CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Mátyási, Róbert |
|---|---|
| Title | An argument against causal eliminativism of ordinary objects |
| Summary | This thesis builds up and defends an argument against ordinary object eliminativism, a metaphysical position which adheres to the idea of eliminating ordinary objects from our ontology. I directly attack a version of the causal exclusion argument---often referred as ``the Overdetermination Argument''---fitted for ordinary objects by Trenton Merricks to support eliminativism. The overdetermination argument attempts to show that ordinary objects cannot cause, since if they could cause they would overdetermine their effects with their parts. This argument supports the elimination of ordinary objects because we have good reason to deny the existence of overdeterminers. In this thesis I argue that this good reason is often the tacit assumption of a minimal counterfactual account of causation. I show that if we accept a minimal counterfactualist account of causation, then ordinary objects are not overdeterminers (at least not in a harmful way). This seriously undermines the overdetermination argument as a reason to eliminate ordinary objects from our ontology. |
| Supervisor | Huoranszki, Feremc |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/matyasi_robert.pdf |
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