2. A Return to the Analogy of Being
2.1 Introduction
In the history of philosophy, the question of whether there are ways of being has been
closely related to a seemingly more general question: when should one think that
some philosophically interesting expression isanalogous? This is because on many of
the historically interesting ways of implementing ontological pluralism, ontological
expressions such as“being,”“there is,”and“exists”are analogous in one or many of
the varied technical senses given to the term“analogy.”
In this chapter, the primary focus will be on explicating a contemporary and
metaphysical notion of analogy, and then providing ontologies on which ontological
expressions such as“being,”“existence,”and so on, are analogous. In what follows,
I will articulate two distinct tests for being an analogous expression, and then
illustrate how, on many ways of implementing ontological pluralism,“being”is
analogous. Along the way, I will present a series of ontological schemes, each of
which meets at least one of the tests. If you are attracted to one of these ontologies,
you have some reason to believe in ways of being.
In general, I see the goal of making a case for ways of being to contemporary
metaphysicians as being challenging enough that a book-length defense is
required. I do not believe that one could ever be rationallyrequiredto believe in
ways of being. Still, a metaphysic is a liveoption if it is rationally permissible to
believe. In recent decades, the dominant view among analytic metaphysicians
was that ontological pluralism is silly or confused, so establishing the rational
permissibility of belief in ways of being is an important task. We made good
progress on this task in the previous chapter, but there is still more work to do.
Let’s proceed.
2.2 Varieties of Analogy
My focus will be on exploring a notion of analogy that is metaphysical in nature and
applies primarily to entities such as properties and relations. My preferred view is
that an analogous term is one that expresses an analogous property or relation. The
phenomenon of analogy then is primarily metaphysical rather than semantical, and
an analogous term might be univocal in ordinary language.