Objects and Persons

This monograph advances a radical metaphysical thesis with significant implications for philosophical theology. Merricks argues that ordinary inanimate objects—tables, chairs, rocks—do not exist, while maintaining that persons do exist as irreducible entities. This eliminative stance toward material objects combined with realism about persons yields a distinctive framework for addressing classical puzzles about divine action and human nature.

The work's central argument proceeds through causal exclusion reasoning. Merricks contends that if composite objects existed, their alleged causal powers would be redundant given the causal powers of their constituent particles arranged object-wise. Since overdetermination is problematic, and the particles' powers suffice for all causal work, composite objects prove explanatorily superfluous. Persons escape elimination because they possess irreducible causal powers—particularly mental causation—not captured by their constituent particles alone.

This metaphysical position bears directly on theological questions. By denying the existence of ordinary objects while affirming persons as fundamental entities, Merricks provides resources for addressing the interaction problem in substance dualism. If persons are not mere arrangements of particles but possess emergent causal powers, divine-human interaction becomes less mysterious. The framework also illuminates discussions of resurrection and personal identity, suggesting persons might survive bodily death if personhood transcends material composition.

The monograph engages critically with contemporary materialist metaphysics, particularly Peter van Inwagen's organism-only ontology. While van Inwagen restricts composite objects to living beings, Merricks goes further, eliminating even organisms except persons. This move challenges naturalistic assumptions about reality's furniture and opens conceptual space for irreducible mental properties—a result congenial to theistic personalism.

Merricks' eliminativism about objects also addresses puzzles of material constitution relevant to incarnation doctrine. If there are no composite bodies, only particles arranged body-wise, questions about how divinity relates to Christ's physical nature require reframing. The work thus contributes to philosophical theology by showing how revisionary metaphysics can dissolve or transform traditional problems.

Though not explicitly arguing for theism, the monograph develops a metaphysical framework hospitable to theological commitments about personal agency, mental causation, and human dignity. By defending person-body dualism through novel arguments about composition and causation, Merricks provides theists with sophisticated tools for articulating classical doctrines within contemporary analytical philosophy.