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Why being fragments

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Abstract

This paper develops a new argument for ontological pluralism—the thesis that being fragments. The argument goes, roughly, as follows. It is conceivable that some beings are ontologically dissimilar. So, it is possible that some beings are ontologically dissimilar. This is sufficient for ontological pluralism. So, being fragments.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Turner (2010).

  2. Cf. McDaniel (2017, Chap. 3).

  3. Cf. Bricker (2001).

  4. Cf. McDaniel (2017, pp. 73–75).

  5. McDaniel (2017, p. 8). But McManus (2013, pp. 653–654) argues that Heidegger’s version of pluralism was driven by this concern too and so was Russell’s.

  6. But McDaniel (2017, p. 74) argues that already ‘Scotus, Suárez, and Descartes’ toyed with the Bricker-inspired possibilism—a variant of pluralism that locates the ontological dissimilarity at the meta-modal level rather than within the actual world.

  7. The number of Aristotle’s categories varies from work to work (and sometimes within what is thought to be the same work). Thus, Categories and Topics list ten categories, whereas there are only eight in Posterior Analytics and Book V of Metaphysics and as few as four in Book XIV of Metaphysics. Cf. Cat.: IV, 1b25-2a4; Top.: I, 9, 103b22; APo, I, 22, 83b15; Met.: V, 7, 1017a22-30; XIV, 2, 1089b18-25.

  8. Cf. Met.: IV, 2. Apart from this, some commentators read Aristotle’s argument that being is not a genus (at Met.: III, 3, 998b21–27) as a case for pluralism. For an overview (and an account of what’s wrong with that reading) see Czerkawski (2022a).

  9. Cf. ST: I.3.5; ST: I.13.5.

  10. Moore (1903, p. 111) and Russell (1912, pp. 89–100).

  11. For a different reading of the status of presence-at-hand, see McManus (2012, pp. 195–198).

  12. See SZ. Cf. McDaniel (2010, p. 694).

  13. For a case for the nesting-free account of Heidegger’s version of pluralism see McDaniel (2013) and for a case for the nesting-friendly account of Heidegger’s version of pluralism see Czerkawski (2022b, pp. 234–240).

  14. For example, van Inwagen’s (1998, 2014), Merricks (2019) and Whittle (2020); other objections discussed in Turner (2010).

  15. McManus (2013).

  16. See especially his 2009 and 2010. Both have since been republished as chapters of McDaniel (2017).

  17. See especially his 2010 and 2021.

  18. And for a possible reply to McManus (2013) see Czerkawski (2022c).

  19. For example, Turner (2010).

  20. McDaniel (2010, p. 689).

  21. This nomenclature comes from Chalmers (2002)—I’ll decipher it in due course.

  22. Ditto.

  23. Cf. van Inwagen’s (1998, 2014), Merricks (2019) and Whittle (2020).

  24. And so, Heidegger himself seems to use these phrasings interchangeably. Cf. SZ: 2 [1].

  25. Cf. McDaniel (2017, p. 74).

  26. Chalmers (2002, p. 157).

  27. Chalmers (2002, p. 158).

  28. Chalmers (2002, p. 157).

  29. Chalmers (2002, p. 159).

  30. Cf. Chalmers (2002, p. 164).

  31. Cf. Chalmers (2002, p. 165).

  32. Chalmers (2002, p. 147). Italics are mine.

  33. Chalmers (2002, p. 147). Ditto.

  34. Cf. Chalmers (2002, p. 148).

  35. Cf. Chalmers (2002, pp. 159–160).

  36. Chalmers (2002, p. 149).

  37. Chalmers (2002, p. 153). Cf. Chalmers (2002, pp. 150–153).

  38. Cf. Chalmers (2002, pp. 160–161).

  39. For how Chalmers’ distinctions can be used to address other apparent counterexamples see Chalmers (2002, pp. 189–192).

  40. Chalmers (2002, p. 194).

  41. Thus, I ignore Howell’s (2008) and Mizrahi and Morrow’s (2015) recent reductio arguments against the conceivability–possibility thesis. For a reply to these arguments see Feng (2022).

  42. Recall that my argument in Sect. 2 talked about possibility in general and note that it works for each of Chalmers’ disambiguations of this notion.

  43. I can also conceive of cases of ‘contemporary’ ontological dissimilarities, but I set them aside to keep things simple.

  44. See contributions in Rayo and Uzquiano (2006).

  45. Soph.: 259a.

  46. Met.: III, 4, 1001a21.

  47. SZ: 3 [1]. Cf. Czerkawski (2022c, pp. 11–14).

  48. Meinong (1983), I am told, allowed that some entities do not enjoy any way of being at all.

  49. For some other inconsistencies one can arguably find in the Heideggerian world see, for example, McDaniel (2016) (who attempts to remove the contradiction) and Casati (2022) (who celebrates it).

  50. Cf. Sect. 3.

  51. Van Inwagen (2014, p. 23) seems to take this step in a later publication, where he asserts that ‘describ[ing] the radically different properties that [vastly different beings] have’ is ‘everything that can be done to describe [vast differences between such beings].’ However, he calls this a ‘rant’ rather than an ‘argument.’.

  52. Chalmers (2002, p. 194). Cf. Chalmers (2002, pp. 188–189).

  53. Chalmers (2002, p. 194). Italics added.

  54. Cf. Chalmers (2002, pp. 194–195).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank members of the audience at ECAP11 in Vienna in 2023, where I presented a version of this paper, for insightful comments and questions. My greatest debt, though, is to its anonymous reviewers at Synthese for their extremely generous and in-depth feedback. I feel that the paper really came to life in our year-long conversation about this material. Thank you!

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    Maciej Czerkawski

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Czerkawski, M. Why being fragments. Synthese 202, 196 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04403-z

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