Consider ordinary objects such as tables, chairs, spoons, cars.
Take the chair in particular as the locus of examination. Chairs are built, used, repaired, and discarded. When asked to fetch one, there is no hesitation and no confusion.
Not everything that can be spoken of succeeds in this way. Some things exist only conceptually, like unicorns. Some cannot exist even conceptually, like a bachelor’s wife. Chairs and spoons belong to neither case.
Assume, then, that such ordinary objects truly exist.
A chair is made of parts. Legs, seat, back, joints. This much is undisputed.
Where, then, is the chair to be found?
1. A chair exists in parts.
No part is a chair. No leg, seat, or joint is the chair itself. If the chair exists in its parts, then each part would be a chair. This implies many chairs where only one is taken to exist. Removing a part would remove a chair, yet this is not how chairs are treated.
2. A chair is of something other than parts.
If the chair exists apart from its parts, then removing the parts should not remove the chair. When the parts are removed, nothing remains that can be identified as a chair.
3. A Chair is of the collection of parts.
If the chair were identical with the collection of its parts, then those parts would be a chair regardless of arrangement.
If a particular arrangement is required, the chair depends on a pattern or criterion beyond the parts themselves.
If arrangement does not matter, the conclusion is absurd, since this is not how chairs are treated.
The examination concerns only independent existence. Psychological continuity, linguistic convention, recognition, and usefulness are not under consideration here. If the chair exists independently, it must be found without appeal to cognition, convention, or designation.
The chair is not found in the parts, apart from the parts, or in their collection. These exhaust the possible ways in which an object could exist independently. No coherent mode of independent existence for the chair is found. This conclusion applies to all the ordinary objects that can be known.
Ordinary objects lack independent existence.