specialists, but is well known to all. Everything is part of it: the gardener
and her tulips, the prisoner and his chains, the cook and his food processor
are all real things that should be included in a complete account ofwhat
there is.1 The aim of The Metaphysics qfEve¢yday Life is to present a theory
that focuses on the familiar objects that we encounter every day — flowers,
people, houses, and so on — and locates them irreducibly in reality.
Let us begin with a distinction between manifest objects ofeveryday life
(roses, chairs, dollar bills, etc.) and the underlying objects that we can hope
that physics will tell us about. Suppose that the underlying objects are
collections of particles. I want to defend a metaphysics that gives onto-
logical weight to the manifest objects of everyday life. This view is an
alternative to contemporary metaphysical theories that take ordinary
things to be “really" just collections of particles. Such theories then have
to answer the question — How do we account for the fact that, ifyour lover
and your prize roses, say, are “really” just collections of particles, they seem
to be a person and and a plant, and do not seem like just collections of
particles? One attempted answer is that we simply choose to employ
concepts like “person” and “plant” to refer to certain collections of
particles. In contrast to such a “conceptual” account of ordinary things,
I want to provide an “ontological” account that is nonreductive with
respect to the manifest objects of everyday life.
By saying that I want to provide an “ontological" account of ordinary
things, I mean that I include in ontology — the complete inventory of what
exists — the objects that we daily encounter (passports, fish, etc.). The words
“tish” and “passport” are not merely predicates; they express properties.
I As I shall explain, things are included in a complete account of what there is in virtue of
being ofone primary kind or another. (See chapter 2.) The gardener, the prisoner, and the
cook are all members of the primary kind person. A hsh or a passport has the property — essentially, as I’ll explain in chapter 2 —
of being a fish or a passport. Fish and passport are primary kinds. Ontology
includes not just physical particles and their sums, but also fish and passports.
Moreover, I take everyday discourse about ordinary things not only to be
largely true, but also to mean what speakers think it means. Unless there is
some reason to do otherwise, I take what we commonly say (e.g., “It’s time
to get your passport renewed,” or “The fish today is fresh”) at face value. I do
not systematically reiriteipret ordinary discourse in unfamiliar terms, nor do
I suppose that ordinary discourse is defective or inferior to some other
(imagined) regimented language. Sentences about ordinary things mean
what ordinary speakers think they mean, and such sentences are onen
true. If I am correct, then the ordinary things that we commonly talk
about are irreducibly real, and a complete inventory of what exists will
have to include persons, artifacts, artworks, and other 1nedium—sized objects
along with physical particles.
Let me make two terminological points. (a) I shall use the term “irre—
ducibly real” and its variants to refer to objects that belong in ontology:
objects that exist and are not reducible to anything “else.” So, in my usage,
someone who says, “Sure, there are tables, but a table is just a bunch of
particles,” takes tables to be reducible to particles and hence takes particles,
but not tables, to be irreducibly real. A complete ontology — comprising
everything that is irreducibly real — on my view will include manifest
objects like tables.
(b) I shall use the term “the everyday world” and its variants as labels
for the target of my investigation. The everyday world is populated by all
the things that we talk about, encounter, and interact with: inanimate
objects, other people, activities, processes, and so on. It is the world that
we live and die in, the world where our plans succeed or fail, the world
we do or do not find love and happiness in — in short, the world that
matters to us. My aim, again, is to give an ontological account ofthe shared
world that we encounter and to argue that a complete inventory of all the
objects that (ever) exist must mention the mediu1n—sized objects that we
are familiar with: manifest objects of the everyday world belong to irre-
ducible reality.
Many contemporary metaphysicians reject this project at the outset:
Why bother, they ask? There is a longstanding tradition in philosophy that
downgrades manifest things. Although that tradition may be traced back at
least to Plato, it is influential today. Some contemporary metaphysicians
reject ordinary things because they take irreducible reality to be exhausted
Beginning in the middle
Finally, there are no other explanations in terms of molecules or atoms
that better explain the phenomena (a letter’s being returned to sender,
carmakers’ losing money, a conservative reaction). So, rather than getting
better explanations of such phenomena from underlying objects and
properties, we would simply lose sight of what we wanted to understand.
Causal explanations in terms of ordinary objects and properties explain
phenomena that we want to explain. Ordinary things figure indispensably
in causal explanations and hence belong in the ontology. (For a detailed
account of nonreductive intentional causation by ordinary things, see
chapter 5.)
In sum, we have overwhelmingly greater reason to believe in the
irreducible reality of ordinary objects and properties than to believe in
any theory that denies that they are irreducibly real.7 The evidence of our
senses, of which the commonsense tradition avails itself trumps arcane
arguments leading to anti—commonsense conclusions cut off from any-
thing we can confirm in experience. We know about ordinary things first-
hand: we encounter them, we manufacture them, we interact with them.8
Our knowledge of collections of simples or fundamental particles is much
more meager, and much more distant, than is our knowledge of ordinary
things.9 So, we have many reasons to pursue a metaphysics that takes
ordinary objects to be irreducibly real.
These reasons to take ordinary objects to be irreducibly real do not
contravene physics. Quite the contrary. As we shall see, the idea of
constitution allows stable ordinary objects to be ultimately constituted
by constantly changing sums of particles, without being reducible to the
sums that constitute them. (See especially chapter 9.) Persistence at the
level of ordinary objects is consistent with fluctuation at the level of atoms
or subatomic particles. Nor is it anti—scientiHc to suppose that we need
7 This point is familiar from G. E. Moore.
8 This is not to deny that there are illusions and hallucinations; it is only to say that irreducibly
real objects can be experienced (under conditions that epistemologists specify). Even ifa
Cartesian Evil Genius were logically possible, we would have no reason whatever to affirm
his existence, and much reason to deny it. I discuss this in “First—Person Extemalisni," The
I\/lodern Schoolmau, forthcoming (2007). Also, see my "Social Externalism and First-Person
Authority,” Erkenntnis, forthcoming.
9 For example, Theodore Sider takes the irreducible existents to be instantaneous temporal
parts. An instantaneous temporal part physically cannot be experienced. The closest we can
get to this reality is to a nondenumerable infinity of instantaneous temporal parts. See
Theodore Sider, Four-Dimenrimmlixm: An Ontology if Persistence and Time (Oxfbrd:
Clarendon Press, 2001). causal explanations beyond those offered by natural science.10 Our ordin-
ary experience generates questions whose answers cannot be given in the
language of natural science. Consider, for example, causal explanation of
soldiers’ being deployed inside a wooden horse. I—Iomer had a causal
explanation using terms that referred to manifest objects. We have no
better explanation today; we would not even think to look to physics to
explain the soldiers’ deployment in the Trojan Horse. We might look to
(macro—level) physics to explain how the horse was built, but not why
it was built or how it was used.
Finally, let me address a commonly heard argument against a metaphy-
sics of ordinary things — an argument from parsimony. The premise is that
recognizing ordinary things needlessly bloats ontology. We can do just as
well, it is said, with an ontology that contains only particles and their sums
(and perhaps sets). So, parsimony dictates that recognizable ordinary things
not be in the ontology.
But parsimony is not the correct virtue to appeal to unless one already
has a coherent and comprehensive view. I shall try to show that the most
coherent and comprehensive view of the everyday world countenances
the irreducible reality of ordinary things. The basic reason to pursue a
metaphysics of ordinary things is that appeal to ordinary things is needed
for a coherent and comprehensive metaphysics that secures the rationality
of our practices and attitudes toward the things we encounter. Thus, we
have good reason not to take manifest objects “really” to bejust collections
ofparticles. That would be to take manifest objects, which we encounter
first—hand, to be “really” we know not what.
Some philosophers may be unmoved by such considerations. So let me
leave it at this: Parsimony is not the only intellectual virtue. A metaphysical
theory should help us understand reality and our experience of it. It is
difficult to see how understanding is served by the suggestion, for example,
that it is never the case that, ontologically speaking, there is exactly one cat
in the room. It is even more mysterious to add that we shouldn’t worry
about this since we still may truly say that there is exactly one cat in the
room.11 Reality as experienced is strange enough; metaphysics should not
make it even more so. The ultimate test of a metaphysical theory, after
IU The domain ofmy view here is the natural world — the world ofordinary things. This view
is neutral about the existence ofanything supernatural. I do not take this neutrality to be in
any way anti—scientiHc,just “anti—scientistic.”
I] Cf David Lewis, “l\/lany, But Almost One,” in Papm in Il/Ictaphyxicx and Epismviology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 164-182.
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