Nothingness and the Ground of Reality

In this paper Priest argues that everything (the totality of all objects) and nothing (the absence of all objects) are perfectly good objects. Each can be defined as a certain mereological sum (fusion). He also argues that nothing is a contradictory object, which is also not an object; and further, that this contradictory object is, in a certain sense, the ground of reality.

Ballot Ontology

The US Presidential Election of 2000 was crucially decided in Florida. And, in Florida, the election might have been decided crucially by the question: is a dimple a hole? “Yes, it is”, so dimpled ballots are valid and ought to be counted. “No it isn’t”, and dimpled ballots must be rejected as invalid. If only one knew the answer! Where were the hole experts when we needed them? Eventually the manual recount was stopped by the Supreme Court. But we did learn something. We learned that even the destiny of a Presidential Election, if not more, might ultimately depend on one’s criteria for identifying holes—not their material surroundings, which everyone could detect, but the holes themselves.

Ontological Pluralism about Non-Being

Ontological pluralism is the view that there is more than one fundamental way of being. This paper sketches ontological pluralism about non-being, the idea that non-being can be further divided into more fundamental categories. After drawing out the relationship between pluralism about being and pluralism about non-being, I discuss quantificational strategies for the pluralist about non-being. I examine historical precedent for the view. Finally, I suggest that pluralism about non-being has explanatory power across a variety of domains, and that the view can account for differences between non-existent past and future times, between omissions and absences, and between different kinds of fictional objects.

How Ordinary Objects Fit into Reality

This chapter by Bryan Frances argues against sparse compositional nihilism, the view that there are no composite objects, such as tables and trees. Even granting crucial nihilist assumptions, he argues that composite objects can reduce to simples, showing how a table or tree might exist while not being single things.

Against Gabriel

Casati and Fujikawa respond to Markus Gabriel’s view that the world does not exist. They summarize and formalize Gabriel’s argument, show how it does not succeed, and engage with Graham Priest’s contribution to this volume along the way.

Thales’ Riddle of the Night

Which is older: day or night? Thales is said to have answered “Night is the older by one day.” Recent research bridges this mysterious riddle with the first conceptual puzzle published by Lewis Carroll: “Where does the day begin?” Once understood in its context, Thales’s day and night riddle presents an opportunity to view astronomy in a sort of reverse perspective. In addition to stimulating this gestalt switch, the day and night riddle fuels speculation that Thales had an insight into the hidden antiquity of the night (and day) and that he correctly inferred that the night is older than the Earth itself.

Saying Nothing and Thinking Nothing

This chapter treats empty thoughts and nonsense that appears to make sense. They argue for the existence of what Gareth Evans termed ‘illusions of thought’, and reply to arguments, especially from Herman Cappelen, against their existence, focusing especially on work by Herman Cappelen.

Why It Matters What Might Have Been

Genuinely counterfactual thought concerns situations that typically both are, and are known, not to exist. This raises a puzzle about the point of counterfactual thinking, and in particular in connection with the counterfactual conditional. It is unclear why a conditional whose truth turns on what happens in imaginary situations should occupy the central role that counterfactuals do have in our serious intellectual practices, in particular in connection with decision-making. This paper sets out the ways in which thinking about the non- actual constrain deliberation about the actual, and locates the value of these constraints in their effect on (a) risk-aversion and (b) future discounting.

Something from Nothing

It strikes many as obvious that negative facts—such as that Justin Trudeau is not a woman—are not fundamental: negative facts must ultimately be explained in terms of positive facts (for instance, that Justin Trudeau is a man). Amijee focuses on a particular class of negative facts: contingent negative existentials (such as that there are no 10ft tall humans). If contingent negative existentials are not fundamental, then they must be explained. But the intuition that contingent negative existentials are explained is in tension with the widely held view that any universal generalization can be explained by its instances together with a totality fact. This is because a totality fact is itself a negative existential, and equivalent to a universal generalization. If the explanation for any contingent negative existential must appeal to another contingent negative existential, then not all contingent negative existentials can be non-fundamental.

Ostrich Actualism

This chapter explores the debate over merely possible objects, clarifies the distinction between actualism and possibility, and reconciles actualism with the reality of possibilities and nonexistents. Focusing on late work by Derek Parfit, Warmke proposes and defends an “ostrich actualism” that permits even actualists to quantify over mere possibilities.