Making Objects and Events: A Hylomorphic Theory of Artifacts, Actions, and Organisms is a study in the metaphysics of the world we make around us, the world of humble artifacts like tables and chairs, as well as sublime artifacts like symphonies, novels, and paintings. Artifacts such as these present a host of philosophical puzzles. How much change can they undergo without ceasing to exist? When they have functions (as chairs have the function of being sat on), how do they come to have these functions, and how are those functions related to the intentions of their makers? In providing answers to these and other questions, the book develops a vision of artifacts as being the impressions of minds on matter; their essences lie in the ways they come to exist, the ways in which makers impose their intentions onto the matter available to them.
Simon Evnine is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. His areas of research include epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. He is the author of Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood (Oxford University Press, 2008), Donald Davidson (Stanford University Press, 1991), and articles in such journals as Mind, Synthese, and Journal of the History of Philosophy on topics in epistemology and the philosophy of mind, Locke, Hume, and Freud.
