Thing-Ontology

Definition

Thing-ontology names the philosophical investigation of the ontological status of ordinary things — the objects, stuff, and matter of everyday life. Two complementary approaches converge in this wiki: (1) Spuybroek's ontological spectrum (object → thing → stuff → mess → trash → waste), grounded in Heidegger's distinction between objects (Gegenstand, "what stands against") and things (selbstständig, "standing by themselves"), where things converge ontologically with event, issue, and habit; and (2) Bucchioni's extension of Ingarden's theory of cultural objects to all ordinary objects, arguing that ordinary objects have the "purely intentional mode of being" — dependent on both physical objects (mind-independent) and intentional acts (mind-dependent). Together, these approaches challenge both naive realism (ordinary objects are simply physical objects) and eliminativism (ordinary objects do not exist), offering a "third way" in which things are neither reducible to matter nor mere projections of mind.

Key Thinkers

• lars spuybroek — the ontological spectrum of things; Heidegger's object/thing distinction applied to inhabitation; entropy and reversibility as the condition of appropriation.
• martin heidegger — the foundational distinction between objects (Gegenstand) and things (selbstständig); "the thick of things" as the ontological convergence of object with event, issue, and habit.
• roman ingarden — the purely intentional mode of being; cultural objects as doubly dependent (on physical objects and intentional acts); existential moments.
• guillaume bucchioni — extends Ingarden's theory to all ordinary objects; vagueness as the mark of conventionality and mind-dependence; the "third way" between realism and eliminativism.
• donald norman — the cognitive-engineering account: everyday things as designed objects whose operation must be understandable; affordances as the relational properties between thing and user; "twenty thousand everyday things" we must learn.

Related Concepts

• dwelling — things as the "doubles" of the inhabiting self; the house as the place "where we live with the ghost of ourselves imprinted on the things around us."
• everyday life — the ordinary objects of the everyday as the site of thing-ontology's investigation.
• appropriation — things "flicker between presence and absence" in the thickened sphere of appropriation; reversibility enables appropriation.
• poche — the thickened wall-space where things are drawn in and suspended from their original meaning.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Being and Time (Heidegger 1927) — the foundational distinction between ready-to-hand (zuhanden) and present-at-hand (vorhanden); equipment as withdrawn in use; breakdown revealing presence-at-hand. "The less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become" (§15, H. 69).
• Habit and Inhabit, Stuff and Trash (Spuybroek 2025) — the ontological spectrum; Heidegger's object/thing distinction; entropy, reversibility, and the circulation of things.
• The Nature of Ordinary Objects (Bucchioni 2022) — Ingarden's purely intentional mode of being extended to all ordinary objects; material constitution; vagueness and mind-dependence.
• Design and Order in Everyday Life (Csikszentmihalyi 1991) — empirical evidence that ordinary objects function as "concrete symbols" carrying personal meaning; objects as the site of a "symbolic ecology" rather than formal/aesthetic value.
• The Design of Everyday Things (Norman 1990) — everyday things as designed objects whose operation must be visible and understandable; affordances as the perceived properties that determine how things could be used; conceptual models as mental representations of how things work.

Open Questions

• How do Spuybroek's phenomenological-poetic spectrum and Bucchioni's analytic-ontological framework relate — are they compatible accounts of the same thing, or fundamentally different projects?
• If ordinary objects are mind-dependent (Bucchioni/Ingarden), what does this mean for architectural objects — are buildings "cultural objects" whose persistence depends on collective intentional acts?
• Can the "third way" between realism and eliminativism inform the debate on architectural ontology (the building as physical object vs. cultural/social production)?
• Does the reversibility of waste (Spuybroek) map onto the generic dependence of ordinary objects on collective intention (Bucchioni) — is the "circulation of things" an intentional circulation?

Related Syntheses

• Heidegger's Dwelling, Genius Loci, and the Everyday — the thingly turn as the most recent extension of the Heidegger → genius loci → everyday thread.