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Tallis in Wonderland

Scrutinising Material Objects

Raymond Tallis sees that the simple everyday world of material objects is not so simple after all.

Nothing in the world seems to be more straightforward than the material objects that surround us. Whether we are talking about things nature serves up, such as stones, clods of earth, trees or birds, or things we make, such as the desk at which I am writing this article or the chair on which I am sitting, they seem, ontologically speaking, to be regular guys. They certainly don’t strike us as intrinsically problematic in the way hallucinations, thoughts, memories, or abstract objects such as ‘economic trends’, or even institutions such as ‘the legal system’ do. You can see them, touch them, pick them up, point to them, even throw them across the room. They don’t (normally) disappear when you turn your back, and they know their place because at any given time they have one.

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