What counts as an antique is decided later, by the people who come to want it

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the question contains a mistake about how antiques come into being. Nobody manufactures an antique. An antique is an ordinary object that has grown old and has then been found interesting by people who did not make it and were not its original market, and proponents argue that this means the category is defined after the fact and cannot be judged from inside the present. Proponents argue that the record on this point is consistent and unflattering to confident predictions. The objects now most sought after were, in their own day, unremarkable or actively disdained: kitchen equipment, advertising signage, factory furniture, printing blocks, shop fittings and machinery kept only because nobody had thrown it away. Proponents argue that the people who owned them would have been astonished to hear they were producing collectables, and that each generation has in turn assumed that the mass-produced goods surrounding it were too common and too cheap to matter. They add that scarcity is produced by ordinary attrition rather than by intention, which is why the dismissal of today's goods is premature. Proponents argue that the very ubiquity which makes an object seem worthless now is what makes the surviving examples precious once almost all of them have been discarded, and that the first appliances, the early machines, the packaging and the everyday plastics of recent decades are already being collected on exactly this pattern. The argument concludes that because the status of an antique is conferred later by people whose tastes we cannot predict, and because that has always happened, we have not stopped creating antiques.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the argument works only where enough examples survive to be found later, and that this is exactly what has changed: the shop fittings and factory furniture it cites were made to last and were discarded while still intact, whereas goods designed to fail leave nothing behind to be rediscovered. They add that the appeal to unpredictable taste is unfalsifiable as stated, since any claim that something has been lost can be answered by saying someone may want it eventually. Critics also note that attrition only produces value when the surviving object is still usable or displayable, which much modern material will not be.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That the category is conferred later does not mean anything can receive it, since conferral requires surviving examples in a condition someone would want. [Rejecting P2] The shop fittings and factory furniture cited were built to last and were discarded while still intact, whereas goods designed to fail leave nothing to be rediscovered. [Rejecting P3] Attrition produces value only where the survivors remain usable or displayable, which much modern material will not be. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that we cannot predict which objects will be wanted, which leaves the question open rather than answering it in the negative.