distinguish these distinctive kinds of ontological superiority, but also to show why
they are properly thought of as distinctivelyontologicalkinds of superiority. Orders
of being are discussed in chapter 2; levels of being are discussed in chapter 3; and
chapters 5 and 7 focus on degrees of being. For now, we’ll focus on ontological
pluralism.
Broadly speaking, there have been (at least) three dominant historical motivations
for ontological pluralism. We can call these motivations thetheological, phenomeno-
logical,andlogicalmotivations.
The theological motivation for ontological pluralism stems from many consider-
ations about the nature of God, but we’ll focus here on two of the more prominent
ones. First, there is the consideration that God is so radically different from any
created thing that no literal ascription of a feature could be true of them both.^11 But
some literal ascriptions must be true of both God andfinite creatures: it is obvious
that“is a God or is afinite creature”truly and literally applies to both God andfinite
creatures. Similarly, it is obviously true that“is not a convection oven”is literally true
of both God and myself. So the claim that no literal ascription of a feature could be
true of both a created being and the divine being must not be taken in complete
generality. Rather, there is some special subset of ascriptions of features that cannot
be literally and truly applied to both God and created beings.
What is this special subset of features? It appears to consist of those features that
are neither mere disjunctions nor mere negations of other features. The concepts of
a merely disjunctive feature and a merely negative feature are in need of clarification,
but I assume that we have enough of a grasp of them to provisionally proceed. An
example of a merely disjunctive feature isbeing an electron or being a donkey. Let’s
provisionally call such features that are neither mere disjunctions nor mere negations
of other featuresfundamentalfeatures.
Instead of saying that no literal ascription of any feature to both God andfinite
beings is true, a better way of formulating the doctrine that God is radically other
than His creatures is that there is no literal predication of a fundamental feature
which is true of both God andfinite creatures; God and His creatures have no
fundamental properties in common.^12 Merely disjunctive or negative predicates
can be truthfully predicated of both, but these predicates never designate fundamen-
tal features, and so in some sense do not ascribefeaturesto God and creatures.
It follows from the assumption that“is an existent”is predicated both of God and
creaturely things, that“is an existent”is not a predicate whose sole semantic value is
fundamental. Perhaps it stands for a non-fundamental feature; or perhaps it is
ambiguous, and it stands for two different fundamental features. But either way,
(^11) See, for example, Aquinas’sSumma TheologicaI, q. 13, article 5 (Aquinas 1948: 63–4).
(^12) I suggested this way of understanding one kind of“negative theology”in McDaniel (2010a). A similar
view has since been developed by Jacobs 2015. See also Davies (2006a: 141–2).