Dylan A. answered • 02/22/21
Experienced logic + philosophy tutor
Hi Michael,
This is one of those philosophical questions that we could go on about forever, but I'll provide a brief response that I hope is helpful. And then if you'd like to discuss it further, feel free to reach out to schedule a meeting.
The most straightforward answer to your question is that everything is a thing. After all, can you think of anything that isn't a thing? (When posing the question 'What is there?', philosopher W.V.O. Quine offered a similar response--'Everything'.)
Maybe this straightforward answer isn't very satisfying, though. Maybe some examples of "non-things" come to mind. Are unicorns things? Are ideas things? Are forces or laws of nature things?
If there is anything that you are disinclined to call a "thing," it's worth reflecting on the reasoning. For instance, if you are disinclined to call unicorns "things," then you might associate "thinghood" with existence. In that case, you might also leave ghosts or other mythical creatures off of the list of things.
Or if you are disinclined to think of ideas as things, then maybe you associate "thinghood" with materiality. Maybe you think that only material objects--like tables and chairs--can be things.
These types of considerations lead philosophers to make various types of metaphysical distinctions. Often you'll see distinctions between 'things', 'objects', 'existents', 'entities', and so on.
Dylan A.
Here’s how I’d think of it: There are certain entities which are almost definitely going to count as “things.” For example, if anything is a thing, a table is a thing. So any characterization of “thinghood” should probably make it the case that tables are things. But beyond the range of commonsense examples (tables, cars, trees, etc.), there may be some room for reasonable disagreement, along the lines described in my initial response, about what should count as a thing. It’s not obvious (to me, at least) that a definition requiring that things be material is any better than one that allows for them to be immaterial; so in that sense, yes, which definition you adopt for thinghood is to some degree a matter of opinion or convention. On the other hand, once a definition has been agreed upon, it wouldn’t be merely a matter of opinion whether, for example, ideas are things. I think it’s worth mentioning, too, that philosophers are often more interested in the underlying metaphysical categories than they are the particular choice of terminology. So whether, for example, “entity” is taken to be more general than “thing” (or vice versa) is less important than simply settling on some terms that will allow us to make helpful distinctions between the material and the immaterial, between the actual and the merely possible, and so on. Again, there’s more to be said here, but I hope this response is helpful. Feel free to send me a message on Wyzant if you’d like to discuss further!03/01/21
Michael L.
Yes, your response has been very helpful.03/02/21
Michael L.
I get your initial response, of considering everything a thing, but then you gave examples of disinclinations that would change the types of entities people considered things and I immediately got the impression that thinghood is a matter of opinion.03/01/21