# ARTIFACTS IN METAPHYSICS Amie L. Thomasson **Opening (not a real abstract):** Perhaps the most striking feature about discussions of artifacts in recent metaphysics is their paucity. While attention has focused on explicating the basic metaphysical concepts at work in the physical sciences, such as space, time, property, event, cause, and law of nature, artifacts and other common sense objects have been relatively neglected by metaphysicians.1 Where artifacts have been discussed, they are often mentioned only in the contexts of arguments that we should deny that there are any such things. In short, where they are not neglected, artifacts have most often simply been rejected from metaphysical studies of what there is. The failure to study the metaphysics of common sense objects such as artifacts is unfortunate, since understanding the ontological status of artifacts is crucial to **Authors:** [[Amie L. Thomasson]]