Objects: Nothing out of the Ordinary - Hardcover

Korman, Daniel Z.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198732538 ISBN 13: 9780198732532

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2015

Synopsis

What sorts of material objects are there? Many philosophers opt for surprising answers to this question that seem deeply at odds with how we ordinarily think about the material world. Some embrace radically eliminative views, on which there are far fewer objects than we ordinarily take there to be, while others go in for radically permissive views on which there are legions of extraordinary objects that somehow escape our notice, despite being highly visible and right before our eyes. In this book, Daniel Z. Korman defends our ordinary, intuitive judgments about which objects there are. The book responds to a wide variety of arguments that have driven people away from the intuitive view: arbitrariness arguments, debunking arguments, overdetermination arguments, arguments from vagueness and material constitution, and the problem of the many. It also criticizes attempts to show that permissive and eliminative views are, despite appearances, entirely compatible with our ordinary beliefs and intuitions.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Z. Korman is an associate professor in the philosophy department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is co-editor of Metaphysics: An Anthology (with Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa) and maintains the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on ordinary objects. While much of his research has focused on the metaphysics of material objects, other research interests include the philosophy of perception, debunking arguments, the nature and status of intuition, Locke on substratum, and scientific essentialism. Korman's work has appeared in such journals as Noûs, The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophers' Imprint, Philosophical Studies, and Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198732538
• ISBN 13: 9780198732532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272