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Thing and Object

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Abstract

There is a fundamental ontological difference between two kinds of entity: things and objects. Unlike things, objects are not identical to any fusion of particulars. Unlike things, objects do not have mereological parts. While things are ontologically innocent, objects are not. Objects are meaty. I defend the distinction between things and objects, and provide an account of the nature of objects.

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Notes

  1. Where this region will be four-dimensional if E persists. The idea is that we copy E throughout its entire existence.

  2. Something like this argument can be found in Sider (2003).

  3. At least, unless in addition to holding that identity is contingent, we are prepared to hold that it is temporally relativised, so that an object is identical to a thing at some times and not others. I will not consider this option since relative identity is not widely endorsed.

  4. I set aside any worries about whether properties instantiated at times, or in temporally modified ways, are truly intrinsic or not. For more on that debate see Lewis (1986), Johnston (1987), Haslanger (1989), Lowe (1988) and van Inwagen (1990a, b).

  5. They hold, for example, that Gibbard’s (1975) Lumpl and Goliath are distinct.

  6. I take it that ‘occupy’ in DAUP means wholly occupy, where a thing or object wholly occupies a region just if it occupies that and only that region.

  7. Where S is a complete decomposition of x iff every member of S is a sub-region of x, no members of S have any sub-regions in common, and every sub-region of x not in S has a sub-region in common with some member of S.

  8. Then we might also want to define o-discreteness*.

    o-discreteness*: O 1 and O 2 are discrete at t iff at t it is no the case that O 1 and O 2 o-overlap*.

  9. For any set of things, there is a fusion of the members of that set.

  10. Where something is o-composed of x and y iff there is some object O, such that x and y are o-parts of O.

  11. Though notice that everything I say would be true of some instantaneous object that is the fusion of my dog at t1 and the University at t1.

  12. Though of course this might not be a larger cardinality.

  13. And indeed those who think that simples are temporally extended, but not in virtue of enduring.

References

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Acknowledgement

With thanks to David-Braddon-Mitchell for helpful discussion of these issues, and to the Australian Research Council for funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Kristie Miller

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  1. Kristie Miller
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Correspondence to Kristie Miller.

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Miller, K. Thing and Object. Acta Anal 23, 69–89 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0021-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-008-0021-5

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