(2010), and The Relationship Between Metaphysics and Logic Conference at
the University of Southern California (2015). Earlier versions of chapter 6 were
presented at a conference on Persistence at the University of Southern California
(2012), the University of Kentucky-Lexington, Johns Hopkins University, the
University of Ottawa, Boston University, the University of Alberta, a conference titled
“Themes from Baxter II”at Ligerz, Switzerland (2013), and at the University of Iowa at
Ames. Earlier versions of chapter 7 were presented at SUNY-Fredonia, the Mellon
Metaphysics Workshop at Cornell University (2009), Metaphysical Mayhem (2010),
the Australian National University Conference on Fundamentality (2010), the
University of Birmingham, the University of Nottingham, and NYU. Earlier versions
of chapter 9 were presented at the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical
Association (2014), the University of Vermont, Conference on Intensional/Hyper-
Intensional Metaphysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
(2014), Georgetown Conference on the Philosophy of Religion (2014), Brown
University, Eidos Conference on Existence, Non-Existence, and Intentionality at
the University of Geneva, Switzerland (2015), Hamburg University, MIT, and
Kyoto University.
After a full version of the manuscript was completed and refereed, I gavefive
lectures based on it at the Seoul National University at the invitation of the Plural-
isms Global Research Network organized by Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen and
Sungil Han. I was also invited by Timothy O’Connor to the University of Indiana at
Bloomington to discuss the entire manuscript over several days with him and his
metaphysics graduate students, Dave Fisher, Hao Hong, Tim Leisz, Nick Montgom-
ery, and Tim Perrine. Their helpful comments improved the manuscript before it was
sent off in itsfinal version.
Material from the following articles has been incorporated into this book:
2009.“Ways of Being”originally appeared in David Chalmers, David Manley, and
Ryan Wasserman (eds.),Metametaphysics:New Essays on the Foundations of
Ontology, Oxford University Press.
2010.“A Return to the Analogy of Being,”Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research81.3: 688–717.
2010.“Being and Almost Nothingness,”Noûs44.4: 628–49.
2013.“Degrees of Being,”Philosophers’Imprint13.19: 1–19.
2013.“Pasnau on Category Realism: Author Meets Critics, Robert Pasnau,Meta-
physical Themes 1274– 1671 ,”Philosophical Studies171.1: 17–25.I thank the respective publishers for permission to use this material, and for
publishing these articles in thefirst place. Let me also thank again the anonymous
referees of the original articles for their feedback.
I gratefully acknowledge the two non-concurrent semesters of research leave
granted by Syracuse University to work on this book manuscript as well as other
projects.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi