ABSTRACT
The distinction that Wiggins draws between natural substances and artefacts appears in his semantic theory. This ‘deictic-nomological’ method is set out, and various readings of the distinction are presented. Some commentators – Massimiliano Carrara, Pieter Vermaas, Michael Losonsky and Lynne Rudder Baker – claim that Wiggins understands artefacts to have an impoverished ontological status in comparison to natural items. These interpretations are found to be wanting, resulting as they do from terminological confusions, and an alternative reading is suggested whereby artefacts are construed as metaphysically distinct from (natural) substances without being in anyway inferior.
