Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts

Major

Philosophy

Date of Defense

4-14-2016

Graduate Advisor

Jon McGinnis

Committee

Lauren Olin

William Dunaway

Abstract

It’s uncontroversial that artifacts like statues and tables are mind-dependent. What’s controversial is what this dependence entails about the ontic status of artifacts. I argue this mind-dependence entails that the extra-mental world contains no artifacts or artifact joints. In support of this claim I respond to recent arguments proffered by defenders of the mind-independent existence of artifacts, viz. those of Lynne Rudder Baker, Crawford Elder, and Amie Thomasson. I argue the most plausible story about artifacts is that they’re in our minds, not the world; they are merely projections onto a world of “indifferent materials”. With this established, I show how many cases of object coincidence, the thesis that more than one object may be located in the same exact region of space-time, cannot occur.

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