Introduction

Philosophy often concerns itself with the most fundamental of questions. One of the most fundamental of these is, perhaps, 'What sorts of things exist?' As with most any question in philosophy, much has been said on this. In the first part of this paper I hope to provide a somewhat critical survey of the history of ontological inquiry. This section will not assume any philosophical background and will attempt to familiarize the reader with what can, at times, appear to be arcane blather. Biases being as they are, there will be more attention given to monistic philosophers (i.e. Spinoza) than would otherwise be expected.

The second part of the paper will introduce more technical and, hopefully, novel material. A (perhaps artificial) dialectic will be established to assist in navigating the plethora of issues involved with establishing a coherent ontology. Two central theses will be defended. These are:

(N) [∀x: x ∈ M] ~∃y(Pxy ^ x =/= y)
(M) [∃x: x ∈ M] ∀y[(y ∈ M) ⊃ (x = y)]

The first, (N), is a response to van Inwagen's Special Composition Question. It says that there is never an instance of material composition, and therefore all material objects that do exist are simple, or without proper parts. Call this view compositional nihilism.

Note that compositional nihilism does not specify how many simple objects exist. (M) says that there exists a material object, and that all other material objects are identical with this object. In other words, there is just one material object. Call this view existence monism.

(I'm not sure if (M) entails (N). Certainly (N) does not entail (M). I suspect, though, that in order to make (M) completely independent of (N), one would have to hold some peculiar view on either the parthood relation or the identity relation. I'll get back to you.)

Other claims will be argued for. While these do reflect what I believe to be the correct conception of the world, I am not married to them. They serve mostly to answer questions sprouted by (N) and (M). The conjunction of them will present a comprehensive (and hopefully correct!) world-view.