Turning the tables on the table deniers: metaphysical mythmaking about ordinary objects

Oderberg, D. S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9585-0515 (2026) Turning the tables on the table deniers: metaphysical mythmaking about ordinary objects. Topoi. ISSN 1572-8749 doi: 10.1007/s11245-026-10424-3

Abstract/Summary

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.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/129286
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s11245-026-10424-3
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > Philosophy
Publisher	Springer
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