7.6 Is Degree of Being the Prior Notion?
We have explored arguments against the NVH that tried to establish that naturalness
is the prior notion. I think they failed. A second way of undercutting the NVH is to
argue that degree of being is the more basic notion. Here I will discuss one plausible
argument for this claim, which is an argument fromideological parsimony.
Theideologyof a theory consists in the notions taken as primitive or undefined by
the theory. Consider two theories. Perhaps they are theories about the nature of
intrinsicality, or causation, or supervenience. Whatever the theories are about, they
are extremely similar theories. In fact, these two theories should be exactly alike with
respect to the primitives they employ, except that thefirst theory appeals to the
notion of existence but claims that existence comes in amounts, while the second
theory appeals to both the notion of existenceandthe notion of naturalness, and
claims that naturalness comes in amounts.
By comparing pairs of theories in this way, we can precisely isolate the question of
which ideology is simpler. Every interesting philosophical notion defined or partially
characterized in terms of the ideology of the second theory that appeals to natural-
ness and quantification can be defined or partially characterized in terms of the
ideology of comparative reality of thefirst theory. From the perspective of ideological
parsimony, thefirst theory is simpler. Both theories postulate a primitive that comes
in amounts, but the second theory employs an additional primitive notion.
Note that Sider (2011) commits himself both to the structuralness of quantification
and the structuralness of structure itself, which suggests that Sider is also dubious
about defining up a notion of quantification in terms of structure. In this respect,
both being and structure are parts of Sider’s ideology. Similar remarks apply to the
system of Schaffer (2009: 374), who makes use of a primitive notion ofgrounding
rather than structure but who also explicitly denies thatexistencecan be defined in
terms of grounding.^27 Both philosophers have a primitive notion of quantification or
existence, as well as a primitive notion that structures in some way what there is.
Let us explore whether we can do with fewer primitives. For the sake of clarity, let’s
first consider the view that the fundamental existential notion is comparative:x has at
least as much being as y.^28 Recall that in the previous section we briefly discussed how
the proper linguistic vehicle for a comparative notion of being is a polyadic quantifier
that binds two variables at once. With the comparative notion, we can easily define
up the“absolute”notion of being: to be is to have at least as much being as oneself.
We capture this idea by defining“absolute”or“monadic”existential quantification in
terms of the polyadic quantifier as follows: for any formula in which“x”is the only
(^27) Many philosophers stress the indefinability of“existence.”See, e.g., Coffey (1938: 33), Gibson
(1998: 1), and Miller (2002: 1). 28
I am confident that a similar story can be told for other views about the nature of quantities, but focus
on this one in order to clearly express the moral of the story.