The Ontology of Car Condition in Used Car Transactions: A Critical Realist Perspective

Abstract

Used car transactions involve uncertainty because appearance, documents, and sellers’ statements provide incomplete access to a vehicle’s condition. Existing explanations emphasize information asymmetry, credence goods, and consumer protection, with less attention to the ontological nature of car condition. This study developed an account of that nature by integrating Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism and John Searle’s social ontology. A qualitative philosophical approach combined library research and conceptual analysis, followed by application of the framework to a transaction involving a 2012 Toyota Fortuner. The analysis conceptualizes car condition as a relationship between physical condition and functional standards, involving two ontological layers: physical reality and institutional status. Physical condition exists independently of human knowledge, while institutional status emerges through collective recognition and constitutive rules. Perceptual access is distinguished from these layers as an epistemic relationship through which buyers and sellers interpret physical characteristics and institutional representations. The case illustrates how manipulated representations and contractual provisions may influence transaction practices despite discrepancies with physical reality or legal validity. The resulting framework complements information asymmetry and credence-goods theories by clarifying the distinctions among material reality, institutional arrangements, and access to knowledge about them. It provides a conceptual basis for understanding how vehicle condition is constituted and interpreted in used car transactions, although its applicability requires empirical examination.