Subjects Among Other Things

Abstract

A. Body and Soul. Arguments by Hume and by Locke and Kant against substantial souls considered and resisted. B. Against Souls. Further arguments against souls: 1. The argument from individuation. 2. The intrinsic nature problem. 3. The argument from causation. C. Might Souls be Located in Space? This seems the most promising way to deal with the problems of B, but is not free of cost: for one thing, souls would then seem essentially spatial since spatial and fundamental, and further puzzles about the dynamics of souls would still call for the attribution to souls of special intrinsic properties or relations, though we have no clue as to the content of these. D. Radical Materialism. This loses much appeal with the realization that nothing material could be ontologically fundamental. If we allow real status to the materially derivative, it seems arbitrary to rule out objects that though immaterial are no more derivative; all the more so if in each case the mode of derivation is equally well understood. So it seems illadvised and unnecessary to strain against the immaterial, or at least against that which is sufficiently meta-material (metaphysical?) to be distinct from the chunk of material that constitutes it at that time. E. On the Constitution of Ordinary Objects. A broadly Aristotelian conception of everyday reality is sketched. Ordinary objects are viewed as ontologically derivative from constitutive matter(s) and constitutive form. F. Some Principles of Ontological Dependence. These explain how the ex-