The Fragmentation of Being

But“ 9 ”is not to be understood in terms of“ (^9) d,”despite the fact that the latter
expression is more natural.
The view defended here, namely that almost nothings are beings by courtesy, is
also consistent with the claim that“being”is polysemous in the ways Aquinas
suggests. Perhaps the following facts jointly suffice for“being”to be polysemous:
(i)m(“ (^9) d”) is relatively natural but is not a terrificfit with use, (ii)m(“ 9 ”)fits with use
very well but is comparatively less natural, and (iii) no other candidate meanings for
“ 9 ”balance these two factors as well as eitherm(“ (^9) d”)orm(“ 9 ”).
Casati and Varzi (1994: 178–84) argue persuasively that claims about the existence
of holes cannot be paraphrased away.^23 We are committed to the literal truth of“ 9 xx
is a hole.”That there is no paraphrase of sentences in which quantification over holes
occurs into sentences in which such quantification does not occur is what we should
expect given that that sentences of the form“ 9 xΦ”are not identical in meaning to
sentences containing“ (^9) dxΦ”plus additional operators or other linguistic machinery.
When one truly says that holes are beings, or that they exist, one is not using“being”
or“exist”in an attenuated or metaphorical sense.^24 It does not follow, however, that
holes are genuine beings rather than beings by courtesy. On the view articulated here,
strictly and literally, holes exist, but they are less real than their hosts.
Let us return to contrasting the view here with the view that was plausibly
attributed to Aquinas. A second difference is that, according to a popular interpret-
ation of Aquinas’sBeing and Essence, those things whose sole mode of being is being-
true exist“only in the mind.”^25 One way of understanding this claim is as the view
that those entities whose sole mode of being is being-true are such that, were there no
minds, they would not exist.^26 Those objects whose mode of being is being-true are
“beings of reason,”creatures whose existence is the product of our cognitive structure
or intellectual activities.
Suárez also makes similar distinctions and claims about almost nothings. Suárez
(like Aquinas) does distinguish (at least) two uses of the word“being.”In Suárez’s
(2005: 70) commentary on Aristotle’sMetaphysics, he writes:
(^23) This claim is consistent with the plausible claim that facts about beings by courtesy supervene on facts
about real beings. 24
This view differs greatly from the position of Brentano (1981b), who argues that there is a difference
between the strict sense of“being”and many“extended”senses of“being,”but claims that truths stated
using an extended sense can be paraphrased in terms of the“strict”sense.“Being”in the sense of“being-
true”is one such extended sense that he recognizes. It is also in contrast to the view of van Inwagen (2014:
5 – 12), who distinguishes between the proposition expressed by“shadows exist”in what he calls“the
ontology room”from the proposition that sentences expresses outside the ontology room. He does not,
however, explicitly tell us whether 25 “shadow”is ambiguous and denies that“exists”is ambiguous.
See, for example, Bobik (1965: 36, 57) and McInerny (1961: 39–40). This interpretation of Aquinas is
also suggested by Klima (1993). 26
Klima (2014: 109) says that thinkers before Ockham thought of beings of reason as mind-dependent
things.

 BEING AND ALMOST NOTHINGNESS