"A Bradford book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-197) and index

The Epistemology and Ontology of Essential Natures -- Conventionalism: Epistemology Made Easy, Ontology Made Paradoxical -- The Epistemology of Real Natures -- Real Essential Natures, or Merely Real Kinds? -- Causal Exclusion and Compositional Vagueness -- Mental Causation versus Physical Causation: Coincidences and Accidents -- Causes in the Special Sciences and the Fallacy of Composition -- A Partial Response to Compositional Vagueness -- Toward a Robust Common-sense Ontology -- Artifacts and Other Copied Kinds -- Why Austerity in Ontology Does Not Work: The Importance of Biological Causation

"In Real Natures and Familiar Objects, Crawford Elder defends, with qualifications, the ontology of common sense. He argues that we exist - that no gloss is necessary for the statement "human beings exist" to show that it is true of this world as it really is - and that we are surrounded by many of the medium-sized objects in which common sense believes. He argues further that these familiar medium-sized objects not only exist, but have essential properties, which we are often able to determine by observation. The starting point of his argument is that ontology should operate under empirical load - that is, it should give special weight to the objects and properties that we treat as real in our best predictions and explanations of what happens in the world

Elder calls this presumption "mildly controversial" because it entails that arguments are needed for certain widely measured positions such as "mereological universalism" (according to which the sum of randomly assembled objects constitutes an object in its own right)."--Jacket

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