moral support, as well as amazingly detailed comments on drafts of every single
chapter. Thank you, Joshua. Peter Finocchiaro and Byron Simmons also gave me
excellent comments on each chapter. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Byron.
I received excellent feedback from the anonymous referees at Oxford University
Press. I’ve refereed books myself. I know it can be a lot of work, and there is
very little professional reward for doing it. The main reward is the knowledge
thatyouhavehelpedimprovesomeone’sworkandhopefullyhavehisorher
gratitude as a consequence. You did, and you do. I don’t know who you were, but
thank you!
Thank you Mark Barber, Elizabeth Barnes, Donald Baxter, Karen Bennett, William
Blattner, Ricki Bliss, Philipp Blum, Ben Bradley, Jeff Brower, Ross Cameron, Ben
Caplan, Taylor Carman, Paek Chae-Young, David Chalmers, Heeyoon Choi, Phil
Corkum, Sam Cowling, Andy Cullison, Shamik Dasgupta, Louis deRosset, Imogen
Dickie, Jordan Dodd, Matti Eklund, Neil Feit, Kit Fine, Daniel Fogal, André
Gallois, Tyron Goldschmidt, Sungil Han, James Harrington, John Hawthorne,
Mark Heller, Benj Hellie, Thomas Hofweber, Hud Hudson, Kim Jeong Hyeon,
Jennan Ismael, Mark Johnston, Li Kang, William Killborn, Hyosung Kim, Jiwon
Kim, Sol Kim, Yewon Kim, Kathrin Koslicki, Marcy Lascano, Chan-Woo Lee, James
Lee, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Sam Levey, Michaela McSweeney, Ofra Magidor, Trenton
Merricks, Kevin Mulligan, Bence Nanay, Alyssa Ney, Daniel Nolan, Josh Parsons,
Robert Pasnau, Laurie Paul, Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen, David Plunkett,
Graham Priest, Jason Raibley, Gurpreet Rattan, Mike Rea, Gabriela Reason, Roth
Reason, Kara Richardson, Gideon Rosen, Raul Saucedo, Jonathan Schaffer, Joshua
Schechter, Eric Schliesser, Jisoo Seo, Ted Sider, Peters Simons, Alex Skiles, Brad Skow,
Olla Solomyak, Roy Sorensen, Nick Stang, Steve Steward, Meghan Sullivan, Amie
Thomasson, Kelly Trogdon, Jason Turner, William Vallicella, Christina van Dyke,
Peter van Inwagen, Ryan Wasserman, Robert Williams, Jessica Wilson, Jeremy Wyatt,
Takashi Yagisawa, and Dean Zimmerman. My apologies to anyone I have forgotten.
Almost all of the chapters were presented in various conferences, talks, and
workshops. Philosophy is a collaborative enterprise and the opportunity to present
my work and receive valuable feedback from this wide variety of audiences
helped me immensely. I am very grateful to have had these opportunities, and
I thank once again the various venues that invited me to present my work. Earlier
versions of chapter 1 were presented at the University of Leeds conference on
Structure in Metaphysics (2007), the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference
(2007), and at the University of Rochester. Earlier versions of chapter 2 were
presented at the Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference (2008) and Williams
College. Earlier versions of chapter 3 were presented at the University of Toronto,
the Central Division of the APA (2008), the Arizona Ontology Conference (2009),
Metaphysical Mayhem (2010), and at the University of Iowa at Ames. Earlier
versions of chapter 4 were presented at Duke University, the Princeton Confer-
ence on Philosophical Logic (2009), LOGOS Conference on Fundamentality
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS