The Fragmentation of Being

being: the possible and the actual both exist, but in different ways. Any merely
possible thing could have been actual,and many actual things could have been
merely possible. It’s built into this ontological framework that things could have
had a different mode of being than the mode they actually have. Relatedly, if
Meinongianism is your thing, it’s not crazier to think that the mode of being of
the things that exist, which is not enjoyed by those entities that are merely objects,
can be gained or lost.
Next, consider a version of the A-theory of time according to which merely past or
merely future objects have a different mode of being than present ones. A particularly
intriguing version is one in which only presently existing things enjoy an absolute
form of existence—they just plain exist—whereas merely past and merely future
things enjoy a relative kind of existence—they always existatsome time or other.
(We discussed this view in section 3.7.) This view implies that a change of mode of
being literally happens all the time. Moreover, it’sachangefromakindofpolyadic
mode—existing at—to a kind of absolute existence—existence simpliciter—which,
in this respect, mirrors the change of being that a mode can undergo in
putative miracles: the mode ceases to enjoy existence-in and comes to enjoy
existence, full stop.
Finally, let’s consider a radical view about intrinsic change over time defended by
Elizabeth Barnes (ms-a). On this view, apparent intrinsic qualitative change—
enjoying one property and then another—is best understood as change of mode of
being. On the view Barnes suggests, every monadic intrinsic predicate corresponds to
a mode of being. One putative advantage of Barnes’s system is that we can provide
truth-makers for intrinsic predications without adding properties or facts to our
ontology. Barnes suggests, for example, that the truth-maker for the proposition that
the rose is red is just the roseexisting redly. (Recall our discussion of truth-making in
section 3.5 for a similar proposal about truths about the past.)
Suppose we accept one of these ontologies and so in turn accept that what mode of
being a thing has is sometimes a matter of contingency. In the previous section, we
discussed an attempt to provide partial grounds for particular claims about the
essences of objects. Is this attempt compromised if what mode of being a thing can
have is contingent?
There are three reasons this is unclear. First, it might be that the mode of being a
thing enjoys differs across worlds while its strict essence does not, but nonetheless in
each world the essence of the thing is (partially) grounded in that world in the mode
of being the thing enjoys at that world. (Compare: a disjunction might be true in
many worlds, but grounded in a different disjunct in each world.)
Second, even if all general laws of essence are ultimately grounded in some modes
of being, it doesn’t follow that all modes of being ground general laws of strict
essence. Perhaps if things change some of their modes of being as time passes or
when they undergo qualitative change, these particular changing modes are irrele-
vant to their essences. Perhaps only if a mode is possessed necessarily and eternally is

BEING AND ESSENCE 