almost nothings is something I will callbeing-by-courtesy, which we shall see is a truly
degenerate way to be.
In section 5.5, I explore whether other putatively possible entities are plausibly
thought of as enjoying being-by-courtesy. In section 5.6, I turn to the question of
whether recognizing being-by-courtesy makes certain ontological questions“easy.”
Finally, in section 5.7, I discuss how the notions of ontological reduction and being-
by-courtesy might be connected, and whether things that enjoy being-by-courtesy
are capable of exemplifying fundamental features.
In what follows, I do not defend the intuition that holes and other almost nothings
exist but are less than fully real. The goal of this chapter is to explore and develop
plausible accounts that can be used to explicate the intuition that almost nothings are
less than fully real. If you do not share the intuition that motivates this project, there
is almost nothing I can do to make you have it. I would ask you to look within once
more to be sure—you are decidedly in the minority if you lack it! But regardless, it
will still be worthwhile for you to see the extent to which the accounts offered here
are plausible, since the questions discussed pertain to fundamental issues in
metaphysics.^4
5.2 Almost Nothings and Levels of Being
Thefirst model of ontological degeneracy that we will consider employs levels of
being, the application of which to Meinongian presentism and degrees presentism
was discussed in sections 3.3 and 3.4. Here’s what the model proposes. There are two
fundamental quantifiers that range over concrete objects, one of which includes
“positive”material objects, such as persons, living organisms, quarks, and so on, but
does not include almost nothings. The other quantifier is more inclusive, containing
everything included in the“inner”quantifier as well as almost nothings. On this
model, the ontological degeneracy of almost nothings is putatively captured by the
fact that positive entities have more being than they do: there is a kind of being
enjoyed by positive entities that almost nothings lack, but the converse is not the case.
This sounds initially promising. But for the following reasons levels of being do not
provide the right model. First, it seems misguided to multiply the number of modes
of being a positive entity enjoys simply in order to capture the way in which the being
of almost nothings is impoverished: instead of capturing how the mode of being of a
hole is deficient, this model suggests that the ontological status of its host is even
better than we thought. We are in effect rethinking the ontological status of positive
entities rather than almost nothings, and that’s why I say this model is misguided: it
“adjusts”the wrong target.
(^4) Metaphysics and ontology have never been concernedonlywith the nature of what is fundamental or
rock-bottom, as even a superficial examination of texts such as Suárez (2005) would confirm.