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The Fragmentation of Being
The Fragmentation of Being offers answers to some of the most fundamental questions in ontology. There are many kinds of beings but are there also many kinds of being? The world contains a variety of objects, each of which, let us provisionally assume, exists, but do some objects exist in different ways? Do some objects enjoy more being or existence than other objects? Are there different ways in which one object might enjoy more being than another?
Most contemporary metaphysicians would answer "no" to each of these questions. So widespread is this consensus that the questions this book addressed are rarely even raised let alone explicitly answered. But Kris McDaniel carefully examines a wide range of reasons for answering each of these questions with a "yes". In doing so, he connects these questions with many important metaphysical topics, including substance and accident, time and persistence, the nature of ontological categories, possibility and necessity, presence and absence, persons and value, ground and consequence, and essence and accident.
In addition to discussing contemporary problems and theories, McDaniel also discusses the ontological views of many important figures in the history of philosophy, including Aquinas, Aristotle, Descartes, Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Leibniz, Meinong, and many more.
Winner of the Sanders Book Prize for best book in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, or epistemology that engages the analytic tradition published in English in the previous five-year period.
Most contemporary metaphysicians would answer "no" to each of these questions. So widespread is this consensus that the questions this book addressed are rarely even raised let alone explicitly answered. But Kris McDaniel carefully examines a wide range of reasons for answering each of these questions with a "yes". In doing so, he connects these questions with many important metaphysical topics, including substance and accident, time and persistence, the nature of ontological categories, possibility and necessity, presence and absence, persons and value, ground and consequence, and essence and accident.
In addition to discussing contemporary problems and theories, McDaniel also discusses the ontological views of many important figures in the history of philosophy, including Aquinas, Aristotle, Descartes, Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Leibniz, Meinong, and many more.
Winner of the Sanders Book Prize for best book in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, or epistemology that engages the analytic tradition published in English in the previous five-year period.
- GenresPhilosophyMetaphysics
334 pages, Hardcover
Published October 10, 2017
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About the author
Kris McDaniel
8 books2 followersKRIS McDANIEL is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 1, 2024
Kris McDaniel writes a suma-style work by bringing together all his works on the degrees of being throughout the last decade. He is obviously picking a fight with probably every single analytic metaphysicians alive by disagreeing with Quinean ontology, but as he says in the first pages of the book his view should make a perfect sense; it has been dominant before Quine and it seems obvious from folk metaphysical view.
As I said I enjoyed the book as a whole but I found it a bit odd that McDaniel did not mention the Islamic Philosophers' views much. What he defends in this book is central to Islamic Philosophy, especially to late Aviccena and to Sohrevardi. I am particularly surprised because he tries to make a point of looking at other traditions of philosophy by repeatedly mentioning Indian philosophies.
That said, I really think there are many works going to draw upon this great book. Even thinking that makes me feel quite jolly.
As I said I enjoyed the book as a whole but I found it a bit odd that McDaniel did not mention the Islamic Philosophers' views much. What he defends in this book is central to Islamic Philosophy, especially to late Aviccena and to Sohrevardi. I am particularly surprised because he tries to make a point of looking at other traditions of philosophy by repeatedly mentioning Indian philosophies.
That said, I really think there are many works going to draw upon this great book. Even thinking that makes me feel quite jolly.
April 20, 2023
Being really do fragment fr fr
February 2, 2021
In this book Kris McDaniel defends quite attractively a metaphysical view that he calls ontological pluralism, the view that there are many ways of being (in the sense of existing). This view has also been recently defended by other metaphysicians such as Jason Turner.
McDaniel's metametaphysical view retains many similarities with the received Quinean metaontological tradition; he agrees with Quineans that particular quantifiers express existence and that metaphysics is centrally concerned with existence. His view then remains much closer to the received Quinean view than such views as that of Jody Azzouni (who denies the first claim in Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case for Nominalism) or even those of Jonathan Schaffer or Kit Fine (who reject the second). However, while orthodox Quineans (such as Peter van Inwagen and Quentin Gibson) think that quantifiers and the existence predicate are univocal, McDaniel argues that they are instead analogous.
Unlike most Quineans, McDaniel also incorporates to his metaontological view the concern of Neo-Aristotelians such as Schaffer and Fine with metaphysical fundamentality. He does this by claiming that some ways of being are more fundamental i.e. natural than others, largely following Theodore Sider in Writing the Book of the World. However, while Sider holds that there is only one absolutely fundamental quantifier and therefore one fundamental way of existing, McDaniel thinks that there are many. Therefore while most Quineans think that we need only ask what there is, McDaniel thinks we must also ask in what way what there is exists.
Perhaps this is connected to the fact that McDaniel also differs from Sider with respect to the methodology of metaphysics. Sider thinks that the pursuit of ideological parsimony is the most important guide to truth in metaphysics. However, McDaniel uses this theoretical virtue only occasionally (e.g. in 7.6, p.218) and unsystematically and holds (on p. 79) that a theory is worthy of belief partly to the extent that it is supported by intuitions. Sider, on the other hand, appears to distrust most intuitions (and holds some extremely unintuitive views, such as the supersubstantivalist view that physical objects are identical with sets of space-time points). However, it appears to me that Sider also appeals to some intuitions occasionally and is unsystematic in this. It seems to me that some kind of middle way should be found between these two methodologies.
McDaniel also connects his discussion well to the history of philosophy, showing how we can make with the aid of his theory a lot of sense of many views of classical philosophers (all the way from Aristotle) that many analytical philosophers have hastily dismissed as meaningless. However, it is weird that while he refers to many thinkers from the phenomenological tradition such as Brentano, Meinong, Husserl and Heidegger, he does not mention Roman Ingarden, who discussed ontological pluralism more thoroughly than anyone else in this tradition (e.g. in the work translated in Controversy Over the Existence of the World: Volume I and in Controversy over the Existence of the World: Volume II), and whose writings seem far clearer than those of Heidegger.
Sider and McDaniel argue plausibly that there are more and less fundamental sorts of existence. However, I am not sure whether there is just one fundamental sort of existence as Sider thinks or many as McDaniel thinks. I have still doubts about the soundness of many of McDaniel's arguments, especially his central argument in section 2.4 which relies on analogies between existence and parthood, arguing that both are systematically variably polyadic. McDaniel's arguments for ontological pluralism and compositional pluralism are similar, and I think there are problems with both.
In fact it appears to me that all the data McDaniel tries to explain with his ontological pluralism can be explained more simply, though perhaps less intuitively, with Sider's supersubstantivalist perdurantist worldview which posits only one fundamental way of existence. As supersubstantivalist perdurantism is not by any means an intuitive view we then come back to the question of how important intuitions should be in the methodology of metaphysics.
McDaniel's metametaphysical view retains many similarities with the received Quinean metaontological tradition; he agrees with Quineans that particular quantifiers express existence and that metaphysics is centrally concerned with existence. His view then remains much closer to the received Quinean view than such views as that of Jody Azzouni (who denies the first claim in Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case for Nominalism) or even those of Jonathan Schaffer or Kit Fine (who reject the second). However, while orthodox Quineans (such as Peter van Inwagen and Quentin Gibson) think that quantifiers and the existence predicate are univocal, McDaniel argues that they are instead analogous.
Unlike most Quineans, McDaniel also incorporates to his metaontological view the concern of Neo-Aristotelians such as Schaffer and Fine with metaphysical fundamentality. He does this by claiming that some ways of being are more fundamental i.e. natural than others, largely following Theodore Sider in Writing the Book of the World. However, while Sider holds that there is only one absolutely fundamental quantifier and therefore one fundamental way of existing, McDaniel thinks that there are many. Therefore while most Quineans think that we need only ask what there is, McDaniel thinks we must also ask in what way what there is exists.
Perhaps this is connected to the fact that McDaniel also differs from Sider with respect to the methodology of metaphysics. Sider thinks that the pursuit of ideological parsimony is the most important guide to truth in metaphysics. However, McDaniel uses this theoretical virtue only occasionally (e.g. in 7.6, p.218) and unsystematically and holds (on p. 79) that a theory is worthy of belief partly to the extent that it is supported by intuitions. Sider, on the other hand, appears to distrust most intuitions (and holds some extremely unintuitive views, such as the supersubstantivalist view that physical objects are identical with sets of space-time points). However, it appears to me that Sider also appeals to some intuitions occasionally and is unsystematic in this. It seems to me that some kind of middle way should be found between these two methodologies.
McDaniel also connects his discussion well to the history of philosophy, showing how we can make with the aid of his theory a lot of sense of many views of classical philosophers (all the way from Aristotle) that many analytical philosophers have hastily dismissed as meaningless. However, it is weird that while he refers to many thinkers from the phenomenological tradition such as Brentano, Meinong, Husserl and Heidegger, he does not mention Roman Ingarden, who discussed ontological pluralism more thoroughly than anyone else in this tradition (e.g. in the work translated in Controversy Over the Existence of the World: Volume I and in Controversy over the Existence of the World: Volume II), and whose writings seem far clearer than those of Heidegger.
Sider and McDaniel argue plausibly that there are more and less fundamental sorts of existence. However, I am not sure whether there is just one fundamental sort of existence as Sider thinks or many as McDaniel thinks. I have still doubts about the soundness of many of McDaniel's arguments, especially his central argument in section 2.4 which relies on analogies between existence and parthood, arguing that both are systematically variably polyadic. McDaniel's arguments for ontological pluralism and compositional pluralism are similar, and I think there are problems with both.
In fact it appears to me that all the data McDaniel tries to explain with his ontological pluralism can be explained more simply, though perhaps less intuitively, with Sider's supersubstantivalist perdurantist worldview which posits only one fundamental way of existence. As supersubstantivalist perdurantism is not by any means an intuitive view we then come back to the question of how important intuitions should be in the methodology of metaphysics.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews