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.
Recommended Citation
Renz, Graham Louis, "It’s All in Your Head: A Solution to the Problem of Object Coincidence" (2016). Theses. 229.
https://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/229