on his answers to (broadly construed) semantical and metaphysical questions con-
cerning expressions like“being,”“existence,”and“there is.”
Heidegger claims both that the word“being”has many meanings and that there
are different ways in which things exist. Section 1.2 explicates the former thesis, as
well as elucidates the connection between senses of“being”and quantification. In
what follows,Ido not distinguish between the notions of existence, and being, and
what there is. On the view I will articulate, everything that there is exists or has being,
but existing things can exist in different ways or enjoy different modes of being.
I claim that any distinction lost by this terminological convenience can be recaptured
in the framework defended in section 1.5. We will see if I am correct!^2
Some contemporary philosophers mistakenly believe that the idea that different
kinds of beings can enjoy different ways of being is metaphysically bankrupt,
and probably even meaningless.^3 In section 1.3, I discuss the doctrine that there
are ways of being, and show how we can understand this doctrine in terms of the
meta-ontological framework recently defended by Theodore Sider (2009, 2011),
who in turn draws heavily on the work of David Lewis (1983a, 1984, 1986), who
in turn draws on the work of Merrill (1980). I then contrast Sider’sviewson
existence with the Heideggerian position developed here, thus establishing a
point of contact between the ancient concern of whether being fragments and
more contemporary issues.
In section 1.4, I compare and contrast this Heideggerian meta-ontological position
withquantifier variance, a view inspired by Carnap (1956) and recently defended by
Eli Hirsch (2002a). Very roughly, quantifier variance is the view that there are many
possible senses of expressions such as“there are,”“exist,”and so forth, which are just
as good as each other and whatever senses we have actually given to these expressions.
Because of this parity of possible meanings, the quantifier variantist concludes that
many (and even perhaps all) ontological disputes—disputes over what there is, what
exists, and so forth—are ultimately trivial. And perhaps each disputant utters truths by
virtue of selecting different meanings for their respective ontological expressions.
In section 1.5, I argue that quantifier variantism is a form of ontological pluralism.
More generally, in section 1.5, I will abstract away from the particulars of Heidegger’s
theory and provide a more general understanding of what belief in different ways of
existing amounts to. Unsurprisingly, there are many ways to believe in ways of being.
In section 1.5, I discuss worries about the impossibility of unrestricted quantification,
plural and singular quantification, the distinction between specific and individual
existence, and Fine’s (2001) notion of truth in reality, all with an eye to implications
for how to understand the claim that there are ways of being.
(^2) Do not think that, by using these expressions as more or less interchangeable, I thereby attribute to any
of the thinkers discussed here (e.g., Heidegger) the view that these expressions (or the natural language
correlates of them in the native tongues of these speakers) are interchangeable. 3
See Quine (1969b: 242). Van Inwagen (2001b) is a prominent neo-Quinean.