ABSTRACT
Objects have been under assault in philosophy for several centuries. This chapter seeks to defend them. Of all the features that might be ascribed to objects, two stand out as especially crucial: unity and autonomy. Unity, because the object is one thing despite its numerous qualities and effects and the various roles it can play in different contexts. Autonomy, because objects have a private reality not generated by its interactions with humans or with other objects. If you hold as I do that objects are unified and autonomous, then philosophy must be object-oriented philosophy, because anything that is both one and independent must count as an object, whether or not it is physical. There are numerous additional features found in some philosophies of objects, but I hold these to be purely optional, much like power steering and cruise control for 1970s automobiles. An object does not need to be natural, as in Aristotle’s theory of substance. It does not need to be indestructible, as are the Leibnizian monads. The object need not be made of purely physical stuff, as many scientific naturalists believe. Neither does it need to be a possible correlate of consciousness, as phenomenology holds. It does not need to be exhaustively presentable by accurate propositional statements, as in the so-called correspondence theories of truth. Despite important shared features, the object is not a classical substance. But neither is it merely a mental entity, because objects unleash forces against one another even when there are no humans or animals to witness them. An object-oriented philosophy need only maintain that there are many objects, that each of them is one thing, and that they are what they are apart from the various events in which they might participate.
