“definition,”it follows that beings by courtesy are less real than concrete material
beings.^16 They are also less real than attributes, assuming that attributes enjoy a
fundamental mode of being. The third model gives a scale on which holes are less
real than attributes even given the assumption that the mode of being an attribute
is polyadic.^17
There are precedents to the position defended here. Recall that Fine (2001: 2–3)
argued that we should distinguish betweenwhat isandwhat really is. There is a
special propositional operator,it is really the case that(“R”). Perhaps there are some
true existentially quantified propositions that are notreallytrue. Fine’s proposal
enables us to distinguish beings by courtesy from genuine beings: both exist, but only
the latterreallyexist. Fine does not explicitly discuss almost nothings, but the
position that almost nothings are real without being really real is a natural view for
him to endorse. (Recall that in section 1.5.4, we discussed a way to formulate the
doctrine that there are modes of being using Fine’s“reality operator.”)
Ross Cameron (2008) also distinguishes between what exists and what“really”
exists. According to Cameron, things that really exist are minimal truth-makers for
existential sentences. But a true existential sentence such as“aexists”can be made
true by something other thana:ifais not a minimal truth-maker for“aexists,”then
aexists but does not really exist. Cameron does not explicitly discuss almost
nothings, but rather applies his framework to questions concerning composition
and mathematical objects. But the extension of his framework to almost nothings is,
if anything, even more apt.
These are modern precedents to the model staked out here. But the model has a
much longer lineage. This distinction betweena’s existing in the sense of there being
a true sentence of the form“aexists”anda’sreallyexisting is foreshadowed by these
remarks by Aquinas:
We should notice, therefore, that the word“being,”taken without qualifiers, has two uses, as
the Philosopher says in thefifth book of theMetaphysics. In one way, it is used apropos of what
is divided into the ten genera; in another way, it is used to signify the truth of propositions.
The difference between the two is that in the second way everything about which we can form
an affirmative proposition can be called a being, even though it posits nothing in reality. It is
in this way that privations and negations are called beings; for we say that affirmation is
opposed to negation, and that blindness is in the eye. In thefirst way, however, only what posits
(^16) I tend to think of entities as something like determinations of their modes of being. The analysis
offered here provides an interesting analogy between entities and their most natural mode of being and
determinates and determinables. Just as determinates and their corresponding determinables are equally
natural/equally real (see section 2.2 and chapter 7), entities are as natural (real) as the most natural mode of
being that they determine. 17
Korman (2015: 306) suggests that we should distinguish the question of which objects are funda-
mental from the question of which modes of being are fundamental. I agree that the questions are distinct,
but I see no reason to think that there are independent scales of fundamentality. On the contrary, our total
theory is much simpler if the scales are linked. And the particular way of linking them defended here has an
impressive historical lineage, as we will shortly see.