It’s All in your Head: a Solution to the Problem of Object Coincidence

Abstract

It's uncontroversial that artifacts like statues and tables are minddependent. 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.