ABSTRACT
Ontological parasites tempting to be lured into a significant mistake by the chain of reflections. The point is that in rearranging, connecting and modifying the materials around people in the world, they make new things. This point they can maintain even while allowing that the things thus constituted are made solely of ingredients that were already there. The theorist impressed by ontological parasitism can now maintain that what supports my keyboard, and may be moved to new office, is a unitary, causally integrated and structured collection of desk parts. In order to be a physicalist, one does not need to hold that certain categories of physical things are more fundamental than others. It may be that there are only physical facts, and that the physical facts exhaust and determine all the facts there are. But such considerations in no way undermine the reality, or substantiality of items that are complex.
