Scholarlink

<p>This paper challenges the Eddington–Sellars tradition of positing ‘scientific’ objects – microphysical counterparts of ordinary, ‘middle-sized’ things such as tables. I argue that familiar eliminativist and reductionist constructions involving swarms, clouds, aggregates, or pluralities lack coherent identity and membership conditions. Kit Fine’s distinction between rigid and variable embodiments further undermines the idea of a distinct ‘scientific’ table: the former yields only extensional fusions with no principled boundaries, the latter collapses into the ordinary table itself. Turning to solid state and condensed matter physics, I show that nothing in contemporary microphysics supplies a determinate plurality of particles arranged table-wise. Consequently, ‘scientific’ tables dissolve as metaphysical fictions.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Turning the Tables on the Table Deniers: Metaphysical Mythmaking About Ordinary Objects

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月7日

查看全文
  • David S. Oderberg

摘要

This paper challenges the Eddington–Sellars tradition of positing ‘scientific’ objects – microphysical counterparts of ordinary, ‘middle-sized’ things such as tables. I argue that familiar eliminativist and reductionist constructions involving swarms, clouds, aggregates, or pluralities lack coherent identity and membership conditions. Kit Fine’s distinction between rigid and variable embodiments further undermines the idea of a distinct ‘scientific’ table: the former yields only extensional fusions with no principled boundaries, the latter collapses into the ordinary table itself. Turning to solid state and condensed matter physics, I show that nothing in contemporary microphysics supplies a determinate plurality of particles arranged table-wise. Consequently, ‘scientific’ tables dissolve as metaphysical fictions.