The introductory chapter lays out the motivations for defending a common sense ontology and provides an overview of the various eliminativist arguments against ordinary objects that will be discussed in the book. It also describes the argument strategy of the book: the early chapters (2 and 3) argue for central views about reference and modality — namely, a hybrid approach to reference, and a conceptualist understanding of modality. But the later chapters provide the most important evidence for these views by demonstrating their ability to defuse all of the arguments against ordinary objects, and to make sense of our common sense world view nonproblematically. The book closes by sketching important metaontological results of the above work regarding which metaphysical questions are and are not answerable, and what methods should be employed in pursuing them.
Keywords: common sense, ordinary objects, reference, modality, conceptualism, modal, eliminativism, metaontology