Discussion of atomistic and monistic theses about abstract reality.

I argue that Schaffer fails to provide a non-question-begging argument for priority monism. Despite his suggestion to the contrary, Humean pluralists need not, and plausibly do not, endorse his tiling constraint on metaphysically basic objects. Moreover, the distinction between supervenience—of the sort at issue in Humean doctrine—and metaphysical necessitation—of the sort at issue in Schaffer’s tiling constraint—points toward an alternative treatment of the phenomena initially inspiring Schafferian monism. There is an important possibility, one that Humeans can or should embrace, that (...) Schaffer overlooks when drawing his monistic conclusion. (shrink)

In a series papers, Jonathan Schaffer defended priority monism, the thesis that the cosmos is the only fundamental material object, on which all other objects depend. A primitive notion of dependence plays a crucial role in Schaffer’s argu- ments for priority monism. The goal of this paper is to scrutinize this notion and also to shed new light on what is at stake in the debate. I present three familiar arguments for priority monism and point out that each relies on (...) a connecting principle that ties dependence to other metaphysical relations. I then argue for two desiderata: the relation between dependence and other metaphysical relations needs to be strong enough to establish that other metaphysical relations are relevant to the direction of dependence but not so strong as to leave no room for revisionary versions of priority monism. I propose a particular way of meeting these desiderata, according to which the target notion of dependence is graded rather than all-or-nothing. One upshot is that we should be less preoccupied with priority monism itself and should instead focus on specific aspects of a broader monistic worldview. (shrink)

Monism, characterized by Jonathan Schaffer as the thesis that the cosmos is the one and only basic actual concrete object, has been the subject of a great deal of recent interest. Spinoza is often taken, rightly, to be an important forebear. This article seeks to explain the distinctive content and basis of Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics and to compare it to contemporary Monism. It then argues that although Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics is not strictly a version of Monism as defined, it has (...) a number of theoretical advantages that make central aspects of it worthy of serious consideration. (shrink)