Making Things Up

Making Things Up

Karen Bennett

1
3
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For my family, by birth and by choice
Acknowledgments

It turns out that books take a long time to write, especially if the lives of people
around you begin and end while you are writing them. Some of the ideas have
been kicking around in various forms since about 2009 or 2010, but they have
evolved significantly. Even now, finally declaring the manuscript finished, I am
not sure I believe everything I say in this book, though I will hold my tongue
about just which parts worry me.
Since it has taken a long time to write, I have presented parts of the book in
many places, and received a great deal of useful feedback from a great number of
people. I am certain that I have accidentally left some names off the below list;
whoever you are, please accept my apologies.
First, thanks to two extremely thorough and charitable readers for Oxford
University Press, who raised pressing questions and caught several mistakes and
unclear passages. I wish I could thank them by name.
Second, thanks to audiences at the following conferences or departments. The
list is long, and all of these discussions helped shape the book in ways big or
small: a conference on naturalness at Arché at the University of St Andrews; the
University of Barcelona; the Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference; Brown
University; the Central APA (twice); the Creighton Club meeting; a conference of
fundamentality at the ANU; the University of Georgia; the “Big vs Small”
conference at the University of Hamburg; the University of Houston; the
University of Illinois Chicago; Indiana University; the University of Konstanz;
the Lake Geneva Graduate Conference; the University of Leeds; the Midwest
Annual Workshop in Metaphysics; a Mellon Humanities Corridor Workshop;
Metaphysical Mayhem (twice); the University of Mississippi; the Kline workshop
at the University of Missouri; the University of Mainz; the University of Massa-
chusetts at Amherst; MIT; the University of Miami; the University of Missouri;
the Morris colloquium on metaphysics and its history at the University of
Colorado Boulder; the University of Nebraska; North Carolina State; the
University of Notre Dame; NYU; the NYU-Columbia Graduate Conference;
the 41st annual Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy; Oxford University; the
Ranch Metaphysics Workshop; a conference on bridging physics and metaphys-
ics at the University of Rochester; Rutgers University; USC; Southern Methodist
University; Stanford University; the University of Texas at Austin; and the
Burman Lectures at Umeå University.
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At some of those conferences, I was lucky enough to have a commentator.

Thanks to Paul Audi, Kenny Boyce, Sara Bernstein, Nick Haverkamp, Thomas
Hofweber, Daniel Nolan, Alison Peterman, Erica Shumener, and Meghan
Sullivan for doing a great job and giving me a lot to think about.
Thanks also to my colleagues and students here at Cornell. I held a reading
group on a very early draft of the book, taught some of the issues in graduate
seminars, and twice discussed some material at a faculty work-in-progress
meeting. Particular thanks to Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt, Augie Faller, Thomas
Foerster, Carl Ginet, David Kovacs, Daniel Murphy, Eric Rowe, and Nico Silins.
I would especially like to thank Ted Sider, who was my colleague for most of the
time I was writing the book, and whose comments over the years have been, as
always, invaluable to me.
I’d also like to single out some particular people who significantly engaged with
the manuscript, either by extended discussion, or giving me written comments—
a few of them multiple times, over the course of several years. The book would be
far worse without their help: Elizabeth Barnes, Ralf Busse, Ross Cameron, Cian
Dorr, Louis deRosset, Kit Fine, Jon Litland, Barbara Montero, Laurie Paul,
Jonathan Schaffer, Jason Turner, Tobias Wilsch, Jessica Wilson, and David Yates.
Finally, thank you to Robert and Helen Appel, whose generous gift to Cornell
endows the Appel Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. This
fellowship gave me an extra semester of leave in 2012, during which the book
project really got started.
Chapters 2 and 3 began life as “Construction Area: No Hard Hat Required,” in
Philosophical Studies, though the material is markedly different except for the
beginning. Chapter 7 reproduces a little bit from “By Our Bootstraps,” which
appeared in Philosophical Perspectives 25. Finally, Chapter 8 contains a few pages
from my “There is no Special Problem with Metaphysics,” which appeared in
Philosophical Studies. Full citations can be found in the bibliography.
Finally, I owe an enormous debt to David, for everything, and to Lila, for
keeping it real.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/4/2017, SPi

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. Building I: Breaking Ground 6
2.1 Some Building Relations 8
2.2 Two Main Axes of Difference 16
2.3 What Is a Unity Thesis? 18
2.4 Monism(s) and Unity Theses 21
2.5 Against Generalist Monism about Building Relations 25
3. Building II: Characterizing the Class 30
3.1 Methodology 30
3.2 Directedness 32
3.2.1 Replying to challenges 34
3.2.2 A positive argument 39
3.3 Necessitation 47
3.3.1 Against indeterministic building 50
3.3.2 Two kinds of building determinism 52
3.3.3 Why another clause is needed 55
3.4 Generativity 57
3.5 Ought More Be Added? 59
3.6 Wrapping Up 65
4. Causing 67
4.1 Two Kinds of Causal Taint 68
4.2 The First Kind of Causal Taint: Causation is a Building Relation 71
4.2.1 Five analogies 71
4.2.2 A methodological principle 78
4.2.3 Objections to the claim that causation is
a building relation 79
4.3 The Second Kind of Causal Taint: Some Particular Building
Relations Are Themselves Causal 83
4.3.1 The first grade of causal involvement 83
4.3.2 The second grade of causal involvement 85
4.3.3 The third grade of causal involvement 95
4.4 Back to Two Kinds of Causal Taint 99
5. Absolute Fundamentality 102
5.1 Methodological Preliminaries 104
5.2 Independence 105
5.3 Completeness 107
5.4 The Relation between Independence and Completeness 111
5.5 Interlude: Is Building Well-Founded? 118
x CONTENTS

5.6 In Defense of Independence over Completeness 122

5.7 Naturalness 124
5.8 The Relation between Independence and Naturalness 126
5.9 In Defense of Independence over Naturalness 129
5.10 Resisting Three Arguments against Defining It at All 134
6. Relative Fundamentality 137
6.1 Accounting for Relative Fundamentality 137
6.2 Two Kinds of Primitivism about Relative Fundamentality 140
6.2.1 Against extreme primitivism 140
6.2.2 A more sophisticated primitivism 143
6.3 Characterizing Relative Fundamentality in Terms of Building 144
6.4 Sketching and Rejecting a Toy Account 145
6.4.1 The toy account 145
6.4.2 Why Toy must be rejected 149
6.5 The Messy Reality 155
6.5.1 The strategy 155
6.5.2 The multi-clause definition MFT 156
6.6 Clarifying the Overall Picture 162
6.6.1 Indexing and generalizing 162
6.6.2 Causation revisited: exactly which relations generate relative
fundamentality? 167
6.6.3 A consequence: not everything stands in relative
fundamentality relations 170
6.6.4 The basic picture 174
6.7 Other Matters Arising 175
6.7.1 Comparatives 176
6.7.2 Formal features 176
6.7.3 Objection: apparent counterexamples to clause (2) 178
6.7.4 Objection: have I changed the subject? 180
6.8 Deflationism vs. Sophisticated Primitivism 182
7. Building Building? 187
7.1 What is the Question, Exactly? 187
7.2 Arguing for Anti-Primitivism 189
7.3 Upwards Anti-Primitivism 192
7.3.1 The view 192
7.3.2 Trying to articulate its intuitiveness 196
7.3.3 Regress averted 196
7.4 The Opposition 199
7.4.1 Two alternatives 199
7.4.2 Can upwards anti-primitivism explain the grounding facts? 201
7.4.3 Can upwards anti-primitivism explain patterns of
grounding facts? 203
7.4.4 Against the alternatives 205
7.5 All in All 212
 CONTENTS xi

8. In Defense of the Nonfundamental 214

8.1 Flatworldism 214
8.2 Against Flatworldism 216
8.2.1 Flatworldism cannot explain the appearances 218
8.2.2 Flatworldism is no simpler than (foundationalist) alternatives 220
8.2.3 Objections 225
8.3 Metaphysics is Not the Study of Fundamental Reality 230
8.4 The Overall Picture 235
Appendix: Objections to the Second Grade of Causal Involvement 239

References 247
Name Index 257
Subject Index 259
 1
Introduction

The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in

the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible
sense of the term.
—Wilfrid Sellars (1962)

Philosophy—even so-called ‘contemporary analytic’ or ‘Anglo-American’

philosophy—is a somewhat fragmented discipline. Some of us investigate
abstract topics in metaphysics. Some of us attempt to reach better understandings
of the great works from eras past. Some of us do highly technical work in logic,
formal epistemology, or philosophy of language. Some of us want no truck with
the a priori, preferring research that is more informed by the empirical sciences.
Some of us are primarily concerned with how we ought to treat one another and
govern ourselves. And so forth.
This disparate collection of topics is united partly by historical and institu-
tional accident, partly by methodology—whatever our differences, we share the
demand for rigorous argumentation—and partly by the simple fact that each
topic involves hard questions that other disciplines do not address. But there is at
least one other theme that unites a surprising amount of philosophical inquiry.
A certain kind of talk is ubiquitous in our field: talk of one phenomenon1
generating or giving rise to another . . . talk of one phenomenon being based in
or constructed from another . . . talk of getting some thing, or property, or state of
affairs, out of another. Philosophy is rife with such locutions.
Here are a few familiar examples of the theme. How do nonmoral properties
give rise to moral ones, or normative ones more generally? How are the modal facts
built out of the nonmodal ones? How does sentence-level meaning emerge from
the meanings of the constituent expressions and the intentions of the speaker?

1
I intend terms like ‘phenomenon’ and ‘entity’ to be neutral across ontological categories: objects,
properties, relations, facts, laws . . .
 INTRODUCTION

How do intentions—and mental phenomena more generally—arise from neural

phenomena, or physical facts more broadly? (Or do they not?) How are ordinary
middle-sized objects, and the laws that govern their behavior, generated from the
behavior of and laws that govern sub-atomic particles and fields?
Notice too that we don’t merely ask these questions about certain kinds of
properties, facts, or laws—notably the mental, the modal, the moral, the ‘higher-
level’—but also about things like properties, facts, and laws themselves. That is,
we also ask these questions about entire ontological categories. Are individuals
bundles of properties, or are properties classes of individuals? Are states of affairs
somehow constructed from individuals, properties, and times? Or are states of
affairs more fundamental, with individuals somehow abstracted from them? Are
laws of nature just patterns in the Humean spread of ‘local matters of particular
fact’? Or is some kind of primitive pushing and pulling relation also involved?
All of these are questions about what ‘gives rise to’, ‘makes up’, or ‘generates’
another, or, to switch directions, about what some phenomenon is ‘based in’,
‘constructed from’, or ‘built out of ’. (Even Derridean deconstructionism, in my
highly limited understanding, is concerned with questions about how meanings,
concepts, texts are built.) Analytic philosophers deploy an array of relations in
answering such questions: grounding, composition, determination, realization,
constitution, and others. I like to call these ‘building questions’ and ‘building
relations’ respectively. Though that terminology is my own, the fact is that we talk
about building all the time, and have been doing so as long as we have been doing
philosophy at all. We do it whenever we claim that some entity or phenomenon
can be accounted for in other terms, and also whenever we deny that it can be.
Either way, we are making claims about what builds—or fails to build—what.2
I argue that there is a unified family of building relations, and articulate the
central features they all share. One shared feature is that they all in some sense
involve generation or production. Another is that they connect entities that are in
some sense more fundamental to entities that are in some sense less fundamental.
All building talk makes, and is intended by its users to make, claims about relative
fundamentality. (Perhaps some relations have not lived up to that intention:
supervenience, in particular, has failed (e.g. McLaughlin and Bennett 2005).

2
Note the centrality of building to Frank Jackson’s claim that metaphysics is fundamentally
concerned with what he calls the “location problem”: “metaphysicians seek a comprehensive
account of some subject-matter—the mind, the semantic, or, most ambitiously, everything—in
terms of a limited number of more or less basic notions. . . . Metaphysics . . . acknowledges that we
can do better than draw up big lists [and] seeks comprehension in terms of a more or less limited
number of ingredients” (1998, 4).
 INTRODUCTION 

But particular supervenience claims were always intended to state a relation

of relative fundamentality and license ‘in virtue of ’ talk.)
A variety of questions arise immediately. Just to get us started: what is the
concept of fundamentality in play? Should we believe in it, or is it a dark notion to
be banished despite the extent to which we implicitly rely upon it? Exactly how
broad is the class of building relations? Do any unfold over time? Might causation
be one? Does it make any sense to think of building relations as themselves built,
or need we take them to be themselves fundamental? This book is about building
and these attendant issues.
In Chapters 2 and 3, I explain in more detail what it means to say that some
relations ‘form a unified family’, and characterize the family of building relations
more carefully. I also argue against the claim that there is a highly general and
abstract building relation that is more fundamental than the more specific
building relations mentioned above. When I speak generally about ‘building’,
I am quantifying over (or otherwise speaking generically about) a class of
relations. I am not speaking of some single, generic relation that deserves a
capital ‘B’: Building.
In Chapter 4, I argue against the natural thought that building is noncausal
determination. It is a mistake to think of ‘vertical’ determination as easily
distinguished from ‘horizontal’ determination, because the building family is
causally tainted in at least two ways. First, causation itself is properly counted
as a building relation. Second, there are particular building relations that are
partially defined in causal terms, and there are even building relations that only
obtain diachronically, in virtue of causal facts.
In Chapters 5 and 6, I investigate the nature of fundamentality. In Chapter 5,
I distinguish three different notions of absolute fundamentality in the contem-
porary literature, and argue that the primary notion is that of being unbuilt. In
Chapter 6, I argue that relative fundamentality—relations like being more funda-
mental than and being just as fundamental as—must also be understood in terms
of building. I further claim that this fact goes a long way towards demystifying
fundamentality talk. Indeed, that is one of the central claims of the book: there is
nothing more to relative fundamentality than the obtaining of certain patterns of
building. Along the way, I investigate various related questions, such as whether
anything is absolutely fundamental at all, and whether everything is comparable
with respect to relative fundamentality.
In Chapter 7, I address the ontological status of building relations themselves.
I argue that they cannot be fundamental, and put forth a particular claim about
what it is in virtue of which they obtain when they do. Since I first defended this
claim in my 2011a, alternatives and challenges have come on the market;
 INTRODUCTION

I compare my view to alternative proposals by Kit Fine and Shamik Dasgupta,

and defend it against their challenges.
Finally, in Chapter 8 I defend the built, the nonfundamental. I defend a
layered, structured picture of the world against the idea that simplicity favors
denying the existence of nonfundamentalia. I further argue that it is not the case
that the sole aim of metaphysics is to uncover the fundamental nature of reality
(contra Sider, among others), nor even to also discover the facts about what
builds what (contra Schaffer, among others). Metaphysics both is and should be
about some nonfundamental things as well.
My title, Making Things Up, is obviously a pun. It is a nod to the fact that some
people think that philosophers—or metaphysicians, at least—are in the business
of inventing things out of whole cloth. Let me be clear that I myself do not think
that; I am an unabashed metaphysical realist.3 But I nonetheless do think there is
an interesting connection between imagination or invention and the kind of
generation that is the topic of this book. In particular, I do not think it is entirely
an accident that the same phrase can be used for both kinds of relation.
That might seem strange; after all, surely the sense in which the Land of Oz
is ‘made up’ (by L. Frank Baum) is quite different from the sense in which
nonfundamental entities like tables or mental states are ‘made up’ (of their
parts or realizers). Yet notice that many people are attracted to the idea that
nonfundamental entities are less real than fundamental ones. For example,
Kristopher McDaniel (2013) defends the notion of “degrees of being”, and points
out that the idea that nonfundamental entities are less real is shared by historical
luminaries like Plato and Descartes. Kit Fine thinks that there is at least a “general
presumption in favor of the grounded not being real” (2001, 27). And Sider has
recently claimed that the existential quantifier applies only in an extended sense
to nonfundamentalia (2011). Whether or not any of that is literally correct—I
think it is not—the intuition behind it makes sense of the shared phrasing.
In both uses, ‘made up’ indicates believed lesser ontological status.
At any rate, my goal in Making Things Up is not to, well, make things up.
Rather, it is to investigate the nature of making things up—or, to revert to my
preferred term, building. It should be noted at the outset that the level of
generality at which I am aiming makes this a somewhat unorthodox philosoph-
ical project. Instead of making highly detailed claims about highly specific
relations, I am pulling back to look at the bigger picture. We philosophers spend

3
My metaphysical realism is consistent with the thought that some disputes might not be worth
pursuing, and that some disputes might not be resolvable by the kinds of methods that metaphys-
icians typically use (see my 2009).
 INTRODUCTION 

a lot of our time precisifying and distinguishing, separating and untangling.

There is nothing wrong with that. But occasionally something can be learned
from lumping notions together rather than from pulling them apart. Sometimes
it is good to zoom out rather than zoom in. I hope you will find it instructive.
At the very least, I hope you will come to see the centrality of the notions of
building and relative fundamentality to philosophical thinking, in much the way
that Molière’s bourgeois gentleman learns—from his ‘maître de philosophie’—
that he has been speaking prose his whole life without knowing it.
 2
Building I
Breaking Ground

As we have seen, issues about building or generating or constructing or giving rise

to—and there are many other metaphors that could continue the list—cut a
surprisingly large swath through philosophy.1 How do we get the moral out of the
nonmoral, the modal out of the nonmodal, the mental out of the physical, the
‘macrolevel’ out of the ‘microlevel’? How do we get an apple out of a bunch of
molecules? How, quite generally, is the ‘big’ built up from the ‘small’?
That last question is my topic here. Yet you might think it is a funny question,
and not just because of the misleading size metaphor. You might think it is a
mistake to try to say anything general here. After all, isn’t it reasonable to suspect
that different sorts of ‘big’, ‘high-level’, or otherwise nonfundamental phenomena
will be built up or based in different ways?
Certainly, they are built up of or based in different things. The parts of an apple
are rather different from the parts of an airplane, and both are quite different
from the realization base of an argument or an ache. Further, they are built up of
or based in different ways in the sense that the question “how could I go about
making one?” will get rather different answers in different cases. And it must be
admitted that that is often the sort of question at stake. Most people who want to
know how an airplane is put together are asking a question that should be
answered by mechanics and engineers, not by philosophers—not by me, at any
rate. Most people who want to know how an aluminum atom is built out of
various subatomic particles are asking a question for chemists or physicists. Most
people, that is, are interested in the sort of building questions that are addressed
by scientists, do-it-yourself manuals, and cookbooks. And when one thinks about
building questions in that way, it looks obvious that there will be clear differences

1
Chapters 2 and 3 began life as my 2011b. Although the beginning is similar, the material has
been heavily revised and expanded; the changes are significant.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

in the answers to them—that there will be clear differences in the way different
sorts of things or phenomena are put together.
All fair enough. But that sort of building question is not the only sort, and it is not
the sort that I am interested in. I am not going to discuss the largely empirical issue
of just which kinds of things have to be assembled in just what spatial configuration
to yield, say, a functional airplane. I am instead going to discuss the very nature of
assembly itself. Although one should indeed ask an engineer how an airplane is put
together, one should ask a philosopher about the nature of putting together.
But thus clarifying the topic still leaves room to think that there are important
differences between the cases with which I began. Most of you probably think
that whatever putting-together relation holds between, say, the physical and the
mental is quite different from whatever putting-together relation holds between
some molecules and an apple. The former, you will say, is supervenience or
realization or emergence or something, while the latter is some kind of compos-
ition. And aren’t those relations different in all kinds of ways—in terms of their
logical form, what sorts of entities they hold between, perhaps their modal force,
and the like? Certainly they are treated independently in the literature. This line
of thought is a gesture in the direction of the better reason for thinking that one
cannot say anything general about how the less fundamental is built up from
the more fundamental—that there are too many different flavors of putting
together, construction, production, or, as I’ll usually say, building.
In this chapter and the next, I explore and evaluate that idea. Is there really too
much diversity among the various building relations to say anything general?
What is the relation among the various building relations? Do they form a unified
family? What does that even mean? Is it in the end a mistake to treat them as
worthy of an overarching label like ‘building relations’ at all? Or, alternatively,
should we junk them all and instead only talk about grounding?
I begin in §2.1 by introducing some of the central, familiar kinds of building
relation. I then (§2.2) characterize the main two ways in which I take them to
differ from one another. §2.3 is devoted to unpacking the idea—not specific to the
case of building—that a collection of properties or relations ‘forms a unified
family’. In §2.4, I characterize a couple of versions of an idea that can be roughly
stated as the claim that there is a special, general, privileged building relation that
somehow subsumes all the rest. I argue that such a claim is not necessary for
building relations to form a unified family, and in §2.5 explain why I do not
endorse it. In chapter 3, I move beyond talking about the nature of the unity
thesis that I do endorse, and spell out what building relations have in common.
Doing so amounts to offering a story of what it is for a relation to count as a
building relation.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

2.1 Some Building Relations

Thus far, I have relied upon informal English expressions like ‘putting together’,
‘generating’, and ‘building’. What, more precisely, do I have in mind? In this
section I will sketch some familiar relations that seem to be good prima facie
candidates for counting as forms of building. This list is not intended to be
exhaustive; it is just a handful of relatively central notions. Further, my sketches
will be precisely that—sketches. I will not offer precise analyses of any of these
relations. Doing so would be both difficult and distracting, and I neither need nor
want to get embroiled in controversies over details. My intention is merely to say
enough to direct your attention to the relevant ideas, so that we can be reasonably
confident that if we disagree about how to characterize one of them, we are at
least talking about the same phenomenon. This section is largely expository;
readers wishing to cut to the action sequences should skip ahead to §2.2.
Composition is the familiar relation between parts and whole—between, for
example, the wheels, body, engine, and your car. Parthood and composition are
interdefined notions: the xxs (at least partly) compose y iff each x is a part of y.
This parthood relation is the intended topic of classical mereology, though I will
leave open whether it is in fact accurately characterized by the axioms of any
particular formal system. Further, as I shall understand it, composition is a
many–one relation between distinct objects. This is mildly controversial, for
two reasons. First, it entails that what might be called ‘improper compos-
ition’—obtaining between a thing and itself—is not really composition. (Simi-
larly, improper parthood is not really parthood.) This simply seems correct to me,
and any advantage to allowing identity to serve as a limited case of composition
can equally well be achieved by defining up a broader notion by disjoining proper
composition (which I simply call ‘composition’) and identity: some x or some xxs
broadly compose y iff either the xxs properly compose y or x = y.2 But those who
resist this approach can take my claim to be that proper composition is a building
relation, and simply replace every occurrence of ‘compose’ and its cognates with
‘properly compose’. Second, I am assuming that what has come to be known as
‘strong composition as identity’ is false. Composites may be in some controversial
sense “nothing over and above” their parts, but they are not literally numerically
identical to them. After all, they are many, while it is one. (For more discussion,

2
Compare the fact that although many systems of formal mereology take their primitive notion
of parthood to be reflexive, it is also perfectly possible to take an irreflexive notion of proper
parthood as primitive, and define a broader notion by means of disjunction and identity. I.e., x is
a part of y iff either x is a proper part of y or x is identical to y.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

see Baxter 1988a, b; Lewis 1991, §3.6; van Inwagen 1994; Sider 2007;
Cameron 2012; Wallace 2011a and b; Baxter and Cotnoir 2014).
Constitution is a one–one relation either between co-located objects of differ-
ent kinds, or perhaps between a co-located mass and object. That is, perhaps it
holds between a lump of clay and a statue, or perhaps it holds between some clay
and a statue (see Baker 2000, 2002 for an account of constitution of the former
sort; see Zimmerman 1997, McKay 2015 for discussion of the latter sort of
account). There is some dispute over whether the relata are in fact distinct
objects, but for present purposes I will assume that they are—that is, I assume
that constitution is not identity. (See Johnston 1992, Baker 1997, and Bennett
2004 for relevant discussion and further citations.) Whether constitution should
be defined in mereological terms is controversial (e.g. Zimmerman 2002, Baker
2002, Wasserman 2004). However, it is less controversial that it is not the case
that if x constitutes y, then x is part of y in the mereological sense; neither
the lump of clay nor the clay are usually taken to be part of the statue (though
see Thomson 1998, Koslicki 2008).
The third building relation is set formation. A first pass characterization might
be that set formation is the relation whereby some things come together to form
a set. That’s a natural way to think about set formation under the assumption
that a set is a “collection, group, or conglomerate,” anyway (Hrbacek and Jech
1999, 1). But of course sets are not always collections, groups, or conglomerates;
singleton sets have only one member, and the empty set has no members at all.
So perhaps set formation is the relation whereby a thing, some things, or nothing
at all form(s) a set. Or perhaps that kind of general notion of set formation is
not needed, and all we need to add to the list of building relations is the
operation of singleton formation. (Roughly, that is Lewis’ view: composition
and singleton formation are enough to make sense of set theory; see his 1991,
especially §2.1.) Whatever exactly set formation is, it is the relation studied by set
theory. It stands to the membership relation as composition or fusion stands to
the parthood relation.
A fourth building relation is realization. It is hard to say what exactly realiza-
tion is, however, because all definitions are disputed, and not everyone uses the
term the same way (e.g. Wilson 1999; Gillett 2002, 2003; Melnyk 2003, 2006;
Polger 2004, 2007; Polger and Shapiro 2008; Shoemaker 2007). In fact, ‘realiza-
tion’ is sometimes used as a generic label for any building relation among
properties or property instances—for almost any relation by which one way a
thing is determines another way it (or something else) is (e.g. Poland 1994, 18–19;
Polger 2004, 118–19). On that use, it is nearly as broad as my label ‘building
relation’. So, with the understanding that this is somewhat stipulative, I’ll say that
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

realization is a one–one relation between properties, property instances,3 or

perhaps states of affairs, centrally characterized by the idea that properties can
play causal roles. For property P to realize property Q on some occasion—for an
instance of P to realize an instance of Q—is, roughly, for P to occupy the causal
role distinctive of Q. In this sense, realization is a relation between first-order
properties and second-order properties, where the latter are understood as
functional properties defined by their causal roles. For example, consider the
standard example used to illustrate (a version of) functionalism in the philosophy
of mind: on this view, pain is characterized by the fact that it is caused by bodily
damage, and causes anxiety, wincing and swearing, and so forth. That causal
role can be occupied by different physical states in different sorts of creature. In
humans, let’s say that it is occupied by the apocryphal C-fiber firings. So, in
humans, it is C-fiber firings that actually are caused by bodily damage, causes
wincing and swearing, and so forth. C-fiber firings “play the pain role”—realize
pain—in us.
This is a sketch of what Carl Gillett calls ‘flat’ realization (2002, 2003)—a one–
one relation between properties that are instantiated by the same individual. He
thinks the notion is inadequate, and offers a competing notion that he calls
“dimensioned realization”. For my purposes, however, this is just terminological.
I classify Gillett’s dimensioned account of realization as a version of what I will
call microbased determination, which is the next (and fifth) building relation on
the list. Its name does not matter. All I am doing here is surveying an array of
different building relations; I could just as well refer to them by letters as by the
loaded names used in the literature.
So what is microbased determination? What I have in mind here is in the
vicinity not only of what Gillett calls “dimensioned realization,” but also what
Kim calls “micro-basing” (1997; 1998, 80–7; 2003; 2005, 57–60), what Shoemaker
calls “microrealization” (2003, 2007), and the process that yields what O’Connor
calls “structural properties” (1994, 2005).4 It is a many–one relation between

3
Polger and Shapiro (2008) challenge Gillett’s claim (2002, 2003; see also Melnyk 2003, 2006)
that property instances, rather than properties themselves, are the relata of the realization relation.
They claim that multiple realization would be impossible if it is properties instances that are realized
rather than properties. However, their argument rests on the dubious assumption that realization
and multiple realization involve the same entities—that any multiply realized entity must itself be
realized. I see nothing wrong with the following definition of multiple realization (assuming we
already have a definition of realization in hand): property P is multiply realized by properties Q, R,
and S just in case some of P’s instances are realized by instances of Q, some by instances of R, and
some by instances of S. (For Gillett’s own response, see 2011.)
4
Both Kim (1997, 291) and O’Connor and Wong (2005, 663) explicitly take their notions to
derive from the one Armstrong uses to construct structural universals (1978b, 69–71; also 1986).
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

properties instantiated by different individuals, or between property instances or

states of affairs involving different individuals (I continue to not be particularly
careful about this). It is the relation between the properties of the parts of a whole,
and the properties of the whole. For example, the mass of a table is microbased
in the masses of its parts, and the wetness of a quantity of water is microbased in
the properties of and relations between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. For
further discussion of the relationship between realization and microbased deter-
mination, see Shoemaker (2007), as well as Kim (1997, 1998). One key feature of
microbased determination is that it is supposed to be a genuine determination
relation. In some sense or other the microbased properties are not supposed to be
anything ‘over and above’ the properties in which they are based. Of course, that’s
a contentious claim, and the notion of ‘over and aboveness’ needs to be further
explicated if it is to have any real content. (I will say a bit about it in Chapter 8.)
Still, though, the phrase must at least be mentioned. That is because there is a
different relation that is often characterized quite similarly to microbased deter-
mination except for the ‘nothing over and above’ part—namely, emergence. Here
again, care is required with the label. As Kim nicely puts it,
‘emergence’ is very much a term of philosophical trade; it can pretty much mean whatever
you want it to mean, the only condition being that you had better be reasonably clear
about what you mean, and that your concept turns out to be something interesting and
theoretically useful (2006, 548).

What I have in mind here is sometimes called ‘ontological emergence’ or ‘strong

emergence’ (Bedau 1997, O’Connor 1994, O’Connor and Wong 2005, Chalmers
2006; see McLaughlin 1992 for extensive historical discussion)5—the kind of
emergence that’s not supposed to be purely epistemic, and is not supposed to be
the thin harmless notion scientists sometimes use. (That harmless notion is some
version of microbased determination.) Emergent properties in this sense are
purported to be, in some sense or other perennially under dispute, ‘genuinely
novel’ or ‘over and above’ the base. Emergent properties are not entailed by, and
thus not deducible even in principle from, the base properties. Again, it is
frequently characterized in a way that amounts to the denial of microbased
determination—the emergent features of a whole, if any there be, are not settled
by the features of its parts taken separately or together (see especially O’Connor
1994, O’Connor and Wong 2005, and van Gulick 2001).6 More or less because of

5
van Gulick calls it “radical kind emergence” (2001, 17).
6
Note that I have not claimed that it is either one–one or many–one. If the base is taken to be
a plurality of property instances or states of affairs—part p1’s being F1, part p2’s being F2 . . .
part pn’s being Fn—then the emergence relation is many–one. But if the base is taken to be a
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

this, it turns out that emergence is not a building relation in my sense, although
the reason will not be entirely clear until §3.4.
The sixth building relation is grounding. This is routinely characterized as a
relation of metaphysical determination that licenses ‘in virtue of claims’—if
x grounds y, then y exists, or obtains, or has the nature it has, in virtue of x.
Under the influence of Fine’s powerful example (1994) of Socrates and the
singleton set {Socrates}, most everyone takes grounding to be stronger than
mere modal necessitation.7 After all, it is necessary that if Socrates exists,
{Socrates} exists, and it is also necessary that if {Socrates} exists, Socrates does
too—but surely Socrates’ existence grounds that of the set, and not the other
way around. Thus most people think that grounding is hyperintensional in the
sense that it can hold asymmetrically between relata that mutually necessitate
each other. (For related discussion see also McLaughlin and Bennett 2005,
§3.5.) Beyond that, there are—as with the other relations—disagreements
about how exactly to define it. There are disagreements about the relata:
while many say that grounding holds between facts (e.g. Rosen 2010, Audi
2012), others allow it to hold between objects of any ontological category
(Schaffer 2010a, 36). Still others resist the claim that it is a relation at all,
preferring to treat it as a sentential operator (e.g. Fine 2001, 2012). There are
disagreements about whether it holdsone–one, many–one, or both, or indeed
whether it is irreducibly plural (Dasgupta 2014a). And although most people
think it has something special to do with explanation, there are disagreements
about exactly what it has to do with explanation (Schaffer 2015, especially §4).
At the time of writing, grounding is more fashionable than the other building
relations I have thus far enumerated. Indeed, it is sufficiently more fashionable
that one might ask why I am writing about building rather than grounding—or,
better, one might ask what the relation is between building and grounding. The
answer depends on how the term ‘grounding’ is being used. Sometimes it is used
in a broad sense that just amounts to quantifying over particular relations in
order to generalize about them; the clearest example of this usage is Jessica
Wilson’s talk of “small-‘g’ grounding relations” (2014). On that kind of usage,
the term ‘grounding’ is basically equivalent to my term ‘building’, and I am
writing about grounding. But often the term is used in a more specific way. As
soon as grounding is claimed to only hold between facts, or to carry some special

microbased property built in the above sense from that plurality, then the emergence relation comes
out one–one.
7
Fine actually used the Socrates example to argue against the modal account of essence. But it
works equally well against a modal account of grounding.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

epistemic force, the term is being used to refer to a particular building relation,
rather than to generalize about a variety of them. Not all building relations take
facts as their relata, or make built entities obvious given the base.
An issue arises. Grounding is sometimes treated as an alternative to, and
advance upon, particular relations of the sort I have been canvassing. Indeed,
proponents of grounding sometimes speak as though grounding can do all the
work itself, and ought to replace other putative relations like realization. Can it be
the case that grounding, understood in the narrow sense as a determination
relation between facts, is the only building relation? There are a number of things
such a claim might mean; here are two. One is that it really is the only building
relation. The other is that it is somehow the central core of all building relations—
a more fundamental relation that somehow unites them all. That second claim is
close to what I will later describe as generalist monism about the family of
building relations, and I will therefore postpone discussion of it. But what
about the first claim? Could grounding literally be the only building relation?
No. First, I simply stand my ground (sorry) and claim without argument that
entities other than facts are built. Cars are built, propositions are built, properties
are built, sets are built, and so forth. So either grounding takes relata other
than facts, or there are building relations other than grounding in the narrow,
fact-determinative sense.
Second, anyone who thinks that grounding is a relation between facts but also
denies that FACT is a fundamental ontological category is committed to coun-
tenancing another building relation in addition to grounding. Gideon Rosen, for
example, says that “the grounding relation is a relation among facts” and then
immediately says that “facts are structured entities built up from worldly items—
objects, relations, connectives, quantifiers, etc.—in roughly the sense in which
sentences are built up from words” (2010, 114). But what is this “building up”
relation to which he helps himself? It cannot, by his own lights, be grounding; it is
not a relation purely between facts. It must be some other building relation.
That concludes my rough-and-ready partial survey of a central cluster of
building relations. There presumably are others. The list of candidates includes
truth-making, whatever relation utilitarians take to generate moral value and
obligation from (say) the distribution of pleasures and pains, and whatever
relation generates expected utilities from probabilities and values of outcomes.8
The list also includes the relation of non-mereological composition that David

8
I am not speaking of the relations of multiplication and addition that generates the mathem-
atical representation of these things, but of the relations between the inputs (like the distribution of
pleasurable and painful consequences) and outputs (like moral value) themselves.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

Armstrong claims generates structural universals from other universals, and

states of affairs from particulars and universals (1986).9 And it includes the
bundling relation that bundle theorists claim generates objects from properties
or tropes. (Perhaps some of these already appear on the list. If L. A. Paul (2002) is
right about the bundling relation, it already appears under the label ‘mereological
composition’. If Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (2005) and Jonathan Schaffer (2008)
are right about the truth-making relation, it already appears under the label
‘grounding’, though see Fine 2012 for critical discussion of this identification.)
The list might include determination in the determinate–determinable sense
(though some remarks I make in §2.3 below undercut this suggestion). The list
does not include supervenience,10 even though most actual supervenience claims
in philosophy—such as to formulate physicalism—were and are intended as
building claims.11

9
I actually find Armstrong somewhat perplexing on this issue. The relevant relation is clearly a
building relation for Armstrong. The tricky question is which way around he thinks it holds. He
often says that particulars and universals are “brought together” (1997, 116) in states of affairs, that
states of affairs “hold their constituents together in a non-mereological form of composition” (118),
that the “constituents are gathered together into states of affairs by the fundamental tie” (118). This
suggests that Armstrong believes that states of affairs are built out of particulars and universals (see
McDaniel 2009, 251 for this interpretation, even using the same building metaphor). Yet Armstrong
also says that “universals are abstractions from states of affairs” (1983, 112; see also 165), and that
there is “dependence of universals on states of affairs” (1997, 29) such that universals “are incapable
of existing in independence of states of affairs” (1983, 165). He even says that “states of affairs come
first” (1997, 118).
In my terms, the question is whether Armstrong thinks that states of affairs are built out of
universals and particulars, or whether he thinks that universals are built out of states of affairs. The
interpretive puzzle arises precisely because Armstrong appears to engage in both directions of
building talk. Indeed, note that if one does not take the appeal to ‘non-mereological composition’
to be in any way of a piece with the appeal to dependence and abstraction, there is no puzzle here at
all. But there clearly is. Hence this constitutes a small bit of further support for my claim that
building relations form a unified family.
10
There are several problems with counting any form of supervenience as a building relation (see
McLaughlin and Bennett 2005, §3.5). First, I argue in §3.2 that all building relations are irreflexive
and antisymmetric. But supervenience is reflexive and not antisymmetric. Second, necessary ex-
istents supervene on anything whatsoever, and thus supervene on things of which they are not built.
Third, properties supervene on their own negations. For example, it is necessarily true that any two
things that are indiscernible with respect to being F are also indiscernible with respect to being ~F.
But surely being ~F is not built out of being F !
Still, though, perhaps it could be claimed that supervenience can hold in a building way—that, say,
irreflexive antisymmetric supervenience is in fact a building relation. I think this is probably not the
best way to go, and that when supervenience does seem to hold in a building way, it is because some
building relation other than supervenience holds. (As Simon Blackburn says, “supervenience is
usually quite uninteresting by itself. What is interesting is the reason why it holds” 1984, 186.) But
I will leave this matter open. See also Chapter 3, note 2, and Kit Fine’s discussion of generative
operations vs generative applications of operations (2010b).
11
At least, they were so intended in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Consider, for example,
the routine use of supervenience to capture physicalism, or the mutual insistence of David Lewis
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

The list is long. In the interests of time and space—not for any deeper reason—
I’m not going to explore all of those relations here. My discussion will largely rely
upon the six that I’ve said a bit about—composition, constitution, set formation,
realization, microbased determination, and grounding. If I convince you that
I am right about them, the lessons will likely apply to the others as well, but I will
leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Let me clarify something before moving into more substantive matters. I have
already noted that there is a lot of room for disagreement about how to charac-
terize these relations, and how to use the relevant terminology. (Indeed, there is
even disagreement about the aptness of my label ‘building’, which to some ears
sounds excessively compositional.) But the disagreements extend beyond that.
People also disagree about
1) which building relations ever hold,
2) which building relations hold in which cases,
3) which building relations hold in which direction,
and even about
4) which relations really are building relations, according to the core notion
I will articulate in Chapter 3.
Insofar as possible, I am going to remain neutral on all of these issues in order
to explore the notion of building in full generality. But let me quickly illustrate
each kind of disagreement.
For an example of disagreement over the first issue, consider the dispute
between those who believe in composite objects and ‘compositional nihilists’
who deny that the composition relation ever obtains.12 For examples of disagree-
ment over the second issue, look to the literature on physicalism and on ethical
naturalism: do physical states realize mental ones? do the natural facts account for
the moral facts? For an example of disagreement of the third kind, consider
Aristotle’s view that at least some wholes are prior to their parts (e.g. Metaphysics

(e.g. 1991, 80) and David Armstrong (e.g. 1989, 55–7; 1997, 12–13) that supervenient entities are an
“ontological free lunch”, “nothing over and above” their base. (Lewis and Armstrong disagreed
about much, but not that.) As Joe Levine pointed out to me, however, it is somewhat less clear that
supervenience claims are intended this way in ethics.
12
For the idea that the composition relation never obtains—or at least obtains more rarely than
one might have thought—see van Inwagen 1990, Merricks 2001, Dorr 2005, Sider 2013. Note that
such people are not committed to denying the counterfactual (or counterpossible?) claim that
composition would be a building relation if it did obtain. At any rate, they recognize that those
who do believe in composition typically treat it as a kind of building. (I do not need to believe in
unicorns to say that if there were any, they would be more similar to horses than to jellyfish.)
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

V.11, 1019a5–10), or Jonathan Schaffer’s more recent defense of priority monism—

the view that the most fundamental entity is the One, the mereological fusion
of everything. “The cosmos [is] fundamental, with metaphysical explanation
dangling downwards from the One” (2010a, 31). Because he thinks that the One
grounds everything else, rather than the other way around, he thinks that building
relations hold in a different direction than many other people do. But this has little
impact on the question of whether grounding is a building relation; his opponents
can agree with him about that.
What about the fourth kind of disagreement? It is tricky to provide examples,
because I have not yet articulated the core features of building. Still, one case is a
version of the view that ‘composition is identity’. The version I have in mind is
one that says that composition has the formal features of identity. (Not all views
that go by the name say that; it is somewhat more common for proponents of the
view to claim that identity inherits at least some of the formal features of
composition.) If composition has the formal features of identity—in particular,
if it is reflexive and symmetric—it fails to meet the account I will provide in
Chapter 3. So, according to such a view, composition is not a building relation.
The existence of this fourth kind of disagreement—disagreement over which
relations really are building relations—is crucial to understanding my method-
ology here. I am emphatically not taking it as uncontroversial, let alone analytic,
that the six relations I have just sketched are building relations. That is, my
strategy is not to take it as a datum that they are building relations, and then
concoct a theory around that claim. Rather, I merely take them to be good prima
facie candidates that illuminate the basic, starting point idea. The real character-
ization of what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation will come in
Chapter 3. Someone who denies that one of the six relations meet that charac-
terization does not counterexample my analysis, but rather simply disagrees with
me that it counts as a building relation.

2.2 Two Main Axes of Difference

The six building relations that I have sketched differ from one another in various
ways. Here I just call attention to two central axes of difference. I will call the first
the relata axis, and the second the unification axis.
The relata axis: as I have characterized them, the relations take different kinds
of relata. Composition and constitution operate on objects. But realization and
microbased determination operate on properties, property instances, or states of
affairs. Grounding perhaps operates only upon facts. And set formation can
operate on anything: there are sets of sets, sets of events, and sets of spoons.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

Now, the ‘as I have characterized them’ in the first sentence of the preceding
paragraph is important, for I have, if anything, overstated the differences. It’s not
so clear these relations take such different relata. Certainly, it’s not so clear how to
use the English words. I have already mentioned that some people use ‘realiza-
tion’ in a quite general way. And I’m pretty sure that some readers have scrawled
complaints in the margin like, “constitution doesn’t just hold between objects.
A fact can constitute another fact, and an action another action, like when my
raising my hand constitutes my asking to be called on.”13 Similarly, it might
look like the composition relation can also hold between things other than
objects: isn’t a quatrain part of a poem and a battle part of a war?14 And so
forth. We—philosophers as well as ordinary people in ordinary contexts—use
verbs like ‘compose’ and ‘part’ and ‘constitute’ and ‘ground’ in a lot of ways
that permit a lot of relata. Nonetheless, the somewhat stipulative definitions
I initially gave, according to which there are differences among the relata of
the various building relations, do hook onto technical notions that are live in the
literature. Consequently, I will pretend that the relata axis is sturdier than it
actually is, and that it marks a stark difference between some building relations
and others. This is an acceptable pretense, because it isn’t to my advantage. After
all, my primary goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that all of
the building relations form a unified family even though they differ from one
another in various ways.
The unification axis: as I have characterized them, some of the relations seem
to involve a certain kind of wrapping up into one, and others do not. That is, some
unify, or gather together a multiplicity, in a way that others do not. This is
reflected in a difference in logical form: some of the relations are many–one, and
others are not.15 (Some might even be irreducibly plural; see Dasgupta 2014a.)
Composition, for example, pulls several smaller things together to make a single
larger thing. Similarly for microbased determination, the process by which the

13
Compare Goldman 1970 on the level-generation of actions, though he tends to use a ‘by’
locution—I ask to be called on by raising my hand—rather than the language of constitution.
14
Metaphysicians disagree about whether that is the same notion of ‘part’, and about whether
there is only one composition relation. See, for example, Simons 1987; van Inwagen 1990, 19; Varzi
2003. See also Winston et al. 1987.
15
On my usage, a relation is many–one just in case it is a two-place relation that takes a plural
argument in the first argument place and a singular argument in the second argument place. (Or,
I suppose, it could be a multigrade relation with at least three argument places, the last of which is
somehow privileged.) There is another use of the term ‘many–one’ (and mutatis mutandis for ‘one–
one’, ‘one–many’, and ‘many–many’). On this alternate use, a two-place relation R is many–one just
in case for all a and b such that aRb, things other than a bear R to b, but a bears R to nothing but b.
van Inwagen (1994, 207n2) complains about Lewis’ usage in Parts of Classes (1991), which suggests
that Lewis may have been one of the first to use the term in the way I have in mind.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

properties of a thing’s parts come together to determine the properties of the

whole. But realization and constitution—one–one relations both—do not do this.
They are determinative rather than aggregative; there is little sense of ‘bringing
together’ involved. Whether or not grounding counts as unifying in this sense is
somewhat under dispute (and depends on what exactly ‘grounding’ is taken to
mean). Finally, set formation precisely straddles this distinction. Often set for-
mation “[binds] together . . . a variety of different objects,” to quote an opening
remark from a set theory textbook (Hrbacek and Jech 1999, 1), but sometimes it
does not. It does not when it generates a singleton set out of a single urelement.16
There are other differences between the building relations. But these two axes
capture what I take to be the primary differences, and together they are certainly
enough to pose at least prima facie trouble for any suggestion of unity here.
Nonetheless, I think that quite a lot can be said about what these relations have in
common. I also think that it is far from clear what, if anything, these prima facie
differences entail. Indeed, I think that building relations form a unified family
inspite of them.

2.3 What Is a Unity Thesis?

But what does that claim even mean? In this section, I back up a step to better
articulate what claims like ‘building relations form a unified family’ or ‘compos-
ition and realization are both building relations’ amount to. Note that the
question here does not actually have anything to do with building relations in
particular. Instead, what we need to know is what it means for any group of
properties or relations to ‘form a unified family’.
Such claims are common. Any invocation of a more general property—of an
overarching kind or group—involves a unity thesis. For example, the properties
redness, greenness, yellowness, and so on are taken to form a unified group known

16
It is worth noting that in at least one passage, David Lewis seems to take the distinction
between unifying and non-unifying relations to carry a lot of weight. It is central to his treatment of
set theory in Parts of Classes that he takes singleton formation to be deeply mysterious, but takes
composition to be “to be perfectly understood, unproblematic, and certain” (1991, 75). And one of
the reasons that he is mystified by singleton formation is that, unlike composition, it is not many–
one. According to Lewis, the student trying to understand the relation finds that
he has no elements or objects . . . to be ‘combined’ or ‘collected’ or ‘gathered together’
into one . . . Rather, he has just one single thing, the element, and he has another single
thing, the singleton, and nothing he was told gives him the slightest guidance about
what that one thing has to do with the other (1991, 30).
I doubt that Lewis could consistently claim that all one–one building relations are problematic (see
my 2015, §8), but it is nonetheless clear that he takes the unification axis to be both stark and
important.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

as ‘the colors’. Or consider the group of elements known as ‘the noble gases’. The
implicit claim behind the label is that helium, neon, argon, and the rest form a
unified family; helium is a kind of noble gas. Or consider standard formulations
of supervenience claims in terms of “A-properties” and “B-properties”—i.e., in
terms of families of properties. Finally, remember Wittgenstein’s example of
family resemblance among different kinds of games (1953, §66–7). His own
point, of course, was that there is only family resemblance, and that it is a mistake
to look for necessary and sufficient conditions on gamehood. But my point is that
there is family resemblance among the games—and we therefore require a story
about what that amounts to. What does it mean to say that backgammon,
football, and Rock Band® form a family—even if a looser-knit, less unified family
than the noble gases? More generally, what does it mean to say that some
properties or relations form a family? Any plausible theory of properties and
relations needs some way of capturing unity.17
There are a number of options, and different ones may be appropriate in
different cases. The simplest is to simply take unity to be a matter of resemblance.
The members of a family of properties and relations unified in this way are
objectively similar to each other; they form a reasonably natural class.18 Because
resemblance obviously comes in degrees, so too does the unity it generates.
Other cases may involve two special relations that are tailor-made for unifying
properties or relations under a common umbrella: the determinate/determinable
relation and the Aristotelian species/genus relation. The primary difference
between the species/genus relation and the determinate/determinable relation is
usually taken to be that each species has an independently specifiable ‘differentia’
that distinguishes it from the other species of the same genus, but determinates
do not. For example, squares are rectangles that are equilateral. In contrast,
there is no F such that red things are colored things that are F. (See Prior 1949,
Searle 1959, Funkhouser 2006.) So some unified families are unified by being
species of a common genus, as squares and non-square rectangles are species of

17
David Armstrong in particular has emphasized this. I have in mind his discussions of ‘higher
order types’ and ‘resemblance among universals’ (1978a, b, 1989, 1997), as well as his argument that
realists can make better sense than nominalists of sentences like “red resembles orange more than
it resembles blue” (1978a Chapter 6, 1989; these draw heavily on Pap 1959 and Jackson 1977). It
should be clear that, unlike Armstrong, I do not intend to use these issues about unity to decide
between theories of properties.
18
A stronger notion of unity can be reached by adding that each member of the resemblance
class resemble the other members more than it resembles any nonmember. This is too strong for
many purposes, however, particularly given that there can be many aspects of resemblance. Squares
form a unified family, even if it is not the case that this (small, pink, fuzzy) square resembles that
(large, yellow, smooth) square more than it resembles this (small, pink, fuzzy) circle.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

parallelogram. And some, like the colors, are unified by being determinates of a
common determinable.19 Note that it sounds somewhat odd to think of the colors
as forming a resemblance class.
Other families are unified in yet other ways. The class Mammalia is unified
largely in terms of causal history. Something similar seems true of certain works
of fiction. Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’ Diary are in some sense versions
of the same story, as are the novel Les Misérables, the Broadway musical adap-
tation, and the 2012 film. Resemblance is perhaps part of the story of what unifies
these, but so is something about their origin, their causal history.
So there are a variety of ways in which some properties or relations—or other
things—can form a family.20 (We have here a unity thesis about unity theses!)
I have no general theory about all of the kinds of unity, nor a general recipe for
figuring out which is in play in which case.
In the case at hand—building relations—I opt for the unity given by resem-
blance. That is, my claim will not be that the various building relations are
determinates of a common determinable, nor that they are species of a common
genus, nor that they have some kind of shared causal history. My claim will
instead simply be that they form a reasonably natural resemblance class. Here’s
why. First, the kind of causal–historical unity useful in biology seems clearly
misplaced here. Second, resemblance classes are more straightforward and better
understood than talk of determinables or genuses. Indeed, I’m not entirely sure
what the difference is between a determinable property and the disjunctive
property that is the result of disjoining the members of a reasonably natural
resemblance class. Third, saying that the various building relations are species of

19
How exactly resemblance, the species–genus relation, and the determinate–determinable
relations are related to one another depends in part on the details of how they are characterized,
and in part upon what properties and relations are taken to be. A class nominalist may say rather
different things than a realist about universals, for example.
David Armstrong in particular appears all but committed to equating resemblance, determin-
ation, and speciation. First, he (mostly) assimilates resemblance to the determinate/determinable
relation: “the resemblance of universals can to a great degree be organized using W.E. Johnson’s
scheme of determinables and determinates” (1997, 48). Second, he analyzes the determinate/deter-
minable relation between universals in terms of partial identity (1978b, chapter 22; 1997, §4.13).
Determinates of a common determinable are complex universals that literally share a common core.
If this common core is, as the ‘partial identity’ talk suggests, a universal that conjoins with other
universals to yield the complex determinates, then it sounds to me like the species–genus relation.
Armstrong explicitly denies this (1997, 54–5; also 1978b, Chapter 22), but I do not see how he can
unless he has a different, more mysterious notion of ‘partial identity’ in mind.
20
My young daughter has a wonderful picture book called All Kinds of Families, which explores
the idea of different kinds of groupings. For example: “a knife and a fork and a spoon are a family/
The stars and the sun and the moon are a family . . . You might say that numbers belong in a family/
or alphabet letters or notes in the scale” (Hoberman 2009).
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

a common genus would arguably commit me to a thesis that I am inclined to

deny—more on this in a moment. Fourth, taking the unity of building relations
to be a matter of resemblance allows me to compare different resemblance classes
in the vicinity, which will prove useful at various points in what’s to come.
Finally, talking about a class of building relations makes salient that I am
talking plurally about them, rather than talking in the singular about a special
privileged Building relation that deserves a capital ‘B’. This is important.

2.4 Monism(s) and Unity Theses

The thought that there is such a privileged building relation is in the air at the
moment. Of course, the current literature does not use my label ‘building’; people
instead talk about things like grounding or ontological dependence. And I cannot
think of anyone who explicitly argues that there is a single privileged relation
(the closest is perhaps my own 2011b). But the idea is nonetheless in the air. In a
recent survey article, for example, Kelly Trogdon says that “one view is that
grounding is univocal in that there is but a single dependence notion . . .
corresponding to the various grounding expressions” that occur in particular
statements about what depends on what (2013a, 98).
Further, the view is attracting opponents who explicitly deny it. Jessica Wilson
sets herself against the view that
a distinctive relation—call it (big-‘G’) ‘Grounding’—is at issue in contexts in which some
entities, propositions, or facts are claimed to ‘metaphysically depend on’ . . . ‘hold in
virtue of ’, be ‘nothing over and above’, or be ‘grounded in’ some others (2014, 535).

Kathrin Koslicki similarly refers to “the illusion that [various dependence locutions]
are all connected via the single relation or operation of grounding . . . [B]y treating a
collection of phenomena which is in fact heterogenous as though it were
homogenous, we have, if anything, taken a dialectical step backwards” (2015, 306).
These sentiments are prefigured by a passing remark that Peter van Inwagen makes
about composition. He rejects the view that
‘part of ’ [is] a transcendental or ‘high-category’ predicate—like ‘is identical with’ or
‘three in number’ and unlike ‘rising’—which can be applied to any sort of object and
which always expresses the same very abstract relation (1990, 20).21

21
van Inwagen frames the view he rejects as being about how a particular predicate works, but
the view I in fact want to discuss is about building relations themselves. As far as the predicates go,
the person who thinks there is a privileged building relation has a choice. She might think that the
privileged relation R itself is the referent of all of the standard building predicates—that ‘compose’,
‘constitute’, ‘realize’, etc. in fact all pick out the very same relation—or she might think that each of
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

Instead, he claims that there are multiple parthood relations—one for objects,
one for curves, one for stories, etc.—that are merely “bound together by a ‘unity
of analogy’” (1990, 19). 22
I take van Inwagen, Wilson, Koslicki, and Trogdon all to be referring to—though
obviously not endorsing—versions of what I have thus far vaguely characterized as
the view that there is a single privileged Building relation. In this section, I will
characterize two versions of this view more precisely, and argue that the claim that
there is a unified family of building relations requires neither of them. In §2.5, I will
argue that they are likely false. Thus, while I endorse the claim that building relations
form a unified family, I do not endorse the claim that there is a single privileged
Building relation (this marks a change of position from my 2011b).
Both versions of the view share the claim that the special building relation is the
most general one, of which the more specific ones are versions. Now, let me hasten to
add that this is not in fact required by the letter of the handwavy formulation upon
which I have been relying. For all “there is a single privileged building relation” says, it
could be one of the specific ones—composition, say. I say a little bit more about that
in this footnote.23 But the thought that it is a highly general one that subsumes the
others is a very natural implementation of the idea. It certainly is what van Inwagen
and Wilson have in mind, and it will be what I focus on as well. Call it generalism:
Generalism: There is a most general building relation of which the others are
versions.

those predicates picks out a different relation, a less fundamental determinate or species of R. Either
way, though, she thinks that R exists, and is the special privileged building relation.
22
Other compositional pluralists include Richard Sharvy (1983), Peter Simons (1987), David Armstrong
(1986, 1997, §8.2), Kristopher McDaniel (2004, 2009), Katherine Hawley (2006), and Fine (2010b).
23
Here’s an example of a group in which it’s plausible that there is a privileged element which is
not the most general one: the class of biological family relations. The parent–child relation is merely
a member of that group. It is itself a kind of biological family relation, and it is not in any obvious
sense more general than the other such relations. It certainly does not stand to them as determinable
stands to determinate; being a cousin is not a specific way of being a parent. Yet the parent–child
relation presumably is the most basic one in terms of which the others are defined: cousinhood,
siblinghood, and so forth. (Of course, gender properties must be added in order to define all the
others: brotherhood, sisterhood, aunthood, etc.) So here the claim is that there is a privileged
biological relation, even though generalism is false.
Is it similarly plausible that there is a privileged building relation that is not the most general one?
A positive answer would involve saying that all of the building relations can be accounted for in
terms of one of the others—i.e., in terms of one of the familiar ones that I characterized in §2.1.
Presumably the only two live candidates are composition and grounding in the specific sense of a
hyperintensional determination relation between facts. David Lewis would be sympathetic to the
former; his student L. A. Paul even more so (2012). An overzealous champion of grounding might be
sympathetic to the latter. Although neither strikes me as particularly plausible, I will not argue that
here. In the main text, I argue for the claim that building relations are unified, but that what I call
generalist monism about the building family is false. This pair of claims is neutral on whether some
version of nongeneralist monism is true of the family of building relations.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

Generalism does not yet say that this relation is in some way privileged. There are
two different ways to add that in.
One is to say that the general building relation is more natural or more
fundamental than the more specific versions—to say that the more specific
versions are built of or abstracted from it. Another is to say that strictly speaking,
the general relation is the only building relation there is. Either way, it is special.
I call both of these versions of monism, even though the first version does say that
more than one building relation exists. The first could be called ‘priority monism’
about building relations, and the second ‘existence monism’, after Schaffer 2010a,
65. Better is to add ‘generalist’ to the label as well:

Generalist priority monism: the most general building relation is more nat-
ural or fundamental than the more specific ones.
Generalist existence monism: There is really only one highly general building
relation that somehow underwrites all the more specific talk.

Two quick points about the formulation of generalist priority monism before
considering some cases to illustrate these theses. First, it only says that the general
property is more fundamental or natural than the specific ones; it does not require
that it be absolutely fundamental. Second, I am helping myself to expressions like
‘more fundamental’ and ‘more natural’. What do they even mean? How are they
related to each other? There is a lot to be said here, and I will investigate the nature
of fundamentality in detail in Chapters 5 and 6. Spot me the fundamentality talk
for now—by the end of the book, it will be much less mysterious.
As an illustration of the monist theses, consider the set of properties consisting
of being an electron in this room at t and being an electron outside this room at t.
Compare the more general property of which both are versions—being an
electron. Surely some version of generalist monism is the right thing to say
about this case: either being an electron is more fundamental than the other
two, or strictly speaking it’s the only property here.
However, while generalist monism is plausible for some families of properties
or relations, it is not for others. Consider the colors. Whatever we take colors to
be, and whatever exact kind of unity is in play in this case, we can all agree that
the colors form a unified family. That’s why we have a general label: ‘the colors’.
But both forms of generalist monism about the colors are completely implausible.
No one would say that the determinable property being colored is more funda-
mental than more determinate color properties like being red, being blue, and
being green. Nor would anyone say that really there is just one property—Color
with a capital ‘C’?—which is very general, can be had in quite different ways by
quite different things, and whose pattern of instantiation makes true all color
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

sentences, like “this mug is red” and “my shirt is black”. And the same goes for
the other examples of unified families I gave a few pages ago; generalist monism is
equally implausible for the noble gases, games, and so forth.
In short, unity is one thing; generalist monism is another. A family of prop-
erties or relations can be unified even though neither version of generalist
monism is true of it. With one caveat: certain choices of unity relation may entail
one of the generalist monist theses. In particular, there is something to be said
for the claim that any case in which it is the genus–species relation that unifies
the family—any case in which the relevant properties are species of a common
genus—is one in which priority generalist monism is true. Suppose the genus
constitutes a common core G, such that each specific property is a kind of
metaphysical conjunction of G and some differentia Dn. If so, the more general
G is more fundamental than the species that fall under it; it is, after all, a
constituent of each of them. But nothing similar follows for families united by
mere resemblance, nor for families united by the determinate/determinable
relation.24 Such families are, or at least can be, unified even though generalist
monism is false of them.
And a good thing too, because there are serious challenges to both kinds of
generalist monism about building relations. In my 2011b, I canvassed several
unsuccessful arguments against the view (characterized slightly differently).
I continue to think that the first few arguments I discussed are not successful,
and in the interests of a streamlined discussion I will not revisit them. But I have
come to think that the last argument I discussed25 has more power than I initially
thought (which is a change of position from my 2011b), and I have thought of
another one.
Let me be clear: I do not take either of these to be knockdown arguments.
I thus do not take myself to show that generalist monism is false. But the
arguments taken together are powerful enough to convince me not to gamble
upon it, and to prefer the weaker claim that the many relations form a unified
family. On this point, I am sympathetic to Wilson (2014) and Koslicki (2015),
mentioned above.

24
Determinables are generally thought to be less fundamental than their determinates, not more.
Jessica Wilson has challenged this (2012), and she may well be right that in some cases the
determinable property is more fundamental: isn’t having mass a more fundamental property than
having mass 1.237863875 grams? But it is important to see that her claim is only that sometimes
determinables are more fundamental than their determinates. As long as they are sometimes less
fundamental than their determinates, then a family of properties can be unified by means of the
determinate/determinable relation without generalist monism being true.
25
Which originally arose in discussion with Mark Heller.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

2.5 Against Generalist Monism

about Building Relations
Here are the two problems in a nutshell: a general building relation a) would not
obey extensionality, and b) would likely fail to be asymmetric. I shall develop
these ideas in turn.
First, extensionality. In mereology, the term is used for the thought that two
distinct things cannot have all the same parts. If x and y have all the same parts,
‘they’ are identical. Here, the extensionality idea would be that two distinct things
cannot be built of the very same builders; the ‘output’ of building is unique. But
this will be false of a general building relation B that holds whenever one of the
more specific ones do, as long as it is possible for two specific building relations to
generate different things from the same ‘input’. And that is possible. For example,
a and b together compose the fusion a + b and set-form the set {a, b}.26 A better
example is available on the assumption that facts can form sets. The fact that a
figure f is equilateral and the fact that f is a rectangle together set form {the fact
that f is equilateral, the fact that f is a rectangle}. But the same two facts ground the
fact that f is square. In such cases, the same input builds two distinct outputs . . . via
a single building relation.
The fact that the general building relation is not extensional is not surprising or
problematic if one thinks of it as a mere disjunction of the more specific ones.
After all, to ‘plug’ one input into different disjuncts of a disjunctive relation is, in
effect, to plug it into two different relations. But for the generalist monist of either
stripe, the general building relation is not a mere disjunction. For the generalist
priority monist, it is more fundamental and more natural than the more specific
ones. For the generalist existence monist, it is the only one there really is. And
that single building relation can generate two quite different built entities from
the same set of building blocks.
As I mentioned, I do not take this consideration to be totally decisive. After all,
not all particular building relations obey extensionality. Grounding is not exten-
sional, for example; one fact p grounds many disjunctive facts that have p as a
disjunct. And there are non-extensional mereologies; I myself have developed one
(2013). So it is not entirely off the table to think that there is a general building
relation that does not obey extensionality. But it is at least somewhat odd to think
that the same input, plugged into the same nondisjunctive relation, can generate

26
Even David Lewis, who thinks that sets are fusions (1991), will take the particular set and
fusion in the example to be distinct. Sets are not fusions of individuals, they are fusions of singletons.
So the set {a, b} is identical to the fusion of {a} and {b}, not the fusion of a and b.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

two very different outputs. Oughtn’t there be something else that makes the
difference?
The second problem for generalist monism is, in the first instance, a problem
for generalism; the monism matters less here. The problem is that there is a case
to be made that any highly abstract, very general relation that holds whenever a
more specific building relation will fail to be asymmetric. However, all building
relations are asymmetric.27 Although I will not defend this claim until Chapter 3,
it is not unreasonable to put the cart before the horse and rely upon it here. For
one thing, waiting until the end of the next chapter disrupts the flow too much.
For another, it is intuitively quite plausible. But if all building relations are
asymmetric, and the general relation that holds whenever a more specific one
does is not asymmetric, then it is not a building relation.
Why think that the general relation is not asymmetric? It fails to be asymmet-
ric if it is possible for two different specific building relations to hold in opposite
directions between the same entities. That is, it fails to be asymmetric if there can
be things a and b28 and some time t or interval t1-tn29 such that a bears building
relation B1 to b at t (and not vice versa), and b bears a different building relation
B2 to a at t (and not vice versa). Such a case is perfectly compatible with each of
B1 and B2’s being asymmetric, but it is not compatible with B1 and B2’s being
versions of a more general asymmetric relation B. Such a general relation would
hold whenever either B1 or B2 hold, so it would be the case that a bears B to b and
b bears B to a—i.e., B would not be asymmetric. Thus if the relevant kind of case
is possible—if two things can mutually bear different building relations to each
other—B1 and B2 cannot be versions of a more general building relation B.
Generalism fails, which entails the failure of both kinds of generalist monism.
This reasoning goes through regardless of whether the general relation is taken
to be a determinable, a genus, or even a mere disjunction. (So it is the generalism
alone that is the problem; there need be no claim that the general relation is more
fundamental.) Determinables need not share the formal properties of their
determinates; genuses need not share the formal properties of their species;
disjunctions need not share the formal properties of their disjuncts. In particular,
determinable relations with asymmetric determinates need not be asymmetric,

27
In Chapter 3, I break the asymmetry of all building relations into anti-symmetry and irreflexivity,
just to more explicitly emphasize irreflexivity.
28
Or things(es?) xx and yy, or xx and y, etc. I only frame the argument in terms of singular
variables for simplicity.
29
Recall that I did not require that building relations be synchronic. The case simply requires that
x’s bearing B1 to y be co-instantiated with y’s bearing B2 to x.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

genus-level relations with asymmetric species need not be asymmetric, and

disjunctions of asymmetric relations need not be asymmetric.
Let me illustrate this for the case of disjunction. Let the predicate “is bifter
than” pick out the disjunctive relation is bigger than or is softer than. Let a be a 1
foot diameter rock, and let b be a 1 inch cotton ball. a is bigger than b, and
therefore bifter than b. But b is softer than a, and therefore bifter than a. So a is
bifter than b, and b is bifter than a—bifter than is not asymmetric, even though
both bigger than and softer than are. Or here’s an even simpler example,
suggested by an anonymous referee: every disjunction of any asymmetric relation
and its (asymmetric) converse fails to be asymmetric. If a is older-or-younger
than b, b is unsurprisingly also older-or-younger than a. In short: because
disjunctions of asymmetric relations can fail to be asymmetric, and all building
relations are asymmetric, disjunctions of building relations can fail to be
building relations. Or, another way at the same point, if the relevant kind of
case is possible, the class of building relations is not closed under disjunction.30
So is the relevant kind of case is possible? Are there any cases in which two
things simultaneously bear different building relations to each other? Here are
two possibilities.
One example arises in the context of Schaffer’s priority monism. Recall that he
thinks that the entirety of the universe grounds the existence and properties of,
say, this cup. The cup is built out of the One, rather than the other way around.31
Yet it is also the case that the cup is part of the entirety of the universe—that the
One is composed of the cup, the desk on which it sits, my car, and everything else
in the universe. So the cup (along with a lot of other things) bears the compos-
ition relation to the One, but the One bears the grounding relation to the cup and
its properties.
Another example involves what has been called ‘downward causation’, and
should be more generally called ‘downward determination’. Jaegwon Kim char-
acterizes a synchronic version32 as follows:

30
This is consistent with the view that relations are cheap, and in particular that there is a
disjunctive relation for any pair on disjunct relations. On such a view, there is a relation that disjoins
the specific building relation; it’s just that it is not itself a building relation. Similarly, I suppose one
could still think that building relations are determinates of a common determinable; it’s just that the
determinable is not itself a building relation.
31
Schaffer is actually neutral about how the One grounds everything, i.e., about the priority
structure of the world other than the claim that the One is the only ungrounded entity (2010, 44).
32
Most of Kim’s more well-known discussions of “downward causation” are discussions of the
diachronic case, in which W’s having M at t causes P to be instantiated at a later time. For example,
this is where the exclusion problem and worries about the violation of the causal completeness of
physics arise. Kim distinguishes the cases in his 1999, and discusses the diachronic case in detail in
many places, e.g. 1993, 1999, and 2006.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND

At a certain time t, a whole, W, has emergent property M, where M emerges from the
following configuration of conditions: W has a complete decomposition into parts
a1 . . . an; each ai has property Pi; and relation R holds for the sequence a1 . . . an. For
some aj, W’s having M at t causes [or in some other way determines] aj to have Pj at t
(1999, 28).

Kim himself thinks that this is impossible, and emergentists usually deny that
they are committed to anything of the sort. But a handful of people have recently
defended something in the ballpark (Bishop 2008, Gillett 2010). They think that
there are cases in which M is realized or microbased in the properties of W’s
parts, but M also in some other way—Gillett calls it ‘machretic determination’—
determines the properties of W’s parts.
These examples can of course be resisted. For one thing, both examples involve
substantive and controversial claims that are endorsed by only a handful of
people. For another, in neither case is it quite true that y is B1-built from x and x
is B2-built from y. Rather, it is only true that y is B1-built from x and x is partially
B2-built from y. In the Schaffer case, for example, the One grounds the existence
and nature of the cup, while the cup plus everything else in the universe composes
the One. The One is only partially composed of the cup. Finally, notice that in
order for these examples to tell against generalism about building, it has to not
only be claimed that the relevant relations hold in the relevant directions, but also
that they are both building relations. So it may be possible to avoid the cases by
denying that one of the relevant relations really counts as a version of building.
So the defender of generalism has room to dodge my argument. She can insist
that no such case is possible, that there are no x and y33 such that x bears building
relation B1 to y at t and y bears a different building relation B2 to x at t. That is, she
can endorse the following principle:
if x bears (or the xxs bear) some building relation to y ( . . . ), y cannot bear
any building relation to x.

Who has the dialectical advantage here? Is this principle more plausible than the
above examples? I am inclined to think not. I am inclined to think that there is a
real problem here for the antisymmetry of the general, abstract building relation
that generalism posits. (I discuss a closely related issue in §6.6.1.) In the rest of the
book, therefore, I will only assume the truth of the weaker claim that building
relations form a unified family. Henceforth, when I talk about building, I am
quantifying over, or otherwise talking generically about, the unified class of
building relations. I am not talking about Building, a single very abstract relation.

33
Or there are some xxs and some yys; again, the singular variables are for simplicity only.
 BUILDING I : BREAKING GROUND 

In sum: I have called attention to six prima facie canonical building relations,
and pointed out that the fact that they differ in various ways is compatible with
the thought that they nonetheless in some sense form a unified family. I have
explored the concept of a ‘unified family’, and claimed that different unifying
relations are appropriate in different cases. Further, I have characterized two
versions of the view that there is a single privileged building relation, and pointed
out that the claim that building relations form a unified family requires neither of
them. Finally, I have provided some reason to be skeptical that there is a most
general building relation that obtains whenever the more specific versions are.
I opt to instead be a pluralist about building (along the lines of Fine 2010b). But
again, this pluralism is consistent with the claim that there is deep and genuine
unity among the building relations.
I have thus far said that I think that building relations form a unified family,
and gone into some detail about what I take that claim to mean. They form a
reasonably natural resemblance class, and I do not assume that the members of
that class are versions of some more fundamental relation. But why do I think
they form a resemblance class, and what is the nature of that resemblance?
That is the topic of Chapter 3. There, I will unpack and articulate what it is that
all of these relations have in common in virtue of which they count as building
relations in the first place. The characterization I offer is intended to be necessary
and sufficient for a relation to count as building. The details will of course be
controversial, but I do not think the unity claim itself should be. If you agree, do
not fret; the night is young and the book is just beginning. There is time enough
for controversy.
 3
Building II
Characterizing the Class

It is intuitive and plausible to say that the various relations canvassed in

Chapter 2 form a unified family. Indeed, it is almost surprising that until recently
they have been treated in near total isolation in the literature. After all, recall that
that we use the various terms like ‘compose’, ‘realize’, ‘arise from’, or ‘get out of ’,
in so many mixed up motley ways, with so many kinds of relata. The hard part is
untangling the concepts, not seeing that they are somehow related. Even Wilson,
who explicitly claims that “there is little terminological, metaphysical, or formal
unity among the specific relations” (2014, 540) repeatedly refers to them as
“small-‘g’ grounding relations”—a label that suggests that she does see unity here.
Recall too that the claim that building relations are unified is entirely consist-
ent with the fact that there are a variety of differences among them. I have
particularly drawn attention to differences in their relata and their logical
forms; there may be other differences as well. Yet this is irrelevant to the claim
that building relations are unified. Quite generally, differences between properties
or relations are no barrier to their forming a unified family. The relations is a
brother of and is a sister of differ—one requires a male in the first slot, the other a
female—yet they are undeniably members of a unified family. Similarly for the
noble gases argon and neon. The fact that two properties or relations are different
in various ways is obviously compatible with the claim that they are also similar
in other ways. Members of a resemblance class need not resemble exactly.
So what do the relevant relations have in common in virtue of which they
count as building relations? Let’s pause for some brief methodological reflection
before trying to answer that question.

3.1 Methodology
What exactly is the project I am about to undertake? What is it to provide a set
of features that “all building relations have in common”, or to provide a set of
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

necessary and sufficient conditions on a relation’s being a building relation? The

answer might seem straightforward: the project is to say what all of the relations
canvassed in §2.1 have in common. But that is not right. I have explicitly allowed
that there might be other building relations, and explicitly left room for disagree-
ment about exactly which relations belong on the list (see the end of §2.1). Again,
the examples are not supposed to exhaust the class of building relations, and
I do not take it to be analytic that they are all and only the building relations.
Rather, I take myself to be calling attention to—even ostending—them as rea-
sonably central examples of a kind concept. Thus when I go on to “characterize
building”, I am not just going to be listing what I take to be shared features of
the particular relations I’ve already mentioned; instead, I will be characterizing a
resemblance class that may include members beyond those I have treated as
canonical examples.
And that raises an issue: resemblance classes are cheap. There are lots of them.
If all I am doing is characterizing a resemblance class, why that class rather than
one that is slightly larger or smaller—slightly more or less inclusive? To put the
same question another way: if someone disagrees with me about the features that
I claim to be individually necessary and jointly sufficient for a relation to count as
building, aren’t we just disagreeing about how the term ‘building’ is to be used? It
is tempting to answer by echoing Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty: it’s my word,
and I get to be “master”. But that response is too glib; there is a deep and
important question here. I therefore offer a few more substantive remarks in
response.
First, the issue here has nothing to do with building relations in particular. If
I were to try to say what it takes for something to count as a house, to try to say
what all houses have in common, to characterize the unified family that includes
colonials, Victorians, ranches, etc., precisely the same questions would arise.
Second, both in the general case and in the case of building relations in
particular, the choice of resemblance class is not totally arbitrary, and disputes
over which particular resemblance class to associate with a label or concept are
not purely terminological. The choice is partly a matter of which resemblance
class best answers to the concept, and in part a matter of which resemblance class
is theoretically useful. For example, having directed attention to the rough idea
of building, I cannot go on to characterize building relations as all and only the
two-place relations, or as the set of relations best loved by Quine. Those charac-
terizations simply miss the mark too badly to be live candidates. So something
like conceptual analysis gets us at least to the neighborhood, and theoretical
utility narrows the field further. This particularly matters in §3.2, when I defend
the claim that all building relations are asymmetric and irreflexive. Part of why
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

I require this of building is that I think it belongs to our ordinary understanding

of what it is for one phenomenon to account for another. But another part of why
I require it is that it is theoretically useful to do so, though the full story there will
not emerge until Chapter 6.
Indeed, it is precisely because I am not just doing conceptual analysis that I can
offer a set of necessary and sufficient conditions on a relation’s counting as a
building relation. After all, few concepts have precise boundaries. There are
typically borderline cases that could be defined in or out; there are typically
multiple resemblance classes that are equally good candidates to be the extension
of the concept. So in general it ought to be mildly surprising for conceptual
analysis alone to yield a tidy set of necessary and sufficient conditions. But
theoretical considerations can motivate sharpening a vague concept into a more
precise one.
With these methodological preliminaries out of the way, I am at last ready to
offer my characterization of building. I claim that three features are individually
necessary and jointly sufficient for a relation to count as a building relation. All
building relations are
i. directed, in that they are antisymmetric and irreflexive,
ii. necessitating, roughly in that builders necessitate what they build, and
iii. generative, in that the builders generate or produce what they build. Built
entities exist or obtain because that which builds them does.
In §§3.2, 3.3, and 3.4, I articulate each of these features more carefully, and defend
them at length. In §3.5 I consider and reject four possible additions to my
characterization of building. I reject three of them because I deny that all building
relations have the relevant feature. But I reject a fourth even though I do think it
specifies a feature that all building relations share.

3.2 Directedness
All building relations are directed in that they have an input–output structure;
they take in some relatum (a) and spit out another. This can be captured by the
claim that they are asymmetric:

(D) For all building relations B, and all x and y, if xBy, then ~(yBx).1

1
I have formulated these, and the other principles in this section, with singular quantifiers for
convenience only. It should be clear that I think some building relations take plural builders to a
single built entity, and that it might be that there is “irreducibly plural” building (Dasgupta 2014a).
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

It can also be captured by the equivalent, though perhaps epistemically more

transparent, claim that they are irreflexive and antisymmetric.2
(D) For all building relations B, and all x, ~Bxx, and
For all building relations B, and all x and y such that x6¼y, if xBy, then ~(yBx).
I will typically talk in the latter way, simply to make irreflexivity explicit. If I were
to just say that all building relations are asymmetric, some readers might miss
that this entails that they are irreflexive as well. (And if I were to say that all
building relations are asymmetric and irreflexive, other readers will complain
that I am being redundant.) Either way, the claim is that nothing builds itself, and
no two things mutually build each other. I intend the directedness claim to apply
to both full and partial building: nothing can fully or partially build itself, and
nothing can even partially build something else if that other thing even partially
builds it.
Directedness entails that identity is not a building relation. It also entails, as a
corollary, that some versions of ‘composition is/as identity’ are incompatible with
the claim that composition is a building relation.3
The claim that building is antisymmetric and irreflexive is very natural.
Proposed characterizations of particular building relations nearly always require
antisymmetry and irreflexivity—consider, for example, Lynne Baker’s definition
of constitution (e.g. 2000, 2002), and various characterizations of grounding
(Schaffer 2009, Rosen 2010, Fine 2012, Audi 2012). In fact, irreflexivity and
antisymmetry seem to me to so clearly be part of the concept of building that
I once thought I could stop here, that the point needed no real defense. I was

2
Or, at least, they hold irreflexively and antisymmetrically on the occasions on which their
holding constitutes building. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, footnote 10, there is a real question
about how best to treat relations that can hold either symmetrically or asymmetrically, as well as
relations that are reflexive, but can also hold between distinct relata (i.e., any reflexive relation other
than identity). Consider two salient examples: supervenience in all its guises (see McLaughlin and
Bennett 2005, especially §3.2 and 3.5), and Shoemaker’s version of the Wilson-Shoemaker definition
of property realization. Shoemaker states that property Q realizes property P just in case P’s forward-
looking causal powers are a subset of Q’s, and Q’s backward-looking causal powers are a subset of P’s
(2007, 12; later refinements do not affect the point). Because this is in terms of subsets, not proper
subsets, each property realizes itself. (Wilson 1999 instead says ‘proper subset’.)
Both supervenience and Shoemaker-realization, then, are reflexive nonidentity relations that can
hold either symmetrically or nonsymmetrically. Shall we therefore say that neither is a building
relation at all? Or shall we say that when they hold asymmetrically, between distinct relata, they
count as building after all? I am inclined towards the former, but nonetheless think the alternative is
worth flagging.
3
The ones I have in mind are those that say that composition inherits the formal features of
identity—in particular, that composition is symmetric and reflexive—rather than saying that
identity inherits some of the formal features of composition.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

wrong. A number of people have recently challenged both the claim that all
building relations are irreflexive and the claim that all building relations are
antisymmetric (Jenkins 2011, Bliss 2014, Barnes forthcoming, Wilson 2014,
Rodriguez-Pereyra 2015).
None of them puts the point in terms of building, of course; that terminology is
mine alone. Barnes, Bliss, and Jenkins speak of dependence, and Wilson about
“small ‘g’ grounding relations”. The latter is basically interchangeable with my
terminology, but the former is not. Strictly speaking, dependence is not the
inverse of building or determination. That is, it can be the case that a builds b
and yet not the case that b depends on a. The relevant sort of cases are exactly
those that led Lewis (1973a) to point out that c can cause e and yet e not causally
depend on c: namely, preemption and overdetermination cases. Dependence is
not the inverse of building, just as causal dependence is not the inverse of
causation. Still, this difference does not matter in what follows, and I freely
adapt their arguments about reflexive and symmetric dependence to the case of
building.
However, there is a further difference between the claims these authors attack
and those I wish to defend, a difference that matters somewhat more. Not only do
they talk about dependence rather than determination or building, they (with the
exception of Wilson) talk about a single relation rather than a family of relations.
They deny that this single dependence relation is antisymmetric and irreflexive—
which is not a claim that I myself actually defend. My own claim is just that every
member of a class of relations is antisymmetric and irreflexive—indeed, that
being antisymmetric and irreflexive is part of what makes them belong to that
class. As §2.5 makes clear, I in fact agree that if there were a single generic
building relation that somehow underlies all building talk, it would likely not be
antisymmetric. That is why I am inclined to deny generalist monism. For now, all
that matters is that I defend a slightly different claim than several of my
‘opponents’ deny; I am adapting their arguments accordingly.
3.2.1 Replying to challenges
In this section, I will reply to some4 of the challenges those authors raise. In
§3.2.2, I will make a positive case for the claim that all building relations indeed
are both irreflexive and antisymmetric. It will take a while.

4
I do not here reply to Rodriguez-Pereya (2015); his paper became available after the book was
effectively complete. He, like Litland 2015, uses cases that tread close to semantic paradoxes
involving self-reference and the like.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

Jessica Wilson offers an argument for the claim that not all building relations
are irreflexive that, if successful, would also show that not all building relations
are antisymmetric. She says that

we already have reason to think that [the assumption that all building relations are
irreflexive] must be mistaken. For, in investigating [building] we aim to make sense
of the usual idioms of metaphysical dependence, and identity claims are paradig-
matic of claims taken to establish that certain goings-on are nothing over and above
certain other goings-on (2014, 571).

Call this the argument from idioms of dependence. It seems to go as follows:

1) The phrase ‘nothing over and above’ is an “idiom of metaphysical
dependence”.
2) “Idioms of metaphysical dependence” mark building in the following sense:
if a sentence involving such an idiom is true, some building relation or
other obtains.
3) ‘Nothing over and above’ can mark the identity relation: there are true
sentences of the form ‘x is nothing over and above y’ where x = y.
4) So identity is a building relation.
—————————
Not all building relations are irreflexive (or antisymmetric).
The argument is valid. And premise 3 is clearly true: I am nothing over and above
myself, and water is nothing over and above H2O. But the phrase ‘nothing over
and above’ is a slippery beast, and as a consequence either or both premise 1 and
2 are false. Sometimes the phrase is used to mark that one phenomenon depends
on another; sometimes it is instead used to state an identity. If ‘nothing over and
above’ counts as an “idiom of metaphysical dependence” at all, it is a slippery,
untrustworthy one that does not always mark the presence of building. (If
premise 1 is true, 2 is not.) In this vein it is very much worth noting that ‘nothing
over and above’ has a cousin, a slippery and untrustworthy idiom of identity—
namely, ‘just is’. Sometimes ‘just is’ is used to state an identity claim; sometimes it
is instead used to state that one phenomenon is exhaustively built out of
another—that it can be explained in terms of something more fundamental (on
the phrase ‘just is’, see Rayo 2013, 5). At any rate, the point is that Wilson’s
argument is not compelling. Where she sees trouble for the irreflexivity of
building, I see trouble for the idea that claims made with the unregimented
‘nothing over and above’ locution provide evidence for much of anything.
(Mutatis mutandis for ‘just is’, and consequently for Wilson’s idea that allowing
reflexive dependence makes best sense of Gideon Rosen’s ‘grounding-reduction
link’ (2010, 122–6).)
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

A second kind of argument against the claim that all building relations are
irreflexive and/or antisymmetric might be called the argument from cases. Both
Wilson and C. S. Jenkins claim to produce examples of reflexive building, and
Elizabeth Barnes and Ricki Bliss claim to produce examples of symmetric building.
An obvious issue with this strategy is that any such examples will be controversial—
possibly too controversial to count as successful counterexamples.
However, there is a related strategy that seems both more promising and more
in line with what Barnes and Jenkins have in mind. I call it the argument from
neutrality. Here, the idea is not that certain claims of reflexive or symmetric
building are definitely true, but rather simply that they are live metaphysical
hypotheses that ought not be ruled out by the way we characterize building.
That is, this kind of argument relies not on any premise of the form ‘some x and
y mutually depend on each other’, but rather only on a weaker premise of the
form ‘there are reasonable metaphysical views according to which some x and y
mutually depend on each other’. Barnes, for example, says that

we can’t maintain that dependence is asymmetric without ruling out wide swathes of
the metaphysical landscape. And that quite simply isn’t the job of a notion of
dependence—which is, after all, meant to be neutral across various ontologies
(forthcoming, 9).

Wilson, too, aims to be “maximally . . . ecumenical” (2014, 561), and Jenkins makes
similar remarks about the claim that dependence is irreflexive (2011, 269–70). The
thought, I take it, is that the relevant mutual dependence claims need not be shown
to be true, nor even particularly plausible. All that matters is that the proponents of
such claims are using the same notion of building or determination as the rest of us.
Building must be understood in a sufficiently neutral way as to permit views
according to which it can hold symmetrically and/or reflexively.
The problem with this generous-sounding line of thought is that it assumes
that it is impermissible to rule views out on the grounds that they are misusing
the notion of building. But surely that is permissible. Consider an analogy with
identity. If someone were to defend a metaphysical picture according to which
some things are identical to themselves and some are not, I would be well within
my rights to simply point out that said person seems not to understand the
identity relation. The mere fact that someone holds this view provides no reason
at all to claim that identity is nonreflexive rather than reflexive. Similarly, the
mere fact that someone asserts a reflexive or symmetric building claim does not
itself provide reason to believe that some building relations are nonreflexive or
nonsymmetric. Metaphysical tools like identity and building are not required to
be neutral across all ontologies.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

Consequently, the argument from neutrality is not as much of an advance on

the argument from cases as it might initially seem. We do have to evaluate the
putative cases on their own merits after all. The question is, are they sufficiently
plausible to overcome my antecedent resistance to the possibility of symmetric or
reflexive building? No.
Some cases are simply implausible on their face—indeed, some are implausible
precisely because they seem to postulate symmetric dependence. For example,
Barnes discusses Armstrong’s position on universals and states of affairs as a
possible case of symmetric building. But I have long found his views unclear
precisely because he seems to want the building to go both directions. (See
Chapter 2, footnote 9.) Indeed, as a referee suggests, one thought is that he
changed his mind.5
Other cases are not convincing because it is too easy to explain away the
appearance of symmetric or reflexive building. Here are a few quick examples.
First, people sometimes say that God has traditionally been thought to be self-
grounded (e.g. Wilson 2014, 571–2). But it is at best unclear whether the
theological tradition holds that God is self-grounded or merely that his existence
is ungrounded.6 Second, Bliss suggests that the two poles of a magnet mutually
depend upon each other (2014, 248), presumably because they cannot exist
independently. But this appearance of symmetric dependence is easily explained
away as instead being a case of common ground: both poles are built from the
magnetic field of the object. Compare the fact that if I did not have a husband,
I would not be a wife. And if my husband did not have a wife, he would not be a
husband. But that counterfactual dependence certainly does not show that the
state of affairs of my being a wife and the state of affairs of his being a husband
symmetrically depend upon each other. Rather, both states of affairs depend
upon various facts about social conventions, a piece of paper we signed, and so
forth. They have a common ground (and cause).7
Third, Jenkins (2011, 268 and 272) and Bliss (2014, 253) both seem to suggest
that reductive physicalism involves reflexive building, for they say that mental

5
Though a worry for that view is that his 1997 seems to contain textual support for the building
going both directions. See Chapter 2 footnote 9. But I do not claim to be an Armstrong scholar.
6
Thanks to David Kovacs here.
7
Cases of common cause can be treated somewhat differently than cases of common ground or
common building base more generally. That’s because the claim that the effects of a common cause
counterfactually depend upon each other typically relies upon backtracking. (If e1 hadn’t happened,
that would have been because c didn’t happen, in which case e2 would not have happened either . . . )
So it can reasonably—or at least Lewisianly (1979)—be denied that the effects of a common cause in
fact do counterfactually depend on each other. But this strategy does not work in synchronic or
atemporal cases like that in the main text.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

states (types or tokens) are both identical to and built from physical states. But
this rests on a misunderstanding of the view. The relevant kind of physicalism
might be carelessly stated using both identity talk and building talk, but no
physicalist actually thinks that identity and building hold between the same
relata. Rather, the identity theorist’s claim is that pain (say) is identical to a
high-level built physical state—some complex neurological state, perhaps—that
is in turn built from lower-level physical states. The pain is identical to physical
state a, and is built from physical states b, c, and d. So the physical facts that build
the mental facts aren’t the same facts as the ones that are identical to the mental
facts; the claim that reductive physicalism constitutes a case of reflexive building
just gets the relata wrong.8
Now, I could continue, and try to refute every putative case of symmetric or
reflexive building that has been or could be offered. But that would take a lot of
space. Further, such a defensive discussion would make my commitment to
the antisymmetry and irreflexivity of building look stubborn and dogmatic.
(Wilson is probably right to say that continued rejection of counterexample
after counterexample becomes “increasingly ad hoc” (2014, 570).) Consequently,
I propose to leave the counterexamples behind, and move from defense to
offense. It is time to offer positive reason to believe that all building relations
are irreflexive and antisymmetric—and, in doing so, offer motivation to resist
other putative counterexamples by whatever means necessary.9

8
Something similar is going on with Barnes’ discussion of immanent universals and entities that
instantiate those universals essentially (forthcoming, 3.1). She suggests that this involves symmetric
dependence. However, this too gets the relata wrong, though more subtly. Suppose entity e
essentially instantiates immanent universal U. The existence of e depends on U, but it is not the
case that the existence of U depends on the existence of e: rather, it depends on the existence of some
instance or other.
9
The most plausible cases of symmetric dependence (really, symmetric partial dependence) are
offered by Barnes: I have in mind her discussion of mathematical structuralism, and of a case in
which one thing is essentially part of another, even though the second thing essentially has the first
as a part. These two cases have a common structure: namely, that the relevant entities essentially
bear some relation to each other. Here is the line of thought:
1. a essentially bears R1 to b and b essentially bears R2 to a.
2. For all x and y and all relations R, if x essentially bears R to y, x depends for its existence on y’s
existence.
—————————
So a depends on b and b depends on a. (Or a’s existence on b’s existence, etc.)
Note that the dependence claims are not generated from anything special about R1 and R2. They are
coming from the ‘essentially’, via the principle in premise 2.
Such cases are not as easily dismissed as the ones I discuss in the main text, especially given that
the common structure basically amounts to a recipe for generating additional examples. However,
I do think they can and should be resisted. My positive argument in the main text establishes that.
The only question is exactly how to resist, and working out the details would lead me too far astray.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

3.2.2 A positive argument

The claim I defend here is to some extent a normative one. To argue that
all building relations are irreflexive and antisymmetric is really to argue
that building ought to be characterized in such a way that only antisymmetric
and irreflexive relations count as building relations—that the resemblance class
that best serves only contains antisymmetric and irreflexive relations. But what is
the force of that ‘ought’? How do we decide which is the best resemblance class?
As I explained at the beginning of the chapter, it is partly a matter of conceptual
analysis, and partly a matter of theoretical utility.
That our pretheoretic concept of building pulls in the direction of antisym-
metry and irreflexivity is clear, and I doubt that proponents of symmetric or
reflexive building would deny it. (They would deny that our ordinary notion
rules out symmetric and reflexive cases, but they would, I think, agree that
such cases are not central, paradigmatic cases of the concept. After all, they see
themselves as fighting an uphill battle against a common assumption.) The more
interesting and important point is that theoretical utility also pulls in the direc-
tion of antisymmetry and irreflexivity.
Why think this? Why think it theoretically useful to require that all building
relations be antisymmetric and irreflexive? I will quickly set aside an answer that
I do not endorse before laying out the one that I do.
Here is the claim I do not endorse: it is theoretically useful to require that all
building relations be antisymmetric and irreflexive because doing so allows for
the truth of metaphysical foundationalism, understood as the claim that all chains
of building must terminate in something unbuilt (e.g. Schaffer 2010a, 37).10 Both
reflexive and symmetric instances of building would constitute chains of building
that fail to terminate. So those who endorse metaphysical foundationalism can
argue on that basis that all building relations are antisymmetric and irreflexive.
However, I myself do not want to do this. The problem is that it is unclear what
theoretical value foundationalism really has, or whether there is good reason to

One option is to deny that there are any cases of the form captured in premise 1. That would be to
say that the relation essentially bearing some relation or other to is asymmetric: if a essentially bears
some relation to b, then b cannot essentially bear any relation to a. Another option is to challenge the
essence!dependence principle in the second premise. It does not look true in full generality, since
I am at least arguably essentially distinct from my cat (contra Fine 1994, 5), and yet in no way
depend upon it. A third option would be to find some tension between the two premises. Notice that
the second premise isn’t true if ‘essentially’ is replaced with ‘necessarily’; I necessarily coexist with all
necessary existents, but I do not depend on all of them. So it is worth investigating what notion of
essence is required here, and whether the first premise is plausible given that notion. (In this respect,
see Fine 1995, 249–50.) Thanks to my spring 2015 graduate seminar for discussion.
10
The view is frequently characterized in terms of grounding in particular.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

believe it to be true. I consequently prefer to be agnostic about it, even though

doing so makes my project more difficult in various ways. I will discuss founda-
tionalism in more detail in §5.5. For now, I simply note that I will not offer the kind
of foundationalist argument that Bliss (2014) criticizes.
Why do I think it is theoretically useful to require that all building relations be
antisymmetric and irreflexive? Because, I claim, doing so allows relative funda-
mentality to be characterized in terms of building. What is at stake is a deflation-
ism or reductionism about relative fundamentality according to which all it is for
one thing to be more fundamental than another is for certain patterns of building
to obtain between them—that is, according to which relative fundamentality is
not an additional metaphysical phenomenon. In Chapter 6, I will say a great deal
more about the connection between building and relative fundamentality, and
spell out a particular reductionist picture in detail. For present purposes, what
matters are the following two points: first, that the reduction requires the truth of
at least one principle connecting building and relative fundamentality, and
second, the most reasonable such principle entails that all building relations are
antisymmetric and irreflexive.
The principle in question is what I call the ‘building to more fundamental than
link’, or B!MFT for short:
B!MFT: for all x and y, and all building relations B, if x at least partially Bs
y then x is more fundamental than y.
If one thing builds—constitutes, composes, realizes, grounds—another, then the
former is more fundamental than the latter. Builders are more fundamental than
what they build. Those who are skeptical of fundamentality—skepticism I hope
to assuage in Chapters 5 and 6—should be skeptical about building, not about the
claim that building talk brings relative fundamentality talk in its wake.11
Now, there are other possible principles that connect building to relative
fundamentality. Here are two reasonably plausible ones (I have relegated some
nonstarter options to a footnote).12 First, consider

11
I address an objection to B!MFT in chapter 6 (§6.7.3, to be precise).
12
If all that’s wanted is some, any, connection between building and relative fundamentality,
there are many more possibilities, such as the following:
B!LFT: for all x and y, and all building relations B, if x at least partially Bs y then x is less
fundamental than y.
B!E: for all x and y, and all building relations B, if x at least partially Bs y then x is
equifundamental with y.
MFT!B: for all x and y, and all building relations B, if x is more fundamental than y then x at
least partially Bs y.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

for all x and y, and all building relations B, if x is unbuilt and y is built, x is
more fundamental than y.
This is true, but not nearly robust enough to license a full-fledged reduction of
relative fundamentality to building. According to it, no nonfundamental thing is
more fundamental than any other. But surely it should be a goal of an account of
relative fundamentality to make sense of the thought that molecules are more
fundamental than chairs, even though they are not themselves fundamental.
Second, consider
If x is fewer direct building steps away from the fundamental entities that
terminate its chain than y is to the fundamental entities that terminate its
chain, x is more fundamental than y.
I discuss this principle at length in Chapter 6. For present purposes, I simply flag
two points. First, it can only be accepted by metaphysical foundationalists, and as
I have just noted, I prefer to remain neutral on whether foundationalism is true.
Second, once the notion of ‘direct building steps’ and ‘building chains’ are
properly spelled out, it becomes clear that this entails the principle B!MFT.
To recap: there must be robust connections between relative fundamentality
and building if the former is nothing beyond the latter—more precisely, if all it
is for a relative fundamentality fact to obtain is for certain complex patterns of
building to obtain. B!MFT is an extremely plausible such principle. And it
entails that all building relations are antisymmetric and irreflexive.
That’s because more fundamental than is antisymmetric and irreflexive (as well
as transitive). Indeed, all comparative relations—like taller than, or any relation
explicitly of the form more F than or less F than—are antisymmetric, irreflexive,
and transitive. (Their irreflexivity presumably follows from the indiscernibility of
identicals; nothing can be more anything than itself.) Together with B!MFT,
this entails that all building relations are irreflexive and antisymmetric. The
proofs are obvious, but perhaps worth including in a footnote.13 The basic idea

But of course we don’t just want some connection or other; we want a connection that respects our
concepts of building and fundamentality. And none of these principles do that. B!LFT and B!E
are clearly ruled out on conceptual grounds. And MFT!B is false as well: an electron in Phoenix is
more fundamental than a water molecule in Ithaca, even though it doesn’t in any way build that
water molecule. Now, B!MFT doesn’t entail that the electron is more fundamental than the water
molecule—a full account of relative fundamentality in terms of building requires more than this one
principle, and I will provide one in Chapter 6. But at least B!MFT is compatible with the fact that
the electron is more fundamental than the molecule, unlike MFT!B.
13
To show that the antisymmetry of building follows from B!MFT and the antisymmetry of
more fundamental than, let R be a building relation, and suppose for reductio that distinct entities a
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

is that reflexive building would allow things to be more fundamental than

themselves, and antisymmetric building would allow things to be both more
and less fundamental than each other.
(A digression is in order. Attentive readers may notice that the antisymmetry
of more fundamental than and B!MFT have another interesting consequence.
They together entail either that it cannot happen that different building relations
hold in different directions, contra my tentative suggestion against generalism
in §2.5, or that the more fundamental than relation is implicitly indexed to
particular building relations. After all, if it can happen that a B1 b and b B2 a,
where B1 and B2 are distinct building relations, then B!MFT entails both that
a is more fundamental than b and b is more fundamental than a—contradicting
the antisymmetry of the more fundamental than relation. The only way to avoid
this is to say that strictly speaking a is more-fundamental-thanB1 b, and b is
more-fundamental-thanB2 b. And this is in fact my preferred view. Now,
I recognize that this is a big and perhaps surprising claim. I myself find such a
view both natural and independently motivated; it falls out of my reductionism
about relative fundamentality and my pluralism about building relations. But
this is not the place to discuss the matter. It will rearise in §6.6.1. I am compelled
to point it out here because some readers will surely put together the pieces that
have been put on the table, and wonder what I want to say about it. But the issue
at hand, right now, is defending the claim that all building relations are irreflexive
and antisymmetric. To that I now return.)
The point, to repeat, is that B!MFT and the irreflexivity and antisymmetry
of the more fundamental than relation together entail that all building relations
are irreflexive and antisymmetric. This makes the issue stark. Opponents of the
irreflexivity and antisymmetry of building must either deny B!MFT, or deny
that more fundamental than is antisymmetric and irreflexive.
The latter option is extremely unattractive. For one thing, it requires saying
that the more fundamental than relation is different from other comparative
relations of the form more F than—e.g. smaller than, more expensive than—all of
which are antisymmetric and irreflexive. For another, saying that more funda-
mental than—or any comparative relation—can hold reflexively violates the
indiscernibility of identicals. If something were more fundamental than itself
(or smaller than itself, more expensive than itself, etc.), it would have to be

and b are such that aRb and bRa. By B!MFT, a is more fundamental than b, and b is more
fundamental than a. But more fundamental than is antisymmetric. Contradiction.
To show that the irreflexivity of building follows from B!MFT and the irreflexivity of more
fundamental than, let R be a building relation, and suppose for reductio that aRa. By B!MFT, a is
more fundamental than a. But more fundamental than is irreflexive. Contradiction.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

different from itself. So the only option is to deny B!MFT—or say that I am
offering a false dichotomy. Barnes does the first and Wilson the second.
Barnes denies B!MFT, at least insofar as her claims about dependence can be
translated into claims about building (it would probably be more appropriate to
attribute this modified passage to Barnes*, particularly in light of her reference to
grounding):

if [building] can be nonsymmetric, then [building] needs to be separated from talk of

grounding, priority, in virtue of, etc. These relations are relations that aim to take us
from the derivative to the fundamental. They take us from things we treat with less
ontological seriousness, or ‘get for free’ . . . down to the ultimate ontological bedrock.
But if [building] is nonsymmetric, it can’t play this role, and it can’t be jumbled
together with these other relations . . . [Building] needs to be separated from theor-
etical gizmos—like grounding, priority, and in virtue of—tailored specifically to take
us from the less fundamental to the more fundamental. [Building] can do a lot of
interesting work in our theories, but it can’t do that. Nor can [building] be used to
explain priority . . . Whatever sense (if any) we can make of those other relations and
whatever work they can do (if any) in our theories, they need to be clearly separated
from [building] (ms 26–7).

Her conditional claim about building is exactly right: if there are nonsymmetric
building relations, B!MFT is false, and relative fundamentality cannot be under-
stood in terms of building. But I reject her conclusion, for her ponens is my tollens.
And the reason should be clear. I have available to me a straightforward account
of relative fundamentality—ontological priority, if you prefer that phrase—on which
it reduces to complex patterns of building. On Barnes’ approach, a different story
is required. But what story? Must she take relative fundamentality to be a further
primitive? Without having something to compare to the account I offer in Chapter 6,
it is hard to do the math, but on the face of it this is a significant theoretical cost.
Wilson instead in effect claims that I have left an option out. She accepts
B!MFT, accepts that there is symmetric and reflexive building, and yet denies
that the more fundamental than relation ever holds reflexively or symmetrically. She
makes this move particularly in the context of reflexive building, so I too will restrict
myself to the reflexive case. (What follows is my interpretation of her 2014, 573,
where she responds to my raising the issue in personal communication.)
Wilson agrees that reflexive instances of the more fundamental than relation
would violate the indiscernibility of identicals, but she denies that there are any such
instances. Her central move is to deny that the claim that a is more fundamental
than b and the claim that a = b together entail that a is more fundamental than a.
Her trick is to appeal to referential opacity—to say that the expression ‘more
fundamental than’ creates an opaque context so that the flanking expressions
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

cannot be replaced with coreferring terms salva veritate. (Jenkins 2011 makes
related remarks in a somewhat different context.)14 That is, on her view the
following three claims are compatible:

1) a is more fundamental than b.

2) a = b.
3) It is not the case that a is more fundamental than a.
Wilson explicitly takes this to be akin to the strategy that Lewis (1971) and
Gibbard (1975) use to defuse modal Leibniz’s Law arguments for the existence of
distinct coincident entities.15
Unfortunately, however, her strategy does not work. The claim that the predicate
‘more fundamental than’ creates an opaque context needs to be supplemented with
a story about why it does so—a story, if you will, about the metaphysical under-
pinnings of the semantic phenomenon. And the most obvious way to do that, the
way inspired by Quine and Lewis, does not help. Thus her acceptance of reflexive
building commits her to the claim that some things are more fundamental than
themselves after all. Let me fill in the details.
Consider Quine’s famous example (1953, 139) of the Italian painter Barbarelli,
who was nicknamed Giorgione. ‘Giorgione was so-called because of his size’ is
true, and ‘Barbarelli was so-called because of his size’ is false—despite the fact
that Giorgione is identical to Barbarelli. What gives? Here, the explanation is
straightforward: the predicate ‘is so-called’ picks out different properties in
different contexts. Attached to the name ‘Giorgione’, it picks out the property
being called ‘Giorgione’; attached to the name ‘Barbarelli’, it picks out the property
being called ‘Barbarelli’. These properties are perfectly compatible, and both are
possessed by the relevant man. He was called ‘Giorgione’ because of his size, but
was called ‘Barbarelli’ because that was the surname he inherited from his father.
That, then, is the explanation of why ‘was so-called’ creates an opaque context: it

14
Jenkins’ appeal to referential opacity (2011, 268–71) is in the service of responding to a
different argument for the claim that all building relations are irreflexive. (Wilson is directly
responding to the argument from the connection between building and relative fundamentality
captured in B!MFT.) Jenkins notes that all reflexive building claims like ‘a depends on a’ sound
bad, and indeed claims that they are all false. She nonetheless wants to resist the inference from this
to the claim that there is no reflexive dependence. The claim that ‘depends upon’ creates an opaque
context plays a role in her attempt to do so.
15
Wilson actually says that the opacity strategy “make(s) sense of how identical entities can have
different properties” (573). But no claim about how a certain linguistic expression functions can
have the metaphysical consequence that there are violations of the indiscernibility of identicals. The
strategy in question is better understood as saying that certain sentences that appear to attribute
incompatible properties to a single entity do not really do so.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

picks out different properties when attached to different names. David Lewis’s
treatment of de re modal claims (1971) is much the same.16
But what is Wilson’s story? Why would ‘more fundamental than’—unlike
other comparative adjectives—create an opaque context? She does not say, and
adopting a version of the Quine/Gibbard/Lewis strategy does not appear to be
useful. That would be to say that the predicate ‘more fundamental than’ picks out
different relations in different contexts. I myself actually take this to be true—it is
a consequence of the indexing to particular building relations that I mentioned a
few pages ago, and which I will explain further in §6.6.1. But I do not see how it
helps avoid postulating reflexive instances of the more fundamental than relation,
instances which Wilson agrees would violate Leibniz’s Law (2014, 573). On the
strategy in question, the claim is that the above trio of sentences express the
following three propositions:
1P) a is more-fundamental-than1 b.
2P) a = b.
3P) It is not the case that a is more-fundamental-than2 a.
These three propositions are indeed compatible; 1P and 2P do not entail the
falsity of 3P—i.e., they do not entail that a is more-fundamental-than2 a. But:
1P and 2P do entail the proposition that a is more-fundamental-than1 a. (Com-
pare: the proposition that Giorgione was called ‘Giorgione’ because of his size and
the proposition that Giorgione = Barbarelli together do entail the proposition
that Barbarelli was called ‘Giorgione’ because of his size. And he indeed was
called that for that reason.) But if a is more-fundamental-than1 a we are back
where we started: with a reflexive instance of more fundamental than that violates
Leibniz’s Law. Perhaps she has in mind a different explanation of, or metaphys-
ical underpinning for, the putative opacity. But in the absence of one, it is not
promising or plausible to retain reflexive building and the link between building

16
Here is Lewis’s view by means of Gibbard’s example. Suppose I put two pieces of clay together
to simultaneously make a statue (Goliath) and a single lump of clay (Lumpl). It is true that Lumpl
would survive being squashed into a ball, and false that Goliath would survive being squashed into a
ball. Must we conclude that Lumpl 6¼ Goliath, despite sharing all parts and occupying the same
spatiotemporal region? No, says Lewis; be careful about what the sentences say. The predicate ‘would
survive being squashed into a ball’ picks out different modal properties when attached to different
names, which make salient different counterpart relations. When attached to the name ‘Lumpl’, the
predicate picks out the property has a squashed counterpart under the lump counterpart relation.
When attached to the name ‘Goliath’, the same predicate picks out a distinct property: has a
squashed counterpart under the statue counterpart relation. These two properties are compatible,
and Lumpl/Goliath is a single entity that has both.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

and relative fundamentality while rejecting the claim that some things are more
fundamental than themselves.
I have offered a positive argument for the requirement that every building
relation be antisymmetric and irreflexive, one that appeals to the connection
between building and relative fundamentality. My claim, again, is that it is
theoretically useful to require antisymmetry and irreflexivity because it opens
the door to a deflationary account of relative fundamentality in terms of building.
To approach it from the other side: allowing either symmetric or reflexive
building requires either denying the principle B!MFT, denying the irreflexivity
and/or antisymmetry of the more fundamental than relation, or somehow claim-
ing that there is a third way, perhaps involving referential opacity. We have just
seen that pursuing the third way is no easy task. To my knowledge, no one has yet
tried to just accept reflexive or symmetric instances of more fundamental than.
And denying B!MFT, as Barnes suggests, comes at a significant cost: it requires
denying my deflationary story about relative fundamentality according to which
relative fundamentality is just relative location in the building structure. That is
why we ought not allow reflexive or symmetric building.
One final matter deserves brief discussion. Although I claim that all building
relations are antisymmetric and irreflexive, I do not claim that they are all
transitive. For several particular building relations, transitivity is either contro-
versial or straightforwardly false. The clearest case is set formation: a forms
{a}, and {a} forms {{a}}, but a does not form—is not a member of—{{a}}
(Wilson makes the same point; 2014, 570). Further, although classical extensional
mereology treats parthood as transitive, this is controversial (for discussion, see
Rescher 1955, 10; Varzi 2006). Finally, although most assume that grounding is
transitive (e.g. Fine 2010a, 100; Rosen 2010, 11617), Schaffer has recently argued
that it is not (2012). I myself am not convinced that transitivity fails for either
grounding or composition, but I do agree that transitivity is not nearly so central
to the concept of building as irreflexivity and antisymmetry are.
And requiring transitivity is not as theoretically important as requiring irre-
flexivity and antisymmetry, either. My deflationary story about relative funda-
mentality would be very slightly cleaner if I insisted on transitivity, but failing to
do so does not gut the project. In particular, it is not the case that the conjunction
of the principle B!MFT and the transitivity of the more fundamental than
relation entails the transitivity of every building relation. Suppose that there is
some nontransitive building relation B such that aBb, bBc, but ~aBc. B!MFT
entails that a is more fundamental than b, and b is more fundamental than c. The

17
Rosen does say that it is “not obvious” that grounding is transitive, but assumes it regardless.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

transitivity of more fundamental than entails that a is also more fundamental

than c. But that does not conflict with the assumption that a does not build c: it
simply has to be the case that one thing can be more fundamental than another
despite not standing in a building relation to it.
And that is clearly possible. Sodium ions are more fundamental than benzene
rings, but benzene rings are not even partially built out of sodium ions—sodium
is simply not involved. A similar point holds for tokens of types that in general
are building related. Hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms are more fundamental
than water molecules, but that does not entail that a particular water molecule in
Ithaca is built out of hydrogen and oxygen atoms located in Phoenix.
This seemingly obvious point will be important in the beginning of Chapter 6,
when I argue that making sense of the more fundamental than relation in terms
of building is a more complicated project than it might at first appear. For now,
all that matters is that the conjunction of (B!MFT) and the transitivity of more
fundamental than does not provide any reason to think that all building relations
are transitive.
All building relations are antisymmetric and irreflexive; some are transitive
and some are not. But recall that the question on the table is: what is it in virtue of
which a relation counts as a building relation? Antisymmetry and irreflexivity
alone are obviously not sufficient; being taller than meets those criteria, but is not
a building relation. More is needed. Building relations are not just directed; they
are also necessitating and generative. It is time to explain and defend the next
requirement, necessitation.

3.3 Necessitation
Very roughly, I claim that all building relations are such that necessarily, if the
‘input’ obtains or exists or occurs, the output does too. The builder(s) guarantees
the built. This claim is a good starting point, anyway; as often the case with
starting points, it is in fact too crude. In this section, I will precisify the idea, and
defend a somewhat weaker necessitation claim.
Before I do so, however, I want to point out that there is a quite different modal
feature that all building relations might be claimed to have. This alternative is to
say that all building relations are such that the built entity counterfactually
depends upon that which builds it:

(CF) For all building relations B, and all x and y, if xBy, then ~x □! ~y.
Why don’t I opt for counterfactual dependence rather than—or in addition to—
necessitation? The reason is that although building is typically reflected in
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

counterfactual dependence, it isn’t always. The problem cases are familiar from
the literature on the counterfactual theory of causation: preemption and overde-
termination. For example, suppose that physical states P1 and P2 both actually
occur, though only P1 in fact realizes my pain right now. But if it hadn’t realized
my pain, P2 would have: P2 is a preempted realizer. For a case of overdetermin-
ation, consider the existential fact that something exists. That fact is grounded in
the fact that I exist, as well as in the fact that my sunglasses do. Or consider Peter
Unger’s well-known problem of the many (1980; see Weatherson 2003 for a nice
overview)—one way to think about that puzzle is as pointing out that there is an
awful lot of compositional overdetermination. If such cases of ‘overbuilding’ and
‘pre-emptive building’ are indeed possible, as it seems, they are cases in which
building occurs without the right patterns of counterfactual dependence. So (CF)
is likely false. Still, it is certainly worth noting that most of the time, building is
indeed reflected in the counterfactual dependence of the built upon the builders.
Counterfactual dependence is typical of building, even though it is not strictly
speaking required for a relation count as a building relation. Even such a weak
claim requires some care with the details; I do that in this footnote.18

18
Here is the most important caveat about how to understand the claim that building is typically
reflected in counterfactual dependence of the built on that which builds it. The claim is decidedly not
that any slight difference to the building base makes a difference to whether or not the built entity exists
or obtains. Clearly, relational changes to the building base will often make no difference at all. But even
small intrinsic changes will at least sometimes make no difference either. For example, assuming the
falsity of mereological essentialism, many composites can exist in the absence of a few of their parts.
And many nonfundamental properties—even fairly determinate ones—are such that their instanti-
ation can tolerate small differences at the microlevel. I could probably be in exactly the same qualitative
state of pain even if one or two fewer neurons were firing.
So how is the counterfactual dependence to be understood? Recall the way I actually formulated it:
had the building base not existed (been instantiated, etc.), the built entity would not have either. To
suppose that the building base does not exist is not merely to suppose that a slightly different entity
(event, object, state of affairs . . . ) occurs in its place. Rather, to suppose that the base does not exist is
to suppose it away entirely. It is to imagine it deleted, rather than replaced with something just
different enough to count as a numerically different entity. (If the relevant sort of entity is very
modally fragile, this will be a very minor change to reality.) Here is Lewis on this point:
Wouldn’t the minimal change to get rid of an event be one that replaces it with a
barely different event? Not so . . . we certainly do not want counterfactuals saying that
if a certain event had not occurred, a barely different event would have taken its place.
(1986e, 211)
When asked to suppose counterfactually that C does not occur, we do not really look
for the very closest possible world where C’s conditions of occurrence are not quite
satisfied. Rather, we imagine that C is completely and cleanly excised from history,
leaving behind no fragment or approximation of itself (2000, 190).
Elsewhere (2003, 482), I call this a ban on replacement evaluations of the relevant sort of counter-
factual. They are inappropriate in building contexts as well as in causal ones (this is no accident and
should be no surprise; see Chapter 4). There are various ways to accommodate this ban (see my
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

The modal feature shared by all building relations is instead that they are all
necessitation relations, in a particular sense to be characterized. This is a claim
about full building, not partial (see Fine 2012 for the distinction in the case of
ground). No one thinks that mere partial builders necessitate what they build;
indeed, that is arguably definitive of mere partial building. The interesting
question is whether full building involves necessitation. This has attracted some
attention recently, particularly in the case of grounding (Trogdon 2013b, Skiles
2015, Leuenberger 2014), but also in the case of composition (Cameron 2007).
Does full building involve necessitation? My answer will be yes, though perhaps
not quite in the way you might expect. I do not claim that each building relation B
is such that if x fully B’s y, it necessitates y. But I nonetheless claim that all
building relations involve necessitation.
Let me explain. The place to start is by noting a distinction between two
importantly different ways in which someone might deny that full builders
necessitate what they build.
One way to deny that full builders necessitate what they build is to deny that
anything necessitates the built entities. This is to claim that there can be genuinely
indeterministic building: there are entire worlds just alike but for the fact that
some built entity exists or obtains in one and not the other. It is to claim, that
is, that built entities fail to strongly globally supervene on the rest of the world. (If
metaphysical foundationalism is true—if all chains of building terminate in
something fundamental—then the claim is that built entities fail to strongly
globally supervene on the fundamental entities.) Cameron 2007 endorses this
position with respect to composition, though he explores an alternative view in
his 2014.
The other way to deny that full builders necessitate what they build instead
accepts that something necessitates the built entity, and merely denies that the full
building base does. The claim, that is, is that x (or the xxs, or set of facts Γ, etc.)
can fully build y ( . . . ) even though x needs to be in some way supplemented to
guarantee y. Perhaps certain enablers are needed, or perhaps blockers must be
absent (Leuenberger 2014). Either way, the claim would be that only something
‘larger’ than x, some x + C, guarantees y, even though x alone counts as the full
building base. C might include positive enablers, or negative facts or totality facts
that rule out blockers. This kind of challenge to the claim that full builders
necessitate what they build assumes that the built is necessitated, just not by

2003, 482n19), but the details matter little for present purposes. What does matter is that it blocks a
variety of putative counterexamples to the claim that built entities counterfactually depend on that
which builds them.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

the full builders. So according to this second view, built entities supervene on the
rest of the world, or perhaps on the fundamentals, but do not supervene on what
builds them alone.
Here is the plan for the rest of this section. I will begin (§3.3.1) by arguing that
the first kind of claim is false; genuinely indeterministic building is not possible.
Then I will argue (§3.3.2) that the second kind of claim is unimportant—that not
much of interest turns on whether or not one denies in that way that full building
is a necessitation relation. In the course of this discussion I will spell out my own
preferred necessitation requirement, the sense in which all building relations
involve necessitation.
3.3.1 Against indeterministic building
I offer two arguments against the claim that genuinely indeterministic building is
not possible—i.e., two arguments for the claim that built entities supervene on
what builds them. Both are more-or-less pieces of conceptual analysis. To fix
ideas, let world w1 contain, among other things, a and b (perhaps they are objects,
perhaps they are facts, perhaps they are something else). Let world w2 be an exact
duplicate of w1 except that b does not exist or obtain there.
Argument 1: from luck. If both w1 and w2 are possible, it’s a matter of chance
whether or not b exists (or obtains, etc.). It just does or it doesn’t. Certainly,
nothing a is doing (as it were) makes the difference between worlds where it
exists and worlds where it doesn’t. Neither a nor anything else is really accounting
for b, or making b exist. So b just isn’t accounted for or made to exist—it isn’t
built at all. (Note that the intuition in play here directly contradicts one of
G. E. M. Anscombe’s intuitions about the causal analogue (1971, 91–2).)
Argument 2: from modal recombination. The joint possibility of w1 and w2
indicates that b is recombinable with a, and indeed with the rest of reality. But such
modal recombinability is frequently taken as a mark of fundamentality: if nothing
else modally constrains b, then b is fundamental (e.g. Schaffer 2010a, 40). But if
something is fundamental, it is not in any way built! Or so I shall argue in
Chapter 5, anyway. For now, I simply assume it; the claim is plausible enough. In
short: if something fails to supervene on the rest of reality, it is recombinable with
the rest of reality; if it is recombinable in that way, it is fundamental; if it is
fundamental, it is unbuilt. So b is not built by a, or by anything else for that matter.
Let me be clear: neither argument is intended to show that no facts or other
entities are undetermined, and in particular they are not intended to show that
both w1 and w2 are not jointly possible. All I am claiming is that if both worlds are
possible, a does not build b in w1. Whatever relations hold between them are not
building relations.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

Perhaps these are not exactly knockdown arguments. But there is something to
them, certainly, and little to be said in favor of the opposite view. And indeed, the
claim that built entities do supervene on the rest of the world is implicitly
assumed by just about everyone I can think of (except Cameron of 2007).
Here’s a way to see this. Consider the well-known zombie argument against
physicalism, introduced by Robert Kirk (1974) and brought to prominence by
David Chalmers (1996). For my purposes, there are two key claims. The first is
that a zombie world is possible: a world that has the same physical facts and laws
as the actual world, but in which phenomenal consciousness goes missing. The
second claim is that the fact that a zombie world is possible entails that physic-
alism is false. This argument is, of course, very controversial. But all of the
controversy has attended the first claim, that a zombie world is genuinely
possible. (Some think it conceivable but not possible; some think it not even
conceivable.) Everyone concedes the second, conditional claim: that if such a
world is possible, physicalism is false. But physicalism would not be falsified by
the possibility of a zombie world if building can be genuinely indeterministic.
That’s because given indeterministic building, the possibility of a zombie world
simply is not inconsistent with the claim that in the actual world, the physical
facts fully build the consciousness facts. Yet no one defends the truth of physic-
alism this way. And the fact that no one does shows that everyone is implicitly
assuming that building cannot be genuinely indeterministic.
In sum, it is reasonable to deny the possibility of genuinely indeterministic
building—i.e., to require that all building relations are such that built entities super-
vene on the rest of the world, or on the fundamental entities if metaphysical
foundationalism is true. Or, to put it another way, it is reasonable to endorse the
following principle:
(N) For all x and y, and all building relations B, if x fully Bs y, there is some
z (6¼ y) such that necessarily, z!y.
If something is built, something necessitates it. (Clarification: I do not assume
that some single entity or fact does the necessitating. I use singular variables for
convenience only. The value of ‘z’ might be a plurality, or a set, etc.) Note that
that (N) is purposely neutral on whether or not z is identical to x. Perhaps what
necessitates y is its full building base x; perhaps it is something else. Actually, the
above is a little too neutral about what necessitates x, because it leaves open that z
might be entirely disjoint from x. I shall rectify this in a moment, when spelling
out two strictly stronger principles that can be thought of as particular imple-
mentations of (N). But even the too-weak (N) captures the idea that genuinely
indeterministic building is not possible, and that all building relations involve
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

necessitation, whether or not full building bases always necessitate what they
build.19 I shall call any view that involves or entails (N) building determinism.
3.3.2 Two kinds of building determinism
There are two competing versions of building determinism. The difference
between them is whether or not they deny in the second way above that full
builders necessitate what they build.
The first version of building determinism is that (N) is true because full building
bases necessitate; call this view ‘building necessitarianism’ (after ‘grounding
necessitarianism’ from Skiles 2015). The building necessitarian will endorse a
stronger principle than (N), one that does away with the extra variable z:
(N1) For all x and y and all building relations B, if x fully B’s y, then,
necessarily, x!y.
(As before, I formulate these principles with singular variables for convenience
only.)
The second version of building determinism is that (N) is true because full
building bases necessitate the built in the circumstances, even though they do
not necessitate the built full stop. For example, someone might think that a can
fully build b despite the fact that a would occur without b if the laws of nature
were different. Or someone might think, with Stephan Leuenberger, that a can
fully build b despite the fact that there is some possible c such that were a to
occur with c, b would not exist or occur; it would be blocked. This kind of view
denies (N1), and thus denies building necessitarianism. But of course it can—
and should!—be coupled with (N), and indeed with something like the follow-
ing principle:
(N2) Let C be some to-be-specified set of background circumstances that
includes neither y nor anything that fully builds y. For all x and y and all
building relations B, if x fully B’s y, then, □[(x + C) ! y].
The restriction on C is to block cheap cases of necessitation-in-the-circumstances.
After all, if y itself can count as part of the circumstances, then anything you like
necessitates y in the circumstances. For example, let an atom in my left leg be x, and
let some faraway table—unconnected to x—be y. That arbitrary atom necessitates
the existence of the table in the circumstances . . . of coexisting with the table. (Such

19
Compare Leuenberger’s discussion of modal constraints on grounding that do not entail what
I call (N1) below.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

cases can also be blocked by requiring that the necessitation-in-the-circumstances

be minimal, but that is arguably undesirable.)20
Which is the better view to adopt? What reason is there to be an (N1)
necessitarian, and what reason is there to be an (N2) circumstantialist (for lack
of a better label)? On the one hand, any reason to think that a does not necessitate
b tends to equally well support the idea that a doesn’t fully build b. That is, any
reason to think that a is only part of what necessitates b can easily be taken as a
reason to think that a is only a partial builder. That line of thought supports (N1).
But on the other hand, our actual building talk frequently fails to invoke
everything required to guarantee the built entity, and it often sounds odd to
treat the extra things as part of the building base. This line of thought supports
(N2). I shall spell it out further with some examples (for others, see Leuenberger
2014 and Skiles 2015).
Consider property realization. Shoemaker famously distinguishes between
core and total realizers, pointing out that C-fiber firings that are not hooked up
in the right way will not realize pain (1981). But it is not just that the C-fiber
firings have to be embedded in the right way in the right sort of complex system;
it also must be the case that the laws of nature are as they are. In a world in which
electrical signals travel sufficiently differently, even an entire brain exactly like
mine will fail to realize pain or any other conscious state. Or consider compos-
ition. I myself am inclined to think that universalism is necessarily true, and thus
that composition is ‘automatic’ in the sense that the mere existence of the parts is
in fact sufficient for the existence of their fusion. But not everyone agrees with
this. Some think that composition is restricted so that only entities that stand in
certain relations—perhaps van Inwagen’s Contact (1990) or Ned Markosian’s
Fastenation (1998)—compose anything. If that is correct, clearly the bare exist-
ence of the parts is not enough for them to compose; they also have to stand in
the right relations to each other. Finally, consider grounding. It is frequently
claimed that the full grounds for some grounded fact or entity necessitate it (e.g.
Rosen 2010, 118; Audi 2012). Yet this is actually not clear. For example, it might
seem natural to say that being taller than is an internal relation, the obtaining
of which is fully grounded in the heights of the relata. But in fact, its obtaining
also depends on the curvature of spacetime.21 Frequently, then, what we call the

20
A minimality restriction would say that no part or member of x + C can necessitate y. The
problem is that saying that all building relations involve such minimal-necessitation-in-the-circum-
stances entails that all building relations are minimal—i.e., that if a fully builds b, no part or member
(etc.) of a fully builds b. But it is controversial whether building is minimal in this sense (e.g. Fine
2012, 57).
21
Thanks to Jill North here.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

building base is not sufficient-full-stop for what it builds; some kind of appeal to
the circumstances in which it exists or obtains is required.
Of course, in all of these cases the building necessitarian can insist that
the extra stuff be counted among the builders; any claim of sufficiency-in-the-
circumstances can be turned into a claim of sufficiency-full-stop simply
by packing the circumstances into the base (for some relevant discussion, see
my 2003, §8 and 9). Count the laws of nature into the total realizer of pain—treat
my brain state as a mere partial realizer—and that total realizer does metaphys-
ically necessitate pain. Count the structure of spacetime into the full grounds of
the taller than relation—treat the heights of the relata as mere partial grounds—
and those grounds do metaphysically necessitate the obtaining of the relation. So
the thought that building only involves necessitation-in-the circumstances (N2),
not necessitation-full-stop (N1), is driven by a desire to preserve certain intuitions
about what the relata of the various building relations really are: that the laws are
not part of the total realizer of pain, that the structure of spacetime is not part of
the full grounds of the fact that you are taller than me. The circumstantialist
position on this is particularly compelling in the case of composition. It would be
odd for someone who believes that composition is restricted to preserve com-
positional necessitarianism by taking the parts of a composite y to be not just the
xxs, but the relations among them as well. Those relations may be required for the
xxs to compose y, but surely they are not themselves parts of y. (Though for
something in the vicinity of this view, see Koslicki 2008, especially Chapter 7.)
On balance, I am inclined to side with the circumstantialist, if only because it
seems worthwhile to preserve the intuitive relata, and because allowing simpler
full building bases makes available simpler examples. But this is not an important
decision; nothing deep turns on it.
Really, the choice between (N1) and (N2) is just a matter of bookkeeping. I can
have intuitive building bases and the somewhat ungainly implementation of the
modal requirement, or I can have a cleaner implementation of the modal
requirement and uglier, more complex building bases. In the latter case, much
ordinary building talk must be treated as invoking mere partial builders. I have
opted for the former. I recognize that some readers would prefer the latter,
presumably because they share the kind of thought that David Armstrong has
about truth-making—namely, that a truth-maker-in-the-circumstances is no
truth-maker at all (1997, 116). But nothing deep turns on this. It at most affects
where we sweep various untidinesses.
Here is an example of an untidiness that arises whichever way we go. There will
be, on either account, a difficulty distinguishing what are intuitively the ‘real’
builders from what are intuitively something more like background conditions.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

This is perhaps clearest on the account I favor: if x necessitates y in C, it is equally

true that C necessitates y in x. But the very same issue arises on a necessitarian
account. On such an account, complete building bases will necessitate what they
build, but will be complex and often spatiotemporally scattered. The intuitively
‘real’ or ‘central’ or ‘salient’ builders can of course be recovered by coupling such
an account with a notion of partial building: perhaps x partially builds y when it is
part of the complete base that necessitates y (for an explication of partial ground
in particular, see Fine 2012). But no such notion of partial building will distin-
guish the seemingly central partial builders from the other aspects of the com-
plete building base that intuitively seem like background conditions only. So the
same issue arises on either account.
What is the solution? It is to ignore the problem. After all, it is precisely the
same as that of distinguishing causes from background conditions—which is
famously hopeless. Indeed, I can adapt some of David Lewis’s words for my
purposes:

We sometimes single out one among all the [builders] of some event and call it “the”
[building base], as if there were no others. Or we single out a few as the “[builders],”
calling the rest mere “ . . . factors” or “ . . . conditions.” . . . I have nothing to say about
these principles of invidious discrimination. I am concerned with the prior question of
what it is to be [part of the building base] (unselectively speaking). My analysis is meant
to capture a broad and nondiscriminatory concept of [building] (1973a, 558–9).

Lewis’s counterfactual theory of causation was only supposed to be an account of

what it is for an event to be a cause of another, not an account of what it is for an
event to be the cause. Similarly here: the account of building that I am working
toward will only be an account of what it is for one thing to build another, not
an account of what it is for one thing to be ‘the’, or the most salient, builder of
another.
To sum up the story thus far: building always involves necessitation in the
sense that building determinism (N) is true. There is no such thing as genuinely
indeterministic building. The further question of whether (N) is true because
(N1) is true or because (N2) is true is much less important. I have chosen (N2), but
those with necessitarian impulses can modify my examples and claims accord-
ingly without loss of anything interesting.

3.3.3 Why another clause is needed

The characterization of building will require a third clause, because the conjunc-
tion of necessitation (N2) and directedness (D) is not enough to demarcate the
class of building relations. All building relations are directed and necessitating,
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

but it’s not true that all directed and necessitating relations count as forms of
building. There are two kinds of problem case. One is a familiar worry about
necessary truths; the other is a new worry about inverses of certain building
relations.
First, the problem of necessary truths. Quite generally, □y entails □(x ! y) for
any x at all.22 So the fact that there are olives in my fridge necessitates the fact that
2 + 2 = 4. And since it’s contingent that there are olives in my fridge, the converse
does not hold; the necessitation is antisymmetric and irreflexive. Yet the fact that
there are olives in my fridge does not in any way build the fact that 2 + 2 = 4, and
the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 does not depend on the presence of olives in my fridge. The
two facts have nothing to do with each other. So not every case of antisymmetric
irreflexive necessitation is a case of building.
One might think that there are ways to get around this. The most obvious
possibility would be to insist that building relations only obtain between contin-
gent entities. The claim would be that all and only antisymmetric, irreflexive
necessitation relations between contingent things are building relations. But while
this would solve the problem of necessary truths, it won’t do. It is ad hoc and
unmotivated. I see no reason to deny that necessary truths or existents ever stand
in building relations. Further, it does not help with the second problem with
taking the directedness requirement (D) and necessitation requirement (N2) to
be jointly sufficient for building.
The second problem has to do with the inverse of certain building relations. To
see it, recall Fine’s familiar example of Socrates and the singleton set {Socrates}
(1994, 4–5). Fine uses it to argue that not every property that a thing has
necessarily belongs to its essence, and thus that essence cannot be defined in
purely modal terms. It is also frequently taken to show that necessitation alone is
not determination or, in my terms, building. Socrates and {Socrates} mutually
necessitate each other, even though the building only goes one way; the necessi-
tation is symmetric but the building is not. But the case also shows more than
that. It also shows that not all relations of antisymmetric and irreflexive necessi-
tation are building relations. That is, (D) and (N2) are not jointly sufficient for a
relation to count as building. Here’s why. There is an antisymmetric and irre-
flexive necessitation relation that holds between Socrates and {Socrates} that

22
Here’s the proof.
1) □y
2) □y v ~□x (1, disjunction introduction)
3) □x ! □y (2)
4) □(x ! y) (3, K principle)
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

intuitively is a building relation—namely, set formation. But there is also an

antisymmetric and irreflexive necessitation relation that holds between Socrates
and {Socrates} that intuitively is not a building relation—namely, set member-
ship. The account of building I have presented thus far cannot distinguish
between these. It does not settle which of set membership and set formation is
a building relation; it does not settle, as it were, the direction of building. So the
account thus far must be supplemented; a third clause beyond (D) and (N2) must
be added.
Before doing so, however, I do think it worth flagging that this problem is
not particularly pervasive. Set formation and set membership are special; it is
not the case that most building relations are such that their inverses also
meet (D) and (N2). Consider composition, for example. Its inverse is decom-
position: if a and b compose c, then c decomposes into a and b. Decompos-
ition meets (D), but only a mereological essentialist would say that it meets
(N2). The rest of us think it perfectly possible for things to exist without their
actual parts. Similarly, the inverse of realization is not typically taken to be a
necessitation relation. So cases in which both a building relation and its inverse
meet (D) and (N2) are not common. This is basically the same point as saying
that there are very few cases where the essence of something plausibly differs
from the properties it has necessarily. Fine chose his example well; sets and their
members are special. I do not know what exactly to make of this. In some moods
I doubt that a single isolated example should do as much work as it does, and
become suspicious that there is some other way to handle it. In other moods,
I figure that a counterexample is a counterexample. In the absence of any other
diagnosis, I will take the latter route. (D) and (N2) are not sufficient for a relation
to count as a building relation.

3.4 Generativity
To see what else is needed, consider what is missing from the problem cases
above. Why isn’t the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 built from the fact that there are
olives in my fridge, despite being asymmetrically necessitated by it? Because
the mathematical fact doesn’t obtain in virtue of the olive fact. The very same
idea can be expressed by other locutions: the mathematical fact doesn’t obtain
because the olive fact does, the olive fact doesn’t in any sense explain why the
mathematical fact obtains, the olive fact doesn’t make the mathematical fact
obtain. Similarly, why is set membership not a building relation? Because
members don’t exist in virtue of the existence of the sets of which they
are members. Alternatively: it’s not the case that Socrates exists because
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

{Socrates} does, the existence of {Socrates} doesn’t in any sense explain the
existence of Socrates, and {Socrates} doesn’t make Socrates exist. I take all
these phrases—‘in virtue of ’, ‘because’, ‘make’, ‘make it the case’, ‘explain’23—
to be getting at the same idea. The idea in all cases is that builders generate
the built. This gives us the third requirement on a relations counting as a
building relation:
(G) For all building relations B, and all x and y, x’s B-ing y makes true certain
explanatory and generative claims. For example, if a builds b, then b exists
(obtains, is instantiated . . . ) because a does, b exists (obtains, is instantiated) in
virtue of a, a makes b exist (obtain, be instantiated), and so forth.

Building licenses generative locutions like ‘in virtue of ’.

Let me clarify two things about (G). First, not every building relation licenses
exactly the same such locutions. What is grammatical to say will depend upon
the relata of the particular building relation in question. Consider the compos-
ition relation on objects, and suppose objects a and b compose c. It is not true
that a and b make c the case, nor that c in virtue of a and b. Those sentences are
not grammatical in English. Objects aren’t the right sort of thing to be made the
case or in virtue of ’d. Rather, the relevant sentences in this case are ones that
advert to facts or states of affairs: “the fact that a and b exist (and, optionally, are
arranged as they are) make it the case that c exists” or “c exists in virtue of the
existence ( . . . ) of a and b”. Generative locutions cannot be mechanically
plugged into simplistic formulae like “a bears some building relation B to b
just in case b in virtue of a”, but this is not a problem for (G) as I intend it. All
building relations license some or other generative statements: composed
objects exist in virtue of their parts, sets exist in virtue of the existence of
their members, realized properties are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation
of their realizers, microbased properties are instantiated in virtue of the instan-
tiation of their plural bases, and so forth.
The second clarification is much more important: I have formulated (G) in
terms of what we can correctly say. My claim is that building licenses certain
statements—that if a building relation obtains, we are allowed to start talking a
certain way. That is all.
This means that (G) is compatible with a range of quite different under-
standings of what underpins or explains it. On one extreme is the claim that

23
I do not think that this use of ‘explains’ has anything epistemic about it. See §3.5 for a bit
more.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

whenever a building relation obtains, a special further relation also obtains: a

primitive in virtue of relation or something along those lines.24 It is the
obtaining of this relation that licenses the generative talk. The table exists in
virtue of the existence and arrangement of its parts because, well, a primitive in
virtue of relation obtains between the fact that the table exists, and the fact that
the parts are arranged as they are. On the other extreme is the claim that there is
no such further relation; there is nothing but the generative talk. Why do
building relations license or make true that kind of talk? They just do, as a
matter of convention. Perhaps it is arbitrary, perhaps it is more deeply embed-
ded in our conceptual scheme, but either way there is nothing further to be said
about the matter. There are presumably positions between these two extremes
as well. For example, it could be claimed that there is an in virtue of relation that
is not primitive, but itself built in some way. These extreme positions simply
mark the endpoints.
My own view varies with my mood. Most of the time, though, I lean towards
something more like the second extreme. This is in part because the first extreme
is most naturally paired with a commitment to generalist monism of the sort
I rejected in §2.5, and in part because it is simpler and cleaner. Why say that the
reason building relations license generative talk is that whenever a building
relation obtains, a further primitive relation obtains, and the obtaining of that
relation licenses generative talk? Why not just say that the obtaining of the
building relation itself licenses the talk? It is at best unclear that anything is
gained by inserting the extra step. But my point at present is less to convince you
to adopt that particular understanding of (G) than to emphasize that (G) itself is
neutral on these matters.
In articulating the features that all building relations share, my goal is to
circumscribe the class of relations—to identify them, to say which relations
count as building relations. The neutral (G), formulated in terms of the legitim-
acy of certain ways of talking, is sufficient on its own to accomplish that task.
Nothing further is required.

3.5 Ought More Be Added?

It is time to finally assemble the pieces. I have argued that (D), (N2), and (G)
jointly characterize building—all building relations are directed, necessitating,

24
Some people use the label ‘grounding’ for this relation: see Fine 2012, 38. On such a view,
grounding isn’t one building relation among others; it’s in a certain sense in common to all the
various building relations.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

and generative. That is, they are antisymmetric and irreflexive necessitation
relations that license a certain kind of generative talk. Putting the pieces together
yields the following definition.
Relation R is a building relation if and only if:
1) For all x,25 ~Rxx, and
2) For all x and y such that x6¼y, if xRy, then ~(yRx), and26
3) Let C be some to-be-specified set of background circumstances that
includes neither y nor anything that fully builds y. For all x and y, if x
fully R’s y, □[(x + C) !y].
4) For all x and y, x’s R-ing y licenses explanatory and generative claims to
the effect that y exists or obtains in virtue of x.
These are the features that make certain relations count as building relations.
Providing them cements the case for the claim that building relations form a
unified family despite the differences amongst them.
Ought anything else be added to this characterization? In this section, I will
argue against four possible additions to my account. Nothing much of interest
hangs on my rejection of the first, but my rejections of the second, third, and
fourth are crucially important to later parts of the book.
First, it might seem natural to say that no relation that is what I shall call
‘disunifying’ can count as a building relation. A relation is unifying if it is many–
one, a relation is disunifying if it is one–many. (Relations that are one–one or
many–many are neither unifying nor disunifying.) Building relations need not be
unifying—as discussed above, many are one–one—but perhaps we should insist
that they not be disunifying. The proposal, then, is that no one–many relation can
be a building relation.
This proposal should not be adopted, because it goes too far beyond the core
notion of building. It would entail that grounding does not count as a building
relation, for one fact can ground many others. The most extreme version of this is
a view that I have already mentioned—Jonathan Schaffer’s priority monism
(2010a, b). He thinks that the entirety of the universe—the One—is fundamental,
and grounds all other ‘smaller’ facts. He does not deny the existence of things like
airplanes, apples, and aches; he just thinks that they are ontologically derivative

25
Again, I formulate these principles with singular quantifiers for convenience only.
26
Clauses 1 (irreflexivity) and 2 (antisymmetry) could obviously be replaced by a single clause
demanding asymmetry: For all x and y, if xRy then ~yRx. This covers both the case when x and y are
identical and the case in which they are not; asymmetry entails irreflexivity and antisymmetry.
Again, my reason for formulating it as two requirements rather than one is simply that I want to
make the irreflexivity requirement explicit.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

from the whole, rather than the other way around. I don’t believe the view, but
I do think that if it were correct, we should continue to count grounding as a form
of building. In other words, we should take Schaffer’s view to be that there is an
awful lot of one–many, disunifying building. We should not require that no
building relations be disunifying.
Second, it might be thought that something about building being explanatory
ought to be added. Certainly, fans of grounding frequently talk of “metaphysical
explanation” (e.g. Rosen 2010, Fine 2001 and 2012, Audi 2012, Dasgupta 2014b
Litland forthcoming, etc.). Should I require that all building relations be such that
builders explain what they build? No. Indeed, I try to avoid using the term
‘explanation’ and its cognates in connection with building; the only exception
was on pp. 57–58 when I introduced the idea of generativity. The problem is that
such talk is ambiguous. In one sense, adding an explanatory requirement to my
characterization would add nothing; in the other sense, adding an explanatory
requirement is neither plausible nor well-motivated.
Call the first sense the purely metaphysical sense, marked by a subscripted ‘M’.
To say that one thing explainsM another is to say that the first fully accounts for
the second, that the first makes the second exist or obtain or happen. But adding
an explanatoryM requirement would do nothing; the idea that builders explainM
what they build is already in my account via the necessitation and generativity
requirements. Call the second sense the epistemic sense, marked by a subscripted
‘E’. To say that one thing explainsE another is to say that the first renders the
second intelligible, sheds some light on how or why it happened, or perhaps puts
an end to a line of questioning. A particularly strong version of the claim that
builders explainE what they build is that built entities are a priori ‘scrutable’ (to
borrow a word from Chalmers 2012) from what builds them. As I’ve already
mentioned, writers about grounding in particular often say that grounding is
explanatory. In some cases it is fairly clear that they mean it is explanatoryE (e.g.
Trogdon 2013a and Dasgupta 2014b; in other cases it is somewhat less clear
whether they mean that it is explanatoryE or explanatoryM.27
Now, requiring that builders explainE what they build would be a genuine and
significant addition to my account. But I do not add it. I certainly do not think
that building relations are themselves explanationE relations; they at best back
explanationE (I side with Schaffer 2016, especially §4). ExplanationE is surely
context sensitive in that it matters what exactly we are asking, and what we
already know; it is also subject to Gricean considerations about cooperativeness

27
For example, that Fine means explainE is suggested by 2001, 25, but that he means explainM is
suggested by 2012, 38.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

and so forth. And even setting that aside, I see no reason to think that every
building relation carries any epistemic force at all. (This is consistent with the
view that some do, though I confess to doubting that any building relations
license a priori scrutability.) These brief remarks perhaps fall short of compelling
argument, but my general view should be clear. I think of building more in terms
of production than explanation in the epistemic sense.
Third, it might be suggested that a further requirement must be added to my
characterization in order to avoid a counterexample: causation. Causes are
minimally sufficient in the circumstances for their effects, and causation is
asymmetric, irreflexive, and licenses generative talk. (It is also typically the case
that effects counterfactually depend upon their causes.28) So causation is directed,
necessitating, and generative, but—goes the objection—it surely isn’t building. It’s
just too different from the other relations I have been discussing. And calling it a
building relation may sound particularly bad given that I have endorsed the
principle (B!MFT). I have said that builders are always more fundamental than
what they build, but surely, goes the objection, causes are not more fundamental
than their effects! So surely I must revise the characterization of building.
And, indeed, there is an obvious fix: require that all building relations be
synchronic, or at least atemporal. Building relations do not unfold over time. If
property P realizes property Q, it does so at some time t; if these molecules
compose that table, they do so at some time t; if these time slices compose that
persisting object, they do so simpliciter.29 Causation, in contrast, is paradigmat-
ically diachronic, and that idea is frequently invoked to distinguish causation
from relations like composition, constitution, or supervenience—relations that
I am calling kinds of building.
Yet although this is a tempting solution to the problem, occasionally tempta-
tion is best resisted. In Chapter 4, I will argue that this is one of those occasions.
We should not require that building relations be synchronic, because there are
important relations that are worth classifying as kinds of building, but that either
unfold over time or only obtain over an extended interval. Indeed, I will argue
that causation itself is a form of building after all. The trick is to think of later

28
That is true by everyone’s lights, not just by Lewis’s. Just as one need not try to analyze building
in terms of counterfactuals to think that it is reflected in patterns of counterfactual dependence, one
need not try to analyze causation in terms of counterfactuals to think that it is typically reflected in
patterns of counterfactual dependence.
29
Four-dimensionalists who believe that persisting objects are mereological sums—or built in
some other, nonmereological way—of temporal parts need to believe in an atemporal building
relation. That tempestuous teenager timeslice is part of me simpliciter, not at a particular time. See
Sider 2001, 55–60.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

stages of the world as being built from earlier ones. I will argue for this in
Chapter 4, and in Chapter 6 I will return to the putatively problematic conse-
quence that causes are more fundamental than their effects. For now, I simply
wish to note that I take it to be a feature, not a bug, that the current definition
allows room for nonsynchronic building relations. (Baron 2015 explicitly permits
grounding to hold diachronically).
I have rejected the first three suggested additions to the account because I deny
that all building relations have the relevant features: I deny that all building
relations are nondisunifying, I deny that all building relations are epistemically
illuminating, and I deny that all building relations are synchronic. But I will reject
the fourth possible addition for a quite different reason.
The fourth suggested addition is that the characterization of building ought to
include the principle I introduced earlier:
B!MFT: for all x and y, and all building relations, if x at least partly builds y,
then x is more fundamental than y.
I think this principle is true, and does state a feature that all building relations
share: they are all such that the input to the relation is/are more fundamental
than the output. But I nonetheless deny that this belongs in the characterization
of building. (This marks an important change of position from my 2011b.)
Here’s why. My characterization of building is intended to state all and only
the features that make a relation count as a building relation—all and only the
features in virtue of which a relation counts as a building relation. (If you like, a
relation’s status as a building relation is grounded in, or otherwise built out of, its
possession of the features specified by the correct characterization of building.)
And even though all building relations are such that their inputs are more
fundamental than their outputs, this is not part of what makes any relation be
a building relation. (Again, this is a crucial difference from my 2011b.) That is, it
is not the case that generating relative fundamentality is part of that in virtue of
which any relation is a building relation.
B!MFT states a universal generalization. And, quite generally, the truth of a
universal generalization leaves open why it is true. This is the point that Plato
famously exploits in the Euthyphro, when considering the claim that everything
that is pious is loved by the gods. Maybe this claim is true because what it is to be
pious is to be loved by the gods—i.e., because being loved by the gods makes a
thing count as pious. But the claim might equally well be true because the pious
things attract the gods’ affection. In that case, being loved by the gods is not what
makes a thing be pious. In short, sometimes all Fs are G because being G is part of
what makes a thing be F, as in the case where being loved by the gods is what
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

makes a thing pious.30 But sometimes not. Sometimes all Fs are G because being
F makes a thing be G, as in the case where a thing’s being pious makes the gods
love it.31 And sometimes it’s just an accident that all Fs are Gs. (E.g., that all
spheres of gold are less than one mile in diameter.)
In the case at hand, the universal generalization is that all building relations
are such that the builders are more fundamental than the built. One explanation
of this fact—the one I reject—is that generating relative fundamentality in this
way is part of what makes a relation count as a building relation. On this line,
building relations are those asymmetric irreflexive necessitation relations that not
only license generative talk, but also generate relative fundamentality relations.
An alternative explanation of the universal generalization—the one I endorse—is
that one thing’s building another is what makes the former be more fundamental
than the latter. That is, the correct picture is that building generates relative
fundamentality, not that generating relative fundamentality makes a relation be a
building relation. To shoehorn this into the standard Euthyphro formulation,
suppose that a builds b, and is more fundamental than b. My claim is that a is
more fundamental than b because a builds b. I deny that a counts as building b
(in part) because a is more fundamental than b.
For further explanation and argument, I offer the entirety of Chapter 6. For
now, I am merely stating that B!MFT is true, but not part of the characteriza-
tion of building. Nonetheless, its mere truth has important consequences. Indeed,
we have already seen three. One is that if causation is a building relation, causes
are more fundamental than their effects. The second is that, in conjunction with
the antisymmetry and irreflexivity of the more fundamental than relation, it
entails the antisymmetry and irreflexivity of each building relation. The third is
that, in conjunction with the antisymmetry and irreflexivity of more fundamental
than and the possibility that different building relations hold in different direc-
tions between the same relata, it entails that relative fundamentality is implicitly
indexed to a choice of building relation.
And there is one more consequence worth flagging. This is that ontological
emergence in the sense sketched in §2.1 is not a building relation. Genuinely
emergent properties—if there really are any, which I doubt—are purportedly no
less fundamental than their bases. Indeed, proponents of emergence typically
claim that emergent properties are basic, despite being in some sense dependent

30
For another example, consider the fact that all bachelors are unmarried. Being unmarried is
part of what makes someone be a bachelor.
31
For another example, consider the fact that all red things are colored. It’s not the case that
being colored is part of what makes a thing be red. Rather, being red is what makes it be colored.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS 

upon the properties or states of affairs from whence they emerge (see in particu-
lar O’Connor and Wong 2005, Chalmers 2006). I claim that this combination not
only characterizes the relevant notion of emergence, but also explains why it
strikes many of us as so very odd.32 Emergent properties are supposed to be both
somehow built up from and dependent upon the base properties, yet also
fundamental. That is not consistent with B!MFT, which I am holding fixed. It
follows that emergence is not a building relation after all.33
To summarize: I have rejected three possible additions to my characterization
of building, and claim that (D), (N2), and (G) alone specify the features in virtue
of which a relation counts as a form of building. Building relations are asymmet-
ric, irreflexive relations by which one thing makes another happen, or obtain, or
be. They therefore objectively resemble one another in readily specifiable ways,
which shows that they form a unified family. However, it is worth acknowledging
that my characterization of building is probably more controversial than the
unity thesis it justifies.

3.6 Wrapping Up
I have covered a lot of ground in Chapters 2 and 3. If your head is spinning,
I apologize, and offer the following summary as compensation.
In Chapter 2, I discussed the nature of unity claims, and made clear that I prefer
to generalize about and quantify over the members of the building family without
postulating a more general building relation at all, let alone one that is more
fundamental than the more specific ones. Much of that chapter was in the service
of clarifying what my claim about building is—simply that all building relations
belong to a reasonably natural resemblance class—and why that rather than one or
another related claim. In this chapter, I have aimed to pay off the promissory note,
and actually characterize the resemblance. I have provided an informative account
of the features of those relations in virtue of which they belong to the family, as well
as noting another feature that they all have in common.
From here, I invite you to choose your own adventure. Those interested in
further investigating whether, and in what sense, causation is a kind of building
should turn the page to Chapter 4. Those interested in learning more about the

32
See also Mark Bedau’s sketch of why emergence is a “perennial philosophical puzzle”
(1997, 375).
33
Barnes 2012 lays out a view according to which emergent phenomena are fundamental yet
dependent. I cannot take up her claim in detail here, as my reply rests on claims I will not make until
later in the book. But it should be clear that she and I have quite different perspectives on this.
 BUILDING II : CHARACTERIZING THE CLASS

connection between building and absolute or relative fundamentality should skip

ahead to Chapters 5 and 6. Those interested in the perplexing question of
whether building relations can themselves be built should go to Chapter 7.
Finally, those who wish to think about built entities themselves rather than the
relations that build them can skip all the way to Chapter 8.
 4
Causing

Building is determination or dependence. It might seem natural to say that it is

noncausal determination or dependence. In this chapter I argue that doing so
would be a mistake. That is, I argue that the standard distinction between causal
and noncausal determination is both less clear and less useful than that typically
assumed.
As a warm-up exercise, let’s review that standard distinction. The thought is that
there are two quite different types of ‘because’ and ‘makes it the case’ talk. One
corresponds to my notion of building: for example, a certain pattern of low-level
physical activity makes it the case that my coffee mug exists and has the mass that it
does. The other is causal: my throwing the mug in a certain direction makes it the
case that there is a big splatter of coffee on the wall. That distinction turns up,
implicitly or explicitly, all over philosophy. Indeed, we even have a deeply ingrained
spatial metaphor for it. Causal determination is horizontal, and noncausal building
is vertical. That metaphor is reflected in the familiar diagrams frequently used to
illustrate various worries about the possibility of mental causation:

M1 → M2
→

P1 → P2

Figure 4.1

Note that it is worth pausing to ask what exactly the axes are supposed to be here.
The horizontal axis is easy; it represents time. But what about the vertical axis? It
represents relative fundamentality. What we indicate when we draw such pictures—
or talk of “higher” and “lower” levels, or the “layered model of reality”—is our belief
that the thing on the bottom is, as the word suggests, more fundamental than the
thing on the top. I shall address relative fundamentality in Chapter 6. For now, I am
merely pointing out that such familiar diagrams reflect the thought that causal and
noncausal determination are rather different beasts.
 CAUSING

The question on the table is whether it is right to insist so firmly on the

distinction between horizontal and vertical—between causal and noncausal—
determination. I say no. Building is causally tainted. It is tainted in two senses.
First, the building family includes causation itself. Second, the building family
includes particular relations that are in various ways partially causal. Defending
these two claims, and their consequences, will occupy the rest of the chapter. But
let me begin by simply clarifying what they say.

4.1 Two Kinds of Causal Taint

The first claim is straightforward: causation is a building relation. It is a member
of the unified class of relations characterized in Chapter 3. That class subsumes
causation as well as traditional ‘vertical’ building, because causation meets the
characterization of building that I provided in Chapter 3. Causation, like vertical
building, is asymmetric and irreflexive. Causation, like vertical building, is min-
imal necessitation in the circumstances. And causation, like vertical building,
licenses generative talk; causes make their effects happen, and effects happen
because their causes do.
There are further similarities beyond those captured in the characterization of
building. For example, both causation and vertical building are typically reflected in
certain patterns of counterfactual dependence, as I noted in the beginning of §3.3).1
Relatedly, it has recently been argued that both causation and vertical building are
best modeled by means of interventionist structural equations (Schaffer 2016,
Alistair Wilson (forthcoming); see Koslicki 2016 for a critical reply to Schaffer).
Indeed, specifying the counterfactuals or structural equations that are relevant in
the causal case requires going out of the way to avoid also capturing building. For
example, one of the early objections to Lewis’s counterfactual analysis of causation
was that it captured too much; the relevant patterns of counterfactual dependence
hold in cases of noncausal determination as well (e.g. Kim 1973). Lewis’s solution
was to require that the relevant events be “wholly distinct”, by which he explicitly
meant not merely that they be numerically distinct, but also that they not stand in
any (what I would call) building relations (1986b, 256). In short, it is easier to spell
out the kind of counterfactual dependence involved in both causation and vertical

1
Again, one need not buy a counterfactual analysis of causation à la Lewis (1973a) in order to
agree that effects typically counterfactually depend upon their causes. Everyone agrees that there are
reasonably reliable counterfactual tests for causation—that causation is typically reflected in coun-
terfactual dependence; what is controversial is whether that is all there is to causation.
 CAUSING 

building than to spell out a version that is involved only in causation. So this is a
deep point of contact between causation and vertical building. But the central point
for my purposes is just that because causation meets the characterization from
Chapter 3, it counts as a building relation.
Certainly, there is lots of historical precedent for lumping causation in
with other kinds of determination. Aristotle thought efficient causation—what
contemporary metaphysicians would just call ‘causation’—was only one of
four distinct kinds. Spinoza arguably took causal dependence and something
like ontological dependence to be the same thing (see Della Rocca 2008,
Schechtman ms). I will leave the task of identifying other examples to those
with greater expertise than I.
Bear in mind that the claim that causation is a building relation does not
entail that causation is exactly like vertical building, any more than it entails
that the various kinds of vertical building are all exactly like each other. Members
of a resemblance class can differ from each other in all kinds of ways. So there is
no objection to be made by pointing to ways in which causation differs from
the relations discussed in Chapter 2. Perhaps causation involves the transmission
of a conserved quantity, while vertical building does not. Perhaps causes are
merely nomically sufficient for their effects, while the bases of vertical building
relations are metaphysically sufficient for what they build. Perhaps built entities
are nothing over and above what vertically builds them—in some sense of
that contentious phrase—while effects are something over and above what
causes them. Or perhaps vertical building “is sensitive to the natures of its relata”
(Audi 2012, 693) in a way that causation is not. Such differences are irrelevant.
They pose no threat to the claim that causation is a building relation.
Properly understood, then, the claim that causation is a building relation ought
not be all that surprising or controversial. It is just the claim that there is a
resemblance class containing both causation and vertical building as members.
And that seems more or less obvious: of course there is a broad class of
asymmetric irreflexive generative-talk-licensing necessitation relations that
includes both causation and (putatively) noncausal determination relations like
grounding or composition. Now, I qualify this point as only ‘more or less’
obvious. There are always objections, and I will address several in §4.2.3. None-
theless, in defending the claim that building is causally tainted in the first way,
my primary task is not to convince you that causation is a building relation.
My primary task is rather to convince you that it is interesting that causation is a
building relation.
After all, the claim that causation is a building relation just says that causation
and nondiachronic vertical building belong to a resemblance class for which I use
 CAUSING

the label ‘building’. But both labels and resemblance classes are cheap. Insects and
spiders form a resemblance class, because they are all smallish and many-legged.
However, I do not recommend doing zoology that way. Similarly, it might be
argued that although we can characterize a class of relations that includes both
causation and the vertical building relations from Chapter 3, and although we can
call that class “building relations” if we want to, there is nothing philosophically
significant about it. All of the action is within the two narrower subclasses. This is
the challenge to the claim that causation is a building relation that I will primarily
take up in this chapter. I will argue that the class consisting of causation and
vertical building is a useful one that appears in interesting generalizations and
does explanatory work. It is more like the group of noble gases than like, say, the
group of all elements whose names in English begin with ‘A’—a group that is in a
weak sense unified, but not very interesting. Defending this claim, about the
significance of the unity, will occupy me through the first part of this chapter. The
fact that building is causally tainted in the first way—that causation is itself a
building relation—matters.
On to the second kind of causal taint. Here, my claim will be that some
particular building relations are causally tainted in the sense that what it is for
them to hold is, in whole or in part, for some causal facts to obtain. I will
distinguish three different ways in which this can happen. But the moral of all
of the cases will be that there are relations that are definitely kinds of building—
that are deeply of a piece with relations like composition, realization, and
grounding—but that are also causal. This is arguably a more heretical claim
than that building is causally tainted in the first way. It is not only the case that
causation belongs to the building class as a separate member; it penetrates deeper,
into individual members of the class. The upshot, I shall argue, is that a group of
purely noncausal building relations cannot in fact be hived off from the rest of the
class without artificially fragmenting the family. In other words, adding a non-
causal or nondiachronic requirement to the account of building from Chapter 3
would yield a family of relations that misses some of what belongs together. The
truly causation-free set of building relations is like the set of mammals except for
the gray ones, or the set of all positive integers except for 37, 89, and 2. It may be
smaller, and in fact more unified, but it is not thereby better.
So. The claim that building is causally tainted in the first sense is the claim that
vertical and horizontal determination are unified—not just on the cheap, but in
ways that matter. Drawing a big circle around both kinds of arrows in Figure 4.1
yields a class that has explanatory power and about which there are interesting
generalizations. I will provide two arguments for this claim in §4.2. The claim
that building is causally tainted in the second sense is the claim that there are
 CAUSING 

relations that are intermediate in status. Some determination relations are neither
purely vertical nor purely horizontal. Bisecting the big circle so that causal,
diachronic determination falls on one side and noncausal, nondiachronic deter-
mination falls on the other yields artificial classes that fail to carve at the joints.2
I will defend this claim in §4.3.
One more setup remark before moving on to the real work. There is a termino-
logical issue here that clouds matters. I choose to call the broader category
‘building’, and to use labels like ‘traditional building’ or ‘vertical building’ or
‘nondiachronic building’ for the noncausal, nondiachronic subcategory. I could
just as easily have chosen to use the label ‘building’ for the noncausal, nondiachro-
nic subcategory, and introduced a new label like ‘determination’ for the broader
class that subsumes building and causing. That is just a terminological issue. What
is not a terminological issue is whether building in the broad sense is in any way
useful, and whether it is in fact more cohesive than building in the narrow sense.

4.2 The First Kind of Causal Taint: Causation

is a Building Relation
The first claim, then, is that causation belongs to the class of building relations.
That is, it is appropriate to characterize building in a way that includes causation,
because vertical and horizontal determination are unified not just on the cheap,
but in ways that matter. Why should we think that? For two reasons. First, their
unification is required to license what I call illumination by analogy. Second, their
unification is the best explainer of the truth of a related but stronger methodo-
logical principle. I shall explain and illustrate each in turn.
4.2.1 Five analogies
By ‘illumination by analogy’, I simply refer to the general fact that it is sometimes
fruitful to think about one philosophical arena in terms of another. Sometimes
‘isms’ developed for one problem can shed light upon another. For example, a
metaethical position about how to make sense of moral discourse might help
make sense of modal discourse as well (consider Blackburn 1993 or Thomasson
2007). In cases like this, one domain is illuminated by thinking through the lens
of—by analogy with—the other. This of course does not always pan out. But
often it does, and the extent to which it is likely to be fruitful is directly correlated

2
For extended discussion of the joint-carving metaphor, see Sider 2011.
 CAUSING

with how similar the domains are. Thinking about one will shed light on the
other if and only if there are deep structural parallels between them.
In the case at hand, there is tremendous potential for illumination by analogy.
Here are five cases that strike me as particularly promising.
First, consider the centrality of disputes about Humeanism to the literature on
causation. Humeans think that nothing is fundamental but “local matters of
particular fact” (Lewis 1986d, ix) that are “entirely loose and separate” (Hume
1748, VII.2).3 Anti-Humeans, in contrast, think that causal pushing and pulling
must be reckoned among the world’s fundamentalia (e.g. Strawson 1987, Tooley
1987, Armstrong 1999). In short, the dispute about Humeanism is a dispute
about building—what is at issue is whether or not causation is built.4
The very same question is apt for vertical building relations as well. Are they
built? Are any or all of them fundamental? Yet this question barely registers in
any of the literature on any vertical building relation. Many people simply
assume that composition is fundamental. I cannot think of any place where the
issue even arises for realization. The one exception is the literature on grounding,
where a handful of people have asked whether the grounding relation might itself
be grounded in something else. In my 2011a, I argue that it can be; the claim that
grounding is grounded does not lead to regress. In Chapter 7, I will pursue the
question further. For present purposes, all that matters is that there is an
apparently illuminating analogy here. The question about the fundamentality
of building must be addressed, and it is not impossible that extant arguments for
or against Humeanism about causation can be adapted to be of service.
Second, there is an interesting question about whether chains of vertical building
relations have to ‘bottom out’ in something unbuilt, or whether there can be ‘infinite
descent’ or ‘turtles all the way down’. This has received particular attention in the
cases of grounding and composition—I have in mind the question of whether the

3
Note my modification of the familiar Lewisian characterization. Lewis himself says that
Humeanism is the view that these local matters are all that exists; I instead characterize it as the
view that local matters are all that is fundamental. That’s because Humeans about causation do not
typically deny that there is any such thing as causation; they do not typically say that all there is,
period, is the mosaic of unconnected particulars. Instead, they usually say that there is causation, and
reductively analyze it in terms of that mosiac. See §7.5.
4
Objection: mightn’t a Humean perfectly well characterize their view in terms of identity—i.e.,
the causal facts just are facts about patterns in the mosaic? But identity is not a building relation.
Response: the right-hand side of that identity claim invokes built facts. Patterns in the mosaic are not
themselves “local matters of particular fact” that are “entirely loose and separate”; they are composed
or otherwise built out of such things. This is still a building claim. A truly nonbuilding form of
Humeanism would identify each causal fact with a primitive feature of the mosaic. It should be no
surprise that no such views exist. (Compare my brief remarks about reductive physicalism in §3.2.
My claim here is the same.)
 CAUSING 

grounding relation is well-founded (Cameron 2008; Schaffer 2010a, 37 and 62; Fine
2010a, 105), and the question of whether gunk is possible (e.g. Lewis 1986a, 85–6
and 1991, 20–1; Sider 1993; Zimmerman 1996). I myself discuss the issue in §5.5.
For now, the only point is that these questions are precisely analogous to the
question of whether the causal chain can stretch back infinitely far—that is, of
whether there has to be a First Cause (see also Cameron 2008). Indeed, this analogy
is fairly explicit in some versions of the cosmological argument.
Third—and so closely related that it is in part just a further twist on ‘second’—
distinct but parallel ‘ex nihilo’ principles can be formulated for causation, vertical
building, and the two together. Start with the familiar phrase ‘nothing comes to be
ex nihilo’. Forget whether it is true; what does it even mean? One interpretation of
‘ex nihilo’ or ‘from nothing’ is a causal one: on this interpretation, the principle says
that nothing happens without a cause. A second interpretation of ‘ex nihilo’ instead
invokes vertical building: on this interpretation, the principle says that nothing
exists without underpinning—everything is built. These two principles are pre-
cisely what is at stake in the second analogy. If the world is turtles all the way down,
in violation of well-foundedness, the second ex nihilo principle is true; if it is turtles
all the way ‘back’, causally, the first ex nihilo principle is true. Note too that both
principles have historical resonance, certainly in Spinoza, Descartes, and Leibniz,
and probably earlier. In particular, Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason appears
to cover both versions of the principle; the Stanford Encyclopedia entry, at any rate,
intentionally runs the two together (Melamed and Lin 2010).
But this third analogy between building and causing stretches beyond those
two understandings of ‘nothing comes to be ex nihilo’. There are also mixed
versions of the principle. That is, in addition to
Nothing is uncaused.
Nothing is (vertically) unbuilt.

We should also consider

Nothing is caused to exist except by vertical building. If there are unbuilt
entities, they are uncaused.
Nothing is vertically built into existence except causally. If there are
uncaused entities, they are unbuilt.5
These are certainly nonstandard readings of the phrase ‘nothing comes from
nothing’. But they are worth having on our radar, and trying to decide whether

5
Thanks to Robbie Williams for pointing out the fourth version to me.
 CAUSING

they are true. Certainly, the third version of the principle is. It says that the only
way anything can come into existence is by means of vertical building—as, for
example, a chair comes into existence when some more fundamental particles are
rearranged to compose it. This entails that a wizard cannot create something out of
thin air, as opposed to rearranging existing materials. It also entails that things that
are not built simply cannot be caused to exist. And since, as we shall see in
Chapter 5, ‘not built’ is a (probably the) central meaning of ‘fundamental’, the
third version of the principle therefore has the consequence that fundamental
entities cannot be caused to exist. That is, it entails that if there are any fundamen-
tal entities (in violation of the second version of the principle6), each either comes
into existence without a cause, or does not come into existence at all—i.e., is
eternal. Is that true? I do not know, and will not take it up any further here. But
I think it is worth discussing, both because it is not entirely implausible, and
because it has historical precedent. Here is Aristotle mentioning the principle:
coming-to-be and passing-away result from the consilience and dissolution of the
many kinds . . . Empedocles too uses language to this effect, when he says ‘there is no
coming-to-be of anything, but only a mingling and a divorce of what has been
mingled’ (On Generation and Corruption, book 2 part 6).7

Whatever we think of this claim, it is only visible as a reading of ‘nothing comes

to be ex nihilo’ once the analogies between vertical building and causing are on
the table.
Here is the fourth potential avenue for illumination by analogy. The philosophy
of mind literature contains rather a lot of discussion of what has come to be known
as the exclusion problem for dualism and nonreductive physicalism. Very roughly:
if everything that happens has a physical cause, and if mental events and properties
are not identical to physical ones, then how can anything have a mental cause? All
such events would be double-caused—i.e. overdetermined—but surely they are not.
(The claim is not that overdetermination is impossible, but simply that it is not the
case that every effect of a mental cause is overdetermined.)
Usually, the problem here is presented as a purely causal one. But really the issue
is broader; the (putative) puzzle is about overdetermination, not just causal

6
Note that the second version entails the third: if everything is built, everything that is caused is
built.
7
Context: Aristotle is not obviously endorsing the principle, but is claiming that anyone who
thinks that there is more than one fundamental kind of thing must believe it. Perhaps he is only
talking about nonfundamental things—things that are built come-to-be and pass-away via building
and unbuilding, or consilience and dissolution. But he actually states the principle in fully general
terms—everything comes-to-be and passes-away via building and unbuilding—which has the
consequences sketched in the main text.
 CAUSING 

overdetermination. At least on the face of it, it would be just as puzzling if, given one
complete ground G1 of some fact or thing A, we were forced to also countenance a
second complete ground G2. After all, G1 is by itself enough, at least in the circum-
stances, to guarantee that A obtains or exists; given G1, what work is left for G2 to do?
Or suppose that x1 . . . xn exhaustively compose some whole y. Under what circum-
stances could we be led to believe that a distinct plurality, say x2 . . . xn+1, also
completely composes y? (Notice that one thing the analogy between causing and
vertical building reveals is that the problem of the many is a cousin of the exclusion
problem.8) Both of those gestures at exclusion-like problems involve only vertical
building, but similar issues can be raised involving a mix of vertical and horizontal
building. In fact, some versions of the exclusion problem are stated in mixed terms.
For example, stage 1 of Jaegwon Kim’s “supervenience argument” turns on the idea,
which he calls “Edward’s dictum” (2005, 36), that mental events cannot both be
directly caused and upwards determined (2005, 39–41; see also 1997, 284–5; 1998,
42). Indeed, Kim says that “the tension between vertical determination and horizontal
causation has been, at least for me, at the heart of the worries about mental causation”
(2005, 38).
Now, these putative puzzles had better be only putative. Without a solution to
the standard philosophy of mind puzzle, the cost is either that mental events and
properties never cause anything, or that an implausibly strong reductive physic-
alism is true. Without a solution to the mixed puzzle, the cost is higher—nothing
is both vertically built and caused. Only fundamental entities are caused; all the
nonfundamentalia that we seem to observe and interact with are just a parade of
epiphenomena.
So we had better find a solution. (For Kim’s own response, see 1998, 77–87.)
Luckily, a variety are available, as evidenced by the vast literature on the exclusion
problem. I myself think that the culprit in each case is the relevant version of
what has, in the philosophy of mind literature, come to be known as the exclusion
principle.9 The most familiar version is the causal one:
Any event that has more than one sufficient cause is (causally) overdetermined.10

8
It is not the same. In the problem of the many, there is not one whole (
effect) that has two
distinct—if largely overlapping—pluralities that compose it (
causes). Rather, there are two distinct
fusions composed of the two pluralities. The tricky part is that both are equally good candidates to be
the ordinary object.
9
I have elsewhere called this position compatibilism, because the claim is that the mental and
physical causes of a single effect are perfectly compatible with each other. Other compatibilists
include Shoemaker (2001), Pereboom (2002), Yablo (1992).
10
This exclusion principle, and the two that follow, could just as well be stated in terms of a
notion of ‘overdetermination in the problematic way’ or perhaps ‘overdetermination in the firing
squad way’. That is, I do not care whether the solution to the exclusion problem says that the effects
 CAUSING

But here again, there are other versions too. One is restricted to vertical builders
or determiners, just as the original causal version is restricted to horizontal ones:
Any entity (event, object, fact, etc.) that has more than one complete vertical
building base is overdetermined.
And a third unrestrictedly ranges over all building relations, horizontal and
vertical both:

Any entity (event, object, fact, etc.) that has more than one complete building
base is overdetermined.11
I have argued elsewhere (2003, 2008) that the first, purely causal, exclusion
principle is false. If the sufficient causes are tightly related in certain ways (even
short of numerical identity), their effects are not genuinely overdetermined.12
Suppose I am right that the first exclusion principle is false. Then if—and only
if—causing is a building relation, the third principle is false as well. A convenient
result. (If not a complete one; I actually think the second principle is false as well.)
However, I do not mean to defend any particular solution to any of the
exclusion-ish problems here. My point, again, is the mere availability of illumin-
ation by analogy, rather than any substantive claim about what exactly to do with
that analogy. The familiar problem about causal exclusion does arise for deter-
mination more broadly, and the same panoply of solutions is available—including
the one that I myself happen to favor, according to which the problem assumes a
false exclusion principle. This is yet another reason to take seriously the idea that
building is causally tainted in the first sense; causation is a kind of building.
On to the fifth and final potentially illuminating analogy between causing and
vertical building. We are all familiar with the notion of a causal role, which has
been widely exploited in the philosophy of mind since the 1960s. The analogy
I wish to point out—markedly unfamiliar though it is—is that the notion of a
causal role can be broadened to that of a building role more generally.
A causal role is a location in a causal nexus, defined by various forward- and
backward-looking causal powers. The presidency of the United States, for
example, is defined by the powers and responsibilities laid out in the Constitution.

of mental events are not overdetermined at all, or that they are not overdetermined ‘in the firing
squad way’. That is just terminological. See my 2003, 474.
11
The principle Kim calls “Edward’s dictum” (2005, 36) is a version of this third principle.
12
What I would say now is, roughly, that the first exclusion principle is false when the two causes
are building related—when one builds the other. This requires refinement, because of complexities
about necessitation vs necessitation-in-the-context that echo matters I discuss in my 2003. But it will
do as a gesture for present purposes.
 CAUSING 

The presidency itself is an office, not a person, but at any particular time it is
occupied by a person. For a person to occupy the role—to be the president—is for
her to actually have those powers and responsibilities. Somewhat more generally,
for something to occupy a causal role is for it to actually cause and be caused in the
ways definitive of the role.13
What would a vertical building role be? A location in a building nexus, defined
by various ‘upwards’- and ‘downwards’-looking relationships. What it is to
occupy a vertical building role is to build and be built in the relevant ways.
This can be rendered somewhat more precise by substituting in a particular
vertical building relation. For example, a grounding role would be defined in
terms of how it is grounded, and what it grounds. But the idea turns out to be
particularly useful in the case of composition.14 Here, the relevant notion is that
of a mereological role, or ‘parthood slot’. A parthood slot is a location in a
mereological nexus, an aspect of the mereological structure of a whole, defined
by what it is part of and what is part of it. To occupy a parthood slot is actually to
stand in the relevant parthood relations, to be part of some things and have other
things as parts. I have argued elsewhere (2013) that exploiting this notion opens
up room to rethink mereology in interesting and potentially fruitful ways. For
present purposes, however, the point is not that the formal mereology I outline in
that paper is correct; it is rather that the relevant move cannot even be seen unless
vertical building is thought of as strongly analogous to causation—that is, unless
causation is a building relation.
My discussion of these five analogies has been somewhat impressionistic.
I have not argued for any particular claims about exactly what we should learn
about vertical building from causing or vice versa; I have simply pointed out that
there are potentially illuminating analogies to be pursued, and claimed that the
only reason they are potentially illuminating is the depth of the connection
between causing and vertical building.
To see this latter point starkly, return to my earlier example of a class that is
unified only on the cheap: the group of elements whose English names start with
the letter ‘A’. The behavior of aluminum sheds no light whatsoever on the
behavior of argon and actinium, and promising research projects about one are
unlikely to carry over to the others. Indeed, about all that can be extrapolated
from one to the others is the likely location of their entries in the dictionary.

13
One could alternatively use a dispositional characterization that merely requires that the
occupant be apt to cause and be caused by the relevant things.
14
Another case (suggested by Brandon Conley) might be mathematical structuralism, depending
on the nature of the relations by which the structures are defined.
 CAUSING

In short, the minimal similarity between these elements does not license much in
the way of illumination by analogy. In contrast, the similarities between causing
and vertical building are neither trivial or accidental, and license rather a lot of
illumination by analogy. This shows that the broad class that contains both
relations is not just unified, period; it is unified in ways that matter to deep and
longstanding philosophical issues.
4.2.2 A methodological principle
There is a second argument for the claim that the class containing both causing
and vertical building relations is unified in ways that matter. The depth of the
similarities not only licenses illumination by analogy, but also provides the best
explanation of the truth of a stronger methodological principle.
Here is the methodological principle: where and when parallel questions arise
about causing and vertical building, the default position should be to adopt
parallel answers to them. One should not break the analogy without argument.
Importantly, notice what the principle does not say. It does not say that one
cannot adopt disanalogous answers, merely that one must have an argument or
explanation for doing so.
Here is what the principle enjoins with respect to the five analogies. First, it
requires that—without an argument to break the analogy—one be a Humean
about both causation and vertical building, or neither. Second, it requires think-
ing that that both causation and vertical building bottom out or that neither do
(same caveat, which I will henceforth leave implicit). Third, it requires thinking
that the vertical building version of the ‘nothing comes to be ex nihilo’ is true just
in case the causal version is. Fourth, it requires thinking that the vertical building
version of the exclusion principle is true just in case the causal version is—and
therefore just in case the fully general exclusion principle that ranges over all
building is. Finally, it requires thinking that the notion of a vertical building role
is just as well—or poorly!—understood as the notion of a causal role.
Again, the claim is not that it is self-contradictory to break the biconditionals
and adopt disanalogous positions on these issues. Rather, the claim is simply that
it is illegitimate to do so without reason or explanation. For example, you cannot
insist without argument that vertical building obviously must bottom out in an
absolutely fundamental level while simultaneously insisting that the causal ver-
sion of the cosmological argument is just silly. Try to imagine an article that took
those two claims as its unargued-for starting assumptions, with no further
explanation. It simply would not fly. Thus I take it to be fairly obvious that the
methodological principle is true: there is clearly pressure to adopt the same
positions in both cases, and a demand for explanation if that pressure is resisted.
 CAUSING 

Compare the following. Suppose I liked the color dark red but hated cherry
red, or adored the taste of tangerines but simply loathed oranges. Such prefer-
ences are prima facie odd, and require explanation. Certainly, one can easily
imagine being challenged about them: “what?! How can you like this and not
that?” Now, there are answers I could give here. Perhaps I find cherry red too
bright, or oranges too sour, or they both remind me of a negative childhood
event, or . . . But I would have to say something—in a way that, crucially, I need
say nothing at all about other preference pairs. If I liked dark red but not lime
green, or loved tangerines but was repelled by bananas, well, that’s just the way it
is. I like one and not the other, and there’s an end on’t. No challenge forthcoming.
Why the difference between the two cases? Easy. Dark red and cherry red are
much more similar than dark red and lime green. Tangerines and oranges are
much more similar than tangerines and bananas. One cannot have greatly
differing attitudes towards extremely similar entities without explanation. Simi-
larly, I claim, one cannot have greatly differing beliefs about extremely similar
relations without explanation. It is precisely when the relevant items are suffi-
ciently similar15 that the methodological principle applies.
The upshot is straightforward: what explains the truth of the methodological
principle is the fact that the similarities between vertical building and causing are
as deep and rich as they are. Once again, we have the conclusion that the class of
building relations—causation together with vertical building—is unified not just
on the cheap, but in explanatorily useful ways.

4.2.3 Objections to the claim that causation is a building relation

In this section, I will consider three objections to my claim that causation is a
building relation. The first two are objections to the claim that causation meets
my account of building; the third is from a different angle.
Recall that I have taken my primary task to be to defend the claim that the
broad notion of building that subsumes both vertical building and causation is
interesting and philosophically important—that is, to defend the claim that my
characterization of building is a good one even though it lets causation in. But
someone might argue that I was wrong to so quickly assume that my character-
ization of building does let causation in. That is, someone might argue that I was
wrong to assume that causation is directed, necessitating, and generative in the
senses explained in Chapter 3.

15
Exactly what degree of similarity? Don’t go looking for precision where there is none to
be had.
 CAUSING

First, someone might deny that causation is directed. Consider time travel, the
objector will say. Suppose I travel back in time to hand the blueprints for the time
machine to my younger self, who diligently builds one and then travels back in
time . . . to hand the blueprints to her younger self. If causation is transitive, then
this kind of closed causal loop shows that causation is not asymmetric or
irreflexive. (If causation is not transitive, a matter on which I have no firm
opinion, an example with a smaller loop is required. Perhaps such an example
would only violate antisymmetry, not irreflexivity as well.)
Second, someone might deny that causation is necessitating. The objection
ought not be that causes only necessitate their effects given the laws and various
background conditions; as I discussed at length in Chapter 3, building is charac-
terized in terms of necessitation in the circumstances. No, the better objection is
rather that causation need not be deterministic. Perhaps some action of mine A
makes a particular event B 90 percent likely to follow, significantly more likely
than it would have been without my action. And suppose that B indeed comes to
pass. Didn’t A cause it, even though it did not necessitate it? If so—if indeter-
ministic singular causation is possible—then causes need not minimally necessi-
tate their effects in the circumstances.
One problem with both of these objections is that it is far from clear that either
case is in fact possible. Closed causal loops are perplexing, and make some people
resist the possibility of time travel altogether. Certainly, I don’t think the apparent
coherence of certain time travel stories is sufficient reason for believing that two
events can mutually cause each other.
And indeterministic causation is perplexing as well. It’s important to be clear
that my opponent’s claim is not merely the unobjectionable thought that there
are true probabilistic causal generalizations, but rather that there can be indeter-
ministic singular causal relations between particular events. I find this question-
able.16 Event A only makes event B 90 percent likely. So if B does happen, what
tipped the scales? If something else helped, then A is merely a partial cause of B,
and the full cause is a deterministic one. And if nothing helped tip the scales, why
say that A caused B? In such a case B seems to me to be random, uncaused by

16
This amounts to saying that I am inclined to deny that probabilistic singular causation is
possible. However, contra Hitchcock 1997, I do not think accepting a probabilistic treatment of
general causal claims while denying one of singular causal claims requires claiming that “there are
(at least) two distinct species of causal relation, each requiring its own philosophical account” (§2.11;
see also 2004, 404). General causal claims like ‘smoking causes cancer’ can be understood as
generalizations over singular causal claims like ‘Joan’s smoking caused her cancer’. Hitchcock
argues against this “generalization strategy” in 1995 §3, but I suspect that more recent work on
generics (e.g. Leslie 2008, Liebesman 2011) provides resources for a strong reply. Pursuing this
thought is a task for another occasion.
 CAUSING 

anything at all. In short: my concept of causation is a deterministic one, and

I seem not to be alone in this; at least some versions of the so-called ‘luck’
objection to libertarian accounts of free will turn on the same basic idea. (See
Mele 2006 for an overview.) Further, despite the rhetoric of some philosophers of
science, the issue here is indeed a conceptual one, not an empirical one. It is an
empirical question whether there are any events whose occurrence was not
guaranteed by the past and the laws. But it is a conceptual question whether
such events count as uncaused or indeterministically caused. (It is worth noting
that, anecdotally at least, many scientists seem happy to deny that there is any
causation at the very lowest levels.)
So I doubt that either symmetric or indeterministic causation is possible. But
I also think that if they are possible, so are symmetric and indeterministic
‘vertical’ building. That is, I think that symmetric causation stands or falls with
symmetric building, and that indeterministic causation stands or falls with
indeterministic building. (I think this because I think that any reason to resist
the causal case would also be reason to resist the building case, and vice versa.)
I therefore deny that we have been given any reason to resist the idea that
causation and vertical building form a unified family. If symmetric or indeter-
ministic causation is possible, then so is symmetric or indeterministic vertical
building, and my account from Chapter 3 would need to be revised anyway.17
Causation would meet any such revised account.
Again, however, I am inclined to deny that symmetric and indeterministic
building or causing is possible. At a bare minimum, I again co-opt some words of
Lewis’: “I shall be content, for now, to give an analysis of causation [and vertical
building] that works properly under determinism” (Lewis 1973a, 559).
The third objection goes like this: if causation is a building relation, then causes
are always more fundamental than their effects. But that’s crazy! It’s obviously
not true that causes are always more fundamental than their effects. So causation
cannot be a building relation.
I have heard this objection . . . a lot. The short version of my response is simply
that the seemingly startling claim that causes are more fundamental than their
effects is not in fact startling at all once we properly understand what it means to
say that one thing is more fundamental than another. To preview what is to
come: to say that one thing is more fundamental than another is to say nothing

17
It isn’t just the characterization of building relations as directed, necessitating, and generative
that would need to be revised. Also on the chopping block would be either the principle B!MFT
(the claim that things are more fundamental than what they build), or the claim that the more
fundamental than relation is asymmetric. As I argued in Chapter 3, those jointly entail that every
building relation is asymmetric.
 CAUSING

more than that the first thing stands in one or another (to be specified) pattern of
building to the second. So to say that causes are more fundamental than their
effects is to say nothing more than that causes cause their effects. Fleshing out
that thought, and making it sound plausible, will have to wait until Chapter 6. For
now, I just want to say a tiny bit to begin to warm you up to the idea that causes
are more fundamental than their effects, and then close the section with a
clarifying remark about the real target of the objection here.
Begin by noticing that talk of what is more fundamental than what is syn-
onymous with talk of what is ontologically prior to what. Relative fundamentality
is a kind of priority. And causes are indisputably prior to their effects—they are
causally prior, certainly, and continuing to bracket time travel cases they are also
temporally prior. Now, this is not obviously the same as saying that they are
“ontologically prior”, a phrase in desperate need of explication. As I have said,
I will provide that needed explication in Chapter 6. For now, the only point is that
the fact that causes are prior to their effects opens the door—just a crack—to the
idea that perhaps they are prior in the same sense as putatively ‘vertical’ builders
are to what they build.
To nudge the door open just a little wider, notice that it is not really all that odd
to treat causation as generating a notion of absolute fundamentality—to say that
uncaused events are fundamental. Imagine that it has been empirically estab-
lished that there indeed is a First Cause, a physical event such as the Big Bang.
Call that event Alpha. I can easily imagine a television nature program on which a
mellifluous narrator like David Attenborough or Carl Sagan intones, “Alpha. The
most fundamental event of our universe. It all started here”.18 And while it’s
admittedly a little harder to imagine the narrator calling later events increasingly
less fundamental, my only point with this fanciful example is that it’s not
completely beyond the pale to postulate some kind of connection between
causation and fundamentality.
Finally, the clarifying remark about the real target of this third objection. The
objector denies that causes are more fundamental than their effects. One way to
accommodate this denial is to deny that causation is a building relation. But
another way to accommodate it is to accept that causation is a building relation,
and instead deny the principle B!MFT that says that builders are more

18
I have stipulated that the First Cause is a physical event because it elicits cleaner intuitions. It is
certainly true that people who believe that God is the First Cause also take the First Cause to be the
most fundamental thing. But that is polluted data upon which I don’t want to rely. Such people often
also think that God is the noncausal ground of everything, the ongoing sustainer of the universe. So
their claim that God is the most fundamental entity might well be driven the thought that he
grounds everything rather than that he is the original cause of everything.
 CAUSING 

fundamental than what they build. In particular, it could be claimed that caus-
ation and vertical building are indeed members of an importantly unified class,
but that relative fundamentality is only generated by or associated with the
relations that belong to a subclass—traditional vertical building. I will consider
this idea in §6.6.2. For now, the takeaway lesson is just that even if the objector is
right to deny that causes are more fundamental than their effects—even if
I cannot eventually convince her to join me in my seemingly heretical claim—
it does not follow that causation is not a building relation.

4.3 The Second Kind of Causal Taint: Some

Particular Building Relations Are Themselves Causal
Building is causally tainted in two different ways. The first is the claim I have just
been defending: causation itself counts as a building relation. The second kind of
taint is that some particular building relations themselves involve causation:
causation taints building not merely by being included in the class as a separate
member, but by penetrating other members of the class.
There are several ways in which this can happen. I will distinguish three. In
homage to Quine, I will call them the three grades of causal involvement.19 Each
grade involves a relation that is clearly of a piece with vertical building, but which is
itself—in one way or another, depending on the grade—partially causal. The
overall moral, I claim, is that causation cannot be separated out from vertical
building without leaving an incomplete class that fails to carve at the joints.
However, drawing that lesson requires taking a fair bit of time to investigate the
three grades of causal involvement. I warn the reader in advance that my discussion
of the second grade of causal involvement will take significantly longer than my
discussion of either the first or third. It is, I think, interesting enough to merit the
time. Nonetheless, do note that each of the three cases I discuss in what follows is
independently sufficient to establish that building is causally tainted in the second
way. The fact that there are three simply makes my case more powerful.
4.3.1 The first grade of causal involvement
There is a canonical building relation that holds synchronically, but does so in
virtue of causal facts that look backwards and forwards in time. What it is for this
building relation to hold—what it is for the base to generate the built—is for
certain causal relations to hold at the base level.

19
The reference to Quine isn’t meant to be taken very seriously. The three grades of causal
involvement do not map in any interesting way onto the three grades of modal involvement.
 CAUSING

The relation I have in mind is property realization, in the sense brought to the
fore by the functionalists of the seventies and eighties. But the notion remains alive
and well in the philosophy of mind, as evidenced by its central role in Andrew
Melnyk’s A Physicalist Manifesto (2003), Jaegwon Kim’s Physicalism, or Something
Near Enough (2005), and Sydney Shoemaker’s Physical Realization (2007). As
I noted in Chapter 2 (§2.1), there are a variety of different definitions on offer.
One is the second-order property version favored by Kim and Melnyk; another is
Wilson (1999) and Shoemaker’s (2001, 2007) “subset of causal powers” version.20
I’ll talk in terms of the second-order property version, which says—roughly—
that functional properties are characterized by their causal roles. For something to
possess a functional property F is for it to have some property or other that plays
the causal role characteristic of F.21 Recall an example from §4.2.1: the presidency
of the United States is characterized by its causal role in the federal government.
Similarly, what it is to be a light switch is to play a certain causal role in allowing
users to regulate the flow of electricity to a lamp. Or consider role functionalists in
the philosophy of mind, who believe that mental properties are defined by their
causal roles. To use a standard toy example, they think that pains are, constitu-
tively, caused by bodily damage and cause swearing, rubbing, and mental states like
worry. To be in pain is to have a property or be in a state that plays that role.
Now, the natural thing to say here is that when we learn that a property is
functional, we learn something about the nature of that property. In particular,
we learn that it is individuated causally, and therefore is either dispositional or
flat-out temporally extrinsic, depending on how the “play the causal role” talk is
cashed out.22 That is, functional properties are instantiated at a time, but are sort
of “rooted outside the times at which they are had”, to intentionally misuse a
phrase from Chisholm (1976, 100–1).23

20
A simple version of Shoemaker’s definition is as follows: “property P has property Q as a
realizer just in case (1) the forward-looking causal features of P are a subset of the forward-looking
causal features of property Q, and (2) the backward-looking causal features of P have as a subset the
backward-looking features of Q” (2007, 12).
21
Here is Melnyk’s version of this kind of characterization: “token x realizes token y iff a) y is a
token of some functional type, F, such that necessarily, F is tokened iff there is a token of some or
other type that meets condition, C, ii) x is a token of some type that in fact meets C; and iii) the token
of F whose existence is logically guaranteed by the holding of condition (ii) is numerically identical
with y” (2003, 21).
22
That is, whether the realizer is simply apt to cause and be caused in certain ways, or whether it
needs to actually be caused in certain ways. See this chapter, note 13.
23
Chisholm’s own use of the phrase requires that if an object has a property that is rooted
outside the time at which it is had, that object exists at times other than those at which it possesses
the property. I am instead using the phrase to indicate something about the property, rather than
about entities that possess it.
 CAUSING 

But—and this is my point—the claim that some properties are functional

properties does not merely tell us something about the nature of those properties.
It also tells us something about what building relations can be like. The realization
relation is a building relation that holds between properties (or states, or property
instances) at a particular time in virtue of24 the causal powers or activity of the
realizer property (state, instance). What it is for the realization relation to hold at
t is for one property P to play, at t, a causal role typical of another property Q. So
the realization relation itself is also in a sense “rooted outside the time at which it
holds”, because it holds between properties or property instances based on their
causal profiles. Do note that it nonetheless holds synchronically. It holds at a
particular time t, but does so in virtue of facts that reach beyond t. As an analogy,
compare the sibling relation. My brother and I stand in this relation to each other
right now, at this particular moment (as well as others), but the fact that it obtains
now depends on facts about our causal history. The sibling relation and the
realization relation are synchronic but temporally extrinsic in similar ways.
The first grade of causal involvement, in short, is that there is at least one
building relation whose obtaining involves causation, even though it holds at a
particular time. Precisely because this is still a synchronic—traditionally
vertical—relation, its existence is perhaps not yet all that interesting. But we are
only at the first grade of causal involvement.

4.3.2 The second grade of causal involvement

In moving to the second grade of causal involvement, we move from a synchronic
building relation to a diachronic one. The claim in this section is that building
relations can hold between indirectly causally connected relata that exist at
different times.25 That is, at least one building relation isn’t just such that its
holding between x and y at a time t causally “looks backward and forward”
beyond t, but actually holds diachronically, between an x or some xxs at t1 and a y
at t2. This building relation is neither vertical nor horizontal, but diagonal: it is a
building process that unfolds over time.
In what follows, I will primarily rely on examples that have a mereological
flavor to them. But I do not mean to suggest that the phenomenon in question is
limited to composition; the idea that building processes can unfold over time
makes sense with regard to other building relations too. In particular, it seems to

24
Note that this ‘in virtue of ’ indicates that realization is not fundamental, whatever you think of
building in general.
25
Sam Baron defends a view he calls “priority presentism”, according to which facts about the
past and future are “diachronically grounded” in facts about the present. However, he explicitly
denies that it is causal.
 CAUSING

make sense with regard to microbased determination and grounding. So

although I will rely upon composition-ish cases, my point here is a broader
one; I intend the basic lessons to apply to building more generally. This will
matter when I respond to some objections at the end of the chapter.
So why think that building relations can hold in a diachronic and causal way?
The basic idea is simple, and can be easily illustrated by example. Imagine some
children emptying a box of Legos onto the floor and building a castle. Or
®
imagine yourself pulling ingredients from the pantry and baking a cake. In
such cases, we start with some things, and use them to make something else.
The castle is built from the Legos ; the cake is made from the flour, sugar, eggs,
®
and whatnot. As that sentence shows, we very naturally use various building
locutions when we describe cases like these. Yet they involve causal processes that
occur over time. Indeed, it is so natural to use building talk to describe these kind
of diachronic causal processes that the following empirical hypothesis seems
prima facie plausible:26 the synchronic or atemporal building notions beloved
by philosophers are developmentally posterior to, and acquired by means of,
diachronic causal ones. Children interact with their environments, build towers
®
with toy blocks and castles out of Legos . . . and only later get a grip on the
®
synchronic parthood relation that the Legos stand to the castle once it has been
built. (My own child owns some wooden blocks that are described on the box as
“ideal for building and introducing the relation of part to whole”.)
At any rate, it is not just “ordinary folk” who find it natural to use building
locutions to describe causal processes that take place over time. Some of our best,
most careful metaphysicians do too. For example, consider van Inwagen’s famous
Special Composition Question from Material Beings (1990). His first formulation
is “in what circumstances is a thing a (proper) part of something?” (20), and his
“official formulation” is “when is it true that ‘∃y the xs compose y’?” (30). Those
are indeed the same question. But one page later, van Inwagen offers what he calls
a “practical version” of the question: “Suppose one had certain (nonoverlapping)
objects, the xs, at one’s disposal; what would one have to do—what could one
do—to get the xs to compose something?” (31). And Ted Sider provides a tongue-
in-cheek paraphrase that reflects that practical version: “[van Inwagen] asked:
what do you have to do to some objects to get them to compose something—to
bring into existence some further thing made up of those objects? Glue them
together or what?” (2009, 384). This “practical version” is notably different from
the original Special Composition Question. It asks about a diachronic causal

26
I have not been able to find any evidence for or against this hypothesis in the psychology
literature.
 CAUSING 

process, not about a ‘vertical’ building relation obtaining at a particular moment.

Yet both van Inwagen and Sider take themselves to be asking the same question,
or at least close enough to make no difference. They find it perfectly natural to
talk diachronically about composition.
In this section, I will argue that apparently diachronic building talk is best taken
at face value. Sentences like “I built this castle from the Legos that were on the
floor” and “this cake is made from eggs, sugar, flour, etc.” do state—truly state—
that a building relation obtains between causally connected entities at different
times. For example, there is a building relation between the eggs and so forth on the
counter and the cake. My primary strategy is defensive. I will argue that there is
genuinely diagonal building by arguing that the best reason to dismiss it does not
work. But at the end of the section I will turn this defensive maneuver into a
positive argument for taking diachronic, diagonal building seriously.
The core idea of the attempt to dismiss diagonal building is this: making sense
of diachronic building talk does not require that there be any diachronic building
relations. We can recognize the naturalness and ubiquitousness of a certain way
of talking, and can agree that the sentence ‘the Lego castle is made from the
®
Legos that were on the floor this morning’ is true. But we need not think that
®
there is any diachronic, causal building relation that in any way underwrites its
truth. Instead, such talk is made true by a combination of building relations that
are not diachronic and diachronic relations that are not building relations. It
follows that there are no diachronic building relations.
This objection has two stages, captured in the last two sentences of the
previous paragraph. The first stage is the claim that diachronic, causal building
talk can be given truth-conditions that do not invoke diachronic, causal building
relations. The second stage is the claim that this entails that there are no
diachronic, causal building relations. I will address these two stages in turn.
A preview: I will argue that the first stage succeeds, though it is trickier than it
might look. I will, however, argue that the second stage fails.
Let’s start with the first stage. What might the truth-conditions for diagonal
building talk look like? Take the sentence ‘the castle is made from the Legos that
®
were on the floor this morning’. Presumably all we are saying is that the castle is
®
(now) mereologically composed of Legos that have the property of having been
on the floor at some earlier time. We are simply stating that things with temporal
properties stand in a purely vertical, synchronic building relation to something
else. What makes the sentence true, then, is just whatever diachronic and causal
relation(s) that make for the Legos’ possession of temporal properties or persist-
ence over time, combined with the purely synchronic acausal composition
relation that obtains now.
 CAUSING

Here is a general version of this claim about the truth-conditions of diachronic

building talk:
Truth Conditions 1: ‘the xxs27 at t1 build y at t228’ (or ‘y at t2 is built from the xxs
at t1’) is true just in case the xxs exist at t1, y exists at t2, and at t2 the xxs build y.
And here is a version formulated specifically in terms of composition, the salient
relation in the Lego case:®
Truth Conditions 1composition: ‘the xxs at t1 compose y at t2’ is true just in case
the xxs exist at t1, y exists at t2, and at t2 the xxs compose y.
According to Truth Conditions 1, there are two relations involved in the Lego
case. One is the vertical building relation of composition; the xxs compose y at t2.
The other is some or other diachronic and causal relation—whatever it is in
virtue of which the xxs persist from t1 to t2. Because this analysis factors the
causality/diachronicity and the buildingness into two distinct relations, there is
no need to posit any genuinely diagonal building. There is no relation between
®
the Legos and the castle that is both diachronic/causal and building.
Unfortunately, Truth Conditions 1 is false. It is not in general true that when
we engage in that sort of talk we are simply stating something about the temporal
properties of the entities—the ‘makings’, as they might be called—that at some
point synchronically build something else. That is because they very often do not
survive the process by which the composite comes into existence. In such cases,
the diachronic talk connects things that never exist at the same time, and
therefore never stand in any synchronic relations at all, building or otherwise.
The relevant kind of case is extremely common.29 Think about chemical
reactions: when baking soda and vinegar are mixed together, neither survives

27
Or a single x.
28
Over some interval t1-tn. I will henceforth gloss over niceties like this and that of the previous
footnote.
29
In an interesting series of papers, the chemist Joseph Earley has argued that this happens a lot,
if not always. He thinks that there is no salt in the sea, because
when salt dissolves in water, what is present is no longer ‘salt’ but rather a collection of
hydrated sodium cations and chloride anions, neither of which is precisely salt, nor is
the collection (2005, 85).
He also thinks that, quite generally, atoms go out of existence when they bond in certain ways; “the
parts of chemical molecules are not, strictly speaking, ‘atoms’ ” (2006, 842). Consequently, neither
hydrogen nor oxygen are parts of H2O any more than eggs are part of my cake (2006).
Now, I don’t think Earley has actually made his case here. He is not very clear about why he thinks
the atoms go out of existence rather than merely undergoing certain sorts of intrinsic change, and is
in general not very careful about the difference between qualitative and numerical sameness.
Nonetheless, Rega Wood and Michael Weisberg also argue that modern chemistry really is at best
 CAUSING 

the process. The resulting foamy mess is almost entirely carbon dioxide escaping
from water. Or consider grapes that are used to make wine, or eggs that go into a
cake. The grapes and eggs are destroyed in the process by which the wine or cake
comes into existence. Grapes do not remain as parts of wine, and eggs do not
remain as parts of cakes. On the ordinary persistence conditions for eggs and
grapes, according to which they are destroyed if they are sufficiently smashed and
scattered, they do not survive the process. Thus when a vegan complains that the
cake “has eggs in it”, what he says is strictly speaking false. Taken literally, his
utterance expresses the proposition that the cake has eggs as parts, which it
doesn’t. What is true—and makes the vegan’s refusal to eat it perfectly rational,
given his background beliefs—is the proposition that eggs feature in a special way
in the cake’s causal history. They leave behind traces; they make important
contributions to the cake’s protein and moisture content. Still, though, there is
no time at which both the eggs and the cake exist, so a fortiori there is no time at
which the eggs are parts of the cake.30 Or stand in any synchronic relation to the
cake at all. Eggs are parts of the contents of a refrigerator, or an Easter basket;
they are not, strictly speaking, parts of cakes. (Not of any cake that I want to
eat, anyway.)
The point is that not all diachronic building talk can be explained away in the
manner currently under consideration. Truth Conditions 1 is straightforwardly
wrong; the cake is (partially) made from the eggs, even though there is no time at
which the eggs stand in any synchronic building relation to the cake. So the first
attempt at the first stage of the dismissal of diagonal building fails. We have not yet
been given an adequate account of the truth-conditions of diagonal building talk.
Let’s try again. There is a better account to be had. To see it, begin with the
question: why is it true to say that the cake made from the eggs and so forth, even
though the eggs are never parts of it? Answer: because the parts of the eggs
become parts of the cake. Not every single one, of course; the shells go in the
trash, and some water is lost in the form of steam. But many of them do. After all,
the cake did not appear ex nihilo—in any sense!—with the wave of a wizard’s
magic wand.31 It was created through perfectly ordinary causal processes from

undecided about the persistence conditions of atoms (Wood and Weisberg 2004, especially 683).
Further, my thinking on these matters was initially sparked by Earley’s work (introduced to me by
Richard Boyd), and I would be remiss not to cite him.
30
Contrast someone with a nut allergy complaining that the cake has walnuts in it. In the usual
case—as opposed to one in which the walnuts are ground into flour—the cake does have walnuts as
parts.
31
When the wizard makes something “out of thin air”—i.e. without rearranging local molecules,
or transporting them in from elsewhere—he makes something without making it from anything. He
 CAUSING

the material of the eggs and other ingredients. So this suggests an alternate story
about the truth-conditions of diachronic building sentences. We should replace
Truth Conditions 1 with Truth Conditions 2:
Truth Conditions 2:
‘the xxs at t1 build y at t2’ is true just in case
(1) The xxs exist at t1
(2) y exists at t2, and is built of some zzs such that either
(i) Most of the xxs are among the zzs, and vice versa (i.e., the xxs ffi
the zzs), or
(ii) At t1, the xxs are built of some pps such that at t2 the pps ffi the zzs.
Truth Conditions 2composition:
‘the xxs at t1 compose y at t2’ is true just in case
(1) The xxs exist at t1
(2) y exists at t2, and is composed of some zzs such that either
(i) Most of the xxs are among the zzs, and vice versa (i.e., the xxs ffi the
zzs), or
(ii) At t1, the xxs are composed of some pps such that at t2 the pps ffi the zzs.
The details may look complicated, but the idea is simple: the xxs at t1 diachron-
ically, diagonally compose y at t2 just in case the xxs and y share a lot of parts at
®
some level of decomposition. In cases like the Lego castle, where Truth Condi-
tions 1 works, clause 2a) does the job; in cases like the cake, where Truth
Conditions 1 fails, clause 2b) does the job. The cake is (in part) made from the
eggs because many parts of the eggs, however low-level, become parts of the cake.
Do note that these truth-conditions for diachronic or diagonal sentences are
clearly causal, even though the word ‘cause’ does not explicitly appear, and even
though the xxs do not cause y in any ordinary sense. y is not causally independent
of the xxs. The main reason is that Truth Conditions 2 requires that xx’s parts
persist to become y’s parts, and on any plausible theory, persistence is a causal
process. (Causally isolated temporal stages can be parts of a scattered four-
dimensional object, but not an ordinary persisting thing like a person or a
chair; similarly, causally isolated enduring entities are distinct things, not a single
entity persisting through time.) A somewhat subsidiary reason is that in the
ordinary case there will be a causal story about how the xxs, or their parts, come
to be parts of y. In the case of the cake, that story involves a person and some
cookware; in other cases, the story will be quite different and need not involve an
agent at all. But it is not, in the usual case, simply random that the xxs or their

makes something come-to-be without building, in violation of the third ex nihilo principle from
§4.2.1. (See also Aristotle’s De Generatione et Corruptione e.g. I.10).
 CAUSING 

parts happen to turn up as parts of y; there is a causal chain whereby they do so.32
(Truth Conditions 2 does not actually require that there be such a causal chain.
I have opted to leave this requirement out, because it is not clear to me that the
random case fails to be an example of the relation in question. At any rate, the
point about persistence suffices to guarantee that diagonal composition is causal.)
I think that Truth Conditions 2, or at least something close to it, is correct.
(I discuss an objection to it in an appendix.) And I agree that Truth Conditions 2
does not invoke diachronic, causal building. Like Truth Conditions 1, it factors
matters into nonbuilding diachronic processes that aren’t (noncausal) building,
and synchronic acausal building. However, I do not think the availability of Truth
Conditions 2 provides any reason to think that there is no diachronic, causal
building relation between the xxs and y, which is the issue at hand.
We have reached the second stage of the attempt to dismiss such relations. The
question on the table is this: how exactly are we supposed to get from the
successful provision of truth-conditions that don’t invoke diachronic, causal
building relations to the claim that there are no such relations? How does success
at stage 1 lead to stage 2? (For discussion somewhat relevant to the issues I will
discuss, see Rayo 2013 Chapters 1 and 2.)
Truth Conditions 2 certainly does not entail that there is no diachronic,
diagonal building. The fact that talk appearing to attribute such a building
relation can be given truth-conditions that do not mention one does not entail
that there isn’t one. To see this, consider an analogy. Talk seemingly about
composite objects can be given truth-conditions that do not mention composite
objects: assuming there are simples, and bracketing how exactly to cash out
‘tablewise’, it is plausible to say that ‘there is a table in region R’ is true just in
case there are simples arranged tablewise in R. And, crucially, that is plausible
regardless of whether or not there are tables. (If there are tables, it is also the case
that ‘there is a table in region R’ is true just in case there is a table in R. There is no
tension between these two different truth-conditions, because there is a table in R
just in case there are simples arranged tablewise in R.) So the fact that sentences
like ‘there is a table in region R’ can be given truth-conditions that do not
mention tables does not entail that there are no tables. Compositional nihilism
is not that easy to establish! Similarly, the fact that sentences like ‘this cake is
partially made from the eggs that were on the counter’ can be given truth-
conditions that do not mention any diachronic building relation does not entail
that there is no such thing. Maybe there is such a relation, guaranteed to obtain
when the conditions spelled out on the right-hand side of Truth Conditions 2 are

32
Thanks to Carl Ginet here.
 CAUSING

met. That is, maybe the right-hand side spells out what it is for the diachronic
building relation to obtain.
A more promising way to fill in stage 2 is to combine Truth Conditions 2 with
an appeal to parsimony. The claim would be that because diachronic building
sentences can be given truth-conditions that do not mention any diachronic
building relations, believing in such relations amounts to multiplying entities
without necessity. And we ought not do that. The idea, in short, is that parsimony
tells us to cut out the middleman.
This move opens an enormous can of worms that I cannot fully address here,
though I’ll say more about parsimony in Chapter 8 when I defend the existence of
nonfundamental entities. For now, I will simply say that this argument assumes
that parsimony requires that we only countenance the most fundamental truth-
makers of any true sentence. And this is not a principle that most people will
want to endorse in general. To echo the reasoning from the previous paragraph,
‘there is a table in R’ has far more fundamental truth-makers than the table itself,
and yet most of us do indeed believe in tables.
Of course, not everyone does. Those who are antecedently inclined towards an
ontology of only fundamental entities—flatworlders, as I like to call them—will
obviously not care that this third argument against diachronic building turns on a
principle with such consequences. Consequently, fully replying to this argument
requires rejecting that kind of ontology. I will do this in Chapter 8. For now, I will
just make the weaker claim that using Truth Conditions 2 to generate a parsi-
mony argument against diachronic building has significant consequences that
most people would reject.
None of this should be surprising. At bottom, what’s going on is that Truth
Conditions 2 is compatible with either of two quite different attitudes toward or
views about diachronic building. One view is that there are no diachronic
building relations, even though there are true tensed sentences about building.
The other view is that there are diachronic building relations, but they are not
fundamental. Taken in the second way, Truth Conditions 2 reflects the thought
that what it is for the xxs at t1 to build y at t2 is for the relevant pattern of
nondiachronic building and diachronic nonbuilding to obtain. The idea is that
although Truth Conditions 2 does not provide any reason to think there is no
diachronic building, it does provide reason to think that there isn’t any funda-
mental diachronic building. The diachronic, diagonal relation is accounted for in
terms of discrete horizontal and vertical components; it is itself built.
This second attitude is the one I defend. I claim that i) the mere availability of
Truth Conditions 2 does not force the first attitude, and ii) although parsimony
might seem to favor the first attitude over the second, that line of thought
 CAUSING 

equally well tells against any other nonfundamental entity. The issue here really
has nothing in particular to do with building; it only has to do with the status of
nonfundamentalia of any sort. If you are in general accepting of nonfunda-
mental entities, Truth Conditions 2 gives you no reason not to accept non-
fundamental diachronic building. If—and only if—you are in general skeptical
of the nonfundamental, that skepticism unsurprisingly applies in this particular
case as well. But there is no special challenge here to diachronic building in
particular.
To see the issue starkly, consider an analogy. There are lots of true sentences
that attribute biological cousinhood to people, such as ‘Lila and Sam are cousins’.
Such sentences can easily be given truth-conditions that do not mention the is a
cousin of relation:
Cousins: ‘x and y are biological cousins’ is true just in case one of x’s parents is
a sibling of one of y’s parents.
That’s about as straightforward as it gets; we should all accept Cousins. But what
I have been emphasizing is that this alone does not settle what we ought to think
about the is a cousin of relation. Ought we deny that there is any such thing? Or
can we instead say that there indeed is such a relation, but it is not fundamental?
The choice point here is exactly the same as in the case of diachronic building. In
both cases, I take the second route; significant further argument is needed to
instead take the first.
I have rebutted what I take to be the most serious challenge to diachronic
building. And this rebuttal can be twisted into a positive argument for diachronic
building. It goes like this: we talk this way all the time. No good reason has been
given not to take that talk seriously. So we should take it seriously. Now, I admit
that this is not exactly a knockdown argument. I can see no knockdown argu-
ment for diachronic building, just as I can see no knockdown argument for the
existence of tables and so forth. (Those who think there is a knockdown argu-
ment for the latter—perhaps Thomasson 2010, 2015 or Schaffer 2009 §2—should
feel free to apply their reasoning to this case.) Knockdown arguments are hard to
come by, and are not in general necessary.33
In sum, the second grade of causal involvement is that there is a diachronic,
diagonal, causal building relation. I have been emphasizing the fact that it is
diachronic more than the fact that it is causal, so perhaps I should underscore

33
Lewis (1983b, x) and van Inwagen (2002, 27) both deny that there are any knockdown
arguments in philosophy. For interesting further discussion, see Ballantyne 2014.
 CAUSING

that latter claim. It is only indirectly causal; the claim is certainly not that if the
xxs stand in this building relation to y, then the xxs cause y. Rather, the claim is
that if the xxs stand in this building relation to y, this is so in virtue of a variety of
complex underlying causal relationships34 between the parts of the xxs and the
parts of y in virtue of which the former persist as the latter.
Although it adds little to the real argument, let me add a few remarks about the
conceptual centrality of diachronic building, as shown by the extent to which it is
embedded in our language. Begin by noting that at least for the particular case of
composition, English has a locution that can only mark traditional, vertical
building: made of. The Lego castle is made of Legos, because it currently has
Legos as parts. However, it is not correct in English to say that wine is made of
grapes. Why not? Because wine does not have grapes as parts. The relation
between grapes and wine is the same as that between the ingredients and the
cake35—the grapes figure in an important way in the causal history of the wine,
and many of the grapes’ parts have become parts of the wine, but the grapes
themselves no longer exist. The building relation between the grapes and the wine
is diagonal, not traditionally vertical. That is why the wine is not made of grapes.
But English does offer two other locutions that serve well in this case: the wine is
made from grapes, and it is also made out of grapes. And brief reflection on the
rules of usage for those expressions reveals that they precisely bridge the divide
that ‘made of ’ imposes—i.e., that they are neutral about whether the relation they
attribute is synchronic or diachronic. Although the wine is only made from
grapes and out of grapes, the castle is made from, out of, and of the Legos.
‘Made from’ and ‘made out of ’ can be used in either sort of case; they can mark
traditional vertical building or diagonal building. I do not intend these informal

34
I need not spell out these relationships in any detail. For one thing, they will vary depending on
what particular kinds of thing y and the xxs are; for another, this is not a book about persistence.
35
I have changed examples because the wine case provides a clearer illustration of the correct
usage of ‘made of ’ than the cake case does. The reason for this is that in the wine case, the builders
(grapes) are picked out via a count noun, but in the cake case, most of the builders (flour, oil, water,
sugar, eggs, etc.) are picked out by mass nouns. When the builders are picked out by mass nouns,
‘made of ’ tends to sound more acceptable. For example, it does not sound particularly wrong to say
that cake is made of flour, water, oil, sugar, and eggs—not nearly as bad as it sounds to say that wine
is made of grapes. But this is neither surprising, nor a problem for my claim that ‘made of ’ can only
be used to mark synchronic vertical building, and thus can only be used when the builders and the
build exist at the same time. It is simply due to the fact that it is not entirely clear what mass nouns
refer to—stuffs?—and it also is not clear what the persistence conditions of stuffs are. The reason we
don’t have clear linguistic intuitions about the well-formedness of sentences like ‘this cake is made of
flour, water, oil, sugar, and eggs’ is just that we don’t have clear metaphysical intuitions about the
persistence conditions of any of those things except for the eggs. (For relevant discussion of
mass terms and stuffs, see Cartwright 1965, Sharvy 1983, Needham 1993, Zimmerman 1995, and
Koslicki 1999.)
 CAUSING 

linguistic ruminations to bear any significant weight, but the availability of the
neutral locutions ‘made from’ and ‘made out of ’ does strongly suggest both that
a) we talk diagonally, diachronically about building all the time, and b) we do so
in a way that is very much of a piece with the way we talk about more traditional
vertical building.
I find that my claims about the second grade of causal involvement provoke a
certain amount of resistance. Some readers will want to challenge various back-
ground assumptions I have allegedly made throughout the section; some will
want to challenge Truth Conditions 2. Many of these objections have straight-
forward replies. At least one opens the door to further interesting inquiry into the
nature of change or becoming. However, because I do not want to derail the
overall argument, I have collated several of them into an appendix that can be
found at the end of the book. It is time to get the third grade of causal
involvement, and overall lessons of the chapter, onto the table.
4.3.3 The third grade of causal involvement
The first grade of causal involvement is that building relations can hold syn-
chronically, but does so in virtue of causal facts that look backwards and forwards
in time. The second grade of causal involvement is that building relations can
hold between relata that exist at different times, and which are indirectly causally
connected. The third grade of causal involvement is that building relations can
hold over an interval, between momentary relata and relata that only exist or
obtain over time, in virtue of causal relations among the momentary relata. These
respectively yield temporally extrinsic vertical building, diagonal building, and—
now—extended building.
As a warm-up, I will start with two examples that are too controversial to do
the work I want, but which have the benefit of being familiar. The first example
arises from van Inwagen’s organicist answer to the Special Composition Ques-
tion,36 namely “for any xxs, there is a y that the xxs compose just in case the
activity of the xxs constitutes a life” (1990, 81–97). What is a life? And what is it
for the activity of some xxs to constitute one? Those are hard questions, and van
Inwagen makes a valiant attempt to answer them. Roughly, a life is an “unimagin-
ably complex self-maintaining storm of atoms . . . mov[ing] across the surface of
the world, drawing swirls and clots of atoms into it and expelling others, always
maintaining its overall structure” (87). However exactly this gets fleshed out, it is
obvious that the xxs are engaged in causal processes, maintaining their arrange-
ment, changing their membership, and so forth. Causal processes take time. If

36
Thanks to Yuri Balashov for suggesting this example.
 CAUSING

only entities that are doing this ever compose anything, composition occurs in
virtue of these diachronic causal processes. That is the natural way to interpret
van Inwagen’s view: composition always and only occurs over an interval, in
virtue of ongoing causal activities of the parts.37
The second example arises from the four-dimensionalist picture according to
which both eternalism and perdurantism are true. Ordinary persisting entities are
spatiotemporally extended; they are space-time worms composed of temporal
parts that are causally connected in important if often underspecified ways. (The
presence of ‘the right kind’ of causal connections is standardly taken to be the
difference between cross-time sums that are genuinely persisting entities, and
those that are merely temporally scattered objects. (See. e.g., Lewis 1976, 72–3.38)
On this kind of picture, the relation by which ordinary objects are built i) obtains
in virtue of causal relations between their parts, and ii) does not hold at any
particular time. Rather, it is extended over time.
Let me spell out point ii) a little bit further. Four-dimensionalists about
persistence—indeed, any eternalist who believes in cross-time fusion—must
deny that the composition relation is synchronic. After all, they believe that
there are instances of composition that do not occur at any single time, because
there is no single time at which all of the relata exist. One temporal part exists at
t1, another at t2, and so on to tn; the fusion itself exists over the interval from t1 to
tn. (The fusion does not wholly exist at any particular moment t during that
interval. It only exists at each t in virtue of having a part at t, in the way that I exist
in a certain spatial region in virtue of my pinky toe’s being located there. The
fusion itself occupies the temporally extended region from t1-tn.) There is no
particular time at which the extended whole exists, and thus no particular time at
which it is composed of the momentary parts. So eternalists who believe in cross-
time fusion cannot think that all instances of composition are instances of
composition-at-a-time, but must instead take composition to be in some sense
atemporal: the kind of notion “we employ when we take an ‘atemporal perspec-
tive’ and contemplate the whole of time” (Sider 2001, 56).39

37
At a minimum, this is a natural interpretation of organicism. The alternative is to treat it as an
example of the first grade of causal involvement. The claim then would be that composition occurs at
a single time t, but in virtue of the forward and backward looking causal properties of the xxs at t.
38
Temporally scattered objects—cross-time sums of arbitrary temporal parts—do not count as
an example of the third grade of causal involvement. While such cases involve extended building,
they do not involve causation; there need not be any causal connections between the parts. Indeed,
there need not be any interesting relations among the parts at all.
39
It is not just that the eternalist perdurantist—call her a four-dimensionalist—has to take
the atemporal notion of composition (or composition simpliciter) as basic and define
 CAUSING 

But although these examples are illuminating, I will not rely on them to defend
the third grade of causal involvement. The problem is simply that they are both
too controversial to bear the weight. (Though it ought to be noted that they at
least rely on quite different controversial assumptions.) I would prefer to dodge
what are, for my purposes, peripheral controversies about the Special Compos-
ition Question, the nature of time, and how objects persist. So perhaps it is time
to leave the warm-up exercise behind, and move on to the real example.
Imagine a minute particle—a simple, if you like, but it need not be—moving
very very quickly in an elliptical orbit. Now imagine a second such particle
moving very very quickly in a similarly shaped orbit, but slightly spatially
separated from the first, and on a different axis; its orbit interlinks with that of
the first. Imagine a bunch more such particles, each on an orbit that interlinks the
previous one. Any truly momentary snapshot—far beyond the shutter speeds of
any commercially available camera—would just show a bunch of particles spread
out roughly in a line, one corresponding to each link. But to ordinary unaided
perception, what we have here is a chain—an ordinary chain, perfectly solid and
clanky and well-suited for locking up a bicycle.40
Here are some claims I take to be true about this case. There exists a chain. It is
solid. It is exceedingly lightweight. It is shaped like so, and is about n inches long.
It has various dispositional properties, like the aforementioned ability to secure a
bicycle.41 All of these claims involve building. The chain is composed of the
particles; its properties—solidity, mass, shape, and so forth—are realized,
grounded, or microbased in the behavior of those particles. However. There is

composition-at-a-time in terms of it. They simply cannot think that all instances of composition are
instances of composition-at-a-time.
One might think that in this respect composition is different from its cognate relation, parthood.
This is because Sider has argued that four-dimensionalists not only can think that parthood-at-a-
time is the basic notion in terms of which parthood simpliciter is defined, but that it is in fact
dialectically advantageous for them to do so. Parthood-at-a-time is, after all, the only notion of
parthood that a three-dimensionalist will accept (Sider 2001, 55–9). However, it is not clear that he is
right that parthood simpliciter can be defined in terms of parthood-at-a-time, because it is not clear
that all instances of parthood are instances of parthood-at-a-time. A cross-time fusion x can have
another cross-time fusion y as a part—for example, my early teen self is a part of me (if an
unfortunately attired, unpleasantly behaved one). But it is not a part of me at any single time t.
40
Gilmore 2007 deploys some related cases to rather different effect. Note that his cases involve
backwards time travel and mine does not.
41
Small quibbles with one or two of these claims are irrelevant. For example, compositional
nihilists will deny that the particles compose anything, let alone a chain. But notice that their
resistance has nothing to do with any special features of my example; they would say the same about
an ordinary (putative) lock available at your local bicycle store. Also notice that they will indeed
endorse their own versions of the other building claims in the paragraph. They will deny that the
chain is solid and so forth, but they will accept that the particles arranged chain-wise plurally
instantiate all the relevant properties. (I make some related remarks in objection 1 in the appendix.)
 CAUSING

no single time at which any of those building relations hold. There is no single time
at which the particles compose a chain. (They might compose an object at each
moment, but it is not a chain; it is a fusion of spatially separated particles.) There
is also no single time at which it has that shape, length, mass, or disposition, and
thus no single time at which any of the relevant property building relations—
realization, grounding, or microbasing—obtain.42 The persisting whole has prop-
erties that it has at no single moment, for there is no single time at which the
requisite base exists. The existence of the chain, the instantiation of the
properties—these are built over an interval, not at any particular time.
This case avoids all the controversies of the earlier ones. It does not require
believing van Inwagen’s answer to the Special Composition Question. It also
does not require any particular view about the nature of time or persistence.
Perhaps it is a bit puzzling what a presentist endurantist thinks the chain is—
each link is identical to a single particle, I suppose—but otherwise the view
generates no particular mystery. She can make sense of the chain case as long as
she can make sense of change over time at all (as long as she has a satisfactory
solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics, for example). Further, the case
involves causation in the requisite way. The chain’s properties are built over an
interval, out of ongoing causal processes. The position of the particle at t1
causes its position at t2.43
But the case does not simply avoid controversy; it illuminates something
important. Although the chain example is obviously a philosopher’s fantasy, it
is empirically plausible that many actual things are like it in the relevant way. The

42
Thomas Sattig (2003) makes a related point, but in his hands it serves as a criticism of a certain
four-dimensionalist claim, and has nothing to do with how building works. He rejects the claim that
a perduring object x is F at t =df x has a temporal part that exists (and only at) at t which is F, because
some properties of an entire space-time worm are simply not such that a momentary time slice can
instantiate them.
43
Is this a central aspect of the case? What if the positions of the particles at each moment are
causally independent of the positions at the next moment? Wouldn’t there still be a chain, with the
same properties—grounded over an interval, yes, but not in ongoing causal processes? I think the
answer depends on the way the example is modified. Suppose first that the positions of the particles
are causally connected, but not directly: p’s position at t1 does not cause p’s position at t2, but both
are caused by some single third factor—an occasionalist god, say. In this case the positions are
causally unified, just by a somewhat circuitous route. Now suppose instead that there is no causal
unity at all among the positions of the particles over time. They are just random, or at least caused by
completely independent factors in each case. Here, I’m inclined to say that despite appearances,
there in fact is no chain—either because there is no entity composed of the particles at all (a claim
that will be favored by those who impose restrictions on composition), or because the entity that is
composed is just a scattered object rather than a genuinely persisting thing. After all, there is no real
difference in kind between the fusion of the particles and the fusion of an arbitrary assemblage of
things like Socrates’ beard, my cat, and your great-grandchild. The particles are just closer together
in time and space.
 CAUSING 

chair you are sitting on feels solid and supports your weight because of compli-
cated causal interactions both within and between atoms. Atomic nuclei are held
together by the strong nuclear force. Atoms come together to form molecules as
their electrons are attracted to and repelled by each other. All the little bits—not
that it is really little bits—are constantly moving and causally interacting. When
atoms bond it is not as though one sticks a hook into the other and stays that way.
So we can set aside the chain case, and consider pretty much any ordinary
nonfundamental thing, and any ordinary nonfundamental property it instanti-
ates. Consider, again, your chair. Its solidity and ability to bear your weight is
microbased in ongoing causal processes at the microlevel, not in properties
statically possessed by stationary particles. The fact that it exists arguably does
as well. Examples multiply. I need not concoct odd thought experiments, as I just
did, or posit controversial ‘new’ relations that I have to convince you count as
forms of building, as I did at the second grade of causal involvement. Pretty much
all the kinds of building that counted as canonical back in Chapter 2 often hold in
a temporally extended fashion, in virtue of the causal activity of the builders.
Certainly composition, grounding, and microbasing do. These relations are not
so straightforwardly vertical after all.

4.4 Back to Two Kinds of Causal Taint

In this chapter, I have argued that building is causally tainted in not one but two
ways. First, I have argued that causation taints the building family by itself
belonging to it as a separate member of a usefully unified class. Second, I have
argued that causation taints the building family by infecting specific other building
relations. I have argued for this second claim by characterizing three grades of
causal involvement—i.e., three ways in which a building relation can obtain in
virtue of causal facts. Really, any one of the three is by itself enough to demonstrate
the second kind of causal taint; together, they make an extremely forceful case.
Either kind of causal taint suffices to show that the traditional distinction
between vertical and horizontal determination is muddy and misleading; either
suffices to show that in some sense, building is not causally pure. But it is not the
same sense. If building were only causally tainted in the first way, it might still be
true that there is a subfamily of purely noncausal building relations that is more
internally unified than the broader class. If so, causation would stand off by itself,
infecting a localized corner of building as though it were a moldy patch on a piece
of cheese. Carving it off might well yield a cleaner, more unified class. But the fact
that building is causally tainted in the second sense undermines the accuracy of
this metaphor. Causation pervades building. Carving off the moldy bits would
 CAUSING

leave nothing behind but a pile of crumbs. That is, carving off all of the causal
taint would leave behind a class that is less natural rather than more. The class of
purely noncausal (causally pure?) building relations includes some relations by
which nonfundamental entities and properties are generated, but not all of them.
It includes set formation, but does not include realization in the functionalist’s
sense. It includes the relation between the Legos and the castle, but not that
between the ingredients and the cake. It includes some but not all instances of
grounding, composition, and microbasing. The class of purely noncausal build-
ing relations fails to carve at the joints, not by including too much, but by
including too little.
Here is a less metaphor-laden way of explaining the same point about the
distinct contributions of the two kinds of causal taint. Let A be the class of purely
noncausal vertical building relations. Let B be the class of causally tainted
building relations—those that hold partially in virtue of the obtaining of some
causal facts. Let C be a class only including causation itself. The claim that
building is causally tainted in the first way is the claim that the union of A and
B and C 44 is unified. The claim that building is causally tainted in the second way
is the claim that the union of A and B is more natural than either A or B alone.
(Indeed, a large part of the point of the second kind of causal taint is simply that
class B exists.)
Clearly, I believe that building is causally tainted in both senses. But it is
nonetheless worth noting the separate contributions of the two kinds of causal
taint, because they are actually independent of each other.
It is apparent that the first kind of causal taint does not entail the second.
However, this is not worth dwelling upon; I frankly do not see a great deal of
room to deny the second kind, regardless of whether or not the first kind is
accepted. What is more important is that the second kind of causal taint does not
entail the first. The claim that some building relations are partially defined in
causal terms, or hold partially in virtue of various causal facts, does not entail that
causation itself is a building relation. (To think that it does would be like thinking
that the fact that all mammals are partially composed of carbon atoms entails that
carbon atoms themselves are mammals!) So there is room for an opponent to
agree with me that building is causally tainted in the second sense while denying
that causation itself counts as a kind of building.
What such an opponent needs to do is provide a reason for ruling out
causation proper that does not also rule out the causally tainted building relations
that she does accept. This requires a bit of care. For example, it would be of no use

44
My discussion of the first kind of causal taint drew no distinction between A and B.
 CAUSING 

to argue that causation is not a kind of building because causation is not

synchronic—neither are the relations invoked at the second and third grades of
causal involvement. Probably what such an opponent wants to do instead is deny
that causation is a member of the class of relations that make for relative
fundamentality, an issue that I have postponed discussing. I will return to it in
§6.6.2. To make any further progress, we need a better understanding of what
relative fundamentality—or fundamentality full stop—is. It is time to move on to
Chapter 5.
 5
Absolute Fundamentality

Throughout the past few chapters, I have repeatedly invoked the notion of
fundamentality. I am by no means alone; the contemporary metaphysics litera-
ture is riddled with mentions of it. Indeed, this was so even before talk of
grounding became fashionable, as a search through any arbitrary selection of
metaphysics papers will show—certainly if one bears in mind that ‘basic’, ‘primi-
tive’, and ‘fundamental’ are typically used interchangeably. But what on earth is it
for an entity, fact, or property to be absolutely fundamental, or to be more
fundamental than another?
One immediate caveat about the question here. The topic of my investigation
is the notion(s) of fundamentality as it is deployed in metaphysics and elsewhere
in philosophy. This is not entirely a technical notion; I think it is also an ordinary
folk concept. Certainly I have had better luck explaining the project of this book
to random people on airplanes than some other philosophical projects I have
worked on. However, there is also a quite different ordinary language use of the
term ‘fundamental’ that must be set aside. I have in mind the use in library
posters that say “reading is fundamental”, by sports clinics that claim to cover
“the fundamentals of basketball”, and in the title of the business textbook
Fundamentals of Corporate Finance. Fundamentality in this sense has something
to do with centrality and importance to achieving certain goals. Reading is central
to learning and acquiring other skills; dribbling and shooting are central to
winning basketball games. They are not fundamental in any of the senses that
I will canvas in this chapter. Either ‘fundamental’ is in some way ambiguous, or
perhaps the library-basketball clinic uses are metaphorical. Whatever the diag-
nosis, my topic is only fundamentality in the metaphysician’s sense, which I will
clarify through the course of this chapter and the next.
In these two chapters, I argue that both absolute and relative fundamentality
can be, and can only be, understood in terms of building. I provide straightfor-
ward accounts of each, which should comfort those who are otherwise inclined to
find fundamentality a dark notion (as, for example, Judith Jarvis Thomson does:
1983, 211). If you are not skeptical that there is an interestingly unified class of
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

building relations, you should not be skeptical of fundamentality talk, either.

Fundamentality talk is just building talk with different words. Fundamentality is
not fundamental, and it is not mysterious.
In Chapter 6, I will investigate relative fundamentality—what it is for one thing
to be more or less fundamental than another, or equifundamental with another.
Here in Chapter 5, my topic is absolute fundamentality: what is it for something
to be fundamental, full stop? But I want to begin by calling attention to the fact
that absolute and relative fundamentality are treated somewhat differently in the
literature. No one ever spells out what relative fundamentality is supposed to be,
and it is typically treated as a primitive. I’ll say more about this in the beginning
of Chapter 6. But with a few notable exceptions that I will mention below, people
usually do say what they take absolute fundamentality to be, and they do not take
it as primitive.
However, not everyone says the same thing, and it has gone unnoticed that not
everyone says the same thing. There are three different notions of absolute
fundamentality that are tangled together in the contemporary literature. Two of
these are based upon building, but one is rather different—the Lewisian notion of
perfect naturalness. In this chapter, I articulate these different notions and
explore the relations among them.1 I will argue that the first building-based
notion is the best: to be fundamental is to be unbuilt.
Now, as I said, a few people do take absolute fundamentality to be primitive.
Kit Fine claims that fundamentality “is a primitive metaphysical concept . . . that
cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms” (2001, 1). Jessica Wilson
similarly says that “the fundamental is, well, fundamental” (2014, 560). It should
be clear that I disagree. However, I will not offer a direct argument that it is not
primitive, as I will in the case of relative fundamentality in Chapter 6. This is
partly because the fact that absolute and relative fundamentality are implicitly
treated so differently in the literature means that the dialectic is different: I need
not overcome a common assumption in order to claim that absolute fundamen-
tality is not an undefinable primitive. It is also because there are accounts of
absolute fundamentality available. Why not help ourselves? Now, Fine and
Wilson do offer some reasons for thinking that we ought not, and I will address
them at the end of the chapter.

1
To keep things manageable, I will stick to pairwise comparisons. That is, I begin by introducing
the first two notions, and arguing in favor of one of them; only that one will remain on the table by
the time I introduce the third notion in §5.7.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

I begin with some methodological preliminaries in §5.1. I then introduce the

first two candidate accounts of absolute fundamentality in §5.2 and §5.3, which
I call independence and completeness. In §5.4 I discuss the relation between them
in detail. After a (necessary) detour in §5.5 to investigate whether we ought to
think that anything is absolutely fundamental, I argue in §5.6 that independence
is a better account of absolute fundamentality than completeness. In §5.7
I introduce the third account, naturalness. In §5.8 and §5.9, I investigate the
relation between naturalness and independence, and argue that independence
remains victor. And in §5.10, I dismiss some reasons to think absolute funda-
mentality is not independence, but is instead undefinable.

5.1 Methodological Preliminaries

I have said that I will compare three notions of absolute fundamentality and
argue that one of them is “best”. But what does that mean? Best by what criteria?
Clearly, the victor must be internally coherent. Beyond that, the issue is partly a
matter of scholarship (what do particular philosophers mean when they talk
about the fundamental?), partly a matter of conceptual analysis (what notions are
live contenders for being concepts of fundamentality, rather than of something
else altogether?), and partly a matter of job description (which concept is—or
which concepts are—the best suited to do the work we want fundamentality to
do?). These three desiderata are intertwined, and cannot easily be separated. At
various points, I will appeal to each of them.
I will not, however, appeal to any substantive judgments about what in fact
is fundamental. I will instead remain as neutral as I can about what, if
anything, is. It is no harder to discuss the notion of fundamentality without
committing to substantive views about what is fundamental than it is to defend
a view about what a law of nature is while leaving to the scientists what the laws
of nature in fact are. Thus everything I say, modulo the occasional choice of
example, is intended to be equally compatible with ‘atomism’ and Schaffer-
style priority monism. Indeed, I intend everything I say to be compatible with
the claim that nothing is absolutely fundamental at all. After all, someone who
denies that anything is absolutely fundamental still needs to know what she is
denying. If nothing is absolutely fundamental, then reality fails to have a
certain feature. But what feature? If we do not know what fundamentality is,
we have no idea.
Finally, until I have made my case for which notion of fundamentality is best,
I propose to largely ban the word ‘fundamental’—except when quoting others, or
when explaining what the word ‘fundamental’ means in some particular
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

philosopher’s mouth. Consequently, I will need to introduce some new termin-

ology by stipulation. Let’s get started.

5.2 Independence
The first candidate is what I shall call ‘independence’. It is defined in terms of
building, roughly as follows (I shall precisify it in a moment):

Independence: x is independent if and only if x is not built by anything.

I do not think there is any question that independence is a—the—central aspect
of our notion of fundamentality.2 Things that are not built do not depend on
anything else. They are basic, rock-bottom features of reality. Certainly, this idea
appears throughout the literature. Schaffer, for example, defines fundamentality
as independence; he claims that x is fundamental, or basic, just in case nothing
grounds it (Schaffer 2009, 373 and 2010, 38). Louis deRosset says: “Call a fact
fundamental if it is not explained by any other fact . . . Fundamental facts just are
those facts which have no further explanation” (2010, 75, 81). And Fine, too, says
that “a true proposition is basic if it is not grounded in other propositions” (2001,
17), though that is not actually an accurate statement of his view about
fundamentality.3
Another reason the basic idea of independence is very familiar is that it has
analogues outside metaphysics. For example, consider epistemic fundamentality.
This notion has to do with justification, and attaches to propositions, or at least
something propositional, like beliefs. The epistemically fundamental or founda-
tional propositions—if there are any—are those that are not inferentially justified,
but instead self-justifying or infallible or something along those lines. (Of course,
it is controversial whether anything is epistemically foundational.) Or consider
logical primitiveness. A predicate, sentential operator, axiom (etc.) is logically
primitive if and only if it is undefined or undefended—in a particular formal

2
Elizabeth Barnes says things that sound as though she is denying that fundamentality has
anything to do with independence (2012, especially 882). But appearances are misleading; she uses
the label ‘independence’ for a different claim. For what it’s worth, her notion of fundamentality
approximates what I will call completeness.
3
Fine’s notion of ‘basicness’ is not his notion of fundamentality, or at least not his only notion.
Rather, his “absolute notion of fundamental reality . . . is simply the conception of Reality as it is in
itself” (25). He thinks that the nonbasic can be “real” (e.g. 27), as well as that the basic can fail to be
real, at least if it is nonfactual (26–7). Although he says little to explicate this notion of reality, he is
fairly clear that it is not independence. He denies that “that the absolute notion of fundamental
reality is in need of a relational underpinning” (25) and says that it is a “primitive metaphysical
concept . . . that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms” (1).
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

system, anyway; logical primitiveness is system-relative. (For example, one sys-

tem of propositional logic might take the Sheffer stroke as its only primitive
connective, and another might take both ‘not’ and ‘and’.) Because logical funda-
mentality is system relative and can be arbitrary, it is not especially deep. But it is
isomorphic to independence.
My point here is simply that the existence of these analogue notions says
something about how well-entrenched the concept of independence is. They are,
however, merely analogues. They are not versions of independence for the simple
reason that they appeal to relations—justification and definition—that are not
building relations. They are antisymmetric and irreflexive, but they meet neither
the modal requirement (N2) nor the generativity requirement (G). For example, the
fact that a belief or proposition P1 justifies another P2 does not mean that P1 is
minimally sufficient in the circumstances for P2, nor that P2 is the case in virtue of P1.
There is a complication. Thus far, I have just characterized independence as
unbuiltness. But in light of an unrelated commitment of mine, this is too simple.
Recall that I do not think there is a single relation, Building; I think there are a
number of different building relations. When I speak—seemingly singularly—of
‘building’, I am generalizing about a class. Because of this, my initial formulation
‘x is not built by anything’ is ambiguous. It might mean that nothing builds x in
any way at all, or it might mean that there is some particular building relation R
such that nothing stands in R to x. The former is particularly robust and general:
x is independent = df 8R~∃yRyx
But the latter is useful too:
x is independentR = df ∃R ~∃yRyx.

This subscripted version yields a number of different versions of independence,

indexed to particular building relations. Some are familiar. For example, mereo-
logical simplicity is a form of independenceR, with R = composition: x is
mereologically simple just in case nothing composes it. And although other
indexed versions of independence do not have familiar labels, they can easily
be introduced. For example, we might introduce the term ‘realization-
independent’ or ‘independentrealization’ to mean that a property or property
instance is not realized by any other. Indeed, note that the indexed versions are
primary. If an entity is independent full stop, that is because it is independentR
for all R.
Now, one might well wonder whether there is a real distinction between the
indexed versions and the fully general version. Is it really possible for something
to be independentR for some R, but not independent in the strongest sense? That
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

is, might something be unbuilt with respect to one building relation, but built
with respect to another? I do not see why not. Presumably an event can be
grounded but uncaused; according to Schaffer, the cosmos is composed but
ungrounded. A mereological fusion is built by composition, but not by ground-
ing; sets are built via set formation, but not by property realization. Those are
candidate cases in which something is independentR1 but not independentR2, and
thus not independent full stop. However, I will not pursue this matter any further
now, though I will discuss related matters at greater length in Chapter 6. The
question only arises because I take there to be a multiplicity of building relations
that need not march in step with each other. (Indeed, the issue here is related to
but distinct from the cases which led me to deny generalist monism in §2.5, and
which will lead me in §6.6.1 to deny that the world has a single building
structure.) But that is a further claim, separate from the question of whether
absolute fundamentality is independence. Those who instead think there is only
one building relation, or only one that is relevant to fundamentality, can sidestep
the indexed version of independenceR—for on such views there is only one, and it
is equivalent to independence full stop—but they would still face the question of
whether absolute fundamentality is independence.
At any rate, worrying about whether something can be independentR1 but not
independentR2 is somewhat orthogonal to the main questions in this chapter: what
are the main candidate notions of absolute fundamentality? How do they relate to
each other? Which if any is the definition we should adopt? Thus far, I have only
characterized one such candidate—independence—and claimed that it is a central
thread in our tangled concept of fundamentality. But it is not the only thread.

5.3 Completeness
The second notion of fundamentality is what I shall call completeness. The basic
idea is that the fundamental entities are not those for which nothing else
accounts, but rather those that do the accounting—they are the things that
account for everything.
Like independence, this basic idea is regularly invoked in discussions
of fundamentality (with minor differences in formulation, of course). Here is
Ted Sider:
It is natural to assume that the fundamental must be “complete”, that the funda-
mental must in some sense be responsible for everything. Completeness seems
definitive of fundamentality. It would be a nonstarter to say that the fundamental
consists solely of one electron: thus conceived the fundamental could not account for
the vast complexity of the world we experience (2011, 105).
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

And here is Jonathan Schaffer:

the basic [i.e., ungrounded] entities must be complete, in the sense of providing
a blueprint for reality. More precisely, a plurality of entities is complete if and only
if [minimally]4 duplicating all these entities, while preserving their fundamental
relations, metaphysically suffices to duplicate the cosmos and its contents. (2010a, 39;
see also 2009, 377)

David Lewis, too, says that “there are only just enough of [the fundamental
properties] to characterize things completely and without redundancy” (1986c,
60), and that, “Fundamental properties figure in a minimal basis on which all else
supervenes. No two possible worlds just alike in their patterns of instantiation of
fundamental properties could differ in any other way” (2009, 205). The list goes
on. L. A. Paul says that “the fundamental structure concerns . . . the constituents
from which everything else is constructed” (2012, 221). Elizabeth Barnes invokes
“the familiar theological metaphor: the fundamental entities are all and only
those entities which God needs to create in order to make the world how it is”
(2012, 876). Carrie Jenkins claims that to call something fundamental is to say
that it is “(part of) that by appeal to which all the rest can be explained” (2013,
212, emphasis in original), and Jessica Wilson claims that “it follows from some
entities’ being fundamental at a world that these entities, individually or together,
provide a ground . . . for all the other goings-on at [that] world” (2014, 561).
Like independence, then, completeness is unquestionably part of what people
have in mind when they engage in fundamentality talk. The appeal is easy to see:
if you are trying to tell the fundamental story about the universe, presumably you
are trying to tell the story of how and why everything is as it is. That is how one
“writes the book of the world”.
But we need a more precise characterization of completeness. The most salient
question is how to best make sense of the ‘account for’ in the basic thought that
‘the complete entities are those that account for everything else’. Traditionally, it
is done modally: the complete entities are those that necessitate everything else,
or those upon which everything else supervenes. (Schaffer and Lewis’s versions
clearly fall into this camp.) But—unsurprisingly—I think it is better done in
terms of building. Here is what a simple modal characterization of completeness
might look like:

Modal Completeness: The set of the xxs is complete at a world w just in case it
necessitates the existence and nature of everything at w.

4
Although Schaffer does not include ‘minimally’ here, an attached footnote makes it clear that he
intends it. He is also clear about the minimality requirement elsewhere (e.g. 2009, 377).
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

There are at least two problems with such a characterization. First, it seems
possible that there be an entity that has lots of relational properties essentially—
relational properties, like coexisting with an x that has properties F and G, which
witness the existence and nature of everything else at its world. In such a world,
that thing (or its singleton set) is complete in the modal sense. Yet intuitively it is
only a witness. It doesn’t make it be the case that the other things are as they are; it
isn’t in fact responsible for the existence and nature of the rest of the world. The
modal notion of completeness therefore does not seem to be what the above
authors really have in mind. Second, it seems that there could be a world in which
everything both exists necessarily and has its nature essentially.5 Perhaps it is a
world in which there are nothing but numbers, or transcendent universals, or
something. (Whatever example is chosen, the things must actually exist too.) In
such a world, any one thing (or its singleton set) is complete in the modal sense.
But, again, that thing is in no sense responsible for the existence and nature of the
things with which it coexists. Modal completeness does not capture the intuitive
idea of truly accounting for everything.
The better move is to characterize completeness in terms of building. Because
building is irreflexive, it has to state that the complete entities are those that build,
not everything, but everything else:
Completeness: The set of the xxs is (or the xxs plurally are, or a non-set-like x is)
complete at a world w just in case its members build ( . . . ) everything else at w.
Three notes about this definition. First, this is just a characterization of the basic
notion. Important further notions can be reached by adding either or both of two
further requirements. One possible addition is minimality: a minimally complete
set is a complete set no proper subset of which is complete. (A minimally
complete plurality is a complete plurality such that nothing among it is complete;
a minimally complete non-set-like entity is a complete entity no part of which is
complete.) The other possible addition is uniqueness: a uniquely complete set is a
complete set such that no distinct set is complete. (Again, mutatis mutandis for
pluralities or single entities other than sets.) Uniqueness entails minimality, but
not vice versa.6 They can be combined to yield a third notion, which I will invoke
in what follows: a unique minimally complete set is a minimally complete set such
that no other set is minimally complete.

5
If Timothy Williamson (2002) is right, everything at our own world exists necessarily.
6
If S is the unique complete set, then no other set can be complete—including proper subsets of
S. But if S is only minimally complete, there can still be an additional minimally complete set; it just
cannot be a proper subset of S.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

Second, notice the ungainly parenthetical alternatives, both in the official defin-
ition and in the ensuing discussion of minimality and completeness. It may seem
most natural to characterize completeness in terms of either a set or a plurality, and
the choice between those two options is just the usual one. (If it is characterized in
plural terms, ‘complete’ is to be treated as a nondistributive predicate.) But
remaining neutral about what exactly is complete requires also leaving open the
option to formulate it in terms of a single non-set-like entity.7 Perhaps an enor-
mous mereological sum, like Schaffer’s One, is minimally complete. Perhaps God is
minimally complete because he sustains the universe. Although I myself am not
drawn to either view, I do wish to allow those who believe such things to be able to
state the completeness theses that they take to be true. Nonetheless, I will hence-
forth ignore the parenthetical alternatives except for one place where it matters;
I will mostly just talk as though completeness is a property of sets.
Third, one could again define up versions of this that are indexed to a
particular building relation. For example, consider “mereological completeness”:
a mereologically complete set at a world w would be a set of atoms of which
everything else at w is composed. But that set would not include the realization
bases of any properties or the grounds of any facts. So the mereologically
complete set at w would not be complete in a stronger sense—it is not a set
that in various ways builds truly everything else. The more intuitive notion of
completeness is rather a stronger one that quantifies over building relations: the
complete set at a world is the set whose members build, in one way or another,
everything else. It is this notion that I will typically have in mind.
I have already pointed out how frequently completeness appears in contempor-
ary discussions of fundamentality. But several of those quoted passages do more
than demonstrate that completeness is one of the standard notions of fundamen-
tality; they also demonstrate that people connect the different notions. Out of
context, the quotes could be misread as ruminations on what ‘fundamentality’
means, with everyone converging on the view that completeness is key. That would
be a mistake. As I have already pointed out, Schaffer’s notion of fundamentality is a
version of independence, defined in terms of the grounding relation. Wilson thinks
fundamentality is undefinable. And, as will become clear in §5.7, Lewis and Sider
both use a notion of fundamentality that is a version of naturalness. In fact, Sider
explicitly argues that his notion of fundamentality cannot be defined in terms of
completeness (2011, 16–18), and Schaffer says that he does not intend the quoted
passage “to define what it is to be fundamental but rather just as a constraint on the
fundamental” (2010, 39n14). Thus at least several of the quoted philosophers are

7
Thanks to David Kovacs here.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

self-consciously making substantive claims here—Schaffer to the effect that the

(grounding-) independent entities are minimally complete, Sider to the effect that
the perfectly structural entities are complete, and Lewis to the effect that the
perfectly natural entities are minimally complete.
Naturalness and structure will have to wait until §5.7. For now, the focus is on
the two building-based notions of fundamentality: independence and complete-
ness. The task at hand is to clarify their relations to each other.

5.4 The Relation between Independence

and Completeness
Independence and completeness are clearly distinct. Completeness says that a
certain set of entities ‘press upwards’, while independence says that nothing
‘presses upwards’ on them. That is, independence and completeness together
reflect the two halves of the familiar phrase ‘unexplained explainers’, which
precisely invokes both notions. The ‘unexplained’ part reflects independence;
the ‘explainers’ part reflects completeness. (This is in contrast with words like
‘fundamental’ and ‘foundational’, which are etymologically neutral between
independence and completeness. Both make reference to the bottom, but neither
distinguishes between ‘flows from nothing’ and ‘from which all else flows’.)
Here’s a different way to see that the concepts are distinct. If building could
hold in certain patterns—patterns that I myself do not think are possible—there
could be a complete set of entities though no independent ones. For example,
suppose building could, per impossible, hold either reflexively or in a circle.
A world in which there was nothing but self-built entities, or nothing but a
building circle, would be a world in which there is a complete set, yet no
independent entities at all. (I owe this point to Jessica Wilson).8
But the fact that the notions are distinct leaves open that there might be true
principles that link them together. In this section, I will consider the following six
such principles:9

8
However, someone who thinks reflexive or symmetric building is possible might prefer a
different notion of independence, one on which the self-built entities or those in the circle do
count as independent after all. See §5.10.
9
Those who prefer to formulate completeness plurally, rather than in terms of sets, should
reformulate these principles as follows:
(1*) Every independent entity is among every complete plurality.
(2*) Only independent entities are among any complete plurality.
(3*) Only independent entities are among any minimally complete plurality.
(4*) All and only the independent entities are complete.
(5*) All and only the independent entities are minimally complete.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

(1) Every independent entity is in every complete set.

(2) Only independent entities are in any complete set.
(3) Only independent entities are in any minimally complete set.
(4) The set of all and only the independent entities is complete.
(5) The set of all and only the independent entities is minimally complete.
(6) There is a unique minimally complete set: the set of all and only the
independent entities.

Each of these principles can be understood in two different ways. First, they
can be understood as invoking the strongest versions of independence and
completeness, those that quantify over all building relations. A thing (fact,
property, what have you) is independent in this strongest sense just in case
nothing builds it in any way whatsoever; it is not the output of any building
relation. And a set of entities is complete in this strongest sense just in case it
builds, in any multiplicity of ways, everything else. Second, the principles can also
be understood as invoking weaker notions of independence and completeness
that are indexed to particular building relations—in each case, indexed to the
same building relation. The technical results go through either way. This will
matter in a moment.
Be warned that my discussion of these six principles is long and somewhat
technical; readers wishing to avoid the details can skip ahead to the end of the
section.
Let’s start at the top. Connecting principle (1) is true; each independent entity
is indeed a member of every complete set. To see this, let a be an independent
entity in some world w. Now consider any set of inhabitants of w that does not
contain a as a member. No such set builds everything else at w, because no such
set builds a. Nothing builds a. So no such set is complete. Thus if there is a
complete set at w, it contains a. Let me be clear: the claim is not that a has to be in
any complete set to account for its own existence, to build itself. Nothing builds

(6*) Only all and only the independent entities are minimally complete: there is a unique
minimally complete plurality.
And those who prefer to formulate completeness in terms of a single non-set-like entity should
reformulate the principles as follows:
(1**) Every independent entity is part of every complete entity.
(2**) Only independent entities are part of any complete entity.
(3**) Only independent entities are part of any minimally complete entity.
(4**) Each independent entity is complete.
(5**) Each independent entity is minimally complete.
(6**) There is a unique minimally complete entity.
I believe that the only place where this matters is in my discussion of how principle (4) depends on
well-foundedness.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

itself. Rather, the claim is that a has to be in any complete set because otherwise it
would be the case that there is something—something in the ‘else’, the set’s
complement—that the set fails to build. Every independent entity must therefore
be in every complete set.
In contrast, connecting principle (2) is obviously false. Many complete sets
contain built entities, because complete sets are cheap. Adding a built entity to
any complete set yields a set that is also complete.
As I move to principles (3) through (6), a minor complication arises. Let me
explain it schematically. For these principles, I will argue for conditional claims
that might naturally be expressed as follows: “principle x is true if building has
feature F ”. But that is not clear enough, given that I do not endorse generalist
monism about building. I do not postulate One True Building Relation whose
features are at issue. So how ought the conditional claims be formulated? There
are two options. The first is “principle x is true if all building relations have
feature F”, where the occurrences of ‘complete’ and ‘independent’ in the prin-
ciples are treated as the fully generalized notions that implicitly quantify over
building relations. The second is “principle x is true for particular building
relations that have feature F”, where the occurrences of ‘complete’ and ‘inde-
pendent’ in the principles are treated as indexed to the particular building
relations in question. The below arguments are intended to show both sorts of
claim. However, I see no reason to complicate an already technical discussion by
doubling the number of arguments—to present each first for the generic claim
and then reformulated for the indexed claim—so I will revert to speaking
generically of building in what’s to come. When I say things like “principle x is
true if building is F”, it can be understood in either the generic way or the indexed
way. There is, I think, only one place where this makes any difference, and I will
relegate discussion of it to a footnote.
To rejoin the main line of argument: up next is principle (3), the claim that
only independent entities appear in any minimally complete set. Here is the
conditional claim: (3) holds just in case building is transitive.10 Since I have
suggested (§3.2) that not all building relations need be transitive, I deny (3) when
taken in full generality. Nonetheless, it might be true for indexed versions of
independence and completeness defined in terms of some particular building
relation that is in fact transitive.
To show that if (3) holds, transitivity holds: imagine the simplest world in
which transitivity fails. This is a world containing only a, b, and c, such that a
builds b, b builds c, and no other building relations obtain—in particular, a does

10
Thanks to Ted Sider for correcting an error here.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

not build c. What are the minimally complete sets in this world? There are two:
{a, b} and {a, c}. Because a alone does not build c, either b or c must be included.
Thus there is a built entity in a minimally complete set, and (3) fails. It follows by
contraposition that if (3) holds, transitivity holds.
To show that if transitivity holds, (3) holds: suppose that (3) fails. Then there is
a built entity b in some minimally complete set S. Let S be the proper subset of
S that contains all members of S except b. By the definition of minimal com-
pleteness, S is not complete. So there is something not built by S, but built by
S plus b. Call it ‘c’. Now let ‘a’ denote whatever builds b. a does not build c. After
all, a is a member of S, and c is just the name given to whatever S builds but S-
fails to build. So a builds b, b builds c, and a does not build c—i.e., building is not
transitive. It follows by contraposition that if building is transitive, (3) is true. In
short, (3) fails iff transitivity does.
What about principle (4)? It says that the set of all and only the independent
entities is complete. Schaffer endorses precisely this in the passage quoted above,
in which he states that the ungrounded entities constitute a “blueprint for reality”
(2010, 39; see also 2009, 377). Kit Fine, too, seems to endorse (4), saying that “it is
natural to understand the concept of . . . the fundamental [as] being whatever
does not reduce to anything else (but to which other things will reduce)”
(2001, 25). So is it true? Like principle (3), it depends. However, the status of
principle (4) does not just depend on whether building is transitive; it also
depends upon the truth of what has been called metaphysical foundationalism.
That is, it also depends on whether building is well-founded in the sense that
whether all chains or structures of building eventually terminate in something
unbuilt.11 Modulo a small wrinkle, then, (4) is true in full generality if and only if
all building relations are transitive and well-founded, and indexed versions will
be true if and only if the particular building relation to which they are indexed is
transitive and well-founded.
This is a nontrivial result. For example, Schaffer endorses (4), but denies that
grounding is transitive (2012). And although he does think that grounding is

11
It might look as though (3) fails if (4) fails. And since I have argued that if (3) fails, building is
not transitive, that would mean that if (4) fails, building is not transitive—contra my claim in the
main text that if (4) fails, either building is not transitive or nor well-founded. But it is not actually
true that if (4) fails, (3) fails. (4) can fail while (3) is true, as shown by the case in which building is
transitive, and a is independent, but b is built from c, which is built from d, which is built from
e . . . and so on ad infinitum (4) is false, because the set of all and only the independent entities is not
complete. (There is a complete set, but it is infinitely large.) But (3) is vacuously true in this case.
That is because (3) has conditional form: it says that if something is a minimally complete set, it
contains only independent entities. But in the case at hand, there is no minimally complete set.
(Mutatis mutandis for (3*) and (3**), as in note 9.)
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

well-founded—see his 2009 and 2010, which arguably mark a change of view
from his 200312—he does not acknowledge that it must be well-founded in order
for it to be true that all and only the ungrounded entities are complete.
First, to show that if building is both transitive and well-founded, (4) holds.
The best way to show this is to note that if building has both features, then
everything is either independent or built by independent entities.13 This is
because the well-foundedness of building entails that every entity is either
i) not on a building chain at all—i.e. neither built nor involved in building
anything else, ii) at the bottom terminus of a building chain, or iii) elsewhere
on a terminating building chain. Entities that meet either i) or ii) are independ-
ent. Entities that meet iii) are not, but the transitivity of building ensures that they
are built by something(s) independent. So if building is both transitive and well-
founded, everything is either independent or built by something independent.
And it is obvious that if everything is either independent or built by something
independent, then the set of all and only the independent entities is complete.
Second, to show that (modulo the wrinkle) if building either fails to be
transitive or fails to be well-founded, (4) fails. I will proceed in two stages. For
the first stage, assume that building is well-founded but not transitive. The
simplest world in which this is the case should be familiar: it is a world containing
only a, b, and c, such that a builds b, b builds c, and no other building relations

12
In 2003, Schaffer “discuss[es] the assumption . . . that there exists a fundamental level . . .
[concluding that] there is no evidence in its favor”. Indeed, he then preferred a “far more palatable
metaphysic in which . . . all entities are equally real” (2003, 498). However, much of the 2003 paper is
really devoted to arguing that parthood might not be well-founded—that the world might be gunky,
that there is not much “evidence for the existence of the mereological atoms” (2003, 501). Thus while
I do think he had not yet reached his current belief in the need for a “ground of being”, I also suspect
that part of the disparity between the 2003 paper and the later papers is due to the fact that he had
also not yet reached his current view that composition is not a building relation—that is, to the fact
that he had not yet concluded that the claim that the world is gunky is not the same as the claim that
there is no fundamental level.
13
This is the place where it matters whether the claim under discussion is the general one or the
indexed one. The claim in the main text is true when interpreted in the general way, namely to mean
that if all building relations are transitive and well-founded, everything is either independent in the
strongest sense (not built in any way) or built by independent (ditto) entities. But the indexed
version of this claim is not obviously true. It is not obviously true that if building relation R is
transitive and well-founded, everything is either independentR or built by independentR entities.
That’s simply because some things just aren’t apt for standing in certain building relations. Suppose
R only holds between facts. Then what do we say about, say, my laptop? We could say that it is
independentR. But we might equally well prefer to say that it is not independentR, that such notions
do not even apply to it. If so, it will not be true that if R is transitive and well-founded, everything is
either independentR or built by independentR entities. But the fix is easy: change the claim to say that
if R is transitive and well-founded, everything that can stand in R is either independentR or built by
independentR entities. The argument for the indexed claim that the set of all and only the
independentR entities is completeR will go through with minor modifications.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

obtain—in particular, a is itself independent, and does not build c. (4) is false in
this world. The set of all and only the independent entities is {a}, but {a} is not
complete. Either or both b or c must be also be included to yield a complete set;
given the failure of transitivity, a alone does not account for c. So if building is
well-founded but not transitive, (4) fails.
For the second stage, assume that building is transitive but not well-founded.
This is a little more complicated, because there are multiple ways for building to
fail to be well-founded. Now, any case in which building relations hold in a circle
can be set aside, because given the assumption of transitivity such cases conflict
with the asymmetry of building. But there are still two other ways for well-
foundedness to fail. One is that no building chains terminate in something
unbuilt; the other is that some do and some instead infinitely descend. (Well-
foundedness says that every building chain terminates in something unbuilt, and
therefore fails as long as not all do. Failures of well-foundedness can be local
rather than total.) If some building chains terminate and some infinitely descend,
(4) is false. To see this, consider a world in which a is independent, but b is built
from c, which is built from d, which is built from e . . . and so on ad infinitum.
Also assume that building is transitive; b is also built from e as well as from any
arbitrary link further down the chain. There is an independent entity in this
world, namely a. But the set of all and only the independent entities—{a}—is not
complete. So if well-foundedness fails in this manner, so too does (4), the claim
that the set of all and only the independent entities is complete.
But what about the case in which building fails to be well-founded because no
building chains terminate in something unbuilt—that is, the case in which there
are no independent entities at all? In such a case, the version of (4) explicitly on
the table is again false. The set of all and only the independent entities is the
empty set, which will fail to be complete if anything else (other than the unit set of
the empty set!) exists. However, recall that I have somewhat arbitrarily chosen to
formulate principles (1)–(6) in terms of sets, rather than in terms of pluralities or,
indeed, a single non-set-like entity (see note 9). There are thus two alternate
versions of (4):

(4*) All and only the independent entities are complete.

(4**) Each independent entity is complete.
And these both suffer from presupposition failure. If there are no independent
entities, they read (in reverse order) like ‘the King of France is bald’ and ‘the
Kings of France are bald’. Whether they are false or truth-valueless depends on
whether one’s preferred treatment of presupposition failure is Russellian (1905)
or Strawsonian (1950), a topic well beyond the scope of this book. This, then, is
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

the wrinkle I mentioned above; it entails that it is perhaps not quite correct to
say that if building is transitive but not well-founded, (4) is false. I shall thus
simply say that (4) holds if and almost only if building is both well-founded
and transitive.
What happens if we add minimality back into the mix, thus moving from
(4) to (5)—the claim that the set of all and only the independent entities are
minimally complete? Nothing at all. (4) is true iff (5) is. It is obvious that
(5) entails (4); that just says that a set that is minimally complete is also complete.
The interesting direction is that (4) entails (5): if the set S of all and only the
independent entities is complete, no proper subset of S can be complete. This is
guaranteed by (1); every independent entity must itself be in each complete set.
Consequently, (5) is actually consistent with the sort of redundancy that typically
thwarts minimality theses. It does not matter if some of the built entities are
‘overbuilt’, i.e. overdetermined, by the independent entities. All the overdeter-
mining independents must still be included in the minimally complete set,
precisely because nothing else builds them.14 If the set of all and only the
independent entities is complete, it is minimally complete.
(1) and (4) together give us (6), the claim that each world contains a unique
minimally complete set: the set of all and only the independent entities. Proof: Let
S be an arbitrary set that is minimally complete at some world w. By the
definition of minimal completeness, we know that no proper subset of S is
complete. By (4), we know that the set containing all and only the independent
entities at w is complete. It follows that S has no proper subset consisting of all
and only the independent entities. But we know from (1) that S contains all the
independent entities. So S itself must contain all and only the independent
entities. Thus, given (1) and (4), the only minimally complete set at any world
is the set of all and only the independent entities. Note that (6) fails if building is
not well-founded. If building is not well-founded and there is at least one
infinitely descending chain, there is no minimally complete set at all, let alone a
unique one. If building is not well-founded and there is at least one circular
dependence chain, there will be more than one minimally complete set.
All told, then, the connections between independence and completeness are
deep and pervasive—if building is transitive and well-founded. If it is, principles
(1), (3), (4), (5), and (6) are all true. If it isn’t, principle (1) remains true, but
(3), (4), (5), and (6) all fail. Thus the relationship between independence and

14
The same point applies to independent entities that are seemingly redundant in that they do no
building work. Such free-spinning cogs still need to be in each minimally complete set, again because
nothing else builds them.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

completeness turns on whether all building relations are transitive and well-
founded in the sense that all building chains terminate in something unbuilt.
First, transitivity. In §3.2, I explicitly did not require that all building relations
be transitive. I pointed out that the transitivity of building is not entailed by the
conjunction of a) the fact that the more fundamental than relation is transitive,
and b) the fact that building bases are always more fundamental than what they
build. I also pointed out that set formation certainly seems to be a building
relation, but is not transitive, and that the transitivity of a few other particular
building relations (composition, grounding) is at least controversial. It is plaus-
ible, then, that not all building relations are transitive. Consequently, I think the
fully general versions of principles (3) through (6) fail. However, since some
building relations quite likely are transitive, some indexed versions of principles
(3) through (6) quite likely go through.
Second, well-foundedness. Must all building relations be well-founded?
That is, is metaphysical foundationalism true? This question deserves its own
subsection.

5.5 Interlude: Is Building Well-Founded?

The foundationalist intuition that all building or at least grounding chains must
terminate is strong.15 For example, Kit Fine says that, “given a truth that stands in
need of explanation, one naturally supposes that it should have a “completely
satisfactory” explanation, one that does not involve cycles and terminates in
truths that do not stand in need of explanation” (2010, 105).
And Jonathan Schaffer says: “There must be a ground of being. If one thing
exists only in virtue of another, then there must be something from which the
reality of the derivative entities ultimately derives” (2010, 37).16 Such claims are
not new. Schaffer cites Aristotle and Leibniz17 as sharing the view (2010, 37n12);

15
Dixon 2016 and Rabin and Rabern 2016 both contain interesting discussion of different
versions of well-foundedness, but appeared too close to publication to be discussed.
16
Again, contrast his 2003. See this chapter’s note 12.
17
Leibniz’s apparent endorsement of well-foundedness is mildly surprising, given that he also,
more famously, endorses the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Recall that the second ex nihilo principle
from §4.2.1 is a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason—nothing exists without a metaphysical
explanation; everything is built. If everything is built, then no building chains ever terminate in
something unbuilt. But this can be made compatible with a commitment to the thought that “there
must be a ground of being” in either of two ways. First, Leibniz might reject the irreflexivity of
building, and claim that the things at the bottom are self-building. Then everything could be built
and all building chains terminate (in something self-built rather than unbuilt). Second, he might
intend the Principle of Sufficient Reason to be restricted to contingent things. Then everything
contingent could be built compatibly with something necessary—presumably God—serving as the
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

other historical figures can probably be added to the list. The view is widely,
though by no means universally,18 held. Still, the claim that the view is widely
held is a long way from the claim that it is true. Ought we to believe it?
Answering that question requires again distinguishing between different ways
in which a building chain can fail to terminate. One way involves circles: a builds
b, and b builds a, or perhaps a builds b, and b builds c, and c builds a. The other
way involves infinite descent: a is built by b is built by c is built by d . . . An
infinitely descending chain of building never closes back on itself, but simply
continues ‘downward’ forever. The distinction between circles and infinite des-
cent matters for the following reason. Nothing I have said about the nature of
building—about what unifies the building family—entails anything at all about
whether infinite descent is possible. But I have said things about the nature of
building that entail that circles are not possible.
Most obviously, my claim that building relations are asymmetric entails that
‘tight’ building circles of the form ‘a builds b and b builds a’ are not possible.
Now, had I claimed that all building relations are transitive, similar reasoning
would show that no building circles are possible.19 Of course, I have not claimed
that all building relations are transitive. But it is nonetheless the case that other
claims I have made entail that no building circles are possible. That follows, not
from the asymmetry and transitivity of building, but rather from the transitivity
and asymmetry of the more fundamental than relation—combined with the
principle I called (B!MFT) when I introduced it in §3.2. (B!MFT), recall,
states that for all building relations B, if x at least partially B’s y, then x is more
fundamental than y. Here’s the argument. Suppose for reductio that a builds b, b
builds c, and c builds a. (This is the kind of ‘bigger’ circle that is not ruled out by
the asymmetry of building alone.) It follows from (B!MFT) that a is more
fundamental than b, b is more fundamental than c, and c is more fundamental

ultimate terminus of all building chains. I merely note these as possible ways of evading the conflict
between the well-foundedness of building and the claim that everything is built; I do not intend any
legitimate Leibniz scholarship here.
18
Gideon Rosen explicitly leaves the matter open (2010, 116). Barbara Montero also thinks it
epistemically possible that the world has no bottom layer of absolutely fundamental entities, and that
we ought to “formulate our philosophical theories” such as physicalism accordingly (2006, 178).
Ricki Bliss defends the possibility of circles of ground (2014). And Graham Priest tells me that the
rejection of well-foundedness was central to Madhyamaka, which paved the way for subsequent
Mahayana Buddhisms. This rejection apparently turns not on a claim of infinite descent, but rather
on a claim of circularity: all being is codependent. See his 2013 and ms; see also the Bliss and Priest
forthcoming anthology.
19
The transitivity of building entails that seemingly larger circles of building in fact involve
failures of asymmetry. Suppose that a builds b, and b builds c, and c builds a. If building were
transitive, it would also be the case that b builds a, in violation of asymmetry.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

than a. It follows from the transitivity of the more fundamental than relation that
a is more fundamental than c. But c is also more fundamental than a, in violation
of the asymmetry of the more fundamental than relation. In short: my claims
about the intimate connection between building and relative fundamentality—
partly articulated by means of (B!MFT), and to be explored much further in
Chapter 6—entail that no circles of building are possible. Those who claim that
such circles are possible must rethink the connection between building and
relative fundamentality. (See §3.2.)
So much for failures of foundationalism via circles. But what about failures of
foundationalism via infinite descent? This is a quite different matter. Sider
provides some reasons to think that building can’t be well-founded (2011,
145–7). And although I feel the force of the intuition that there must be a ground
of being, I think the arguments in its favor are less than compelling.
For example, Schaffer claims that if building20 is not well-founded, “being
would be infinitely deferred, never achieved” (2010, 62). Taking this passage
seriously requires ignoring the fact (noted above) that denying that building is
well-founded is not equivalent to asserting that there are no independent entities,
that nothing has an ultimate building base or ground. Failures of well-
foundedness can be localized. Set that aside, though; presumably what Schaffer
intends to say is that that if no building chains terminate—if there are no
independent entities—“being would be infinitely deferred, never achieved”. The
phrase is elegant. But what exactly is it supposed to mean?
Perhaps it means that nothing would truly ‘have being’—that is, nothing would
be fully real, or exist in the strongest sense. But why should we believe that?
Presumably the background assumption is that only independent entities are
fully real, that the built has a lesser degree of reality (see Chapter 1). I myself do
not agree. But even if I grant the assumption, I do not see an argument for well-
foundedness here. If there are no independent entities, and only independent
entities are fully real, then nothing is fully real. Turning this into an argument for
well-foundedness requires tollens-ing back by means of the claim that something
is fully real. But why assume that? Once these mysterious ‘degrees of reality’ are
countenanced, what is the reason to insist that something must have degree of
reality 1?
Or perhaps the quotation means that if building chains never terminate in
independent entities, nothing would exist at all. But, again, why believe that?
I can think of two reasons. One thought might be that only independent entities

20
In particular, he is talking about “a relation of metaphysical priority . . . that can hold between
actual concrete objects” (2010, 36).
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

exist; built entities do not merely have a ‘lesser degree of reality’, but do not exist,
period. This amounts to a view that I call flat-worldism—the claim that there are
no built entities. Hardly something to be assumed without argument! (Indeed, in
Chapter 8, I will argue that it is false.) But even if it is true, it would not establish
that building is well-founded in anything like the sense on the table. Rather, it
would establish that there is no such thing as building. Nothing is built; there are
no relata to serve as the ‘output’ of any building relation. There are no priority
chains, terminating or not.
The other possible reason to think that if there are no independent entities,
nothing would exist at all involves a hidden premise: namely, that only inde-
pendent entities can build anything. That claim, together with the claim that
there are no independent entities, really does entail that nothing exists at all: there
is nothing unbuilt, and nothing built. But why accept the hidden premise? If
correct, it would be the case that all nonfundamentalia spring directly from the
bottom, which certainly cuts against something most of us believe—namely that
the world is hierarchically structured. Things come together to build other things,
which in turn come together to build yet less fundamental things. Subatomic
particles build atoms, which together build molecules of various sorts, which
together build things like chairs and the cats that sleep upon them. In short,
I simply do not see how to turn Schaffer’s “infinitely deferred, never achieved”
passage into a convincing argument for well-foundedness. (For further attempts,
see Cameron 2008).
The seeds of another possible argument can be found in something else
Schaffer says in the same article: namely, that the requirement that “all priority
chains terminate . . . provides the kind of hierarchical structure against which the
question of what is fundamental makes sense” (2010, 37). However, I see no
reason to take this very seriously either. First, again, not all priority chains need to
terminate in order for there to be fundamental entities. If some chains terminate
and some do not, there are fundamental entities even though building is not well-
founded. Second, even if no building chains terminate, the question ‘what is
fundamental?’ still makes perfect sense. The answer is ‘nothing’. Third, what
provides genuinely ‘hierarchical structure’ is not the existence of a bottom level of
independent entities, but rather—as I’ve just suggested—a complex structured
array of building relations. If the xxs build the yys, which in turn build the zzs
(and so forth), there is hierarchical structure regardless of whether or not the xxs
are independent. Indeed, there is more hierarchical structure than there would be
if the xxs were independent but directly built each of the yys, zzs, and so on. The
hierarchical structure is constituted by relations of relative fundamentality, not
absolute. So the issue about hierarchical structure is misguided, unless there is
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

reason to think that if nothing is absolutely fundamental, nothing stands in

relative fundamentality relations either—that if nothing is absolutely fundamen-
tal, nothing is more fundamental than anything else. There is no reason to think
that, and plenty of reason to think the opposite. Toward the end of §6.4.2, I argue
in some detail that our relative fundamentality judgments are not hostage to the
existence of a fundamental level.
I claim, then, that these passages from Schaffer do not contain any reason to
believe well-foundedness. Now, I cannot pretend that those arguments are the
only possible ones; presumably there might be other ways to establish it. But my
basic stance is clear: I have yet to see a decent argument for the doctrine that all
priority chains must terminate, that building is well-founded. The doctrine is
backed by a powerful intuition, and that is all. And it is not even clear how
seriously to take that intuition. After all, it contradicts another powerful
intuition—namely, that everything is explained, that nothing comes to be ex
nihilo, in the second (vertical building) sense from §4.2.1. I do not know whether
that intuition should be taken seriously either, but it has had an influential career
as the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
Let me be clear that I do not deny that building is well-founded. My claim
is rather that I have no idea whether it is. I would consequently prefer not to
assume it.

5.6 In Defense of Independence over Completeness

So where does all this leave us with respect to the relation between independence
and completeness? Regardless of the status of well-foundedness and transitivity,
the two concepts are distinct; the complete entities press upwards, while the
independent entities are such that nothing presses upwards on them. If building
is both well-founded and transitive, then the set of all and only the independent
entities in a world is the unique minimally complete set there. But if building fails
to be either one, then if there are any independent entities, their set is not
complete at all—let alone minimally complete.21 And it is a live issue that various
building relations might fail to be transitive, or fail to be well-founded.
In short, these are decidedly not interchangeable notions. So which of the two is
the better concept of absolute fundamentality? Strictly speaking, I do not need to
answer this question; both are defined in terms of building, and my overall claim
in this chapter is that fundamentality must be defined in terms of building if it is to

21
This conditional formulation dodges the “small wrinkle” from earlier.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

be defined at all. So, strictly speaking, either would do. Still, independence seems
to me better suited to serve as the central concept of fundamentality. Here’s why.
First, until very recently—indeed, until revising a draft of this chapter—I had
never seen anyone use completeness as their sole meaning of the term ‘funda-
mental’. Jenkins (2013) seems to do that, though she does not directly defend her
choice against the alternative notion, namely independence. Typically, complete-
ness is only invoked in conjunction with either some version of independence, or
with naturalness. What I mean is that when people make the common claim that
the fundamental entities, taken together, are minimally complete, they do not
mean it as a definition. Rather, what they mean is that a group of entities that has
one feature also has another, in the way that someone might say that robins are
the first birds of spring. That is not a definition of robinhood, or a statement of
what it is to be a robin. Similarly, most people who say that the fundamental
entities, taken together, are complete are not defining fundamentality; they are
not saying that what it is to be a fundamental entity is to be a member of a
minimally complete set. As in the passages from Schaffer, Sider, and Lewis
quoted earlier, there is typically a further characterization of fundamentality in
the background. In contrast, independence-fundamentality is invoked all over
philosophy, often without completeness.
This sociological point is underscored by the second reason to take inde-
pendence as the preferred building-based notion of fundamentality: independ-
ence is in some real sense prior to completeness. To see this, let w be a ‘flat’
world—in w everything is independent, and nothing is built. In w, it is not only
the case that there is a unique minimally complete set, as guaranteed by (6); it is
also the case that there is a unique complete set. The only complete set is the set
of all and only the independent entities—i.e., the set of everything that exists
there. Thus the claim “everything in w is fundamental” is true regardless of
whether we interpret it as meaning “everything in w is in the complete set” or as
meaning “everything in w is independent”. But now notice why there is this
overlap. The independents are in the unique complete set because they are
independent. They are in the unique complete set because nothing else builds
them, not because they do any building work of their own. None of them do any
building work; everything at w is an ‘idler’ in roughly22 Lewis’s sense (2009,
205). So what makes each one a member of the unique complete set is the fact

22
Roughly. As we shall see, Lewis’s notion of absolute fundamentality is perfect naturalness. So
his idea of an absolutely fundamental thing that ‘does no work’ is not an unbuilt entity that builds
nothing, but rather a perfectly natural entity that “play[s] no active role in the workings of nature”
(2009, 205; see also 212–14).
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

that it is independent. But the converse is not true. It is not the case that what
makes each one count as independent is the fact that it is a member of the
unique complete set.
Overall, then, I find it much more plausible to take independence as the
primary building-based notion of fundamentality than to take completeness
that way. I shall continue to do so. Thus far, then, my claim is a conditional
one: if absolute fundamentality is defined in terms of building—rather than
defined in completely alternative terms, or not defined at all—then to be abso-
lutely fundamental is to be unbuilt. This is a long way from the claim that to be
absolutely fundamental is to be unbuilt. I still have work to do.

5.7 Naturalness
The alternative to defining absolute fundamentality in terms of building is to
define it in terms of naturalness. David Lewis is primarily responsible for the
existence and popularity of this alternative. He relies heavily on the notion of
naturalness—which he also calls ‘sparseness’—throughout his work (1983a,
1984, 1986c), and explicitly connects it with fundamentality. He says, for
example, that
physics has its short list of ‘fundamental physical properties’ . . . what physics has
undertaken, whether or not ours is a world where the undertaking will succeed, is an
inventory of the sparse properties . . . when a property [is sparse], I call it a natural
property (1986c, 60).

Or, more directly: “fundamental properties are those properties that I have
elsewhere called ‘perfectly natural’” (2009, 204). More recently, Ted Sider has
extended Lewis’s notion of naturalness beyond things like predicates, properties,
and classes. His notion of structure—“a generalization and extension of Lewisian
naturalness” (2011, vii) “allow[s] us to ask, of expressions of any grammatical
category, whether they carve at the joints” (2011, 8). Like Lewis, he too connects
naturalness/structure with fundamentality, saying:
I connect structure to fundamentality. The joint-carving notions are the funda-
mental notions; a fact is fundamental when it is stated in joint-carving terms.
A central task of metaphysics has always been to discern the ultimate or
fundamental reality underlying the appearances. I think of this task as the
investigation of reality’s structure (2011, vii).

Indeed, he explicitly states that he uses the term “‘fundamental’ . . . more or less
interchangeably with ‘joint-carving’ and ‘part of reality’s structure’” (2011, 5).
Further, he rejects Schaffer and Fine’s reliance on grounding (2011, Chapter 8),
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

and tries not to engage in any independence-style locutions. His core notion of
fundamentality, in short, is naturalness-based.23
But what is naturalness, or structure, or whatever we want to call it? Sider
explicitly says that he cannot define ‘structure’ (2011, 11), and rejects several
reductive hypotheses (§2.4). Lewis also says surprisingly little in either “New
Work for a Theory of Universals” (1983a) or “Putnam’s Paradox” (1984), the first
places where he heavily relies on the notion. Still, we can glean a fair bit of
information about it, or at least about what it does. Lewis begins by characterizing
naturalness’ opposite, claiming that abundant properties, unlike sparse or natural
properties, “do nothing to capture facts of resemblance . . . do nothing to capture
the causal powers of things . . . [and] carve reality at the joints—and everywhere
else as well” (1983a, 13). That tells us at least some of what is special about the
sparse or natural properties: they do capture facts of resemblance, causal powers,
and carve reality only at the joints. These thoughts are echoed in the famous,
slightly later, passage from On the Plurality of Worlds:
sharing of them makes for qualitative similarity, they carve at the joints, they are
intrinsic, they are highly specific, the sets of their members are ipso facto not entirely
miscellaneous, there are only just enough of them to characterize things completely
and without redundancy (1986c, 60).

This, of course, adds in something we have already seen—that Lewis thinks that the
natural properties are minimally complete in close to the sense from the previous
section.24 What else does he say about naturalness? Natural properties are supposed
to help distinguish laws of nature from other Humean generalizations (1983a,
39–43). They are supposed to serve as ‘reference magnets’25 or ‘eligible contents’
for our terms (1983a, 45–54; 1984). They are also supposed to help characterize
duplication—duplicates share all perfectly natural properties—and hence intrinsic-
ness (1983a, 27). They are “not at all disjunctive, or determinable, or negative”
(2009, 204). Finally, Lewis is explicit from the beginning that naturalness comes in
degrees (1983a, 13). This means that the candidate notion of absolute fundamen-
tality is perfect naturalness—naturalness to the highest degree.

23
Another metaphysician whose notion of fundamentality is naturalness-based is Phillip Bricker.
He relies on “the distinction between the fundamental or (perfectly) natural properties and relations,
and the rest” (1996, 227, italics his); he talks of a property or relation’s being “fundamental, or perfectly
natural ” (2008, 115, italics his). This is worth noting in its own right, but also because Bricker is a
central link in the chain between Lewis and Sider: Lewis was Bricker’s Ph.D. advisor, and Bricker was
Sider’s.
24
“Close to the sense from the previous section” because Lewis defines completeness modally,
and I defined it in terms of building.
25
Lewis himself seems never to have used this phrase. It is actually due to Harold Hodes (1984,
135). Credit to Ted Sider for the sleuthing.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

That sketch contains a lot of seemingly disparate pieces: qualitative similarity,

joint-carvingness, intrinsicness, lawlikeness, eligibility. (See Schaffer 2004, Dorr
and Hawthorne 2013, and Thompson 2016 for further discussion of these pieces.)
Consequently, there is a question here about how to best understand the relations
among these strands.
There are two main interpretive possibilities. First, Lewis might mean a few of
them to carve out the core notion—as more-or-less analytic claims about how he
intends to use the term ‘natural’—with the rest as substantive claims about what
work natural properties do. Second, perhaps ‘naturalness’ is supposed to be a
theoretical term, introduced by its job description, and referring to whatever it is
that plays or realizes the naturalness role. This second interpretive possibility
makes none of the individual strands analytic or meaning-constitutive. If nothing
meets the role at all, then there is no such thing as naturalness (1970, 432). But if
it turns out that the role is almost occupied, although nothing quite does all the
work—say, perhaps some natural properties turn out to be disjunctive after all—
then naturalness does exist, and we were just slightly wrong about its nature. (See
Lewis on “near-realizations”: 1970, 83; 1972, 253.)
The second is likely what Lewis intended; it fits well with Lewisian strategies
elsewhere, and with his own account of theoretical terms. John Hawthorne and
Cian Dorr argue this point in more detail (2013). Sider, too, both interprets Lewis
this way (2011, 88) and treats ‘structure’ as a theoretical term himself (2011,
10–11)). However, the difference between the two interpretations doesn’t matter
too much for my purposes. The precise formulation of certain questions will vary
according to which interpretation is adopted, but the basic issues are the same
either way. One central issue is (first interpretation) whether there really is a
unified concept of naturalness here, or (second interpretation) whether any single
phenomenon plays the naturalness role. Another central issue is whether natur-
alness is really a concept of fundamentality at all, rather than of something else
altogether. I will bracket these questions for now, to return to them in §5.9.
For the moment, then, I will spot its proponents the notion of naturalness. We
can make some headway thinking about the relation between naturalness-based
fundamentality and building-based fundamentality despite not knowing what
exactly naturalness is supposed to be.

5.8 The Relation between Independence

and Naturalness
It is obvious that naturalness/structure and independence are distinct. None
of the characteristic notions used to characterize naturalness appear in the
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

definition of independence. And although the modal version of completeness

does appear in the sketch of naturalness—in the thought that the natural entities
are minimally complete—this is best stripped out for my purposes, or at least not
made central. That’s because I have suggested that the intuition behind com-
pleteness is better captured in terms of building than modally, and I am currently
investigating the possibility of an alternative to a building-based characterization
of fundamentality.
Still, as with independence and completeness, the fact that the concepts are
distinct leaves open that there might be true principles that connect them. This
time, I will only consider two:
(1) All perfectly natural entities26 are independent.
(2) All independent entities are perfectly natural.

Thankfully, here the arguments are less complicated.

First, principle (1). Without the ‘perfectly’, the principle would clearly be false;
there are many more-or-less natural kinds or properties that are built—being a
mammal, being a water molecule. The more interesting question, reflected in the
formulation of (1), is whether any perfectly natural entities can be built. This is
simply because independence is not a graded notion, and its proper analogue is
therefore perfect naturalness. So can there be a perfectly natural, built entity? Yes.
Consider a proton, for example. Protons are not fundamental in the independ-
ence sense; they are composed of quarks held together by the strong nuclear
force. Or, to avoid the pesky complexities of actual science, perhaps I should
instead offer a thought experiment. Let a schmoton be a kind of particle that is
composed of exactly two indiscernible, perfectly natural parts. Are schmotons—
well, schmotonhood—perfectly natural? Well, why wouldn’t it be? Schmoton-
hood meets all of the criteria explored in the previous subsection. Schmotonhood
is intrinsic. Schmotonhood makes for perfect qualitative similarity; every schmo-
ton is exactly like every other schmoton, including vis à vis causal powers.
Schmotonhood figures in laws, let us stipulate—protonhood certainly does,
after all. Can it figure in fundamental laws? Again, why not? It would be
illegitimate to say that it cannot because it fails to be perfectly natural; that
would obviously be question-begging in the current context. It would also be
illegitimate to say that it cannot figure in fundamental laws because it is built; that
cannot be the right criterion of fundamental lawhood for one who intends to

26
As usual, I intend ‘entities’ to be a catch-all term for whatever ontological category is taken to
be appropriate. Perhaps it is properties or kinds; perhaps, à la Sider, naturalness can apply more
broadly.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

provide an alternative, nonbuilding-based notion of fundamentality. In sum, I do

not see how it could be denied that schmotonhood is a perfectly natural property,
at least according to the rather nebulous criteria of naturalness sketched above.
Indeed, I think that any intuitive pressure to deny that schmotonhood (or
protonhood) is perfectly natural entirely stems from the fact that it is built.
That is, I think it stems from confusing precisely the two notions of fundamen-
tality that I am trying to keep distinct.
A very different sort of case can also be used to show that built entities
can be perfectly natural or structural. Instead of thinking about properties,
particularly those possessed by material objects and subject to empirical
investigation, consider again the kinds of things metaphysicians talk about:
ontological categories, abstract objects, and so forth. Consider, in particular,
sets. Can a set be perfectly natural? By Lewis’s own lights, absolutely. After all,
his notion of naturalness applies in the first instance—perhaps exclusively—to
properties, and he thinks that properties are sets. They are sets of actual and
possible objects (1986c, 50–7). So some sets are perfectly natural. But all sets
are built—they are built of their members. For Lewis, they are built by a two-
stage process involving two different building relations. (Of course, Lewis
himself doesn’t speak of building.) The operation of singleton formation
generates singleton sets from the individual members; those singletons then
mereologically compose the set (1991). So Lewis himself is committed to the
claim that there are perfectly natural, nonindependent entities—namely, some
sets. Indeed, because he thinks that i) some properties are perfectly natural, ii)
all properties are sets, and iii) all sets are built, he is committed to the claim
that there is a sense in which all perfectly natural properties are built. Sider,
too, considers sets to be structural but built, though for him the claim is
slightly different. Loosely speaking, it is that the ontological category SET is
structural, rather than merely thinking that some sets in particular—the
perfectly natural properties—are structural. More precisely, since he prefers
not to say that entities are structural (2011, 164–5), his claim is that sets
exist in the fundamental sense, and that the relation of set membership is
structural (Chapter 13, personal communication).
What about principle (2)? Can the two notions of fundamentality on the table
come apart in the other direction? Can there be independence without perfect
naturalness? Yes. The simplest way to show this is that traditionally, certainly for
Lewis, only properties, predicates, and sets can be natural. It makes no sense to
say of a particular thing like an object that it is natural. On this conception,
obviously there are things that are independent but not natural: independent
entities that are not properties or sets.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

Now, this point not only shows that principle (2) is false, but starts to call into
question the whole project of treating fundamentality as naturalness. I will
explore this point in more detail in the next section.

5.9 In Defense of Independence over Naturalness

My goal in the last section was just to show that independence and perfect
naturalness can come apart. There are built entities that are perfectly natural,
and there are independent entities that are not perfectly natural. But only at the
very end did I start to say anything about which is the better notion of absolute
fundamentality. What can be said in favor of independence over naturalness?
I offer five arguments, in roughly ascending order of importance.
First, there is a conceptual argument in favor of independence over natural-
ness. Imagine the following two worlds. In w1, there are no independent entities.
It is a world of infinite descent—turtles all the way down—in which no building
chains terminate in something unbuilt. Well-foundedness fails totally, rather
than just locally; everything whatsoever is built. Nonetheless, there are perfectly
natural properties or entities. w2, in contrast, is a world in which building is well-
founded. All building chains terminate (originate?) in unbuilt, independent
entities. But w2 is a non-cooperative, anti-Lewisian world. There are no natural
kinds, there are no exceptionless laws, and simplicity is no guide to truth. (I have
argued that w1 is genuinely possible by arguing for the truth of principle (1) just
above. The possibility of w2 is, admittedly, less clear, because the status of
principle (2) is less clear.) Question: in which world, if either, is there a funda-
mental level? In which world, if either, is anything fundamental? In w2. Clearly.
Now, this is nothing but a piece of conceptual analysis. It is a purely verbal
point about how to use the word ‘fundamental’. It does not show, and is not
intended to show, that naturalness is a useless notion. I certainly do not think that
it is—or, at least, that its various individual aspects and components are. Rather,
I simply deny that our concept of fundamentality is a concept of similarity, or
law-governedness, or intrinsicness, or anything like that. It is, as the word
suggests, a concept of being at the bottom.
Second, at least in Lewis’s hands, naturalness seems to blur the line between a
story about what fundamentality is and a story about what is fundamental. Recall
that one of the key features of naturalness (on the first interpretation from §4.7),
or one of the jobs that he calls upon it to do (on the second interpretation), is to
characterize duplication: “two things are qualitative duplicates if they have
exactly the same perfectly natural properties” (1983a, 27). He then uses duplica-
tion to characterize intrinsicness, saying that a property is intrinsic iff it is shared
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

between duplicates (26). It follows, as Lewis notes, that all perfectly natural
properties are intrinsic, though not vice versa (27). So if fundamentality just is
perfect naturalness, then all of the fundamental properties are intrinsic. Indeed,
in the famous passage from Plurality quoted above, Lewis just lumps intrinsic-
ness in with the other aspects of naturalness. But surely this involves moving
from a claim about what fundamentality in part is to a claim about what the
fundamental entities happen to actually be like. Shouldn’t it be an open possibility
that the fundamental entities are not intrinsic? The independence understanding
of fundamentality does leave this open; the idea that the fundamental things are
unbuilt is completely neutral about what is fundamental. Maybe it is whatever
physicists tell us it is, maybe it is Schaffer’s One, maybe it is the mind of God.
Maybe it is a lot of intrinsic properties over space-time points; maybe it is a vast
network of relations.27 It is whatever is unbuilt. Regardless of whether such
neutrality is a requirement on an account of fundamentality or merely a desid-
eratum, it speaks in favor of independence over naturalness.
The third and fourth reasons to prefer an independence characterization of
fundamentality have to do with two central strands of Lewis’s characterization of
naturalness. These problems are not affected by whether we think of those
strands as more-or-less analytic claims about the nature of naturalness (first
interpretation), or as different aspects of the job description (second interpret-
ation). The two strands I have in mind are the following:
Similarity: A property P is perfectly natural iff things that possess it are
perfectly qualitatively similar (in that respect).28
Legality: A property P is perfectly natural iff it figures in fundamental laws of
nature.

The third reason to prefer an independence characterization of fundamentality to

a naturalness characterization has to do with each claim taken separately; the
fourth is that they are in tension with each other.29

27
See Hawthorne 2006 for some related ideas.
28
Dorr and Hawthorne characterize this strand by saying “the more natural a property is, the
more it makes for similarity among things that have it” (2013, 21).
29
There is a preliminary complication with each of these two strands—namely, that they are
circular. Consider Similarity. What is it for two things to be perfectly intrinsically qualitatively
similar? Presumably, it is for them to be duplicates. If so, Similarity basically says that the perfectly
natural properties are all and only those that are shared between duplicates. But Lewis defines
duplication as the sharing of all perfectly natural properties (1983a, 27). So we have a circle of
interdefinition, and Similarity does not actually tell us much about what it is for a property to be
perfectly natural. A related issue afflicts Legality. Here, the key question is, what is it for a law of
nature to be fundamental? On a naturalness-based account of fundamentality, a fundamental law is
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

Third, then, independence is more easily generalizable beyond properties and

predicates than either Similarity or Legality, and thus—to the extent that Simi-
larity and Legality express central aspects of naturalness—is more easily gener-
alizable than naturalness. Independence clearly can apply to any ontological
category. Failing to stand as the output of a building relation is not the special
bailiwick of properties; anything can fail to be built. (Indeed, if there are any
entities that somehow cannot be the relata of any building relation, they are
automatically independent.)
In contrast, it is at best unclear how to generalize either Similarity or Legality
beyond properties and predicates, as Sider wants to do. He acknowledges this
about Similarity (2011, §6.2), saying that:
it seems inapplicable to quantifiers and sentential connectives, for example. Quan-
tifiers and sentential connectives aren’t “shared”, nor do they have instances, so we
can’t assess whether their sharing makes for qualitative similarity or whether the sets
of their instances are highly miscellaneous (103).

It is similarly hard to see how to extend Legality to yield a fully general notion.
Perhaps things other than properties—notably, quantifiers, connectives, and
various mathematical operators—in some sense ‘figure in’ laws of nature. But
Legality still falls short, because it is unsuited to picking out what we might think
of as metaphysical structure. Consider, for example, the question of whether the
ontological category PROPERTY is a natural or structural one. This seems like a
legitimate question. (It is unquestionably a legitimate question whether that
ontological category is independent. Indeed, it is not only legitimate but live; it
is the question of whether certain versions of nominalism are true.) But
PROPERTY—the ontological category, rather than any particular property—
doesn’t figure in any laws of nature. The same point goes for various other
ontological categories: SET, CAUSE, and, indeed, LAW. Thus, either none of
these notions are structural, or the broader notion of structure must be reached
by some other means than by generalizing particular aspects of naturalness like
Similarity and Legality. Perhaps the relevant notion here is not Legality proper,

presumably a law—whatever exactly that is (there is no obvious reason that those who adopt a
naturalness-based account of fundamentality need also adopt Lewis’s account of lawhood)—that
only invokes perfectly natural properties. In which case it is again not very illuminating to be told
that the perfectly natural properties are those that figure in fundamental laws.
I have called this issue a ‘preliminary complication’, and relegated it to a footnote. I mention it
largely to make clear the limits of these statements of similarity and legality. They are not and cannot
be reductive definitions of naturalness. Rather, they are simply articulations of two of the central
threads of the notion, or aspects of the job description—aspects that are not intended to stand on
their own. See Lewis 2009, 204.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

but rather something more like ‘required to make full sense of the world’? If that
is what is meant, things like properties and laws and numbers and so on might
well count as ‘natural’ or ‘structural’ after all. But if that is what is meant, then
completeness, not Legality, is the crucial aspect of naturalness, and Lewis and
Sider do not utilize a nonbuilding-based notion of fundamentality after all. In
short, insofar as we want a notion of fundamentality that can apply across the
board, to entities of any ontological category—and to any ontological category
itself—independence is better positioned than naturalness. At least, that is the
case if we follow Lewis in taking Similarity and Legality to express central aspects
of naturalness, or the naturalness role.
Fourth, Similarity and Legality are in tension with each other, and thus should
not both be part of the naturalness package.30 To make this point, it will be
helpful to break apart the two directions of the biconditionals, yielding:
SimilarityA: If a property P is perfectly natural, things that possess it are
perfectly qualitatively similar (in that respect.
SimilarityB: If a property P is such that things that possess it are perfectly
qualitatively similar (in that respect).
LegalityA: If a property P is perfectly natural, it figures in fundamental laws.
LegalityB: If a property P figures in fundamental laws, it is perfectly natural.
I will argue that SimilarityA is in tension with LegalityB, and that SimilarityB is in
tension with LegalityA. It follows that we should not endorse both Similarity and
Legality, and they ought not both be part of naturalness.
The problem with endorsing both SimilarityA and LegalityB is that they together
entail a falsehood. They together entail that any property that figures in funda-
mental laws makes for perfect qualitative similarity. But this is false. Properties
that figure in fundamental laws of nature can fail to make for perfect qualitative
similarity. Consider the property having mass. Things that have this property can
be otherwise very different—not just in what they are like in other respects,31 but

30
Schaffer 2004 argues for a related point. He and I agree that Lewisian naturalness is a bit of a
jumble, but focus on different aspects of that jumble. He claims that there are really two none-
quivalent conceptions of naturalness to be found in Lewis: a ‘scientific’ conception defined by what
I have called Similarity (though he brings in causal powers as a separate principle), and a ‘funda-
mental’ conception defined by minimal completeness. In contrast, I set minimal completeness aside
completely; it is a building-based notion. I argue that Similarity and Legality are incompatible with
each other—or, better, they are jointly incompatible with plausible claims about the relation between
perfect similarity and fundamental lawhood.
31
Things that have mass can be otherwise extremely different from each other—certainly more
different than things that have the property being an electron, for example. This raises the following
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

in the very respect of mass itself. Having mass, after all, is highly determinable.
Some things have mass by having 2.12986 milligrams mass; other things have mass
by having 17.89180 kilograms mass. Yet it is the determinable property, not its
determinates, that figures in laws of nature that are about as close to fundamental
as we can currently formulate (for some related ideas, see Hawthorne 2006, 235;
Wilson 2012).
Further, LegalityA and SimilarityB should not both be part of naturalness
either, because they, too, together entail a falsehood. They entail that any
property that makes for perfect qualitative similarity must figure in fundamental
laws. This, too, is false. Properties that make for perfect qualitative similarity can
fail to figure in fundamental laws of nature. Consider the sort of duplication that
Lewis uses as his very first example of the benefits of the notion of naturalness
(1983a, 25–7), and which is also standardly invoked to illustrate supervenience
claims. Suppose that I actually have a molecule-for-molecule duplicate. She and
I share many properties, including the highly complex, highly conjunctive, highly
specific property being KB-like, which basically specifies all of our qualitative
similarities.32 Clearly, all instances of being KB-like are perfectly similar.
But, equally clearly, the property does not figure in any laws, fundamental or
otherwise.
Now, perhaps these inconsistencies can be smoothed away. They are arguably
not central to Lewis’s overall project; he could still get at the gist of naturalness
without endorsing precisely Similarity and Legality above. For example, perhaps
he should only have endorsed both SimilarityA and LegalityA, or perhaps only
SimilarityB and LegalityB. (Unfortunately, however, both SimilarityB and Legali-
tyA seem independently false. The case of being KB-like arguably falsifies Similar-
ityB. And Lewis himself takes ‘idlers’—perfectly natural properties that figure in
no laws—to be possible (2009, 212–14), which directly falsifies LegalityA.) But
even if all the inconsistencies and tensions can be ironed out, so that we have a
coherent concept of or job description for naturalness, it is not at all clear why we
are supposed to think that there is a unified phenomenon here.
This brings us to my fifth reason for preferring an independence character-
ization of fundamentality to a naturalness characterization. Since it is fairly clear
that there are multiple nonequivalent aspects to the concept of naturalness—
much of my preceding discussion can be taken to show that—I shall frame this

bonus question: Does the fact that instances of electron are more qualitatively similar to each other
than instances of mass entail that being an electron is more natural than having mass?
32
Note that being KB-like is a highly complex qualitative property, not the haecceitistic property
being KB.
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

fifth point in terms of the second, job description interpretation of how the
phenomenon is picked out. The question then is, why should we think that a
single phenomenon plays the naturalness role? This is an instance of a general
question about theoretical posits. When should we ever think that a single
phenomenon plays some theoretical role? The following answers mark the two
unacceptable extremes. On the one hand, we cannot demand a fully independent
justification of the existence of a single entity with such and such features. That
would gut the very idea of a theoretical posit, in science as much as philosophy.
On the other hand, however, we cannot give the positer complete free rein to
produce an arbitrary assemblage of things to be explained and claim without
argument that some single phenomenon explains them all. I cannot, for example,
expect to be taken seriously if I simply announce the existence of positum, a
substance that explains why smoke rises, the surface tension of liquids, and the
otherwise perplexing career of Ashton Kutcher.
So where between those two extremes does the particular case of naturalness lie?
I do not know, but it is not my job to say. Naturalness’ proponents owe us some
further reason for thinking that there is some single thing—naturalness—that
makes for qualitative similarity, figures in laws of nature, serves as eligible contents
for our terms, can be used to characterize intrinsicness, and picks out exactly those
things that together “characterize things completely and without redundancy”. In
the absence of such further reason, the independence characterization of funda-
mentality once again has the advantage. In contrast to naturalness, independence is
clear and precise; there is no parallel worry about its univocity.
In sum, independence is a far better candidate than naturalness to serve as the
central notion of absolute fundamentality. If it is to be defined at all, absolute
fundamentality should be defined in terms of building; to be absolutely funda-
mental is to be unbuilt.

5.10 Resisting Three Arguments against

Defining It at All
It is time to discharge that conditional. Can it be defined at all? I noted at the
outset that both Fine (2001) and Wilson (2014) argue that it cannot be. They
offer three arguments, one from Fine and two from Wilson.
Fine “reject[s] the idea that the absolute notion of fundamental reality is in
need of a relational underpinning” (2001, 25), saying that:

It is natural to understand the concept of fundamental reality in terms of the relative

concept of one thing being less fundamental than, or reducible to, another—the
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY 

fundamental being whatever does not reduce to anything else (but to which other
things will reduce). But . . . how can an explanatory connection be determinative of
what is and is not real? We may grant that some things are explanatorily more basic
than others. But why should that make them more real?

I am not entirely sure what to make of this, because I confess that I do not fully
understand Fine’s notion of “Reality”. But he does seem to use it as I would use
the label ‘absolute fundamentality’. His idea here seems to be that a relation like
grounding cannot make something fundamental or not, for it is an explanatory
relation, and explanation can’t affect how the world is. My response to this
depends upon how ‘explanatory’ and its cognates are used. Recall my distinction
between the epistemic and metaphysical senses of ‘explain’ in §3.5: one thing
explainsE another if it in some way sheds light on it, and explainsM another if it
generates it or makes it happen. If Fine means that we ought not define absolute
fundamentality in terms of explanationE, then I agree, and have not done so.
Building relations are productive relations in the world that at best back the truth
of certain explanatory sentences. If Fine means that we ought not define absolute
fundamentality in terms of explanationM, then I disagree, and do not see that he
has offered any reason against doing so. Why can’t a productive, generative
relation be determinative of what is and isn’t fundamental?
Wilson’s first argument is that what it means to be fundamental is to not be
“metaphysically defined”:
the fundamental should not be metaphysically characterized . . . in any other terms.
The fundamental is, well, fundamental: entities in a fundamental base play a role
analogous to axioms in a theory—they are basic, they are ‘all God had to do, or
create’. As such—again, like axioms in a theory—the fundamental should not be
metaphysically defined in any other terms (2014, 560).

But this seems to me to confuse defining the fundamental entities with defining
fundamentality. I of course agree that no fundamental entities can be “metaphys-
ically defined”—such entities are not accounted for by anything; they are not
built. That is precisely to say that they are independent. But that does not stop us
from defining fundamentality itself as independence. It is true that on my picture,
any particular fundamental entity is fundamental in virtue of being unbuilt—i.e.,
that its status as fundamental is not fundamental. But that is consistent with its
being fundamental.
Wilson’s second argument arises from the fact that she thinks that the various
small ‘g’ grounding relations can hold reflexively and symmetrically.

Why could the fundamental goings-on not mutually ground each other, as on a
holist pluralist view of the sort associated with, for example, Leibniz? And why could
 ABSOLUTE FUNDAMENTALITY

the fundamental goings-on not ground themselves, as some have supposed God
capable of doing, or as a metaphysical correlate of foundational self-justified beliefs?
(2014, 560)

She is right that if one countenances reflexive and symmetric building, the option
arises to allow such things to count as fundamental even though they are not
independent. But I argued against countenancing reflexive and symmetric build-
ing in Chapter 3. Further, even granting her examples, it doesn’t follow that
absolute fundamentality cannot be defined, and it doesn’t follow that it cannot be
defined in terms of building. Let us suppose that it is possible for fundamental
entities to be self-built, or to mutually build each other. The letter of independ-
ence would have to be rejected, but there is an easy replacement:

Independence*: x is independent* just in case for all y such that y builds x, x

builds y.33
This is trivially satisfied if x is not built by anything at all. A slightly different
version is available to those who do not believe in symmetric building, but do
think that fundamental entities can reflexively build themselves: namely, that x is
independent** just in case it is not built by anything else. Again, I do not endorse
the claim that absolute fundamentality is independence*, or independence**.
I think it is independence, because I do not think anything is self-built or
symmetrically built. I merely claim that the cases she considers can be handled
by a slight modification, yielding a definition of absolute fundamentality that is
squarely in the spirit of independence.
I have argued that to be absolutely fundamental is to be unbuilt. I have not
argued that anything is absolutely fundamental. I have also not yet said anything
about what it is for one nonfundamental thing to be more fundamental
than another nonfundamental thing. It is time to move to Chapter 6. It turns
out that the project of characterizing relative fundamentality in terms of
building is somewhat more complicated than the parallel project about absolute
fundamentality.

33
Or perhaps a better version would be one that allows a group of independent* entities to
partially build each other. I have in mind something like the following: x is independent* just in case
it belongs to a set S none of whose members are partially built by anything outside S.
 6
Relative Fundamentality

6.1 Accounting for Relative Fundamentality

In the previous chapter, I argued that absolute fundamentality is best understood
as independence, and therefore is best understood in terms of building.1 How-
ever, this claim alone is obviously not enough to account for the kinds of
fundamentality talk that philosophers routinely engage in. We also say that
some phenomena are more fundamental than—or exactly as fundamental as—
others. This is relative fundamentality talk, and it cannot be replaced by absolute
fundamentality talk. One thing can be more fundamental than another even
though the former is not absolutely fundamental. For example, carbon atoms are
more fundamental than I am, and the property being a carbon atom is more
fundamental than the property being a homo sapiens. Yet neither carbon atoms
nor the property being a carbon atom is absolutely fundamental. They are not
part of the rock-bottom story of the world; there is a further explanation of their
nature; they are built.
So what is it for one thing to be more fundamental than or ontologically prior
to another? This question is both crucial and neglected. It is crucial because
philosophers engage in relative fundamentality talk all the time,2 and such talk
ought not go unexamined. Further, it is only against a shared background story
about relative fundamentality that apparent disputes about what is more funda-
mental than what are guaranteed to be genuine disputes. (Suppose philosopher A
claims that electrons are more fundamental than the mereological sum of
everything in the universe, and philosopher B says that the sum is more

1
This chapter could equally well be titled ‘Ontological Priority’. I take relative fundamentality
and ontological priority to be the same thing.
2
Here, as in Chapter 5, my topic is fundamentality in the metaphysical sense. The “reading is
fundamental” style uses that I mentioned there do have relative analogues. One can imagine a school
board member of a cash-strapped district saying “reading is more fundamental than finger paint-
ing!” Such usages are not my topic here.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

fundamental than the electrons. If A and B do not mean the same thing by ‘more
fundamental than’, they may not in fact disagree.)
But the question is also neglected. There are no explicit accounts of relative
fundamentality in the literature.3 This might seem to be a surprising claim. After
all, the current literature is filled with discussions of grounding, ontological
dependence, and the ‘in virtue of ’ relation. But such discussions do not by
themselves constitute an account of relative fundamentality. An account of
relative fundamentality must say what it is for one thing to be more fundamental
than, less fundamental than, or equifundamental with something else—and
nothing of that form is automatically entailed by any theory of grounding,
ontological dependence, or even building generally. The easiest way to see this
is by noting that the following biconditionals all fail:
x is more fundamental than y just in case x at least partially grounds y;
x is more fundamental than y just in case there is some building relation R such
that x at least partially Rs y;
x is more fundamental than y just in case y ontologically depends on x.

These are all false. One thing can be more fundamental than another despite the
first’s not in any way building the second, and the second’s not in any way
depending on the first. A hydrogen atom in Phoenix is more fundamental than a
water molecule in Ithaca, even though those particular entities stand in no
building or dependence relations at all.
A different story about relative fundamentality must be provided. Now, I will
go on to argue that building is the only pen we need in order to write that story,
because relative fundamentality relations like more fundamental than are nothing
more than complex patterns of building. But my point here remains: one cannot
simply say “I believe in building relations!” or “I have a well worked-out theory of
grounding!” and take oneself to have thereby provided an account of relative
fundamentality.
What might an account of relative fundamentality look like? What options
should be on the table? Three possibilities suggest themselves.
One is that relative fundamentality ought to be characterized in terms of
relative naturalness: one thing is more fundamental than another just in case it
is more natural than the other. This account of course needs to be supplemented

3
This is perhaps not quite true. But at the time of writing it remains the case that the only
definitions I have seen are nonstarters that simply endorse a false biconditional like the ones
I discuss in the main text. E.g. deRossett says that “one fact is more fundamental than another iff
the one explains the other, but not vice versa” (2013, 5, italics in original).
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

with an account of relative naturalness, of what it is for one thing to be more

natural than another. Typically, relative naturalness is characterized in terms of
absolute naturalness. For example, Lewis says that the less than perfectly natural
properties are those that “can be reached by not-too-complicated-chains of
derivability from the perfectly natural properties” (1986c, 61); this suggests that
he thinks that one property is more natural than another—more fundamental
than another—just in case it can be derived from the perfectly natural properties
by a less complicated chain of derivability. Sider agrees that what he calls
‘comparative structure’ is to be understood in terms of perfect structure,
though he criticizes Lewis’s proposal and offers a more complex account of his
own (2011, §7.11).
In what follows, I will set aside the relative naturalness account of relative
fundamentality. I will not argue against it in detail for the simple reason that
I have no further criticisms to offer beyond my discussion in §5.9. Relative
fundamentality ought not be equated with relative naturalness for the same
reasons that absolute fundamentality ought not be equated with perfect natural-
ness. Naturalness is not obviously a unified phenomenon, and it is also a poor fit
for our pretheoretic relative fundamentality concepts. It is something different.
A second possibility is that relative fundamentality is an inexplicable primi-
tive that cannot be characterized at all; there is nothing in virtue of which
relations like more fundamental than obtain. This seems to be the view implicit
in the literature—the received view that is typically neither articulated nor
defended.4 However, it is a bad idea. In §6.2 I will argue that the relative
fundamentality facts are intimately tied to the building facts in ways that rule
out the most straightforward kind of primitivism about relative fundamentality.
Now, the existence of these connections does not rule out every kind of
primitivism, and I will sketch a more sophisticated version that I will not
fully argue against until the end of the chapter (§6.8). But the connections
nonetheless warrant putting the third possible account of relative fundamen-
tality on the table for consideration: a view that accommodates the connections
between building and relative fundamentality by simply identifying the relative
fundamentality facts with building facts.
This is the view that I will defend. Relative fundamentality, like absolute
fundamentality, can be characterized in terms of building. All it is for relations
like more fundamental than and exactly as fundamental as to obtain is for certain
complex patterns of building to obtain. This is a kind of deflationism or

4
Schaffer does explicitly say that he doubts that relative fundamentality is “amenable to further
analysis” (2010a, 36).
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

reductionism about relative fundamentality: the relative fundamentality facts just

are complex patterns of building. Relative fundamentality is not a further,
metaphysically deep phenomenon. Like absolute fundamentality, relative funda-
mentality is not fundamental; it is built.
In §§6.3 through 6.5, I develop this deflationist view in detail, by investigating
exactly how to characterize relations like more fundamental than in terms of
building. In §§6.6 and 6.7 I elaborate upon the resulting overall picture, and
address some objections.
A final quick point before getting underway: my methodology in this chapter
mirrors that of earlier chapters. The question of what relative fundamentality
amounts to is partly a matter of theoretical usefulness, and partly a matter of
conceptual analysis. That is, whatever account we wind up with had better be
coherent and able to do the kinds of philosophical work relative fundamentality
is called upon to do. But it also needs to be intuitively plausible, in that it must
help make sense of the ways in which philosophers—and non-philosophers—
engage in the practice of calling some things more fundamental or more basic
than others. I do not see much hope for clearly separating these strands, and I will
not try to do so in the arguments that follow. I will return to some related
methodological points when addressing an objection in §6.7.4.

6.2 Two Kinds of Primitivism about

Relative Fundamentality
Here is a straightforward if extreme version of primitivism about relative funda-
mentality: relative fundamentality has nothing to do with building. There is
nothing in virtue of which the relative fundamentality facts obtain, and the
relative fundamentality facts are entirely unconstrained by the building facts.
They just have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
This view is false. There are pervasive connections between the building facts
and relative fundamentality facts, as shown by the following four arguments.
6.2.1 Against extreme primitivism
First, if extreme primitivism is true, the building facts and the relative funda-
mentality facts are modally recombinable (c.f. Schaffer 2010a, 40). That is, there
are possible worlds that are just alike in what builds what, but that differ in what
is more fundamental than what. There are also possible worlds that are just alike
in what is more fundamental than what, but that differ in what builds what. This
is implausible on its face: there cannot be three worlds with the same building
structure, but such that priority monism is true in one, atomism true in another,
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

and everything is equally fundamental in the third. Perhaps, though, my claim

here is more bald statement than argument. The second and third considerations
are siblings of this recombinability point that may be more convincing.
Second, it is very intuitive to say that builders are more fundamental than what
they build. Back in Chapter 3, I captured this idea by means of a principle that
I called (B!MFT): if x at least partially builds y, x is more fundamental than y.
But that in effect states a way in which the building facts constrain the relative
fundamentality facts. It says that if x builds y, it cannot be the case that y is more
fundamental than, or equifundamental with, x.
Third, there are other principles that have even more intuitive appeal, and which
also entail ways in which the building facts constrain the relative fundamentality
facts. One is that all absolutely fundamental things are equifundamental. Another
is that all absolutely fundamental things are more fundamental than any nonfun-
damental things. Conjoined with Chapter 5’s claim that absolute fundamentality is
independence—unbuiltness—these principles respectively entail that
all unbuilt things are equifundamental, and
all unbuilt things are more fundamental than any built things.
These are additional ways in which the building facts constrain the relative
fundamentality facts. In sum, if you agree with me either that things are less
fundamental than that which builds them, or that to be fundamental is not to be
built, you already agree there are pervasive connections between building and
relative fundamentality, and thus that extreme primitivism is false.
The fourth argument against extreme primitivism is an epistemic argument. The
basic idea is that we come to know what relative fundamentality relations obtain by
coming to know various facts about what building relations obtain, and this is not
explicable if relative fundamentality is entirely independent of building.
More slowly, the fourth argument has two premises. The first premise is that
building facts constitute evidence for relative fundamentality facts.5 In defense of
this premise, I first note that we use it as evidence: the reason you believe that
atoms are more fundamental than chairs is that you believe that chairs are built of
atoms. I further note that something much stronger seems true—namely, that we
must use it as evidence. That is, it seems plausible to say that building facts
constitute the only direct6 evidence for relative fundamentality facts. After all, we

5
Or perhaps for propositions about what relative fundamentality facts obtain.
6
They are not the only evidence, period. I might come to believe some proposition about a
relative fundamentality fact on the basis of testimony, or on the basis of an inference. (If I am
justified in believing that if f, then a is more fundamental than b, and justified in believing f, then
on that basis I can be justified in believing that a is more fundamental than b.) But if my belief is
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

are just at a loss as to what to say about cases where we haven’t got the right kind
of building information. To see my point here, consider a possible world that
contains two nonfundamental entities, a and b. I will tell you various things about
the nonbuilding nature of a and b—their color, size, and so forth—but I will tell
you very little about their building structure. I will only tell you that both are
built, and that neither builds the other. Beyond that you know nothing; you know
nothing at all about how they are built, or of what they are built. You do not
know, for example, how physics works in the world in question, or whether there
are extended simples there. Question: which is more fundamental, a or b? Your
answer, surely, is “you’ve got to be kidding.” You simply do not have the evidence
you need. When we make relative fundamentality judgments—when we come to
justifiedly believe propositions about the relative fundamentality relations things
stand in—we always rely, directly or indirectly, on precisely the kind of building
information that is absent here. So there is reason to think that building facts
constitute the only direct evidence for relative fundamentality facts, but in what
follows I will only rely on the weaker claim that they constitute evidence for
relative fundamentality facts.
The second premise of the epistemic argument against extreme primitivism is
that building facts constitute evidence for relative fundamentality facts only if
there is a causal or constitutive link between them. This is an instance of a
reasonably plausible general principle (at least for non-mathematical knowledge),
namely that if a fact or proposition is evidence for another, there must be a causal
or constitutive link between them. I am no epistemologist, and will not try to
properly defend this general principle here. But it seems reasonably plausible,7
and certainly this instance of it is. If there is no causal or constitutive link between
the building facts and the relative fundamentality facts, if they are entirely
independent of each other, why would the former indicate anything about the
latter? To claim that they did would be to claim some systematic yet entirely
coincidental correlation. It would be as odd as saying that the Dow Jones
Industrial Average is entirely irrelevant to the local weather forecast, but none-
theless provides good evidence for propositions about whether it will rain the
next day.

justified, building information comes in somewhere: it is used as evidence by the person whose
testimony I believe, or I use it as evidence for the conditional premise, etc.
7
The fact that the smoking gun is in Smith’s closet is evidence that Smith committed the crime
only if there is the right kind of causal connection between Smith’s actions and the presence of the
gun. The fact that person P is a biological brother is evidence that P is biologically male only because
part of what it is to be a brother is to be male.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

It follows from the first and second premises that there is some kind of
intimate causal or constitutive link between the building facts and the relative
fundamentality facts. It follows, that is, that extreme primitivism about relative
fundamentality is false.
6.2.2 A more sophisticated primitivism
This is progress. But as I have already noted, the claim that extreme primitivism
is false falls short of the reductionist or deflationist claim that I wish to defend. It
falls short of the claim that relative fundamentality is nothing over and above
complicated patterns of building, that the relative fundamentality facts just are
building facts. This is because the relative fundamentality facts can be con-
strained by the building facts without being building facts. Indeed, for all I have
said thus far, the relative fundamentality facts can be constrained by the building
facts even though there is nothing in virtue of which the relative fundamentality
facts obtain.
In other words, there is room for a different, less extreme version of primitiv-
ism about relative fundamentality: a view according to which there is nothing in
virtue of which the relative fundamentality facts obtain, and yet the relative
fundamentality facts are systematically constrained by the building facts in the
ways that I have already suggested (and in more ways besides, as will emerge in
§6.3). To see this, consider the constraint imposed by (B!MFT)—that if x even
partially builds y, x is more fundamental than y. This can perfectly well be true
even if there is nothing anything in virtue of which anything is more fundamental
than anything else. The key point is that the primitivist can deny that x’s building
y is what makes x be more fundamental than y. After all, that does not follow
from the (B!MFT) conditional. Indeed, this more moderate, more sophisticated
primitivist position can be characterized by means of her attitude to that condi-
tional. She thinks it is better understood as a necessary condition on one thing’s
building another than as a sufficient condition on one thing’s being more
fundamental than another. The sophisticated primitivist’s picture is this: the
world has relative fundamentality structure ‘before’ any building relations obtain,
and that structure enables building relations to obtain. Building relations can only
hold between things that are antecedently different in terms of relative funda-
mentality. (The sophisticated primitivist takes the stance towards B!MFT that
I explicitly distanced myself from in §3.5.)
To further illuminate the position, consider the epistemic argument again.
A primitivist can accept that the building facts and the relative fundamentality
facts do stand in an intimate relation that enables the former to provide evidence
for the latter. What she can say is that the building facts constitute evidence for
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

the relative fundamentality facts because the relative fundamentality facts are
necessary for them to obtain, not because they make the relative fundamentality
facts obtain. Compare: if you have evidence that Barack Obama was in 2016 the
legally elected United States president, you thereby have evidence that he was
then over thirty-five years old. This is not because his being elected president
makes him be over thirty-five years old; his status as president obviously does not
cause or ground or otherwise build his age. Rather, it is because his being over
thirty-five is a necessary condition on his being president that if you have
evidence for the latter, you have evidence for the former. Similarly, the building
facts can provide evidence for what is more fundamental than what even if they
do not make it be the case that anything is more fundamental than anything else.
On this kind of primitivist picture, building sheds light on relative fundamental-
ity because building relations can only obtain between entities that antecedently
stand in the right kinds of relative fundamentality relations.
The upshot is that primitivism, understood as the claim that there is nothing
in virtue of which any relative fundamentality fact obtains, is in fact compatible
with the claim that there are systematic connections between the building
facts and the relative fundamentality facts. My arguments in §6.2.1 only rule
out an extreme version of primitivism that denies the existence of those
systematic connections. A sophisticated primitivism that accepts them remains
a live option.
Nonetheless, it is not immediately appealing. To my ear, at least, the idea that
the world contains basic relative fundamentality structure that renders building
possible is prima facie quite implausible. And I think there is a better option
available. It is time, then, to get that option on the table.
In the next three sections (§6.3 through §6.5), I will develop the deflationist
idea that the reason there are systematic connections between the building facts
and the relative fundamentality facts is that the latter are nothing over and above
the former. For a relative fundamentality relation like more fundamental than to
obtain just is for certain particular patterns of building to obtain. In §6.6 and §6.7,
I will draw out some consequences, clarify the overall picture, and respond to
some objections. Finally, in §6.8 I will argue that the resulting overall picture is
superior to sophisticated primitivism.

6.3 Characterizing Relative Fundamentality

in Terms of Building
Thus far, I have only said that relations of relative fundamentality are nothing
more than patterns of building. I have not yet said anything about which patterns
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

of building. Clearly, I need to specify them in order to properly spell out the
deflationist account, and that is the task of the next two sections.
I will begin by sketching a toy version of the reduction—a version that rests
upon two untenable assumptions. This account is illuminating despite being
ultimately hopeless, and I will sketch its main virtues before explaining why it
must be rejected. I will then try again, using those virtues to develop a better,
though notably less tidy, account.
Both the tidy toy account and the messy real account share the same core idea:
relative fundamentality is relative location in the building structure. (More
accurately, relative fundamentality is relative location in a building structure;
I return to this below.) To be more fundamental than something else is to be
lower in the building structure; to be less fundamental is to be higher in the
building structure; to be equifundamental is to occupy the same relative position
in the building structure. This is a very natural idea, and it helpfully unites the toy
account with the real one—the two agree that relative fundamentality is relative
location in the building structure, but disagree on how best to make sense of what
that means. But really it is not particularly contentful in its own right. Talking of
what is ‘lower’ is just a metaphorical way of talking about what is more funda-
mental, in the same way that talking of what is at the ‘bottom’ is a metaphorical
way of talking of what is absolutely fundamental. And we do not have the kind of
independent grip on building structure that would allow the metaphor to genu-
inely shed light on relative fundamentality—that is, we do not have independent
intuitions about what it is for something to be lower (or higher) in the building
structure than something else. Thus, although I will continue to mention building
structure when I gesture at the basic idea behind the reduction, it will not play an
official role in either the toy or real account.8

6.4 Sketching and Rejecting a Toy Account

6.4.1 The toy account
There are three relative fundamentality relations: more fundamental than, less
fundamental than, and equifundamental with. Conveniently, the first two are

8
To put this point another way: I will attempt to directly fill in definitions like
x is more fundamental than y = df ———
rather than working with pairs like the following:
x is more fundamental than y = df x is lower in the building structure than y, and
x is lower in the building structure than y = df ———
Factoring the account into two parts obscures rather than illuminates the issues.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

interdefined. If we have an independent definition of more fundamental than, the

less fundamental than relation can obviously be defined in terms of it:
x is less fundamental than y = df y is more fundamental than x.
However, matters are more complicated when it comes to equifundamentality.
For the purposes of constructing the toy account, I will assume that it too can be
defined in terms of more fundamental than, as follows:

x and y are equally fundamental = df

1) it is not the case that x is more fundamental than y, and
2) it is not the case that y is more fundamental than x.

I will eventually revisit and reject this definition (§6.6.3), but it is convenient for
now. With it and the definition of less fundamental than in hand, I can com-
pletely characterize relative fundamentality in terms of building simply by char-
acterizing the more fundamental than relation in terms of building.
And that looks easy enough to do. A natural idea is that to be more funda-
mental is to be closer to the bottom—to the terminus of what might be called its
building chain or structure. To flesh out that natural idea, I will make two
assumptions that are dubious at best. (This is, again, merely the toy account,
not the real one.) I will assume first that there is a bottom, and second (roughly)
that there is only one path from any built entity to the bottom.9 Given these
assumptions, the following is a straightforward account of the more fundamental
than relation:
Toy: x is more fundamental than y = df there is a building relation R such that
x is fewer direct R-steps from the fundamental entity(ies) that terminate its
chain or structure than y is from the fundamental entity(ies) that terminate its
chain or structure.

Clearly, this requires defining some terms.

x is one direct R-step from y = df x directly bears R to y or y directly bears R to x
x directly bears R to y = df x at least partially Rs y and there is no z such that x
bears R to z and z bears R to y10

9
Thanks to Augie Faller for pressing me on the need for the second assumption, and to Thomas
Foerster for further discussion of it.
10
Note that this makes it impossible for one thing to both directly build and indirectly build
something. That is, it can’t be that a directly builds c, and also builds it via b.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

x and z are on the same R-chain or structure = df there is a building relation R

such that either
x at least partially bears R or its ancestral to y, or
y at least partially bears R or its ancestral to x, or
there is a z such that x and y both at least partially bear R or its ancestral to z.
Four points about these formulations are worth flagging.
First, as is often the case in this book, I have used single rather than plural
variables for convenience only; really there should be parenthetical remarks like
“x (or the xxs) . . . ” sprinkled throughout.
Second, the appeal to direct building and direct building steps is due to the fact
that some building relations are transitive.11 (In §3.2, I denied that all building
relations are transitive, but some are.) And each entity that stands in a transitive
building relation is exactly the same number of building steps from the bottom of
its chain—namely, one. To see this, suppose that R is a transitive building
relation, that a is absolutely fundamental, and that aRb and bRc. Here, a builds
c just as much as it builds b; b and c therefore each count as one building step
from a. To avoid flattening out the building structure in this way—to maintain
the intuitive thought that b is closer to the bottom than c is—we must instead
count direct building steps. b is one direct building step from a, but c is two. In
short: relative distance from the bottom must be measured in terms of direct
building steps rather than in terms of building steps simpliciter.
Third, I talk of building chains or structures. This is because the label ‘chain’ is
really only apt for simple cases in which one thing fully builds another, which fully
builds a third, and so forth. But any case in which multiple entities partially build
something is going to involve branches, and thus not be quite chain-like. Things
on different branches will count as being parts of the same building structure, even
though they are not building-related themselves, by means of the final clause of
the definition of the ‘being on the same structure’ relation. For example, suppose a
and b both partially compose c. a and b do not stand in any building relations (or
ancestrals thereof) to each other. But they count as belonging to the same
structure because there is a third thing, namely c, which they both partially build.12
Fourth, recall that when I talk generically about “building”, I am generalizing
about a class of relations, not talking about some single highly abstract relation

11
For discussion of the transitivity issue, I thank Brian Epstein, an audience at the University of
Mainz, and a grad student at Texas whose name I have unfortunately forgotten.
12
If unrestricted composition is true, my characterization of ‘being on the same chain or
structure’ entails that every object is part of the same compositional structure. That seems right.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

that deserves a capital ‘B’ (see §§2.4 and 2.5). I have formulated Toy in a way that
brings this out explicitly, by quantifying over particular building relations,
though for ease of exposition I will not always do so. But it turns out to be
important that I am not appealing to a highly general building relation of the
kind I discussed in Chapter 2, and I will discuss how it affects my actual account
of relative fundamentality later, in §6.6.1.
Toy characterizes relative fundamentality in terms of relative rank on particu-
lar chains or structures of building. Compare the way one might characterize
relative location in the U.S. military command structure: namely, Person1 ranks
lower than Person2 just in case Person1 is closer to the bottom of the chain of
command on which he sits than Person2 is to the bottom of the chain on which
she sits. (Since military chains of command terminate at both ends, one might
instead choose to say that Person1 ranks higher than Person2 just in case Person1
is closer to the top of the chain of command on which he sits than Person2 is to
the top of the chain on which she sits.) Note too that it does not matter that the
four different branches of the military have independent chains of command;13
cross-chain comparison is perfectly possible when relative rank is counted in this
way. A Navy Captain ranks higher than an Army Captain, for example, because a
Navy Captain is nine ranks above the lowest officer rank, and an Army Captain
merely seven.14
As I said, Toy is hopeless. But before explaining why, I want to note that it has
at least four important positive features. First, given the assumptions in play, it
entails the intuitively correct (B!MFT) principle that I discussed in Chapter 3:
if x at least partially builds y, x is more fundamental than y.
Second, it also entails a related principle:
if x at least partially builds y, and y at least partially builds z, then x is more
fundamental than z.
This principle is important in light of the fact that I do not assume that all
building relations are transitive; see §3.2. Third, Toy entails a principle that is so
plausible that it is arguably analytic:
if x is absolutely fundamental and y is not, x is more fundamental than y.

13
Ignoring the president, that is. I suppose that as commander-in-chief he is the highest ranking
officer of all four branches of the military.
14
Source: http://www.militaryfactory.com/ranks/
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

Fourth, as I have already noted, Toy easily generates ‘cross-chain’ or ‘cross-structure’

relative fundamentality relations. That is, it generates relative fundamentality rela-
tions between entities that do not stand in any building relations (or their ancestrals)
to each other, and do not mutually help build some third thing. This means that it
can handle cases like that of the electron in Phoenix and the water molecule in
Ithaca. Even though that electron does not stand in any building relation to that
water molecule—the two belong to different building structures—the electron is
closer to the bottom of its chain than the water molecule is to the bottom of its.
Thus, according to Toy, the electron is more fundamental than the water molecule,
which is the intuitively correct result.
6.4.2 Why Toy must be rejected
I have walked through these points partly in order to illustrate the good features
of Toy, and partly to lay down some desiderata on whatever account replaces it.
And something must replace it, because it cannot stand. At the outset, I noted
that Toy rests on two dubious assumptions, and it is time to revisit this point.
Treating relative fundamentality as relative distance from the bottom obviously
assumes that there is a bottom, and that there is a univocal way to measure
distance from it.
But both assumptions are enormously problematic. First, while I do not think
it false that there is a bottom—that every building chain or structure terminates
in something fundamental—I have made clear (§5.5) that I do not think it can
safely be assumed to be true. I am officially agnostic. Second, even pretending that
each chain does terminate, it’s just false that there is an unproblematic, univocal
way to calculate distance from the terminus.
There are two kinds of problem case. One is when something is fully built by
multiple independent building chains of different lengths. This kind of ‘over-
building’ is clearly possible; for example, the fact that something exists has many,
many independent grounds. It is grounded by the existence of something near
the (assumed for sake of discussion) bottom, such as a quark; it is also grounded
by the existence of things quite far from the bottom, like a crowd of people. The
other kind of case is when something has multiple partial builders, at different
distances from the bottom. This, too, is possible: consider the mereological sum
of a simple with an ordinary office chair. In neither case is there a clear, univocal
answer to the question, “how many direct building steps are there from this entity
to the bottom?”.
So neither of the two assumptions ought to be made. Yet without them, Toy
falls apart. These are not small issues that mild tinkering could fix; they consign
the whole strategy to the dustbin.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

First, consider what happens when we relax the assumption that there is a
unique number of direct building steps between the entities in question. In
particular, consider a case in which d is built by c, which is built by b, which is
in turn built by fundamental entity a. Let d also be directly built by fundamental
entity e (Figure 6.1).15

←
c
←

b
←

a e
Figure 6.1

Now, is c more fundamental than d? It ought to be, surely. But Toy actually
delivers no results at all. It is not the case that there is a there is a unique answer to
the question of how many direct R-steps d is from the fundamental entities that
terminate its chain(s). It is 1; it is 3. So there is no clear answer to whether c is
fewer direct building steps from the terminus of its chain than d is from the
terminus of its chain—d is on two chains, and different distances from their
respective termini.
Or consider this case, involving partial building (Figure 6.2).

a b e
Figure 6.2

15
This kind of case can also be used to show that without the assumption that there is a unique
building chain from each built entity to the fundamental terminus, Toy would not in fact have all of
the positive consequences I just claimed. In particular, without the assumption Toy would not entail
B!MFT. I leave the details to the reader.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

The same issue arises: there isn’t a single answer to the question of how many
direct building steps d is from the terminus of its chain. It doesn’t have a single
terminus, and there are two routes from d to the bottom.
Now, there are ways of modifying Toy so that it does deliver a result in cases
like these, but none of them are very satisfactory. For example, one could try this:

Toy*: x is more fundamental than y = df there is a building relation R such that

x is fewer direct R-steps from the fundamental entity(ies) that terminate the
shortest chain or structure on which it sits than y is from the fundamental entity
(ies) that terminate the shortest building chain or structure on which it sits.
Or perhaps this:
Toy**: x is more fundamental than y = df there is a building relation R such
that x is fewer direct R-steps from the fundamental entity(ies) that terminate the
longest chain or structure on which it sits than y is from the fundamental entity
(ies) that terminate the longest building chain or structure on which it sits.
One problem is that Toy* is incompatible with B!MFT; in the case described
in Figure 6.1, it would make d more fundamental than c. Another problem is
that the choice between Toy* and Toy** seems otherwise arbitrary. Certainly
the relevant cases are not ones about which we have clear intuitions. Compare the
entities in Figure 6.1 with entities that are built in the same way minus the
overbuilding (Figure 6.3).

d d*
←

c c*
←
←

b b*
←

a e a*
Figure 6.3

According to Toy*, d is more fundamental than d*. According to Toy**, they

are equifundamental. Neither answer seems to me to be clearly better than the
other. This would be “spoils to the victor” in Lewis’s sense (1986e, 194)—the
matter should be settled by whichever definition is chosen on other grounds. But
what other grounds?
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

The other problem with Toy is its reliance on the assumption that all building
chains terminate in something fundamental. Let me spell out the problem in
detail, as it goes a little bit differently depending on whether no building chains
terminate, or some do and some do not. First, suppose that no building chains
terminate. Then asking which of two things f and g is closer to the nonexistent
terminus of its building chain is like asking whether New York City is closer to
Atlantis than San Francisco is to the Land of Oz. Since neither Atlantis nor Oz
exist, neither New York nor San Francisco bear any relations to either of them.
Similarly, if their chains do not terminate, f and g simply do not bear any relations
to the termini of their respective chains. Claims about the relative proximity of f
and g to the termini of their respective chains suffer from presupposition failure,
just like claims about the relative proximity of New York City and San Francisco
to Atlantis and Oz. Such claims are either false or truth-valueless, depending on
one’s preferred treatment of presupposition failure. So if, as per Toy, claims about
what is more fundamental than what are claims about the relative proximity of f
and g to the terminus of their building chains, they too are false or truth-valueless
if all chains fail to terminate in something unbuilt. So it is not the case that f is
closer to the bottom of its chain than g is to the bottom of its, nor the case that g is
closer to the bottom of its chain than f is to the bottom of its. On the above
characterization of equifundamentality—two things are equifundamental if nei-
ther is more fundamental than each other—it follows that everything is equifun-
damental in a world in which no chains terminate.16
Matters are slightly more complicated in a world in which some building chains
terminate and some do not. Not everything is equifundamental in such a world;
things on terminating chains can stand in the more fundamental than relation.
But as before, everything on any nonterminating chain is equifundamental. The
new and tricky question is about the relation between a thing f on a terminating
chain and a thing g on a nonterminating chain. A claim like ‘f is closer to the
bottom of its chain than g is to the bottom of its’ is analogous to ‘New York City is
closer to Boston than San Francisco is to Oz’. Perhaps these sentences, like the
ones in the preceding paragraph, suffer from presupposition failure, and are
similarly false or truth-valueless. If so, f and g are equifundamental, as above.

16
Different characterizations of equifundamentality yield different results. For example, consider
the following:
x and y are equifundamental = df x and y are the same number of steps up from the bottom of their
respective chains.
On this characterization, nothing is equifundamental in a world in which no chains terminate. (In a
world in which some chains terminate and some do not, only entities on terminating chains can be
equifundamental.)
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

But it seems to me that there is at least some case to be made for the claim that
these sentences are instead true. After all, New York City is some particular
distance from Boston, but San Francisco is no particular distance from Oz. So
maybe New York City is closer to Boston than San Francisco is to Oz. If this is the
right way to assess them, than f indeed is closer to the bottom of its chain than g is
to the bottom of its—more generally, anything on any terminating chain is more
fundamental than anything on any nonterminating chain. Either way, though, we
get a blanket result about the relative fundamentality relations between any entity
on a terminating chain and any entity on a nonterminating one.17
These are strange results. The upshot is that Toy holds relative fundamentality
hostage to the existence of a bottom level of unbuilt, absolutely fundamental
entities. Now, this does not yet constitute an objection. It is one thing to say that
Toy holds relative fundamentality hostage in this way; it is another to argue that
the correct account ought not do that. To see that these are separate steps,
compare a theist who holds a divine command theory of moral value, but also
takes it to be epistemically possible that God does not exist. Her moral theory
holds rightness and wrongness hostage to the existence of God, which she takes
to be open to doubt. But she may well think this is exactly right, for she may well
think that if it turns out that God does not exist, then it also turns out that
nothing has moral value. Similarly, I suppose someone might argue that if it turns
out that the world has no bottom then it really does turn out that everything is
equifundamental.18 (More carefully: if it turns out that there are nonterminating

17
One might want to weaken the characterization of more fundamental than along the following
lines:
Toy2: x is more fundamental than y just in case x has fewer building steps underneath it.
Like Toy, Toy2 characterizes relative fundamentality in terms of relative rank on a building chain.
Unlike Toy, Toy2 does not require that building steps be counted from a bottom. Nonetheless, Toy2
still cannot accommodate the possibility of nonterminating chains. The problem now is that there
are an infinite number of steps below anything on any nonterminating chain. Consequently, Toy2
entails that everything on any terminating chain is more fundamental than anything on any
nonterminating chain, and that everything on any nonterminating chain is equifundamental
(bracketing complications about different sizes of infinity, at any rate). (Thanks to Kit Fine here.)
These consequences are no more acceptable than those of Toy. Toy2 holds relative fundamentality
hostage to the existence of absolutely fundamental entities just as Toy does.
18
Arguably, this constitutes another interpretation of Schaffer’s claim that the idea that “all
priority chains terminate . . . provides the kind of hierarchical structure against which the question of
what is fundamental makes sense” (2010, 37; see §4.5). If not all priority chains terminate, and Toy is
correct, then the question of what is more fundamental than what perhaps does not make sense—
though better would be to say that it makes sense but gets an unexpected answer. But (a) Schaffer’s
actual claim is framed in terms of absolute fundamentality rather than relative, and (b) the point
does not provide a reason to believe that all priority chains terminate unless we also have reason to
believe that Toy is correct. The better response, I claim, is to instead characterize more fundamental
than in a way that can withstand the possibility that not all priority chains terminate.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

building chains, then it also turns out that everything on such chains indeed is
equifundamental.) So pressing this objection against Toy requires providing
some reason to think that such a person is wrong—some reason to think that
relative fundamentality is not hostage to the existence of a bottom level.
Here goes. It’s just very intuitive that some things can be more fundamental
than others even in a world in which all building chains infinitely descend. In
particular, the intuitive pull of (B!MFT)—that if x builds y, x is more funda-
mental than y—remains untouched by the supposition that there is no bottom. It
doesn’t matter how x is built; it doesn’t matter if x is built by z is built by . . . and so
on ad infinitum.
This intuition is underscored by considering the causal analogue. (This ana-
logy has force even without my claim that causation is itself a building relation,
and I will present it accordingly.) Suppose that there is no First Cause; the
universe extends infinitely backwards. This supposition in no way undermines
our inclination to judge some events causally prior to others. My flipping the light
switch remains causally prior to the light’s coming on, for example. So the correct
account of causal priority must allow some events to be causally prior to others
even if there is no First Cause, just as the correct account of relative fundamen-
tality must allow some events to be more fundamental than others even if no
building chains ever bottom out.
Let me be clear: in both cases my point is that the relevant relations can
withstand the existence of infinite but non-circular chains of building and
causing, respectively. If there were, per impossible (§5.5), a closed loop of
building, it really would be the case that nothing on it would be more funda-
mental than anything else. Similarly, causal priority does not withstand the
existence of closed causal loops. Consider the following simple time travel story.
A woman who looks a lot like me emerges from my closet and offers me plans
for a time machine. I tinker in the basement for a week, and build a prototype.
I test it out by traveling back in time by one week, and emerge from my closet to
hand the plans to my slightly younger self. In such a case—and quite likely we
are reasoning counterpossibly here—it is clear that neither my emerging from
the closet nor my tinkering in the basement is causally prior to the other.
(Be sure not to confuse temporal priority with causal priority when thinking
this through).
But this is very different from the case in which there is no First Cause. Causal
priority can withstand the absence of a First Cause but not closed causal loops;
similarly for the more fundamental than relation: it can obtain between entities
on infinitely descending but noncircular building chains. Because Toy cannot
accommodate this, it must be rejected.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

Toy thus fails not once but twice. It does not yield clear results in cases in
which there are multiple paths to multiple fundamental termini, and incorrectly
ties relative fundamentality to the existence of such termini—i.e., to the truth of
metaphysical foundationalism.

6.5 The Messy Reality

Time to try again. We have not seen any reason to reject the basic idea that relative
fundamentality is relative location in the building structure—in particular, we have
not seen any reason to reject the basic idea that to be more fundamental is to be
lower in the building structure. Rather, all we have seen is reason to reject the way
I have thus far tried to characterize relative location in the building structure. What
alternative strategy might there be? A metaphor might be helpful here.
Imagine a bunch of towers of wooden blocks projecting upwards toward the sky,
and suppose we want to know the relative building location of the individual blocks
that compose the towers. (What we want to know is not the relative spatial location
of the blocks, but the relative location in the building structure.) One way to do this
is to compare the ‘building distance’ between each and some fixed point—
presumably, the ground.19 So: count the blocks between each target block and
the ground, and compare the numbers. This, of course, is how Toy does it. But if
there is no ground—or even if it just cannot be assumed that there is a ground—an
alternate strategy is required. Similarly, an alternate strategy is required if some
blocks are supported, either jointly or independently, both by several small blocks
and by one tall block. That alternative is to note the relations between the target
blocks themselves. This is the strategy I will explore in this section.
It is immediately apparent that such a strategy is fairly straightforward for
blocks in the same tower, and much less so for blocks in different towers. This is
why I pointed out that it is a significant virtue of Toy that it has no trouble with
such cross-chain comparisons. But Toy is not a viable option, so we must explore
the alternative—even though it will result in a messier account of relative
fundamentality. The characterization of the more fundamental than relation
that replaces Toy is an ugly, multi-clause affair.
6.5.1 The strategy
To get started, note that the problem with Toy is that it does not provide a
necessary condition on one thing’s being more fundamental than another.

19
If we imagine that every tower has a top, then we could equally well count down from the top
as up from the bottom.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

Something can be more fundamental than something else without being any
closer to the bottom, if the reason it is no closer to the bottom is either that there
is no bottom, or no straightforward fact of the matter about which is closer. But
Toy plausibly does provide a sufficient condition on one thing’s being more
fundamental than another. If a and b are each located on building chains that
do terminate, and if there is a univocal way of counting how many direct building
steps each is from the terminus of their chain, and if a is fewer direct building
steps from it than b is, then a is more fundamental than b. Consequently, I shall
weaken and rename Toy, so that it can serve as the first of several individually
sufficient and jointly necessary conditions on one thing’s being more fundamen-
tal than another:
(1) x is more fundamental than y if there is a building relation R such that x is
fewer direct R-steps from the fundamental entity(ies) that terminate its chain
or structure than y is from the fundamental entity(ies) that terminate its chain
or structure.
The question before me is: what are the other sufficient conditions on some-
thing’s being more fundamental than another? What else can make a thing more
fundamental than another, other than relative distance from the termination of a
building chain? I must add more clauses to (1) to reach MFT, the correct—if
messy—account of more fundamental than.
I propose to take the four positive features of Toy as my guide. Each such
feature is a verdict about a case: if x and y are like so, then x is more
fundamental than y. (For simplicity, I continue to leave out the parenthetical
extension to the plural case: if x (or the xxs) and y (or the yys) are like so . . . )
Because each of the four cases can happen even if building fails to be well-
founded, and even if built entities can lie on multiple chains of full or partial
building, my goal is to ensure—by brute force, if necessary—that for each such
case it remains true that if x and y are like so, then x is more fundamental than
y. Thus each case will yield an additional sufficient condition on one thing’s
being more fundamental than another, for a total of five individually sufficient
and jointly necessary conditions. All of these conditions are characterized in
terms of building.

6.5.2 The multi-clause definition MFT

The first case that was easy for Toy to handle is the case in which x partially builds
y. It ought to turn out that in such a case x is more fundamental than y. Now, clause
(1) will entail this result if x and y are on a building chain that terminates in
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

something unbuilt. But it will not do so if x and y are steps on a nonterminating

building chain; in such a case x is no closer to the bottom than y is. So the
(B!MFT) principle needs to be added as a separate sufficient condition:

(2) If x at least partially builds y, x is more fundamental than y.

One down, three to go.
The second case that was easy for the simple account Toy is that in which x at
least partially builds y, and y at least partially builds z. The desired result is that x
is more fundamental than z, but nothing I have said so far actually guarantees
this. Clause (1) does not do it; if x, y, and z are on a nonterminating building
chain, x is no closer to the bottom than z is. Clause (2) does not do it either; not all
building relations are transitive. (Consider set formation. Ur-element a does not
build—is not a member of—{{a}}, and thus does not count as more fundamental
by clause (2). But there is nonetheless a strong intuition that a is more funda-
mental than {{a}}; it is two steps lower in the building structure.) So this too needs
to be secured by an additional clause:

(3) if x stands in the ancestral of a building relation to y, x is more funda-

mental than y.
Relative fundamentality is generated not just by building relations proper, but
also by their transitive closures.
Third, any viable account of the more fundamental than relation has to
ensure that anything absolutely fundamental is more fundamental than any-
thing nonfundamental. Whether or not this requires an additional clause
depends on how one chooses to treat cases in which one thing is on a termin-
ating chain and the other is on a nonterminating chain. (Clause (1) clearly
entails that absolutely fundamental things are more fundamental than non-
fundamental things on terminating building chains; the question is what it says
about the relation between absolutely fundamental things and nonfundamental
things on nonterminating building chains.) On page 153 I pointed out that
there is at least some case to be made for the claim that Toy entails that
everything on any terminating chain is more fundamental than anything on
any nonterminating chain. If that is correct, then clause (1), née Toy, can
handle this case—it will entail that every fundamental thing is more funda-
mental than any nonfundamental thing. But there is an at least equally good,
and probably better, case to be made for the claim that Toy entails that
everything on any terminating chain is equifundamental with anything on
any nonterminating chain. (Recall that it all turns on how one assesses the
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

truth conditions of sentences like ‘New York City is closer to Boston than San
Francisco is to Oz’.) If that is correct, then clause (1) cannot handle this case; it
will not entail that every fundamental thing is more fundamental than any
nonfundamental thing. So caution requires that
(4) if x is absolutely fundamental and y is not, x is more fundamental than y
be independently stipulated as a fourth clause.
Adding clauses (2), (3), and (4) to clause (1) constitutes a significant
advance upon Toy; the four clauses together yield an account that permits
some things to be more fundamental than others even if they are on building
chains that fail to terminate. But the account is still missing something
crucial. Clauses (2) and (3) only apply to entities on the same building
chain—that is, to entities that either stand in a building relation or in the
ancestral of one. And while clauses (1) and (4) do apply to entities on
different building chains, (1) only covers cases in which both chains termin-
ate, and (4) only covers cases in which one of the things is itself the terminus
of its chain. Consequently, the account thus far only allows things on different
building chains or structures to stand in the more fundamental than relation if
either i) one of them is absolutely fundamental, or ii) both are located on
terminating building chains.
But that requirement ought not be in place. Recall yet again that there is
strong intuitive pressure to say that a hydrogen atom in Phoenix is more
fundamental than a water molecule in Ithaca, despite the fact that it in no
way helps build that molecule. That intuition is unchanged if we assume that
nothing at all is absolutely fundamental, that both the atom and the molecule
are located on nonterminating building chains. This suggests that entities on
different building chains—entities that neither stand in a building relation nor
the ancestral of one—can indeed stand in the more (less) fundamental than
relation, regardless of whether or not either of their chains terminate. This is
the final case, easy for Toy, that the correct account of relative fundamentality
must handle.
What is the source of the strong intuition about this case? Why do we think the
hydrogen atom is more fundamental than the water molecule, despite not
building it? Because in general, water molecules are (partially) built of hydrogen
atoms. We think that this particular atom is more fundamental than that
particular molecule because of relative fundamentality relations that obtain
between lots of other particular atoms and molecules. This suggests that some-
thing like the following might be another sufficient condition on x’s being more
fundamental than y:
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

if x belongs to some kind K and y belongs to some kind K* such that members
of K* are built20 from members of K, then x is more fundamental than y.21
This would not only account for the fact that the hydrogen atom in Phoenix is
more fundamental than the water molecule in Ithaca, but also account for
another kind of example. Sodium ions seem more fundamental than benzene
rings, even though it is never the case that sodium ions help build benzene rings.
Similarly, plutonium atoms are more fundamental than peanut butter sand-
wiches, despite the fact that plutonium atoms are never part of peanut butter
sandwiches. In such cases, the relevant kinds are not sodium ions or plutonium
atom, but rather something more general, like atom. Benzene rings and peanut
butter sandwiches are built out of atoms, even though they are not built out of the
more specific sorts of atoms initially in question. So by this suggested condition,
sodium ions and plutonium atoms do count as more fundamental than benzene
rings and peanut butter sandwiches.22
But although it is in the right ballpark, this condition is actually too permissive.
It only requires that there be some kind to which x belongs such that members of
that kind typically build things of y’s kind. That is what enables it to handle cases
like those in the preceding paragraph. But the availability of very general, high-
level kinds makes this too easy to satisfy; some restrictions will be necessary.
For one thing, we need to ensure that the kinds not be so broad that they
encompass both fundamental and nonfundamental members. Without such a
restriction, the condition above could yield symmetric instances of the more
fundamental than relation: it might be the case that some a be absolutely
fundamental, and hence (by clause (4)) more fundamental than some nonfunda-
mental b, and yet b belong to a kind that typically builds things of a’s kind. To see
the problem, consider a world in which one person has a simple fundamental
soul, but physicalism is true of everyone else. All but one of the minds are
physical. By clause (4)—and correctly—the soul is more fundamental than any
neuron, but by the condition proposed above, any neuron is more fundamental

20
This probably need not be read as ‘always built’, but as something weaker like ‘typically or
normally built’. If normalcy is invoked, the usual problems arise. Suffice it to say that the definition
may need to invoke a notion of normalcy that is not defined in terms of frequency. See, e.g., Millikan
1989, 284–5.
21
Thanks to Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt for an improved formulation here.
22
Here is a set-theoretic example. Consider two equifundamental things, a and b. Take their
singleton sets, {a} and {b}. Now take the singleton set of the second singleton set: {{b}}. Surely {a} is
more fundamental than {{b}}; we started with equifundamental entities and went one less step up the
set-theoretical hierarchy. Yet here too, {a} does not even partially build {{b}}. But the new clause
solves this case as well. {a} belongs to a kind (sets of ur-elements), and {{b}} belongs to a kind (sets of
sets), such that things of {a}’s kind typically or normally build things of {{b}}’s kind.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

than the soul. After all, the soul is a mind, and in the world in question neurons
typically build minds. I am suggesting that we block this sort of case by denying
that the broad kind mind to which both the physical minds and the soul belong is
legitimate for the purposes of the condition.
Further, we need to ensure that the kinds not be ones to which both entities
belong. Otherwise, there will be additional cases that entail, surely wrongly, that
the more fundamental than relation is not asymmetric. Consider two intrinsically
indiscernible hydrogen atoms, a and b. The condition above entails that a is more
fundamental than b: a belongs to a kind (particles23) such that things of b’s kind
(hydrogen atoms) are typically built of particles. That is, one of the kinds to
which a belongs is so general that it is in fact a kind that builds b. This is already
counterintuitive, but what is worse is that the converse is also true. The same
reasoning shows that the condition also entails that b is more fundamental than
a. (To look ahead a bit: both of these cases problematize asymmetry even when
the more fundamental than relation is indexed to a particular building relation.
More soon.)
These restrictions can be packed into the condition, yielding a reformulation
that avoids both problems:

(5) if x belongs to some kind K and y belongs to some kind K* such that
i. neither K nor K* includes both built and unbuilt members, and
ii. y does not belong to K and x does not belong to K*, and
iii. K*s are typically or normally built from Ks,
then x is more fundamental than y.

(5) does not entail that hydrogen atoms a and b are each more fundamental than
the other, nor that neurons are more fundamental than an outlier fundamental
soul. However, it does correctly entail that sodium ions are more fundamental
than benzene rings.24
Let me assemble what I have so far, even though it is not yet my full story about
the more fundamental than relation; some further complexities remain to be
introduced in the next section. I have provided five sufficient conditions for one
thing to be more fundamental than another, using only the resources of building.
If they are the only five ways, they are jointly necessary, yielding the following:

23
I realize that talk of ‘particles’ becomes dubious the closer one gets to fundamental physics. If
necessary, change the example; I am quite sure others can be found.
24
And that {a} is more fundamental than {{b}}, as per note 22. {{b}} is not a set of ur-elements,
and {a} is not a set of sets.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

(MFT) x is more fundamentalR than y = df either

(1) x is fewer building steps away from the fundamental entity(ies) that
terminate its unique chain than y is from the fundamental entity(ies)
that terminate its unique chain, or
(2) x at least partially builds y, or
(3) x stands in the ancestral of a building relation to y, or
(4) x is absolutely fundamental and y is not, or
(5) x belongs to some kind K and y belongs to some kind K* such that
a. neither K nor K* includes both built and unbuilt members, and
b. y does not belong to K and x does not belong to K*, and
c. K*s are typically or normally built from Ks.
As we shall see, this is not really a definition of more fundamental than proper—I
will explain that subscripted ‘R’ in §6.6.1—but I shall treat it that way for now. It
is disjunctive, but not gerrymandered. It is disjunctive in that it spells out five
distinct sufficient conditions—one thing can be more fundamental than another
by means of any of five distinct paths.25 Yet it is not an arbitrary, ad-hoc list. It is
unified in that each of the clauses relies only on the notion of building to spell out
a way for one thing to be more fundamental than another. The first four clauses
do this directly; the fifth clause does it rather more indirectly.
One can always fight about the details. Complicated, multi-clause definitions
beg to be counterexampled, after all. Perhaps clause (5) requires some further
tinkering; perhaps there needs to be an additional clause. I do think this defin-
ition is, at a minimum, on the right track. But I am frankly not particularly
concerned about small counterexamples and consequent tweaks, as long as those
tweaks result in clauses that remain formulated in terms of building. Indeed,
I rather suspect that there are multiple slightly different ways to characterize the
more fundamental than relation in terms of building, each of which would in
effect count as a competing partial realizer of our ordinary concept. There may be
more than one equally good candidate. (See §6.7.4 for closely related discussion.)
I am perfectly amenable to such ideas because I care much more about my overall
claim than about the precise implementation. My overall claim, again, is a
reductionism or deflationism about relative fundamentality—there is nothing
more to relations of greater and lesser fundamentality than the obtaining of certain

25
One consequence of this is worth noting. The definition does not entail that if x is of the same
kind as y, x cannot be more fundamental than y. It merely entails that if x is of the same kind as y, x
cannot be more fundamental than y via the fifth path. It is perfectly possible for x to be more
fundamental than y via the first, second, or third clause. Cases in which something is more
fundamental than something else of the same kind will come up in §6.6.3.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

patterns of building. In a world with no building relations, nothing is more

fundamental than anything else.
Suppose with me that MFT, or something close to it, is correct. Much more
needs to be said about the picture of relative fundamentality that results. In §6.6,
I will explain and explore the following three “big picture” points.
First, MFT is, in the first instance, indexed to a choice of particular building
relation. While generalized versions can be characterized, they are derivative and
not always antisymmetric. Second, as I have already noted (especially §4.2.3),
I am committed to the claim that causes are more fundamental than their effects.
I shall return to and defuse this claim in light of the thought that relative
fundamentality is relation-indexed. I shall also make some more general remarks
about whether it is the broad class of building relations as I have characterized it,
or some smaller subclass, that generates relative fundamentality. Third, the
definition of equifundamentality I assumed back in §6.4.1 must be rejected,
and replaced by one that leaves room for some things not to stand in any relative
fundamentality relations at all.

6.6 Clarifying the Overall Picture

6.6.1 Indexing and generalizing
MFT includes an as-yet-unexplained subscripted ‘R’: it says that one thing is
more fundamentalR than another just in case . . . It is time to explain this add-
itional feature of the view. The subscript is necessary because the more funda-
mental than relation—and relative fundamentality generally—is implicitly
indexed to particular building relations. There are two reasons for this: my failure
to endorse generalist monism, and one of my reasons for failing to do so. I will
sketch these in reverse order.
Recall from §2.5 that generalist monism is the claim that there is a privileged,
highly general building relation that either is more fundamental than the specific
ones, or else is the only one there really is. And recall that one reason I do not
endorse generalist monism is the fact that I take it to be an open possibility that
different building relations might hold in different directions. That is, I think
there might be cases of the following form: a bears building relation R1 to b, and b
bears a different building relation R2 to a. In §2.5, I considered a couple of
possible examples of that form in order to show that a fully general, abstract
Building relation would likely fail to be asymmetric. (In particular, I considered
synchronic downward determination of the sort discussed by Kim (1999), and
composition and grounding in the context of Schafferian monism (2010).) But
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

now combine such cases with the B!MFT principle, which says that builders are
more fundamental than what they build. This entails that a is more fundamental
than b, and b is more fundamental than a. And that, of course, contradicts the
asymmetry of the more fundamental than relation—unless the two instances of
‘more fundamental than’ do not in fact pick out the same relation. And that is my
view: a is more fundamentalR1 than b and b is more fundamentalR2 than a. (This
came up briefly as an aside in §3.2.)
So that is the first reason I believe that relative fundamentality claims are, in
the first instance, indexed to particular building relations. But there is another
reason. The denial of generalist monism itself makes it natural to index relative
fundamentality, independently of the motivating thought that particular building
relations can hold in opposite directions.
Because I deny generalist monism, I do not use the term ‘building’ and its
cognates to pick out a single, privileged, highly general building relation. I instead
use it to speak generically about a multiplicity of particular relations. So when
I say that one thing builds another, what I really mean is that some particular
building relation or other holds between them. Correspondingly, when I say that
one thing is more fundamental than another, what I really mean is that it is more
fundamental in virtue of particular patterns of particular building relations.
Relative fundamentality relations always obtain in virtue of some particular
building relation’s obtaining. So it is really very natural to say that relative
fundamentality relations are indexed to particular building relations.
On my view, then, relative fundamentality claims are, in the first instance,
implicitly indexed or relativized to a particular building relation. (So is absolute
fundamentality. Absolute fundamentality is independence, and independence is
in the first instance indexed to particular building relations. See §5.2.) This means
that one thing can be more fundamental than another, not in five ways—one
for each clause of MFT—but in five-times-n ways, where n is the number of
building relations. If a is more fundamental than b, really a is (say) more
fundamentalcomposition than b. Strictly speaking, there is more than one kind of
relative fundamentality. Strictly speaking, then, the above definition is not exactly
a definition of the more fundamental than relation, but rather a schema for these
indexed notions of relative fundamentality. That is why the above characteriza-
tion does not start with

x is more fundamental than y = df either . . .

but rather with

x is more fundamentalR than y = df either . . .

 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

This schema can be filled out by specifying a particular building relation, and
precisifying the clauses accordingly:
x is more fundamentalcomposition than y = df either
1) x is fewer composition steps from a mereological simple than y is, or
2) x itself is part of y, or
3) x stands in the ancestral of composition to y. (This clause is unnecessary if
composition is itself transitive; I am neutral about this.)
4) x is simple and y is not, or
5) x belongs to some kind K and y belongs to some kind K* such that
a) neither K nor K* include both mereologically simple and complex
members, and
b) y does not belong to K and x does not belong to K*, and
c) members of K typically or normally compose members of K*.

Mutatis mutandis for other building relations.

Indeed, mutatis mutandis for the simple account Toy. The reason I index MFT to
particular building relations has nothing to do with the reasons I moved away from
Toy; it has nothing to do with the possibility that some building chains may not
involve a unique path to a unique unbuilt terminus. It is instead entirely due to the
fact that I deny that there is a single highly abstract building relation. So Toy, too,
must treat relative fundamentality relations as in the first instance indexed; that will
be common to any account that both characterizes relative fundamentality in terms
of building and takes ‘building’ to be a general term that picks out a class of relations
rather than as a singular term that picks out one privileged relation, Building.
Now, the fact that relative fundamentality is, in the first instance, tied to
particular building relations does not mean that there is no place for more general
relative fundamentality claims that are not so indexed. There indeed is a place for
such claims. But they invoke a generalized notion of relative fundamentality that
is derivative from the indexed notions. (The general notion of independence is
similarly derivative from the indexed versions. See §5.2.)
There are a variety of ways a general notion might be characterized. Here’s a
preliminary, unsuccessful attempt:

x is more fundamental than y = df there is some building relation R such that x

is more fundamentalR than y.

The problem with this simple characterization is that it does not deliver the
intuitively correct results in cases where multiple different building relations
‘chain together’. For example, it is plausible that a thing’s parts are more
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

fundamental than its singleton set: any arbitrary part p of a is more fundamental
than {a}. After all, p is more fundamentalcomposition than a, and a is more
fundamentalsetmembership than {a}. But there is no particular building relation R
such that p is more fundamentalR than {a}. p does not build {a} in any clear
sense—it is neither a member nor part of {a}—and there is also no single building
relation whose transitive closure T is such that a’s parts bear T to {a}.
One way to solve this problem is to simply add a clause to patch up the
loophole, yielding a first possible characterization of a generalized more funda-
mental than relation:
1. x is more fundamental than y = df either there is some building relation R
such that x is more fundamentalR than y, or there is some z and there are
building relations R1 and R2 such that x is more fundamentalR1 than z, and z is
more fundamentalR2 than y.
This ensures the transitivity of the generalized relation by brute force.
A second possibility takes a different tack altogether. What I have in mind is
suggested by David Kovacs’ view about ontological dependence (ms). He claims
that ontological dependence is what he calls an “aggregative cluster concept”.
‘Bigger than’, for example, is such a concept; what is bigger than what is settled by
a complicated, imprecise weighting of comparative height, width, volume, mass,
and so forth. Applied to ontological dependence, the idea is that what ontologic-
ally depends on what is similarly settled by a complicated and imprecise weighing
of ‘dependence factors’, which include set formation, composition, and
necessitation—rather similar to my building relations. So the Kovacsian view
about relative fundamentality—which is not the same as ontological depend-
ence26—would be that the generalized more fundamental than relation is a
(complicated, imprecise) weighted sum of the various specific indexed notions.
For one thing to be more fundamental than another full stop is for it to emerge
the victor when all the relevant indexed more fundamental thanR arrows are
taken into account. Since a big part of Kovacs’ claim is that the general notion
cannot be analyzed with anything like precision, I will not try:

2. x is more fundamental than y = df For all R and all z, the weighted sum of
all the indexed more fundamentalR than relations between x and y, and
between x and z and y, etc., favors x as overall more fundamental.

26
The more fundamental than relation and ontological dependence are neither the same nor
even extensionally equivalent, for reasons that I hope to have made familiar to you. a can be more
fundamental than b without b’s ontologically depending on a. Recall the electron in Phoenix and the
water molecule in Ithaca.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

Or something like that.

I am not particularly interested in further refining these two versions of the
generalized relation, or choosing between them. The key point here is that both of
them are explicitly derivative from the relation-indexed versions—and not guar-
anteed to behave as one might expect more fundamental than to behave.
The difficulties emerge when considering the possibility of cases in which the
indexed relative fundamentality relations point in opposite directions—that is,
cases in which one thing a is more fundamentalR1 than another thing b, and b is
more fundamentalR2 than a. If any such cases are possible, both generalized
notions face trouble, though in different ways. The first one will not be asym-
metric, and the second one will simply not deliver clear results. Now, there may
be yet another way to characterize a generalized more fundamental than relation;
I cannot claim that the two attempts I consider are the only possibilities. But it
ought to be clear that no general relation will fare well in the kinds of cases I am
about to sketch.
The simplest way indexed relative fundamentality relations might point in
opposite directions is the kind of case just mentioned in explaining why I index
relative fundamentality in the first place—namely, cases in which building rela-
tions point in opposite directions. In this sort of case, clause (2) of MFT entails
that a is more fundamental thanR1 b, and b is more fundamental thanR2 a. On the
first account of the non-indexed general relation, a and b are each more funda-
mental than each other; this version of the general relation fails to be antisym-
metric. On the second account . . . well, without more details about how to
calculate the weighted sum, there simply is no answer. Perhaps a and b are
equifundamental?
But note that for the indexed more fundamental thanR relations to hold in
opposite directions, it need not actually be the case that any building relations do.
That is, there may be cases in which a is more fundamental thanR1 b and b is
more fundamental thanR2 a even though there aren’t building relations R1 and R2
such that a bears R1 to b and b bears R2 to a. After all, clause 2 of MFT is not the
only way for one thing to be more fundamental than another; one thing’s being
more fundamentalR than another does not require that they themselves stand in a
building relation. In particular, now that the claim that causation is a building
relation is on the table, I can add a different kind of case that is more plausible to
my ears (and probably only to my ears).
Suppose that I gouge my pencil with my thumbnail. In doing so, the motion of
my hand causes some atoms to move around. If causation is a building relation,
the motion of my hand builds the motion of those atoms, and thus by clause (2) is
more fundamentalcausation than the motion of the atoms. But, indexing to some
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

other building relation—perhaps realization or grounding—the motion of the

atoms is more fundamental thanrealization the motion of my hand, by clause (5).
Here again, the first generalized more fundamental than relation fails to
be antisymmetric, and it is unclear whether, and in what direction, the second
one holds.
Now, I recognize that some may take this as a reductio of the claim that
causation is a building relation. (One could in principle also take it as a reductio
of the claim that entities that are noncausally built ever cause anything—that is,
as a reductio of the claim that there is genuine causation at anything other than
the fundamental level.) I think it is instead just an illustration of the fact that true
relative fundamentality is indexed to a choice of building relation.
Earlier in this chapter, I said that relative fundamentality is relative location in
the building structure. That was a bit of sloganeering. Really, relative fundamen-
tality is relative location in a building structure: it is far from clear that the world
has a single building structure. It has a mereological structure, and a grounding
structure, and a causal structure . . . but it may well not have a coherent building
structure generally. It certainly does not if (a) causation is a building relation, and
(b) things that are noncausally built ever cause anything.

6.6.2 Causation revisited: exactly which relations generate

relative fundamentality?
Let us return to that claim of mine—that causation is a building relation. I also
claimed that one way for something to be more fundamental than something else
is to at least partly build it. (And that is not a new claim; since Chapter 3, I have
been saying that builders are more fundamental than what they build.) I am
thus obviously committed to the claim that causes are more fundamental
than their effects.
I have seen a number of otherwise sensible philosophers cringe at this. They
take it to show that I have gone terribly wrong somewhere. But visceral reactions
ought not always be trusted, and I think this one is misguided. Causes are
more fundamental than their effects. Allow me to (try to) convince you. First,
I will show that the claim is not as strange as it might at first sound; second, I will
motivate the claim by comparing it to an alternative picture that denies it. (You
may also wish to revisit the warm-up remarks that I made when I first broached
this topic in §4.2.3.)
On my deflationist approach to relative fundamentality, there simply is noth-
ing untoward or objectionable about the claim that causes are more fundamental
than their effects. I deny that there is anything deep or mysterious about relative
fundamentality; indeed, claims of relative fundamentality add absolutely nothing
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

to claims of building. For a to be more fundamental than b is just for a and b to

meet one of the clauses of MFT—no more, no less. When a is at least a partial
cause of b, they together meet clause (2), and a thereby is more fundamental than
b. And this is not some extra fact about a and b, something new beyond the fact
that a causes b. It is just a new way of saying that a causes b. I thus see nothing
wrong with saying that if Billy throws a rock at a bottle and breaks it, then his
throwing the rock is more fundamental than the breaking of the bottle—for all
that means is that his throwing the rock caused the window to break. Causes
cause their effects. What initially sounds counterintuitive is revealed to be trivial.
Here is another way of making the very same point. On my view, claims of
relative fundamentality are implicitly indexed to a particular building relation. So
really the relevant claim is that a is more fundamental thancausation b. And relative
fundamentalitycausation is causal priority. The putatively shocking claim that
causes are more fundamental than their effects is just the trivial claim that causes
are causally prior to their effects. In short, the visceral negative reaction to my
claim that causes are more fundamental than their effects stems from not taking
my deflationism sufficiently seriously. The claim is just not problematic when
properly understood.
Can it nonetheless be avoided? Yes. The way to resist the claim that causes are
more fundamental than their effects is to insist that only a subset of building
relations make for relative fundamentality—the subset that does not include
causation.27
One clarification before I evaluate this move. The relevant subset must be all of
the building relations other than causation itself. It will not do to try to instead
appeal to the set of noncausal building relations, or to the set of synchronic or
atemporal building relations. The issue here should be familiar from Chapter 4.
What I there called the first kind of causal taint—that causation itself is a building
relation—is perfectly compatible with the claim that the subset of building
relations that does not include causation is more natural than the broader class.
But what I there called the second kind of causal taint—that various building
relations other than causation frequently hold over time in virtue of causal facts—
is not consistent with the claim that the subset of building relations that are

27
Or, equivalently, by saying that causation isn’t a building relation after all. This would be to use
the label ‘building’ only for a subset of the set for which I have been using it. Call the latter, bigger set
S. The move in question would reserve the term ‘building’ for the subset of S that makes for relative
fundamentality. Contrary to appearances, this wouldn’t really gut Chapter 4. The bigger set S that
includes causation remains interestingly unified and philosophically important; it just wouldn’t be
the set that makes for relative fundamentality. It should be clear that this is a notational variant of
the move discussed in the main text.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

purely nondiachronic and noncausal is more natural than the broader class. That
subset is less natural. And that makes it less suited for generating relative
fundamentality. Why would relative fundamentality arise from a less natural
set of relations rather than the more natural, broader set? And what is it about
diachronicity that makes certain building relations unfit for generating relative
fundamentality? This is particularly pressing given that the relative fundamen-
tality relations more fundamental than, less fundamental than, and equifunda-
mental with can perfectly well hold diachronically. An electron in the Jurassic is
more fundamental than a currently existing car.28
So the right strategy is to simply single out causation itself. The subset of the
large class of building relations that make for relative fundamentality is, well,
everything except causation. This subset is easily carved off from the larger set,
and is plausibly more natural. So why not say that that is the set of relations that
generates relative fundamentality?
Honestly, go ahead if you want. I in fact agree that our pretheoretic, intuitive,
uncashed out notion of relative fundamentality or ontological priority is more
closely affiliated with building relations other than causation. That is, I think the
pretheoretic notion is probably a mishmash of relative fundamentalityground,
relative fundamentalitycomposition, and others—but relative fundamentalitycausation
either does not enter the mix at all, or else does so only around the edges. This is
just a point about our concept, and about how we in fact tend to use words like
‘more fundamental than’ and ‘ontologically prior to’. I instead opt for a revision-
ary usage because it lays bare the crucial point: there is nothing special about
relative fundamentality. Relative fundamentality—ontological priority, if you
prefer—is generated from the instantiation of the various building relations
according to the recipe given in MFT. Causal priority is generated from the
instantiation of the causal relation according to the recipe given in MFT. Denying
that causal priority is a species of relative fundamentality obscures this. Accepting
that it is—and choosing to use the words ‘more fundamental than’ in a way that
makes it true that causes are more fundamental than their effects—instead brings
it to the fore. My claim that causes are more fundamental than their effects is a
rhetorical decision as much as anything else.
Indeed, I think any lingering dissatisfaction with my view has less to do with
my claims about causation than with my deflationism. That is, the real worry is
not that I claim that causes are more fundamental than their effects. It’s rather
that treating causal priority as a species of relative fundamentality makes vivid

28
Whether this claim requires denying presentism turns on the general question of whether
presentists can account for cross-time relations. (See objection 2 in the appendix to Chapter 4.)
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

that on my view relative fundamentality is nothing special. If you like, I am

deposing relative fundamentality and ontological priority. The surface complaint
about causation masks a deeper desire for a richer notion of relative fundamen-
tality, for a thicker notion on which ontological priority is different in kind from
causal priority. It is not.

6.6.3 A consequence: not everything stands in relative

fundamentality relations
I now turn to a further aspect of my view. Characterizing the more fundamental
than relation as I have requires characterizing the equifundamentality differently
than I did in §6.4.1. There, I made the rather natural assumption that two things
are equifundamental just in case neither was more fundamental than the other. It
turns out that I must reject this assumption.29
The issue here is due to the fact that I leave open the possibility of nontermi-
nating building chains. (Once again, my agnosticism about whether all building
chains terminate makes life harder for me.) Now, entities on the same nontermi-
nating chain or structure will stand in the more fundamental than relation; either
one directly builds the other, or they will at least stand in the transitive closure of
some partial building relation. That is what it takes to be on the same building
chain. But what about entities on different nonterminating building chains or
structures?
As it stands, MFT only allows for one way for such things to stand in the more
fundamental than relation. This is the way captured in clause (5)—ignoring
irrelevant complexities, roughly that the things belong to kinds such that that
one of the kinds of thing typically builds the other kind of thing. But, if there are
nonterminating building chains, there will likely be many pairs of entities on
distinct, nonterminating building chains that are not like that. My coffee cup and
your left shoe, for example. So if MFT really is necessary and sufficient for
something to be more fundamental than something else, then neither of such
pairs of entities are more fundamental than the other. On the earlier definition of
equifundamentality, it follows that every pair of such entities is equifundamental.
But they cannot all be equifundamental. To see the problem, suppose there is a
nonterminating building chain such that a1 is built by a2, which is built by a3, and
so forth ad infinitum. Further suppose that there is another nonterminating
building chain such that b1 is built by b2, which is built by b3, and so forth
(Figure 6.4).

29
In what follows, I am indebted to Daniel Bonevac, Josh Dever, and Jon Litland.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

a1 b1

←
a2 b2

←
a3 b3
. .
. .
. .
Figure 6.4

Further, suppose that no pair consisting of one member from each chain meets
clause (5) of MFT: they do not belong to kinds such that members of the one kind
typically build members of the other. Since no such pair can meet any of clauses
(1) through (4), either, MFT entails that it is not the case that a3 is more
fundamental than b3, and it is not the case that b3 is more fundamental than
a3. By the earlier definition of equifundamentality, a3 and b3 are equifundamen-
tal. But the same reasoning shows that a2 and b3 are equifundamental. And then
the transitivity of equifundamentality entails that a2 and a3 are equifundamental.
But clause (2) of MFT entails that a3 is more fundamental than a2, because it
builds a2. Contradiction.
The problem here is that the following four claims are inconsistent:
• the MFT definition of more fundamental than
• x and y are equally fundamental = df
1) it is not the case that x is more fundamental than y, and
2) it is not the case that y is more fundamental than x.
• Equifundamentality is transitive.
• Some things on nonterminating building chains are building-isolated in the
following sense: they neither stand in any building relation, nor stand in the
ancestral of any building relation, nor are such that they belong to kinds whose
other members typically do stand in building relations. In short: there are
entities on distinct nonterminating chains that do not meet clause (5) of MFT.
One of these claims must be rejected.
We cannot give up the third: I can no more make sense of the claim that
equifundamentality is not transitive than I can make sense of the claim that
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

same-heightedness is not transitive. (Surely any relation of the form ‘exactly-

as-F-as’ is transitive.) And we cannot give up the fourth, either. Given the
assumption that there are nonterminating building chains, I cannot imagine
any non-ad-hoc reason to deny that there can be building-isolated entities on
them. After all, it is overwhelmingly plausible that there are building-isolated
entities: my coffee cup and your left shoe, or the number 7 and a peanut butter
sandwich. And I can see no reason to insist that all members of such pairs
must be located on terminating building chains. (No reason, that is, other than
an insistence that all building chains terminate—an insistence that I long
ago set aside.) So the culprit here must be either MFT or the definition of
equifundamentality.
To say that the culprit is MFT is to say that it does not state a necessary
condition on one thing’s being more fundamental than another. It is to say that
MFT needs another clause, that there must be another way for things on distinct
nonterminating chains—things like a2 and b3—to stand in the more fundamental
than relation. Now, I have been clear that I am in principle perfectly amenable to
adding an additional clause or otherwise modifying MFT. But I simply don’t see
any reason for doing so here. That is, I have not been able to think of an
independently compelling example of a pair of entities on distinct nonterminat-
ing chains that do not meet clause (5), and yet it is intuitively clear that one is
more fundamental than the other. Without such a case, there is no motivation to
modify MFT to solve this problem. More importantly, without such a case we are
in the dark about just how to modify MFT.
That leaves the definition of equifundamentality. This, I think, is the real
source of the problem. I therefore deny that two things are equifundamental
just in case neither is more fundamental than the other.
Really, my denial of that claim is a shadow cast by the following more general
fact: on the current approach, not every pair of things stands in any relative
fundamentality relations at all. Not everything is even comparable with respect to
relative fundamentality. Some pairs of things are such that it’s not the case that
the first is more fundamental than the second, not the case that the second is
more fundamental than the first, and also not the case that they are equifunda-
mental. They simply don’t stand in any relative fundamentality relations
whatsoever.
This may sound surprising, but it ought not. Indeed, I claim that this is not a
cost to be borne, but rather is the right result. Reflect again upon the components
that have led me here. First, there is the project of defining relative fundamen-
tality in terms of building. Second, there is the refusal to assume that all building
chains terminate in something unbuilt. Third, there is the very plausible thought
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

that some things are building-isolated in the above sense: they don’t stand in any
building relations, don’t stand in the ancestral of any building relations, and don’t
even belong to kinds whose other members typically do stand in building
relations. Of course putting those puzzle pieces together yields a picture on
which not everything stands in relative fundamentality relations.
Here’s the clearest way to see the point. If all building chains terminated in
something fundamental, Toy would be an adequate account of relative funda-
mentality (well, ignoring the issue about whether everything is a unique number
of building steps from the terminus, anyway). Building-isolated entities would
not raise any interesting issues, for their relative fundamentality would simply be
measured in terms of—better, constituted by—their respective distances from the
bottom of their respective chains. So if all building chains terminated, Toy would
entail that everything is comparable with respect to relative fundamentality. But
I have rejected the assumption that all building chains terminate, and Toy with it.
So the relative fundamentality of building-isolated pairs is not always given by
their respective distances from the bottom of their chains. But, given their
building-isolation, it is also not given by the building relations in which they
stand. In such cases, it is simply not given by anything.
In short, if you accept the project of defining relative fundamentality in terms
of building, and the idea that some things are building-isolated, and you join me
in refusing to assume well-foundedness, it really is quite natural to deny that
everything stands in relative fundamentality relations. Indeed, I think something
stronger is true. I think it would be the correct thing to say even if relative
fundamentality were not defined in terms of building. That is, I think even a
primitivist who does not assume well-foundedness ought to agree that building-
isolated entities on nonterminating chains do not stand in relative fundamental-
ity relations.
This does leave a question hanging: what is it for two things to be equifunda-
mental, if not for neither to be more fundamental than another? A promising
alternative is to say that two things are equifundamental just in case everything
more fundamental than one is more fundamental than the other, and everything
less fundamental than one is less fundamental than the other:

x and y are equifundamentalR = df 8z [(z is more fundamentalR than x iff z is

more fundamentalR than y) and (z is less fundamentalR than x iff is z less
fundamentalR than y)]30

30
Thanks to Jon Litland here.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

This captures the intuitive thought that equifundamental entities have in some
sense the same relative ‘rank’ in the building structure, but leaves room for some
things to simply not have comparable ranks. Building-isolated entities on distinct
nonterminating chains, such as a2 and b2 above, will not come out equifunda-
mental by this definition—all of the ans ‘below’ a2 are more fundamental than a2,
but none are more fundamental than b2 (mutatis mutandis for all the bns below
b2). Note too that it in principle allows entities on distinct nonterminating chains
to be equifundamental. What would be required is that the two chains be
structured so that each pair like a3 and b2 meet clause (5) of MFT. (For example,
imagine that a3 and b3 are both electrons, and a2 and b2 both atoms, a1 and b1
both molecules, and so forth.) Finally, this definition will ensure that equifunda-
mentality is transitive.
6.6.4 The basic picture
It is time to re-emphasize the basic picture: the relative fundamentality facts just
are building facts. Relative fundamentality is relative location in ‘the’ building
structure; it is nothing over and above the obtaining of complex patterns of
building relations. It is not a further, metaphysically deep phenomenon, and it is
not an additional thing to pack into our ontology or ideology. Fundamentality
talk adds nothing to building talk, in the same way that parthood talk adds
nothing to composition talk. That is, suppose we accept that there is a compos-
ition relation, that sometimes two or more things, the xxs, compose a third thing,
y. Given this, we do not complicate our ontology by ‘adding’, or also counten-
ancing, a parthood relation.31 The two are not exactly inverses of each other—
like, say, the being a parent of and being a child of relations, or the being taller
than and being shorter than relations—but they are nonetheless correlative in a
related sense. Similarly, the relation being more fundamental than is not exactly
the same as building, and being less fundamental than is not building’s inverse.
But they are nonetheless defined in terms of building. All there is to one thing’s
being more fundamental than another, or to its being fundamental full stop, is
that the right patterns of building obtain.
Given this deflationism, fundamentality is not a dark notion. It is just another
way of talking about building. To say that grounded facts or realized properties
are less fundamental than their grounds or realizers is just to say that they are,
well, grounded in or realized by them. To say that wholes are less fundamental
than their parts is just to say that they are composed of their parts. Those who are

31
The same point can be made in terms of predicates: one does not complicate a language by
adding a ‘part of ’ predicate to a language that already contains ‘compose’.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

skeptical of fundamentality talk should therefore either reconsider their doubts,

or redirect their worries at building itself. (However, it is hard to do without
building altogether, as will become more apparent in Chapter 8.)
As we have seen, putting genuine flesh on the bones of this grand picture
results in an account that is untidy in perhaps unsatisfying ways. The definition
of more fundamental than is uncomfortably complex. Relative fundamentality is
implicitly indexed to particular building relations in a way that undermines the
idea that the world has a unique priority ordering or structure. And, finally, not
everything is comparable with respect to relative fundamentality; not every pair
of things stands in any relative fundamentality relations at all.
But let us be clear about the source of these complexities. It is not the deflationism
itself. That is, it is not the project of reducing relative fundamentality to building.
Rather, the source of the complexities is the following two additional theses:
We cannot assume the foundationalist claim that all building chains terminate
in something unbuilt.
There is no single most general, most fundamental building relation of which
the more familiar relations are versions. There is just a class of building
relations.
The first is largely responsible both for the uncomfortable byzantry of MFT, and
for the fact that not every pair of things stands in relative fundamentality
relations. The second is responsible for the fact that relative fundamentality is
indexed to particular building relations.
Those who instead reject these two theses—i.e., those who embrace both
metaphysical foundationalism and generalist monism—can avoid the complexities
of my account. They can accept a version of Toy that reflects the view that only a
single building relation orders everything. (Though they still must find a plausible
way to assign each thing a determinate, unique number of building steps from the
bottom.) Call this deflationism without tears, perhaps. It is certainly simpler than
my view. I, of course, think it is head-in-the-sand oversimplified. But my only point
right now is that the complexity of my account arises from auxiliary commitments,
not the deflationism; it would be a serious mistake to blame the deflationist project
of reducing relative fundamentality to building.

6.7 Other Matters Arising

Unsurprisingly, various smaller complications, consequences, and objections
require further discussion. Here are four. My discussion of the final one may
be important to understanding how I think of the project in this chapter.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

6.7.1 Comparatives
More fundamental than is a comparative relation, and ‘more fundamental than’ a
comparative adjective; similarly for ‘less fundamental than’ and ‘exactly as
fundamental as’. The standard semantics for comparative adjectives treats them
as comparing features that the relevant entities have to some degree, or in some
quantity: very roughly, that if a is more F than b, there is some P such that a has P
to degree d1 and b has P to degree d2, and d1 > d2 (e.g. Cresswell 1976, Heim 1985,
Kennedy 2005). For example, one thing is taller than another just in case its
height is greater than the other’s height; one thing is heavier than another just in
case its mass is greater than the other’s mass. Too much reliance on the above
rough gloss of the semantics, coupled with a steady diet of simple cases like ‘taller
than’ or ‘heavier than’, might lead one to think that the correct analysis of ‘more
fundamental than’ should be that one thing is more fundamental than another
just in case it has a greater quantity of fundamentality than the other. Which
is not what I have said. Certainly, I have not claimed, and do not believe,
that fundamentality is an intrinsic property that some things have more of
than others.
But, despite what the above rough gloss might suggest, that is not required
by the standard semantics for comparatives. For example, no one will analyze
‘farther away than’ in terms of relative quantities of some intrinsic feature of
the things that stand in the relation. Rather, x is farther away than y just in
case the distance between x and some contextually salient location z is greater
than the distance between y and z. And that is a much closer analogue to
‘more fundamental than’ than ‘taller than’ is. Indeed, if we could assume the
existence of a bottom level of absolutely fundamental entities, we could rely
on Toy, and the analysis of ‘more fundamental than’ would be pretty much
the same: x is more fundamental than y just in case the distance between x
and the bottom of its chain is smaller than the distance between y and the
bottom of its. But the metaphysician, perhaps unlike the semanticist, needs to
acknowledge that this talk of ‘distance’ is metaphorical, and offer some way to
cash it out. My above account can be understood as doing just that. In short,
nothing I have said is inconsistent with standard linguistic treatments of
comparatives.

6.7.2 Formal features

In general, more-F-than comparatives (and less-F-than comparatives) impose a
strict partial order: they are asymmetric, irreflexive, and transitive. In addition,
exactly-as-F-as comparatives are in general reflexive, symmetric, and transitive.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

Do my characterizations of the more fundamental thanR and equifundamental

withR relations—indexed to a particular building relation, not the generalized
version—ensure that they in fact have those formal features? I think so. But
matters are somewhat less tidy than would be ideal.
Equifundamentality is easy; it is obviously reflexive, symmetric, and transitive.
Recall the definition:
x and y are equifundamentalR = df 8z [(z is more fundamental than x iff z is
more fundamental than y) and (z is less fundamental than x iff is z less
fundamental than y)]
This says that everything more fundamental than x is more fundamental than y
and everything less fundamental than x is also less fundamental than y. This
clearly holds between a thing and itself, holds both directions if it holds at all, and
chains pairs of equifundamentals together as transitivity requires.
The story about the formal features of more fundamental than is more
complicated, because my characterization of that relation is more complicated.
MFT has five clauses, five individually sufficient and (I continue to assume)
jointly necessary conditions on one thing’s being more fundamental than
another. This means that any proof that more fundamental than so characterized
is either irreflexive or asymmetric must have five stages. For more fundamental
than to be irreflexive, for example, each clause must be irreflexive. (As, happily,
each is easily seen to be.) And any proof that more fundamental than so
characterized is transitive will be even more complex, because we must consider
cases in which some a is more fundamental than b, and b more fundamental than
c—by different clauses.
I will not walk through the details or provide proofs. Clause (5) obviously
complicates matters. But even setting the details aside, beginning to reflect upon
whether MFT secures the formal features of more fundamental than makes it
clear that part of the work is being done by the formal features of building. For
example, I’ve just pointed out that the reason the more fundamental than relation
is irreflexive is that each clause is irreflexive; no single thing can meet any of the
sufficient conditions. But why are the clauses irreflexive? Because building rela-
tions are irreflexive. Similarly, the asymmetry of building does part of the work in
establishing the asymmetry of more fundamental than. (Clause (3) is crucial to
establishing transitivity, since building relations need not be transitive. If a is
more fundamental than b by clause 2, and b is more fundamental than c also by
clause 2, it is clause (3) that guarantees that a is more fundamental than c.)
Now, one might worry that something dialectically dodgy is going on here.
Back in Chapter 3, I used this principle
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

B!MFT: for all x and y, and all building relations B, if x at least partially Bs y
then x is more fundamental than y.
to establish that all building relations are irreflexive and asymmetric. Now I am
using the irreflexivity and asymmetry of each building relation to show that my
characterization of more fundamental than is irreflexive and asymmetric. Isn’t
that circular?
It is not. I analyze relative fundamentality in terms of building relations, but
I do not analyze building relations—better, what it is for a relation to be a
building relation—in terms of relative fundamentality. What I did back in
Chapter 3 was point out that it is theoretically fruitful to require that all building
relations be asymmetric and irreflexive, because doing so permits the kind of
reductive analysis of relative fundamentality in terms of building that I have
offered in this chapter. Really what is going on here is that the asymmetry and
irreflexivity of more fundamental than and the asymmetry and irreflexivity of
building stand or fall together; they are a package deal.
6.7.3 Objection: apparent counterexamples to clause (2)
MFT allows the more fundamental than relation to obtain in ways that might
seem counterintuitive at first blush. The most notable putatively problematic
cases do not arise from one of the more complicated clauses of my characteriza-
tion of the more fundamental than relation, but simply from clause (2): the clause
which also appeared in chapter 3 as (B!MFT). The claim in question is just that
if x even partly builds y, x is more fundamental than y.
It follows from this claim that ordinary middle-sized dry goods can be more
fundamental than each other, in a way that might appear too fine-grained. One
might think that ordinary “middle-sized dry goods” like couches and blankets
and tables should all come out at least roughly on a par; they should all be more-
or-less equally fundamental. But clause (2), née B!MFT, entails that if a couch is
built of a bunch of folded-up blankets, it is less fundamental than they are.
Similarly, this can happen in cases in which the built thing is, by some measures,
less complicated and interesting than that which builds it. Suppose, for example,
that I make a triangular paperweight out of three iPhones and some glue. On my
account, those iPhones are more fundamental than that paperweight.
Finally, it is even possible that things of the same kind—indeed, things that are
otherwise extremely similar—can be more fundamental than each other.32 Again,

32
Can something be more fundamental than something from which it is intrinsically indiscern-
ible? I doubt it. The key question is whether intrinsically indiscernible things can meet any clause of
MFT, which seems unlikely. For example, to meet clause 2 a thing would have to be able to (at least
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

this is the case because direct building relations can obtain between them; things
can build other things of the same kind. This is perhaps most obvious when we
think of extremely general kinds—ontological categories like events, facts, or
objects. Since objects are (or at least are among) the relata of the composition
relation, objects build other objects. Since facts are (or at least are among) the
relata of the grounding relation, facts build other facts. Since events are (perhaps)
the relata of the causal relation, events build other events. But it is also the case
with far less general kinds. A table can be composed of other, smaller tables, and
it used to be the case that the Pope’s crown was composed of three other crowns.
By my definition of more fundamental than, this means that a crown can be more
fundamental than another crown.
Two key points are needed in order to properly understand these cases, and to
see that they do not constitute counterexamples to my account of relative
fundamentality.
First, there is an important distinction between singular and general claims of
relative fundamentality. Singular claims state that certain particulars stand in
some relative fundamentality relation, and general ones state that some pattern
or regularity holds. On my account, the singular claims are prior; relative
fundamentality relations obtain in the first instance between particulars. General
claims of relative fundamentality, like the universally quantified ‘all Fs are more
fundamental than Gs’ or the generic ‘Fs are more fundamental than Gs’, are
reached by, well, quantifying or generalizing. The above cases provide no reason
to believe the general claims: that crowns are more fundamental than crowns,
that iPhones are more fundamental than paperweights, that blankets are more
fundamental than couches. Rather, what are true are singular claims: that those
crowns are more fundamental than the Pope’s ‘triple tiara’, that those iPhones are
more fundamental than that paperweight, and that those blankets are more
fundamental than that couch. And these claims are simply not problematic, as
the second point brings out.
Second, recall that relative fundamentality relations always obtain in virtue of
the fact that some particular building relation obtains, and, indeed, their obtain-
ing just is the obtaining of some particular building relation or pattern thereof.
The iPhones are more fundamental than the paperweight, yes, but only because
they are more fundamentalcomposition than the paperweight—and their being
more fundamentalcomposition than the paperweight just is their composing the

partially) build something from which it is intrinsically indiscernible. Can x be both (for example)
part of y and intrinsically indiscernible from y? It would have to be the case that x also has a part, z,
which is intrinsically indiscernible from itself.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

paperweight. Similarly for the other cases. In short, seemingly odd claims like
‘these iPhones are more fundamental than this paperweight’ and ‘these blankets
are more fundamental than the couch’ say no more than that they compose the
paperweight and the couch respectively. Once we take seriously that relative
fundamentality talk adds nothing to building talk, we can see that such claims are
nothing to be afraid of.
6.7.4 Objection: have I changed the subject?
One might complain at this point that the story I have offered diverges too much
from ‘ordinary’ relative fundamentality talk, by which I mean the usage by non-
philosophers as well as metaphysicians, though primarily the latter. (As I briefly
mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 5, I think non-philosophers do engage in
fundamentality talk and have the same basic concepts as metaphysicians.) After
all, other people do not say that iPhones are more fundamental than paper-
weights. Other people do not say that strictly speaking there are multiple more
fundamental than relations, that may or may not march in step with each other.
And other people, arguably, have something more robust in mind. So, the
complaint goes, maybe I have offered an account of something, but it isn’t the
notion of relative fundamentality used by other metaphysicians (and
other philosophers, and non-philosophers). My account departs too much
from ordinary usage.
The objector might even further suggest that it’s misleading to describe my
view as a form of deflationism about relative fundamentality, and to present it
as though it’s a radical claim. It’s not so surprising to be told that more
fundamental thancomposition reduces to mereology, that more fundamental
thanset formation reduces to set formation, etc.! What would be a bold claim is
the claim that more fundamental than reduces to building. And, goes the
objector, in changing the subject I have simply not done that. I have pulled a
bait-and-switch.
Response: no, I have not. My account is offered as an analysis of the ordinary
notion of relative fundamentality. It does not respect all intuitive judgments, no.
But, I claim, it is the best we can do. I have argued against the existence of a
primitive more fundamental than relation whose pattern of instantiation is
unconstrained by the building facts (extreme primitivism). In §6.8, I will argue
against the existence of a primitive more fundamental than relation whose
pattern of instantiation is constrained by the building facts (sophisticated primi-
tivism). There isn’t a primitive such relation. My account is the best alternative,
an alternative that makes sense of many ordinary relative fundamentality
judgments, though not all.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

I am claiming, basically, that our ordinary notion of relative fundamentality

does not quite correspond to what the world is like. This is an instance of a
general phenomenon that arises with theoretical terms (see Lewis 1970, 83; 1972,
252) and the so-called ‘Canberra plan’: it’s one thing to do conceptual analysis;
it’s another to figure out whether the world contains anything that perfectly fits
the resulting description. Sometimes the world just does not oblige.
Here’s an analogy. Consider the familiar question about the nature of personal
identity over time: in virtue of what am I the same person as the six-month-old
baby that my mother carried on a camping trip in British Columbia? Here’s a two-
part story that seems reasonably plausible to me. First, our ordinary concept of a
person is that of an immaterial soul-pellet, transferable to different bodies, indi-
visible, non-duplicatable, capable of undergoing some but not just any psycho-
logical changes. I think that is a reasonable conclusion to draw from our intuitive
reactions to the various familiar puzzle cases. The apparent conceivability of body-
swap cases pushes us away from bodily continuity accounts; the apparent conceiv-
ability of duplication cases pushes us away from psychological continuity accounts.
So I think there’s a decent case to be made that dualists like Richard Swinburne
(Shoemaker and Swinburne 1984) are correct as far as conceptual analysis goes—
our concept of a person is a dualist one, according to which persons are immaterial
souls. But—and this is part two—of course it doesn’t follow that persons really are
immaterial souls. It’s entirely consistent with that quick piece of conceptual
analysis that immaterial souls do not exist. I myself think they do not exist.
I think dualism is false (and think so partly on parsimony grounds not unlike
those I will wield against sophisticated primitivism in §6.8).
Now, obviously I can’t defend here either the claim that our concept of a person
is a dualist one, nor the claim that substance dualism is false. It’s just an example.
But imagine that I were to convince you of both claims. What should we then
think? One reaction, I suppose, would be to deny that there are any persons. But
that seems a bit over-the-top. There are persons—I am one, and you are too. No,
the right reaction is to simply say that there are persons, but the folk, pretheoretic
account of what they are is wrong. Our concept of what a person is does not quite
line up with what a person in fact is. Philosophers writing on personal identity
ought to (re?)conceive of themselves as defending normative proposals of how we
should think about what persons are, and how they persist over time.
Similarly for the case at hand. I don’t think anything in the world quite answers
to our pretheoretic concept of relative fundamentality. Now, obviously, any
account of relative fundamentality must to some extent respect the ordinary
notion, in order to count as an account of relative fundamentality rather than
something else altogether. Mine clearly does. So I offer it to you in the following
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

spirit: if you come to agree with me that primitivism is not to be endorsed, there is
an alternative to consider. It is slightly revisionary; so be it.33
It is time, then, to finish arguing against primitivism.

6.8 Deflationism vs Sophisticated Primitivism

Recall that I distinguished between two versions of primitivism about relative
fundamentality. Both versions say that there is nothing in virtue of which the
relative fundamentality facts obtain; that is what makes them primitivisms. The
extreme version says that relative fundamentality has nothing at all to do with
building, that the facts about what builds what do not in any way constrain the facts
about what is more fundamental than what. I argued against this, but also
introduced a more sophisticated version of primitivism that is not susceptible to
the problems with extreme primitivism. The sophisticated primitivist accepts that
there are intimate connections between building and relative fundamentality. She
thinks that the facts about what builds what constrain the facts about what is more
fundamental than what, even though it is not the case that the former in any way
account for the latter. On her view, primitive (fundamental, independent) facts
about what is more fundamental than what enable and prohibit various patterns of
building. For example, suppose it is a fundamental fact that a is more fundamental
than b. She thinks it follows that b cannot build a. (Recall the example from earlier:
the fact that Obama is president levies a constraint on—has consequences for—
how old he is, even though it does not in any sense make him be that age.) The
relative fundamentality structure comes first; building structure follows.
Exactly what connections between building and relative fundamentality does
the sophisticated primitivist accept? Officially, this is left open; endorsing any
such connections makes a primitivist sophisticated. I just gave an example that
turned on her accepting B!MFT. I earlier suggested that she should also accept
that all unbuilt entities are equally fundamental. Now we can see that she can, in
fact, accept the entirety of MFT. And insofar as each clause is intuitive and
independently plausible, she should accept MFT. But by her lights, it is not a
definition of the more fundamental than relation in terms of building, and it is
not the case that each clause states a sufficient condition on one thing’s being
more fundamental than another. Rather, it is a statement of how building

33
As I made clear at the end of §6.5, other slightly different accounts of relative fundamentality in
terms of building may be available. If one were developed, it would compete with MFT; the question
would be which best realizes our ordinary concept. Or perhaps they would be equally good
candidates. Again, I care much less about the triumph of MFT in particular than about the triumph
of building-based deflationism in general.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

relations can hold given the antecedent relative fundamentality facts—each

clause states a necessary condition on one thing’s building another.
Sophisticated primitivism is better than extreme primitivism. But it is not nearly
as good as my deflationism. I shall offer two arguments for the claim that
deflationism is to be preferred. Both are basically simplicity considerations.
First, the sophisticated primitivist has a fundamental more fundamental than
relation,34 and I don’t. She also has a lot of fundamental relative fundamentality
facts, and I don’t. These are ontological costs. Are they worth it? I cannot see that
they are, as I cannot see any benefits that they pay for.
Now, I suppose someone might try to say that the benefit these extra funda-
mental posits pay for is avoiding all the complexities of my account. A primitivist
wouldn’t index relative fundamentality to a building relation, or have such an
ugly definition of relative fundamentality, or complicate the characterization of
equifundamentality, and so forth. But this response gets things wrong. As I have
already noted, none of those complexities arise from my deflationism per se.
They instead arise from two other independent commitments—my refusal to
assume that that all building chains terminate, and my refusal to claim that there
is a single monolithic building relation. And these are completely dissociable
from the deflationism. A primitivist might share the skepticism about the claim
that all chains terminate, for example. More importantly, a deflationist need not
share them. Indeed, in the current philosophical climate, they are somewhat
unusual commitments. Many people think that grounding is the only relation
that matters, and that metaphysical foundationalism is true: all grounding chains
terminate in something fundamental. Someone with those background views can
help themselves to a simpler deflationism. They can have something close to Toy,
though they would still have to solve the problem about how to count grounding
steps. And they can also have a single asymmetric more fundamental than
relation, the simple definition of equifundamentality, and everything would
stand in relative fundamentality relations. (Apparently I like to make things
hard for myself.) Sophisticated primitivism has no advantage over that deflation-
ism. The point, then, is that the putative costs of my account are not costs of
deflationism per se.
There is a second way in which my view is simpler than sophisticated primitivism.
Recall that she accepts various connections between building and relative

34
I assume she will take more fundamental than as basic, and define less fundamental than and
equifundamental in terms of it. Nothing substantial in what I say is affected if she chooses to take one
of the other two as basic instead.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

fundamentality; that is definitive of the view. Perhaps she accepts MFT, perhaps she
accepts a slight variant, perhaps she only accepts B!MFT, or even just the weaker:35
For all x and y, if x is more fundamental than y, then y does not build x.
But whatever she thinks, whatever connections she endorses—what can she
say about why they hold? For concreteness, let’s suppose she endorses MFT. For
me, MFT is a definition; it is constitutive of what the more fundamental than
relation is. Not so for the primitivist. But then why is it true? I suggest that she can
say nothing in response to this question; it is a mysterious, arbitrary constraint on
fundamentality. And that amounts to adding yet another primitive to the theory.
It is not just the case that there is nothing in virtue of which particular relative
fundamentality facts obtain; it is also the case that there is nothing in virtue of
which a certain more general fact holds, namely that relative fundamentality and
building march in step in the ways specified by MFT.
To see my point here, pretend for a moment that the taller than relation is
primitive. What you would expect is that some people or things are taller than
others, and some are not, and that’s all there is to it. Nothing can be said about
why. But what you would most certainly not expect is that every blond person is
taller than any brunette, or that everything in Chicago is the same height
(nothing is taller than anything else). If patterns like that obtain, they are further
primitive facts, an extra layer of inexplicability in the theory. Similarly here:
whatever connecting principles the sophisticated primitivist endorses are further
primitive facts, not included in or entailed by her claim that relative fundamen-
tality relations obtain in virtue of nothing at all. On her view it is an odd, arbitrary
restriction; on mine, it is perfectly well explained.
All in all, sophisticated primitivism seems pointlessly ontologically extrava-
gant. All the extra fundamental facts and structure do nothing. The case for
deflationism is clear.
I want to quickly underscore this point by returning to an issue that I discussed
briefly in Chapter 3. When I introduced the idea that all building relations are
generative in the sense that they license ‘makes it the case’ and ‘in virtue of ’ talk,
I was explicitly neutral about just what this comes to. My claim was intended to
be compatible with a variety of different understandings of what explains why
such talk is licensed. On one extreme is the claim that some relations are truly
generative, and some are not; it’s just primitive. On the other extreme is the claim
that there is no such relation, only the talk. It is just a matter of convention that

35
Suppose that a is more fundamental than b. The principle can be derived by conditional proof
from B!MFT and the asymmetry of more fundamental than.
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY 

certain relations license certain ways of talking. And there may be intermediate
positions, as well.
I officially take no stand on which of these positions is correct. Yet I would be
remiss not to explicitly note its consequences. On the first approach, the world
decides which relations count as building relations. But on the second approach,
it is instead partly conventional. The world (presumably) decides which relations
are asymmetric, irreflexive necessitation relations; but we conventionally chose
which subset are generative, and thus are the building relations. The different
attitudes toward generativity entail different attitudes towards the demarcation of
which relations are building relations. And that, coupled with this chapter’s
reduction of relative fundamentality to building, yields different attitudes toward
the world’s relative fundamentality structure. On one view, it is what it is. On the
other view, it is partly conventional.
Interesting as this possibility is, I am not going to pursue it here. It is, perhaps,
for future work. I am not entirely sure how to choose between the options, and
I certainly do not want to wade into the morass of trying to sort out what “truth
by convention” comes to. I note it in part so that those deeply skeptical of the
recent metaphysical turn towards grounding and fundamentality can see that
there may be room at the table for them, too. But I note it primarily to make a
point about sophisticated primitivism.
The point about sophisticated primitivism is this: it loses out on parsimony
grounds even to the view that couples deflationism with the claim that it is just
primitive which relations are generative, and thus (at least in part) primitive
which relations are building relations. Sophisticated primitivism says that all
relative fundamentality facts are primitive, and that there are primitive con-
straints on the ways in which building and relative fundamentality interact.
That’s a lot of primitives. But the primitivist about generativity kind of only
posits one primitive fact: that such and such are the relations whose obtaining in
various complex ways constitutes relative fundamentality. That’s a whole lot less.
I have argued that relative fundamentality reduces to building. Everyone talks
as though relative fundamentality is primitive. It is not. Even if you dispute the
details of the complex definitions I have provided in this chapter, you should be
moved by my attacks on the two kinds of primitivism that I have sketched. And
even if my picture may not do justice to every single intuition that every single
person has about relative fundamentality, it does justice to a lot of them, in a very
parsimonious way. Neither relative nor absolute fundamentality are themselves
fundamental. Fundamentality is built.
But what about building? I have made claims about what unifies the family of
building relations, but I have not yet said anything about what it is, if anything, in
 RELATIVE FUNDAMENTALITY

virtue of which any building relation exists, or obtains on a particular occasion.

This is left almost entirely open. (Not entirely; presumably it would be best not to
claim that building relations obtain in virtue of the obtaining of certain patterns
of relative fundamentality relations.) It is time to address this question.
 7
Building Building?

7.1 What is the Question, Exactly?

In the past few chapters, I have argued that, and sketched a picture according to
which, fundamentality is not fundamental. But what about building itself? Is it
fundamental? Or is building built?
Though that question has a nice ring to it—nice enough for me to title the
chapter analogously—it is actually not very clear. And the reason it is not very
clear has nothing in particular to do with building, or with the nature of
fundamentality. It is instead an unclarity in the claim that any property or
relation is fundamental. And such claims, of course, are ubiquitous. (Philo-
sophers often talk about “the fundamental properties and relations” without
specifying what they are.1) But what does it mean to say that a property or
relation is fundamental? There are at least three different things it might mean,
even holding fixed that fundamentality is independence—i.e., that to be funda-
mental is to be unbuilt.
First, it might mean that there is nothing in virtue of which the property or
relation exists. Second, it might mean that there is nothing in virtue of which it is
instantiated on particular occasions. Third, it might mean that only fundamental
entities instantiate it. The focus of this chapter will be whether any or all building
relations are fundamental in the second sense: for each building relation B, is
there always something in virtue of which it is instantiated, when it is?
Here’s why I focus on the second sense. It is obvious that no building relations
are fundamental in the third sense; it’s part of my overall picture that at least one
of the relata of any building relation is always nonfundamental! (If you like: it is
in the nature of building and fundamentality that building relations take at least
one nonfundamental relatum.) It will become clear in a moment why that sense

1
Physicists and philosophers of physics also talk of “fundamental forces and quantities”.
I suspect the same issues apply, though such matters are sufficiently outside my wheelhouse that
I will remain silent about them.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

of ‘fundamental relation’ is even worth mentioning in this context. And the first
question seems to me to be orthogonal to my overall project here. It is, or at a
minimum is intimately connected with, the question of what properties and
relations are. A believer in universals can think that some properties and relations
are fundamental in the sense that there is nothing in virtue of which they exist.
But a nominalist cannot quite think that. To be clear, I have in mind here not the
sort of nominalist who altogether denies that there are properties and relations,
but rather the sort who denies that PROPERTY is a fundamental ontological
category. David Lewis is a nice example (e.g. 1986c), as are the other kinds of class
nominalist that Armstrong attacks (e.g. 1989). For simplicity, consider a simple
class nominalism according to which monadic properties are sets of individuals
and n-place relations are sets of ordered n-tuples. Sets exist in virtue of their
members, so properties and relations exist in virtue of the individuals that
instantiate them. So the class nominalist denies that properties and relations
are fundamental in the first sense.
One might immediately react: surely nominalists can say that some properties
and relations are fundamental! Or at least nominalists do say that; if they ought
not, then they have a problem. But this is too quick. All that follows is that when a
nominalist says that some property is fundamental, she must mean something
other than that there is nothing in virtue of which it exists—something other than
that they are fundamental in the first sense. She might mean that it is funda-
mental in the second sense: that there is nothing in virtue of which any particular
thing instantiates it. Or she might mean that it is fundamental in the third
sense—that only fundamental entities instantiate it. Or she might mean some-
thing altogether different. (Lewis meant that the property is perfectly natural.)
But I do not see how she could mean that it is fundamental in the first sense—that
there is nothing in virtue of which it exists. Consequently, the question of
whether or not any or all building relations are fundamental in the first sense
comes down to the question of whether or not some version of nominalism is
true. And that is not a debate I intend to wade into here. I do not know what the
best general theory of the nature of properties and relations is.
The question before us, then, is whether building relations are fundamental in
the second sense—is there anything in virtue of which they are instantiated on
particular occasions? Suppose that a builds b. Is there anything in virtue of which
that is the case? That is, is there anything that makes the fact that a builds b
obtain? Note that I have just shifted from talk of a relation being instantiated to
talk of a fact obtaining. The language of facts is very natural here, and I will at
least sometimes engage in it. I intend the two ways of talking to be synonymous:
all I mean when I ask whether there is anything in virtue of which the fact that a
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

builds b obtains is whether there is anything in virtue of which a builds b. And the
question “are the building facts themselves built?” is intended to be equivalent to
the more awkward question, “are particular obtainings of building relations
themselves built?” which is itself equivalent to “is there anything in virtue of
which this building relation obtains on this occasion?” The fact-talk is just an
occasionally convenient shorthand; sometimes it’s nice to have a noun.
In my 2011a, I addressed this question for the case of grounding in particular.
I argued that the grounding facts are not fundamental, and laid out a view about
what grounds them. I was soon joined by Louis deRosset, who independently
argued for the same view (2013a). I will not rehash the entirety of my previous
discussion here, though there will be overlap; this chapter is perhaps best read in
combination with my 2011a. My plan here is as follows. In §7.2, I will argue for the
general claim that the building facts are not fundamental, that whenever a building
relation obtains, there is something in virtue of which it obtains. Call this general
claim anti-primitivism about the building facts. In §7.3, I will lay out and motivate
my preferred implementation of anti-primitivism—i.e., tell my story about what it
is in virtue of which they hold. This is the same picture I defended in 2011a,
broadened to the case of building more generally. In §7.4 I will respond to some
objections and argue against some alternative versions of anti-primitivism.

7.2 Arguing for Anti-Primitivism

There are (at least)2 two reasons for thinking that the building facts are not
fundamental. The first turns upon Ted Sider’s purity principle, which says that
“fundamental truths involve only fundamental notions” (2011, 106).3 This entails
that “facts about the relationship between the fundamental and the nonfunda-
mental [must] themselves [be] nonfundamental” (107, italics his).4 That is, his
claim is that the connections or bridges between the nonfundamental and
the fundamental become tainted by the nonfundamental thing on one side.

2
See also Loss 2016 and Litland forthcoming, §3. I find Litland’s consideration less than forceful.
After introducing a notion of “O-fundamentality”—an object is O-fundamental if it figures in an
ungrounded fact—he points out that if the grounding facts are ungrounded, all objects are O-
fundamental. He takes this to be clearly not desirable. But I take it to be more a restatement of the
claim that the grounding facts are ungrounded than an argument against it.
3
This is just an initial version of purity. Sider reformulates it, and his version of completeness, on
115–16. However, the details do not matter for my purposes.
4
Or perhaps purity only entails that facts about the relationship between the fundamental and
the nonfundamental cannot themselves be fundamental. This entailment claim, unlike the quoted
one above, is compatible with views on which such facts are neither fundamental nor nonfunda-
mental (Dasgupta 2014b, Schaffer forthcoming).
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

Nonfundamentalness trickles up, as it were. (The most salient discussion is in

§§7.2 and 8.2.1.) Now, building facts of the form ‘a builds b’ are all either facts
about the relationship between something fundamental and something nonfun-
damental, or else they are facts about the relationship between two nonfunda-
mental things. It follows from purity that no such facts are fundamental.
I think this argument is intriguing. But I do not at the end of the day know how
seriously to take it, partly because I do not know how seriously to take purity, and
partly because I worry that appealing to purity is question-begging in this
context. After all, the question of whether the building facts are built is perilously
close to the question of whether purity is true. So, yes, insofar as you find purity
compelling, you should also be attracted to the view that the building facts are
built. But it would be better to have a more independent argument that does not
rely upon purity. Luckily, I do.
The second argument for anti-primitivism turns upon a principle that I have
already relied upon a few times in this book:5 whatever the (contingent) funda-
mental elements of the world are, they are open to free modal recombination. This
recombination principle is particularly plausible given the independence-based
understanding of ‘fundamental’ now in play. Consider the reason that, on this
understanding, nonfundamental entities are not freely recombinable with the
fundamental entities: it is precisely that they are built. Because built entities
supervene upon that which builds them, there can be no change to the built entities
without change to that which builds them. But this constraint on recombinability
simply does not apply to entities that are not built, and no other constraint suggests
itself. The claim is therefore compelling; there is no reason to deny that funda-
mental (independent) entities are freely recombinable. In particular, any contin-
gent fundamental entity, or kind of fundamental entity, can simply be ‘deleted’
from the world. If the two fundamental kinds are F and G, there is a possible world
in which there are Fs and no Gs, and a world in which there are Gs and no Fs.
This recombination principle gives me the basis for a reductio of the claim that
the building facts are fundamental. They are contingent. So if they were funda-
mental, there would be a possible world w just like the actual world in the
distribution of all the rest of the fundamental entities, but without any building
facts. In w, no building relations obtain; nothing builds anything else. Yet all of
the other actual fundamental entities remain exactly as they actually are. So what

5
I rely upon the recombination principle both to argue against the possibility of genuinely
indeterministic building (§3.3), and to argue against primitivism about relative fundamentality
(§6.2). Jennifer Wang (forthcoming) raises some challenges to the claim that contingent fundamen-
tal entities are freely recombinable, but her paper came to my attention too late to substantively
engage with it.
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

about the actually built entities? Are there cars, mental states, glasses of water in
w? I claim that neither a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer is acceptable.
Consider first the positive answer, according to which w does contain the things
that are built in the actual world. On this horn of the dilemma, w contains things like
consciousness, crowds, and cars—or at least entities qualitatively indiscernible from
such things—but they are fundamental there.6 However, this is unacceptable; it
involves denying the very plausible thought that things that are otherwise qualita-
tively indiscernible from built entities are also built.7 I have no real argument for that
claim, but I simply cannot wrap my mind around how it could be false.
Now consider the negative answer, according to which w is just like the actual
world in all fundamental matters except the building facts, but contains no
entities that are built in our world. This amounts to saying that an extreme
zombie world is possible. This is intuitively implausible: surely, given the funda-
mental facts and entities that actually build all the nonfundamentalia, the non-
fundamentalia must follow. But on this horn of the dilemma, building has to be
genuinely indeterministic in the sense of §3.3; builders in no sense necessitate
what they build. On this horn, built entities do not strongly globally supervene on
the fundamental entities, or indeed on anything merely less fundamental. Yet
they surely do, as I argued at length in §3.3.
At this point, it is very tempting to say that w is not possible, and thus that the
building facts are not freely recombinable, and thus that they are not fundamen-
tal. But there is, unfortunately, a loophole to close. There is a way to embrace the
second horn without implausibly denying the supervenience claim. After all,
I have thus far made an assumption: namely, that the actual world contains
other fundamental matters besides the building facts. If that is false, if there are
no other fundamental matters, then a world with no building facts but just like
the actual world in all other fundamental matters isn’t much like the actual world
at all. On the assumption that defines this horn—that w contains no entities
corresponding to the actually built entities—w is the empty world. The pair of the
actual world and the empty world does not violate the global supervenience of the
built entities on the fundamental entities. And there is nothing obviously wrong
with the claim that some world is empty. So what’s the problem?

6
Thanks to Shruta Swarup for discussion of this option.
7
One might have thought that this picture violates the claim that everything that is built is
essentially built. That is not quite right, however. After all, it could be claimed that the car-like and
crowd-like entities in w are neither identical to nor counterparts of the relevant actual entities. And it
could be claimed that they are not, strictly speaking, cars and crowds at all, precisely because they are
not built. With those claims in place, the current understanding of w does not violate the principle
that everything that is built is essentially built.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

I agree that this is the best response to my argument. But it is not good enough.
Note what the proponent of this response is doing to slip through the dilemma:
claiming that nothing is fundamental except the building facts! First, hardly
anyone wants to make that claim. I myself have gone to great lengths in this
book to leave the matter open, but almost everyone else—in informal discussions
perhaps more than in print—wants to claim that there are a variety of funda-
mental matters, that the world “bottoms out”. So this would be reckoned by most
to be an unacceptable consequence. Second, there’s just something dialectically
odd about defending the claim that the building facts are fundamental by
claiming that nothing else is. If everything else is built, why think the building
facts are the one exception? Why think they are the one kind of thing not located
on infinitely descending chains? The answer obviously cannot appeal to the claim
that there is something problematic about infinitely descending chains.
To sum up: the claim that the building facts are fundamental has any one of
three unpalatable consequences. It entails either that built matters do not globally
supervene on fundamental matters, that qualitatively indiscernible things can
differ in whether or not they are fundamental, or that there are no fundamental
matters other than the building facts. None of these should be embraced. So the
building facts are not fundamental. Anti-primitivism is true. That is, building is
not fundamental in the second sense above: when a building relation obtains,
there is something in virtue of which it obtains.

7.3 Upwards Anti-Primitivism

7.3.1 The view
OK, so exactly what is it in virtue of which building relations obtain? It’s one
thing to argue for anti-primitivism, and another to tell a positive story about how
the building facts are built.
The gist of my view is straightforward. Suppose that a builds b. Then a also builds
a’s building of b. That is, a also builds the fact that a builds b. In virtue of what does b
exist or obtain? In virtue of a. In virtue of what does a build b? In virtue of a. Shamik
Dasgupta calls this view “simple reductionism” (2014b); Jon Litland calls it “the
straightforward account” (forthcoming). We could perhaps also call it “the bottom-
up approach”, or the label I will adopt here, upwards anti-primitivism.8

8
The label ‘reductionism’ and its cognates are too fraught, and I have not endorsed any claim to
the effect that if x builds y, y reduces to x. The problem with ‘the straightforward account’ is simply
that it does not yield a nice label for those who endorse the view. And I have dropped the ‘simple’
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

In my earlier paper, I argued for what I now call upwards anti-primitivism in

terms of the closely related claim that grounding is superinternal: it is “such that
the intrinsic nature of only one of the relata—or, better, one side of the relation—
guarantees not only that the relation holds, but also that the other relatum(a)
exists and has the intrinsic nature it does” (2011a, 32).9 To directly import this
earlier claim about grounding to the broader context of this book would be to
claim that all building relations are superinternal. I do not quite claim this.
I stand by the spirit of my earlier claim, but must modify two details.10
First, I ought not have characterized superinternality in purely modal terms.
For the usual reasons, something stronger would be better (see Cameron 2014).
Thus, I ought rather to have characterized it in terms of building: a superinternal
relation is such that the intrinsic nature of the entity(ies)11 on one side of the
relation builds both the other relatum(a) and the fact that the relation holds. That
is, both the output relatum(a) and the building fact exist or obtain in virtue of the
input relatum(a).12
The second modification is that I no longer claim that building relations obtain
in virtue of the intrinsic nature of one of the relata (or one side of the relation).

because it adds little; the downwards anti-primitivism I argue against in §7.4.4 is as simple as my
view.
9
The ‘one side’ formulation allows for cases in which there is more than one entity involved in
the relation. It allows many-one relations to be superinternal, for example.
10
Litland 2015 criticizes the internality of grounding by means of examples involving self-
reference, but this appeared too close to publication for me to substantively engage with it.
11
Again, ‘entity’ is my placeholder term for relata of whatever ontological category is required.
12
The same can be done for Lewis and Armstrong’s notion of an internal relation. They both
characterize internality in terms of supervenience, but it can be done in terms of building instead
(see Cameron 2014).
Defining both internality and superinternality in terms of building rather than supervenience makes
it possible to say that a relation is superinternal but not internal. This cannot be done on the modal
versions, because supervenience and entailment are typically understood to be monotonic: if A is
entailed by or supervenes upon B, it is also entailed by and supervenient upon B + C for any C. (If C is
incompatible with B, A is still entailed; in standard logics, everything is entailed by a contradiction.)
The obtaining of a superinternal relation is entailed by or supervenient upon the intrinsic nature of the
first relatum; the obtaining of an internal relation is entailed by or supervenient upon that plus more—
the intrinsic nature of both relata. Thus if internality and superinternality were characterized in terms
of supervenience or entailment, all superinternal relations would be internal.
However, the building characterizations permit relations to be superinternal but not internal. And
it is much less plausible that building is monotonic. Composition is not, and I have claimed that
composition is a building relation. Grounding is also usually taken to be nonmonotonic (Audi 2012).
Here is a general argument for the nonmonotonicity of building: it is entailed by its irreflexivity.
(Thanks to Daniel Murphy here.) Suppose for reductio that building is monotonic, and suppose that
A is built by B. Then A is also built by B + C for any C. It follows that A is built by B + A, in violation
of reflexivity.
Upshot: because building is not monotonic, relations can be superinternal without being internal.
This corrects the discussion in 2011a.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

I instead allow that some of its extrinsic features might matter as well. This
renders the language of ‘internality’ no longer apt, so I will instead talk of
building relations as being one-sided. I will tighten this up shortly, but here is
the basic idea: a one-sided relation is such that the intrinsic and extrinsic features
of the entity(ies) on one side of the relation builds both the other relatum(a) and
the fact that the relation holds. I now claim that building relations are one-sided
rather than superinternal.
Let me be clear that the move from superinternality to one-sidedness is not a
big or important one. Anyone who says either that building relations are super-
internal or that building relations are one-sided counts as an upwards anti-
primitivist. Those two views are basically notational variants; they share the
basic commitment that the more fundamental side of the building relation builds
the building fact as well as the built entity. The issue here is exactly the same as
that between the two versions of the necessitation requirement in §3.3. Our actual
building talk frequently fails to invoke everything required to guarantee the built
entity, so we face a choice. We can pack everything required into the full building
base, or we can say that the full building base only necessitates the built entity in
the circumstances. The former option entails that the complete building bases for
most things will be rather large and spatiotemporally distributed; the latter
option allows more limited, localized bases, but they will not be fully intrinsic.
Back in Chapter 3, I chose the latter option, claiming that building bases are only
minimally sufficient in the circumstances for what they build. I think it is just as
legitimate to say that my brain state grounds or otherwise builds my mental state
as it is to say that Billy’s throwing his rock caused the window to break—despite
the fact that, in both cases, all sorts of background conditions and laws need to be
in place for the first relata to guarantee the second.
It is a consequence of this choice that building relations are not superinternal.
This is, as I explained in Chapter 3, basically a matter of bookkeeping. The only
reason it is not a completely trivial matter of bookkeeping is that in some cases—
notably causation—our intuitive judgments go very strongly with the more
restrictive input relatum. I would have a hard time convincing you that causation
is superinternal, but presumably you can see, with little explicit argument, that it
is one-sided. Nonetheless, I reiterate that everything I go on to say about the one-
sidedness of building can be replaced with claims—arguably clearer, tidier
claims—about the superinternality of building. Doing so yields a version of
upwards anti-primitivism that shares all the advantages of my version. Either
way, though, I claim that it is a mark of building that (pssst—at least in the
circumstances) everything is settled by the base, by the first relatum(a). That is
what makes it generative.
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

However, choosing to proceed with the claim that building relations are one-
sided as opposed to superinternal requires me to be a bit more careful about what
exactly one-sidedness amounts to. All I have done so far is remove the require-
ment that all the work be done by intrinsic features of the building entity. But this
lets in too much. Not just any extrinsic features are permissibly included in the
building base of a one-sided relation. Really, a one-sided relation is one that
obtains in virtue of intrinsic and a certain subset of the extrinsic features of the
first relatum. But what subset?
Well, for one thing, the subset cannot include relations between the first and
second relatum. If that is allowed, all relations are trivially one-sided. Suppose
that I am two feet to your left. That this relation obtains is fully settled by my own
intrinsic and extrinsic features, because ‘being located two feet to the left of you’ is
among my extrinsic features! So extrinsic properties that themselves reflect the
relation to the second relatum must be ruled out of the base of a one-sided
relation. Further, such information also cannot be allowed into the base by other
clever means. Here is one such clever method: invoke not relations to the second
relatum itself, but to its parts, grounds, or other building base. That I am two feet
to your left is fully settled by my own intrinsic and extrinsic properties, even not
counting my relations to you, because my relations to your parts will do the job.
(Suppose I am slightly more than two feet from atom a1, slightly less than two feet
from atom a2 . . . an, and you are composed of a2, a2 . . . an.) Here is another clever
method: invoke not relations to the second relatum or its parts (or other building
base), but rather to other things in the world, whose relations to the second
relatum settle that the relation obtains. That I am two feet to your left is
guaranteed by my intrinsic and extrinsic properties, even not counting my
relation to you or your parts, because my relations to other things will do the
job. (Suppose I am three feet to the left of your car, which is one foot to the right
of you.) In short, to reach a proper characterization of one-sidedness, we must
rule out not only any mention of the first relatum’s relation to the second, but
also any mention of the second relatum or its building base. If a relation R
between a and b is genuinely one-sided, both the fact that R obtains and the
existence and nature of b are built from—if you like, grounded in—a’s intrinsic
nature and that subset of its extrinsic properties that makes no direct or indirect
mention of b, or of anything other than a that builds b.
All of this is just to explain my claim that building relations are one-sided, and
thus clarify what exactly my version of upwards anti-primitivism amounts to. So
why endorse upwards anti-primitivism at all? One reason is simply that I prefer it
to extant alternatives, but I will set this aside since I will not argue against other
views until §7.4. In §§7.3.2 and 7.3.3, I offer two more direct arguments for
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

upwards anti-primitivism. First, the view is intuitive; second, it neatly sidesteps a

regress that threatens the claim that building facts are built. Let me spell out these
points in order.

7.3.2 Trying to articulate its intuitiveness

Here is a somewhat impressionistic line of thought in favor of upwards anti-
primitivism. If a fully builds b, then a makes b exist, obtain, or occur. But if a
makes b exist, obtain, or occur, it makes the fact that a builds b obtain as well.
Because a is doing all the work in generating b, it thereby also does all the work in
making it be the case that it generates b. As I said earlier, “it all unfolds upwards”
from a (2011a, 33). One wants to say—if b unfolds from a, so does the meta-
phorical arrow connecting a to b.
Consider physicalism. Physicalism says that this complex physical fact grounds,
realizes, or otherwise builds my desire for a cup of coffee. In virtue of what does it
do so? Well . . . in virtue of itself. Part of what it is to be that complex physical fact is
to be a realization of a coffee desire. Or consider the fact that my shirt is purple.
This grounds the fact that it is colored. What grounds the fact that its being purple
grounds its being colored? Its being purple! It’s in the nature of purple things to be
colored. That’s part of what it is to be purple. Nothing else is required.
Perhaps it will help to try more or less the same thought from a different angle.
Use ‘x’ to pick out whatever it is that builds the fact that a fully builds b. Because
x makes it the case that a builds b, it contributes to the building of b. Therefore
x helps build b itself, not just the fact that a builds b. It follows that x is either
identical or contained within (mereologically, set theoretically, or as an aspect of)
the complete building base of b. It follows, that is, that x is identical to or
contained within a. In short: anything that builds a building fact thereby also
builds the built entity involved in that fact.
7.3.3 Regress averted
The second reason to believe upwards anti-primitivism is that it provides a lovely
solution to the threat of regress. This was my primary motivation in 2011a, as it is
for deRosset 2013a.
Recall that upwards anti-primitivism is an instance of anti-primitivism full
stop: whenever any building relation obtains, there is something in virtue of
which it obtains. And anti-primitivism of any kind appears to fall victim to a
regress. Suppose again that a builds b. By anti-primitivism, that itself must be
built; there is something in virtue of which a builds b. Call it x. x builds the fact
that a builds b. But that means that another building relation obtains, now
between x and the fact that a builds b. By anti-primitivism about building,
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

there is something in virtue of which that relation obtains. Call that which builds
it—its building base—y. y builds the fact that x builds the fact that a builds b. At
this point, parentheses will be handy: . . . y builds [(x builds (a builds b)].
Now, it is not entirely obvious that this is problematic. Contra my 2011a, the
infinite series here does not violate well-foundedness.13 It is not an infinite chain
of the form a is built by b is built by c is built by . . . It is more like an infinite list:
a builds b.
x builds the fact that a builds b.
y builds the fact that x builds the fact that a builds b.
z builds the fact that y builds the fact that x builds the fact that a builds b.14
...
Further, it is perfectly possible that various of the entities in this list are absolutely
fundamental. a might well be absolutely fundamental, for example, as might each
of x, y, and the like. Still, though, the infiniteness of the series might seem
bothersome for much the same reason as the failure of well-foundedness is
usually taken to be bothersome.
For one thing, there is something bothersome about the fact that there is no
satisfying end to the line of questioning that produces the above list. I take it that
something like this concern motivates those who insist that building (or at least
grounding) must be well-founded. I do not share that insistence, and do not
know how seriously to take the concern. I simply note that the same one arises in
reaction to the above list, generated by anti-primitivism. Another concern is that
one might take the infinite series to be ontologically profligate. As long as the
above variables take different values, anti-primitivism winds up committed to
both an infinite number of instances of building, and an infinite number of the
things (x, y, etc.) that build those instances.
Now, neither of those reasons to worry about anti-primitivism’s commitment
to the infinite list is entirely compelling. I suspect there are other ways to avoid
them or otherwise downplay their significance. (My own Chapter 8 provides the
seeds of a response to the second one.) My point here is just that the upwards
anti-primitivist in particular has nothing at all to worry about. Whatever the

13
Thanks to Shamik Dasgupta and Ted Sider for discussion.
14
This is as good a place as any to reiterate that my talk of facts is intended to be equivalent to
talk of the obtaining of a building relation. Here is a fact-free version of the same list:
a builds b.
x builds a’s building of b.
y builds x’s building of a’s building of b.
z builds y’s building of x’s building of a’s building of b.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

strength of the concerns, they are only concerns at all if the variables take
different values. Which the upwards anti-primitivist denies.
Again let a build b. By the one-sidedness of building, a also builds the fact that
a builds b. Now there is an additional instance of building, an additional building
fact—namely the fact that a builds the fact that a builds b. What builds that fact?
The one-sidedness of building gives us the answer. a builds the fact that a builds
the fact that a builds b. And again and again, ad infinitum. As before, we have an
infinite list:
a builds b.
a builds the fact that a builds b.
a builds the fact that a builds the fact that a builds b.
a builds the fact that a builds the fact that a builds the fact that a builds b.
...
But at each step the same answer is put forward; at each step the one-sidedness of
building returns the same base.
This dissolves the two worries I raised for anti-primitivism generally: the fact
that a certain line of questioning never ends, and the expanded ontology. Neither
is really the case, not if upwards anti-primitivism is true.
First, I suggested that perhaps part of what is bothersome about anti-
primitivism is the fact that a certain line of questioning has no end. In virtue of
what does this building relation obtain? In virtue of what does that one obtain?
And so forth. But now that we know that all of these questions have the same
answer—namely, a—they seem a lot less problematic. Second, the ontology. The
infinite series turns out to be no addition to being; we do not postulate a new
building base at each step. The series that appeared to be . . . y builds [(x builds
(a builds b)] in fact takes identical values for x, y, and so on; x = y = a. So there is
no explosion of entities that do building work. There is only one, namely a. It is in
virtue of a that all of those building relations obtain.
Now, it remains the case that there is an explosion of building facts, i.e. of
instances of building relations. But this is a triviality. Compare the truth regress: if
proposition p is true, it is true that p is true, and it is true that it is true that p is
true . . . and so on. There is indeed an infinite list of truths, but all obtain in virtue
of the same feature of the world. The fact that grass is green is the truth-maker for
the proposition ‘grass is green’, for the proposition ‘“grass is green” is true’, for
the proposition ‘“‘grass is green” is true’ is true’, etc. The truth regress is often
used as a paradigm of a harmless regress (e.g. Armstrong 1989, 56; Nolan 2001,
523–4). I claim that, for the upwards anti-primitivist, this infinite series is
similarly harmless (see my 2011a, 34; deRosset 2013a, 262; Dasgupta 2014b, 588).
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

7.4 The Opposition

7.4.1 Two alternatives
Unsurprisingly, upwards anti-primitivism has opponents. Well, what has oppon-
ents is upwards anti-primitivism about grounding in particular. This book is the
first to place grounding in context, as a member of a broader family. Throughout
§7.4, I will revert to talking about grounding, so that I can respect the actual
claims of my interlocutors. But I intend what I say to be generalizable.
Kit Fine supports a view that could be called downwards anti-primitivism
about the grounding facts. He takes a “top-down approach” (2012, 76) and says
that the fact that a grounds b is grounded in the nature of b:
What explains the ground-theoretic connection is something concerning the nature
of [the grounded fact] and not of the grounding facts themselves . . . It is the fact to be
grounded that ‘points’ to its grounds and not the grounds that point to what they
may ground . . . The fact to be grounded bears full responsibility . . . for the ground-
theoretic connection.
(2012, 76)

And Shamik Dasgupta defends a different view, both in a generalized form and a
more specific version. The general view is what he calls brute connectivism, the
view that grounding facts like a grounds b are partly grounded in some general
connection between a-like things and b-like things, which is itself ungrounded
(2014b, 568). Dasgupta’s own preferred version of brute connectivism is brute
essentialism, the view that the ungrounded general connection is one that
arises from the essence of the grounded entity, which is itself ungrounded. In
particular, he says that the fact that a grounds b is grounded in a plus the fact that
it is essential to something’s being b-like that if something a-like obtains,
something b-like does too (e.g. 568).15 He further says that facts about essence

15
Dasgupta does not actually state the general principle, instead focusing on examples. Consider
the following, where “C-activities” is shorthand for things like people giving talks, asking questions,
and the like:
(F) The fact that e contains people engaged in C-activities grounds the fact that e is a
conference
(F) is a grounding fact; the question is what grounds it. Dasgupta says that (F) is grounded in the
following facts:
(F.i) Event e contains people engaged in C-activities.
(F.ii) It is essential to being a conference that if an event contains people engaged in C-activities
then it is a conference.
On his view, the latter fact is autonomous—not apt for being grounded.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

are ungrounded because they are autonomous—not apt for being grounded at all
(see his §7, especially 579–80).
It is useful to extract three different threads from these views. One thread is
downward-directedness, the thought that something about the grounded entity or
fact at least partly makes the grounding fact obtain. The second thread is
connectivism, the thought that some generalization about the kinds of things
involved in the grounding fact at least partly makes the grounding fact obtain.
The third thread is grounded-in-groundlessness, the thought that something that
at least partly makes the grounding facts obtain is itself ungrounded. My upwards
anti-primitivism is neither downward-directed nor connectivist nor grounded-
in-groundless. Fine’s view is downward-directed but not connectivist. (I am not
sure that he takes an official stand on grounded-in-groundlessness.) Dasgupta’s
brute essentialism is obviously connectivist and grounded-in-groundedless, and
somewhat less obviously downward-directed. It is downward-directed in that the
general connection arises from the essence of the grounded thing, rather than
that of the grounding thing.
Connectivism alone need not involve claims of grounded-in-groundlessness,
though brute connectivism by definition does. Further note that brute connecti-
vism is not inherently downward-directed. Brute connectivism, again, is just the
view that the fact that a grounds b is partly grounded in some general and
ungrounded connection between a-like things and b-like things (2014b, 568).
There is room in logical space for versions of connectivism—brute or not—that
are entirely upwards-directed: for example, a view that says that the fact that a
grounds b is partly grounded in the fact that it is essential to something’s being
a-like that if something a-like obtains, something b-like does too. In sum,
Dasgupta’s version of brute connectivism (brute essentialism) is downward-
directed, because he takes the general connection to arise from the essence of
the grounded entity. But brute connectivism itself need not be.
One final exegetical matter. Despite the presence of the word ‘brute’, brute
connectivism is a form of anti-primitivism in my sense: the grounding facts
are grounded. What the ‘brute’ indicates is that at least part of what grounds
them is ungrounded. (Not something fundamental: Dasgupta believes that
some ungrounded facts, including ones about essence, are “not apt for being
grounded in the first place” (576).) But the grounding facts are grounded, so
it is a version of anti-primitivism. So is Fine’s view. It is thus worth noting that
the discussion to come amounts to infighting among anti-primitivists. We all
agree that the grounding facts are grounded; we disagree sharply about what
grounds them.
I have two tasks before me. One is to directly argue against these views. The
other is to respond to the ways in which their proponents have argued against
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

mine. Dasgupta in particular has raised two objections to upwards anti-primitivism,

claiming that it does not have as much explanatory power as his brute essentialism
(or brute connectivism more generally). First, he argues that upwards anti-
primitivism cannot genuinely explain the grounding facts; second, he claims that
it cannot explain patterns of grounding. I will address these two objections in §7.4.2
and §7.4.3; I will argue directly against Fine and Dasgupta’s views in §7.4.4.
7.4.2 Can upwards anti-primitivism explain the grounding facts?
Dasgupta says that “ground is an explanatory notion” (2014b, 572), and thus that
if a grounds the fact that a grounds b, a must also explain the fact that a grounds
b. But, he says, it simply doesn’t. He offers two reasons for thinking that it
does not. First, he claims that such explanations just “sound bad” (572). He
offers the example of a conference, an event whose occurrence is grounded in
various complicated behaviors (giving papers, asking questions, etc.) that he calls
C-activities. He asks,

Question 1: Why is this event a conference (rather than, say, a football match)?
Answer: Because it contains people engaged in C-activities. So far, so good. Question
2: Why is it that those activities make the event count as a conference (rather than a
football match)? The [upwards anti-primitivist] says: Because those people engaged
in C-activities. This is not a good explanation. Compare this to brute connectivism.
To Question 2, the brute essentialist (for example) answers: Because it lies in the
nature of what a conference is that you have a conference whenever people engage in
C-activities. It is clear which is the better explanation.
(572)

Dasgupta further complains that upwards anti-primitivism entails that “facts that
should get different explanations get the same explanation” (573):

For example, suppose (as is customary) that if P obtains then P grounds P v Q. And
suppose (as is also customary) that P grounds

P. Then [upwards anti-
primitivism] implies that what grounds the fact that P grounds P v Q is exactly the
same as what grounds the fact that P grounds

P, namely, P. And this is wrong: the
grounds are surely different and involve something about disjunction in the first case
and negation in the second. It is because of the way disjunction works that P is a
sufficient explanation of why P v Q, while it is because of how negation works that P is
a sufficient explanation of why

P.
(573)

Here, the charge is that P cannot ground both the fact that P grounds P v Q and
the fact that P grounds ~~P—those facts need different explanations, ones that
respectively invoke the nature of disjunction and the nature of negation.
I confess that I do not really understand why Dasgupta thinks that P alone fully
grounds two different grounded facts—P v Q and ~~P—and yet cannot fully
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

ground two different grounding facts. But the main thing I want to call attention
to is the fact that all of the work in both of these arguments is done by the claim
that “ground is an explanatory relation” (572)—that grounds explain what they
ground, or, to generalize for the current context, builders explain what they build.
But this claim is ambiguous. On one reading, I think it is false; on another
reading, it is true, but there is no reason to deny that the grounds to which the
anti-primitivist appeals explain the grounding facts in this sense.
Back in §3.5, I distinguished between a metaphysical and an epistemic sense of
‘explanation’—and noted that I try to avoid the word altogether. To say that
something x explainsM y is to say that x makes y exist or obtain, that it fully
accounts for y. ExplanationM is production or generation or making happen/
obtain or being responsible for (in a nonmoral sense). ExplanationE, in contrast, is
an epistemic notion. To say that x explainsE y is to say that x renders y intelligible,
or sheds some light on how or why it happened. ExplanationE is a vexed affair,
clouded over with pragmatic and contextual questions. What counts as a satis-
fying explanationE of y might vary from person to person, depending on what
they already know, and what exactly they are asking.
Dasgupta is, I take it, claiming that grounds explainE what they ground (or
perhaps that they explain in some other way). I, in contrast, claim only that
builders explainM what they build. Building backs certain kinds of explanationE,
just as causation backs causal explanation (see Schaffer 2016)—in some sense of
‘back’ that deserves further scrutiny. But building relations are not themselves
explanationE relations. So if Dasgupta does indeed have explanationE in mind,
then he is right when he says in a footnote that “it may be that Bennett or
deRosset mean something different by ‘ground’ than I do. In particular, if
‘ground’ in their mouths is not constitutively tied to explanation then my
remarks here do not engage with their view” (573n31).
My picture, then, is that the conference-building C-activities also build the fact
that the C-activities build the fact that there is a conference. Those activities
generate the conference, and generate the fact that they generate that there is a
conference. Similarly, what makes it the case that P grounds ~~P? Just P. That’s
what does the metaphysical lifting, as it were. If you’ve got P, you thereby have
both ~~P and the fact that P grounds ~~P. Now, perhaps an epistemically
satisfying story about why P grounds ~~P would need to appeal to the nature
of negation. After all, if you don’t know how negation works, you won’t find “P”
to be an illuminating answer to the question “in virtue of what does P ground
~~P?”. But a metaphysically complete story about why P grounds ~~P—about
how P manages to do the work—need not appeal to the nature of negation. The
nature of negation does not help make it be the case that P grounds ~~P. P does
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

that, alone. If anything, the fact that P grounds ~~P grounds the nature of
negation. Negation is (in part) the operation such that propositions ground
their double negations.
A full picture of my reaction to Dasgupta’s arguments will have to emerge
gradually, as I directly argue against his (and Fine’s) alternative views about what
grounds the grounding facts. But the central kernel of my response to Dasgupta’s
first objection is that I take building to be productive rather than explanatory in
any epistemic sense.

7.4.3 Can upwards anti-primitivism explain patterns of grounding facts?

Dasgupta’s second objection to upwards anti-primitivism is that it says nothing
about what grounds patterns of grounding facts—generalizations about ground-
ing. (The more general issue, of course, is about what builds patterns of building
facts.) It is a fair point that I did not say anything about this; I was focused on the
particular, token case. This thing builds that thing; in virtue of what is that so?
But Dasgupta is right that there is also a question about patterns or generaliza-
tions. This kind of thing builds that kind of thing; a-like things build b-like
things—in virtue of what is that so? According to him,

[upwards anti-primitivism] does not provide any resources with which to explain the
patterns in grounding facts . . . The brute connectivist can explain [why all events in
which people engage in C-activities are conferences in virtue of those activities] by
saying that each instance of the pattern has a common ground in some general
connection between C-activities and conferences. But the [upwards anti-primitivist]
cannot say this, for on her view there is no general principle that is a common
ground of each instance. [Upwards anti-primitivism] just says, of each particular fact
Y and plurality of facts Xs, that if the Xs ground Y then the Xs also ground the fact
that the Xs ground Y. But this gives us no indication of why, whenever there is a fact
to the effect that some people engage in C-activities, it grounds a fact to the effect
that there is a conference. For all that the [upwards anti-primitivist] says, the pattern
is a brute coincidence, a massive accident. This is unacceptable.
(2014b, 574)

I have two responses. First, each instance of a generalization having a common

ground is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the generalization. Second,
there is a natural way for the upwards anti-primitivist to extend her account to
explain generalizations about building.
To see the first point, let’s change examples. Imagine someone asking why all
United States presidents to date have been biologically male. We can all agree that
the following is not a good answer: because George Washington was male, John
Adams was male . . . and Donald Trump is male. We don’t want a bare enumeration
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

of the instances; what we want is instead a complex socio-historical story about

sexism and traditional women’s roles and so forth. This is what Dasgupta is
complaining about: he says that the upwards anti-primitivist must explain all
generalizations about building in the bad instance-by-instance way, making the
generalizations look accidental even if they are not—as the generalization about U.
S. presidents obviously is not.
But the president case can also be used to show that appeal to a common ground
for each instance is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the generalization.
To see that it is not sufficient, note that there presumably is a common ground for
each instance; the biological maleness of each president is grounded in posses-
sion of a Y-chromosome (or so I’ll suppose for simplicity, anyway). But this is
no help at all. The fact that Washington had a Y chromosome, Adams had a
Y chromosome, and so on is just as hopeless an explanation of the fact that all U.
S. presidents have been male as enumerating the instances was. To see that it is not
necessary—that explaining the generalization does not require that each instance
has a common ground—imagine that there is no common ground for the bio-
logical maleness of each president after all. That is, imagine that maleness
turns out to be disjunctive, like jade, and can be had in either of two different
ways: by possessing a Y chromosome or by possessing a Z chromosome. One can
certainly imagine it remaining both true and explainable that all the presidents
are men; the relevant socio-historical machinery could easily be blind to this
difference in the ground of maleness. So the lack of a common ground for the
instances does not mean that the generalization is just accidental.
Now, in denying that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain a
generalization that all of its instances have a common ground, I am denying a
stronger claim than Dasgupta actually makes. I don’t think he means to suggest
that there is any such general connection between generalizations and the
grounds of the instances. Rather, he just means to point out that he has an
explanation available—one that happens to appeal to a common ground of each
instance—that the upwards anti-primitivist does not have. He even says that he
only wants there to be “some explanation of the pattern, even if it is not an
explanation that points to a common ground” (574), and acknowledges that
perhaps the upwards anti-primitivist can “[add] to the theory in order to explain
the pattern” (574). And that is exactly right. As I noted, upwards anti-primitivism
is in the first instance a theory about what grounds the instances—what grounds
the fact that (say) a grounds b on some particular occasion.
So suppose a pattern of grounding also holds; suppose it is true that a-like
things ground b-like things. How ought the upwards anti-primitivist explain
that? There is an obvious way for her to go. She should say that the fact that
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

a-like things ground b-like things is grounded in a-likeness, the nature of a-like
things, what it is to be a-like. Why would she say anything different?16
Overall, I do not see that the upwards anti-primitivist has any special difficulty
explaining generalizations about grounding or building. I do think that there are
big and interesting questions about how to explain generalizations: for example,
how to best make sense of the fact that they seem both to be fully accounted for
by their instances and yet often not fully explained by their instances. There is
also the Russellian question of what makes universal generalizations true: the
proposition that all ravens are black is not made true just by the blackness of each
actual raven, as the addition of green one falsifies the universal generalization
even though the initial ravens remain black. I do not have anything of great
interest to add on these matters. But I also do not see anything especially
problematic for the upwards anti-primitivist.
7.4.4 Against the alternatives
Thus far, I have responded to two particular objections that have been directed at
upwards anti-primitivism. But what about the alternative views themselves? It is
time to look at them directly.
Recall that Dasgupta claims that the fact that a grounds b is grounded in a plus
the fact that it is essential to something’s being b-like that if something a-like
obtains, something b-like does too. Fine, in contrast, claims that the fact that a
grounds b is grounded in b alone.17 In what follows, I am going to treat these
grounding claims as claims about production or generation rather than claims
about explanationE. That is, I am going to treat them as respectively saying that a
and the essence of b-type things makes it the case that a grounds b, and that b
makes it the case that a grounds b. This, after all, is the question that I for one am
interested in: what makes it the case that a grounds or otherwise builds b? This
may or may not accurately reflect what they themselves have in mind. But it
reflects what I have in mind. The question that I am interested in is the question
of what makes it the case that a grounds or otherwise builds b. The Fine-ish and
Dasgupta-ish answers to this question are worth considering, even if Fine and
Dasgupta themselves turn out to have something slightly different and more
‘explanatory’ in mind.
First, against Fine’s downwards anti-primitivism. The central problem is that it
is overwhelmingly plausible to me that whatever builds a building fact also builds

16
Dasgupta offers the upwards anti-primitivist an explanation that appeals to what is essential to
being b-like (2015, 574). That goes against the upwardness of the view.
17
He explicitly rejects a view akin to Dasgupta’s (Fine 2012, 76).
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

the built entity ‘mentioned’ in that fact. (I have already said as much in §7.3.2.) If
x partly or fully makes it be the case that a builds b, then x partly or fully make it
be the case that b. I confess that I have struggled to articulate a straightforward
argument for this principle, but here is the motivating, if metaphorical, idea.
Building a building fact is like painting a picture or arranging a scene; how can
one paint a picture of a’s building b without painting b?18 Here’s another way to
think about it: building a building fact cannot simply involve inserting a staple
between a and b without contributing to b as well. If it did, b would have to
already exist or obtain, ‘before’ a builds it. And that contradicts the assumption
that b is built by—generated from—a. To run with the temporal metaphor, it’s as
though b makes it be the case that a brings it into existence, which cannot be
right. Maybe such a picture makes sense on a quasi-Meinongian ontology on
which things can subsist without existing, and facts can subsist without
obtaining—floating out there in the ether waiting to be grounded or otherwise
built. But whatever the other problems with such a view, it does not do justice to
the thought that building is a matter of making be. I conclude, then, that to insert
the building staple between a and b is to help generate b. Whatever builds the
building fact also builds the built entity.
If that principle is granted, the problem for downward anti-primitivism is
obvious: the claim that b makes it the case that a builds b entails that b partly
makes it be the case that b. This violates the irreflexivity of building relations
generally, and of grounding in particular.19
Second, against Dasgupta’s view.20 Recall that he himself endorses
brute essentialism, which is a version of brute connectivism, which is itself a
version of connectivism. I will argue against the last, the most general
view—connectivism. Connectivism says that the fact that a grounds b is partly
grounded in a general connection between a-like things and b-like things.
(Brute connectivism adds that the general connection is brute, and brute

18
Thanks to Louis deRosset here.
19
Perhaps matters are a little more subtle than this. Sometimes Fine says that the nature of b
makes it be the case that a builds b. But conjoined with the principle from the main text—that what
builds the building facts also builds the built entity—this still leaves us with the claim that the nature
of b partly makes it be the case that b.Arguably that is not quite a violation of irreflexivity, but it is
close enough as makes no difference.
20
It is tempting to think that brute essentialism faces a version of the problem that faces downward
anti-primitivism, but on reflection I think it does not. It escapes because Dasgupta really appeals to the
essence of the kind to which b belongs, rather than anything specific to the essence of b in particular.
It is in the essence or nature of being a conference that an event is a conference if it consists
in people engaged in C-activities; and this is (at least partly) why the fact that those
particular people . . . engaged in those activities made the event a conference. (2014b, 567)
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

essentialism adds that the general connection is essential to the kind to which
the grounded entity belongs.) That is, I will argue against the inclusion of
general connections in the grounds of the grounding facts. It does not matter
to my argument whether or not the general connection is brute, or whether it
belongs to the essence of the grounded fact.
What exactly does Dasgupta mean by a “general connection”? I am not entirely
sure. One obvious possibility is a generalization: whenever something a-like occurs,
something b-like occurs. To use Dasgupta’s example, whenever an event contains
people engaged in C-activities, it is a conference. Perhaps there are other options;
perhaps he has something else in mind. I shall get there soon. But first let me show
that the “general connection” included in the grounds of the grounding fact had
better not be a generalization. For the moment, then, I will understand connecti-
vism as the view that the fact that a grounds b is partly grounded in the fact that
whenever something a-like occurs, something b-like occurs.
The first thing to note about connectivism thus understood is that it is a
descendant of the view espoused by Lewis Carroll’s Tortoise (1895). The Tortoise
does not see why he should accept that Q given that he accepts P, even though to
the rest of us it seems obvious that P entails Q. No, the Tortoise wants to explicitly
add ‘if P then Q’ to the premises. But then he is not sure why he ought to accept Q
even though he accepts P and P!Q. Something is still missing, suggests the
Tortoise, and adds [P & (P!Q)] !Q to the premises . . . And so on and so forth.
The narrator of the tale leaves to run some errands and returns months later to
find him still at it (280).
Admittedly, the parallel with connectivism requires a little care. That’s because
adding P!Q to P to get Q is directly parallel to adding ‘if something a-like
obtains, something b-like does too’ to a to get b. Which is not the view on the
table. The connectivist says that we must add ‘if something a-like obtains,
something b-like does too’ to a to get the fact that a grounds b. But the principle
for which I just argued—namely that whatever builds a building fact also builds
the built entity—bridges the gap. It entails that the connectivist is committed to
saying that b only obtains in virtue of both a and the fact that if something a-like
obtains, something b-like does too. So, one wonders: is the connectivist commit-
ted to a Tortoise-style regress? Perhaps what grounds b is not a and the fact that if
something a-like obtains, something b-like does too, but rather (i) a, (ii) the fact
that if something a-like obtains, something b-like does too, and (iii) if a and the
fact that if something a-like obtains, something b-like does too, then b. Or
maybe . . . There is a case to be made, then, that the connectivist is committed
to saying that the grounds of any fact are infinitely long. Still, the issues here are
delicate, and I do not wish to rest too much weight on this charge.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

My primary complaint involves not a regress but a circle. The connectivist

wants to add, to the grounds of each grounding fact, a generalization to the effect
that if a fact like the ground obtains, so does a fact like the grounded: the fact that
a grounds b is partly grounded in a general connection between a-like things
and b-like things. But what grounds that general connection? Its instances. The
general fact that if something a-like obtains, so too does something b-like is made
true by that a-like thing and b-like thing, and that one, and so forth. But by the
connectivist’s lights, each such instance is partly grounded in the generalization.
Each instance is partly grounded in the generalization, and the generalization is
partly grounded in each instance. This violates the asymmetry of grounding.
That is the gist of the problem, anyway. It requires refinement. The problem is
that Dasgupta, at least, will deny that the generalization is grounded in its
instances. After all, he is a brute connectivist; he thinks that the general connec-
tion is not grounded at all. In addition, a natural way to understand his complaint
that upwards anti-primitivism cannot explain generalizations about grounding is
as follows: because citing the instances does not explain the generalization, and
grounding is explanatory, the instances do not ground the generalization.21
Now, I have already pointed out that I do not accept the claim that
grounding—or building more generally—is explanatory in any epistemic sense,
and thus am not moved by this line of thought. Generalizations are often not well
explained by their instances, but they are in some sense nothing beyond them.
They are exhausted by their instances; they consist in their instances; they are
built of their instances. (And, perhaps, something to the effect of a ‘that’s all’
clause.) Still, I would like to try again; I would like to offer a version of the
circularity charge that has teeth even against someone who thinks that the
generalization is ungrounded. It will rely only on a weaker claim.
Here is the weaker claim: generalizations are temporally posterior to their
instances in the sense that no general proposition is non-vacuously true, and
no general fact obtains, before at least some of its instances do. For example,

21
There is actually some textual evidence that he will not deny that generalizations are grounded
in their instances. He says that the generalization about conferences is “like all universal general-
izations, grounded in its instances”, even though citing the instances does not provide a satisfactory
explanation of the generalization. He then says
there is an issue of how to properly formulate the question of what explains the
pattern . . . Perhaps the question is what grounds the necessity of the universal gener-
alization. Or perhaps it is what best explains the universal generalization in some non-
grounding sense of ‘explains’. But it would be distracting to settle this here.
(570)
This passage seems to suggest that generalizations are grounded in their instances, even if not
explained by them. But I think the interpretation in the main text is more accurate.
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

suppose that in one hundred years there will be a new kind of thing. Let us call
them Fs, and stipulate that it will be the case that all of them are G. There are no
Fs now. Is it true now that all Fs are G? Well, yes, because that generalization is
vacuous now. But it is not non-vacuously true. Nor is it non-vacuously true that
all Fs will be G. There are no Fs to have any properties, to figure in any de re
temporal truths! The most that might be non-vacuously true now is a de dicto
sentence with a temporal operator out front: it will be the case that all Fs are G.
(Whether even that is true depends on whether the future is open or closed.) And
that is the most that might be non-vacuously true until the moment that there is
an F that is G.22
Now fast forward to the moment when the first F thing comes to be. Call that
particular entity f. It is, of course, G. In virtue of what is it G? I don’t know, since
I didn’t say what Fness and Gness are. But I do know this: the fact that all Fs are
Gs is no part of what grounds the fact that f is G. All Fs are Gs only comes to be
non-vacuously true, or a fact, upon f ’s being G. So the general claim that
generalizations partly ground their instances is false.
The application to the case at hand is straightforward. That a-like things
ground b-like things is a general fact. It is temporally posterior to its instances
in the sense that it does not obtain until at least one particular a-like thing
grounds a b-like thing. Thus, it does not obtain at the time that the first a-like
thing (call it a1) grounds the first b-like thing (call it b1). Consequently, there is
one grounding fact—the fact that a1 grounds b1—that is not even partly
grounded in the fact that a-like things ground b-like things. This shows that it
is not true in full generality that each grounding fact is grounded in a general
connection between things like the first and things like the second. This falsifies
connectivism.
I can imagine a connectivist wanting to concede the point about the first
instance (or first few instances?) of one kind of thing grounding another, but to
hold onto her view about later instances. But conceding that much concedes
everything, because it undermines the motivation for placing any connectivist
generalization into the grounds of the grounding facts. If the generalization that
a-like things ground b-like things doesn’t enter into the grounds of the fact that
a1 grounds b1, and if and a2 and b2 are members of the same respective kinds as a1

22
None of my claims in this paragraph assume anything about the nature of time. Perhaps the
claims in the main text are most obviously true given presentism, but they are true on a four-
dimensionalist picture as well. On such a view, it is timelessly true that there are Fs, and it is true that
the manifold contains Fs, all of which are G, and all of which are located one hundred years later
than the time at which I write this footnote. But it is not non-vacuously true in 2015 that there are Fs,
nor is it non-vacuously true that all Fs are G.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

and b1, the generalization doesn’t need to enter into the grounds of the fact that
a2 grounds b2 either. If one a-like thing can ground a b-like thing without the
generalization helping ground the fact that it does, any a-like thing can do it.
So generalizations cannot be included in the grounds of grounding facts. But
now we should remember that Dasgupta does not in fact use that language in
stating connectivism. He instead says that connectivism is the view that the
grounds of grounding facts include “general connections”. What might a general
connection be other than a generalization?
Dasgupta in particular claims that the general connection is an “essentialist
fact”, a fact about the essence of the kind of grounded thing in question (see
especially 567–8; 578). In the conference example, it is a fact about the nature of
conferences—part of what it is to be a conference is to be such that whenever
people engage in C-activities, there is a conference. He allows other kinds of
connectivist to do it differently, to say that instead, “the general connection is a
necessary truth, or a conceptual truth, or perhaps even a metaphysical law” (568;
italics in original). So one version of connectivism adds essentialist facts to the
grounds of the grounding facts; another instead adds necessary truths; another
adds conceptual truths; another metaphysical laws. “So,” says my connectivist
opponent, “who said anything about adding generalizations? You are not prop-
erly engaging with our view.”
But as far as I can tell, this is a bit of smoke and mirrors, because each of these
connectivist moves amounts to embedding the generalization within an operator:

It is essential to being b-like that whenever something a-like occurs, something

b-like occurs.
It is necessary that whenever something a-like occurs, something b-like occurs.
It is a conceptual truth that whenever something a-like occurs, something
b-like occurs.
It is a metaphysical law that whenever something a-like occurs, something
b-like occurs.

(This is fairly explicit on p. 568.) But these are all still generalizations. To put
necessarily true generalizations into the grounds of the grounding facts is to put
generalizations in there. To put “essentially true” generalizations into the grounds
of the grounding facts is to put generalizations in there. And so forth.
The upshot is that calling the general connection an “essentialist fact” or a
“necessary truth” or “metaphysical law” allows the connectivist to characterize
her view without the word ‘generalization’. It allows her to characterize her view
as that the grounds of the grounding facts include essentialist facts or
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

metaphysical laws. But that does not mean that her view denies that the grounds
of the grounding facts include generalizations. And, as I have argued, we should
deny that, on pain of violating the claim that generalizations are, at a minimum,
temporally posterior to their instances (not to mention the Carroll-ish worries.)
Now, there may be other ways to develop connectivism. One natural place for a
connectivist like Dasgupta to retreat—and perhaps this is in fact the intended
view23—is to an analog of the Dretske–Tooley–Armstrong view of laws of nature
(e.g. Dretske 1977, Tooley 1977, Armstrong 1978a and 1978b, 1983). Armstrong,
for example, takes laws to be contingent necessitation relations obtaining
between universals—the law that all Fs are G is really the fact (state of affairs)
that the universal Fness necessitates the universal Gness. Take some particular a
that is both F and G. On Armstrong’s view, the fact that a is G is grounded in the
fact that it participates in the universal Fness, and Fness necessitates Gness. This
is different from saying that the regularity itself—that all Fs are G—is part of what
grounds a’s being G. Fness and Gness are entities unto themselves; the relation
between them grounds both the regularity and the instances. For the case at hand,
the idea would be to move away from the connectivist claim that the regularity
that a-like things ground b-like things partly grounds the fact that a particular a
grounds b, and instead claim that a relation between distinct entities—a-like-ness
and b-like-ness, or the nature or essence thereof, or something like that—partly
grounds the fact that the particular a grounds b. This kind of connectivism posits
connections directly between kind-essences themselves.
Obviously, such a view shoulders substantial commitments similar to those
that Armstrong’s view shoulders. It requires realism about the essence or natures
of kinds, or universals, or something in the ballpark, and it requires making sense
of the relations between them. It further requires that those essences or universals
exist uninstantiated. If they cannot, the temporal precedence problem will rearise.
How could the relation between a-like-ness and b-like-ness partly ground the
first fact that an a1 grounds b1 if it did not obtain before a1 grounded b1?24
I leave the development of this view to those interested in endorsing it. As for
me, I’ll stick to upwards anti-primitivism.

23
The view feels ‘simpatico’ to Dasgupta’s overall leanings, but it is not his view. For example, he
does not say that there is a connection between the essence of being some C-activities and the
essence of being a conference.
24
Armstrong’s own views on analogous matters are complex. He does not think there are any
uninstantiated universals, but does believe that there are some uninstantiated laws—i.e. laws without
instances. This obviously requires him to backpedal from the straightforward assertion that every
law is a necessitation relation obtaining among universals. See, e.g., 1983, 99–100 and Chapter 8.
 BUILDING BUILDING ?

7.5 All in All

I have argued against primitivism about the building facts. Something builds the
building facts. What builds them? I have argued in favor of upwards anti-
primitivism, and argued against downwards anti-primitivism and connectivism
(or, to preserve parallelism in the labels, connectivist anti-primitivism). I admit
that I am not fully convinced of everything I have said in this chapter. I am more
confident that anti-primitivism is true than I am that upwards anti-primitivism is
true, and I am more confident that upwards anti-primitivism is true than I am of
the details of my arguments against my opponents. These are muddy waters, only
beginning to be charted. But at a minimum I hope to have cast some pale light on
the debate. I suspect there is much to be learned here about different subtle
assumptions about how grounding or building works. For one thing, the thought
that grounding is—or is not—explanatory clearly figures in attitudes towards
what could ground the grounding facts.
And there is another matter stirring underneath. The dispute between my
upwards anti-primitivism and Dasgupta’s connectivist anti-primitivism (and
perhaps Fine’s downwards anti-primitivism) reflects, I think, a broader if less
clear dispute between Humeanism and anti-Humeanism. It is somewhat difficult
to articulate exactly what this comes to, largely because it is somewhat difficult to
articulate exactly what Humeanism comes to. Permit me a brief digression.
One traditional characterization of Humeanism is by means of “Hume’s
dictum”, the claim that the world is “entirely loose and separate” (Hume 1748,
VII.2), that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. But
what exactly is ‘distinct’ supposed to mean? If it is taken at face value as meaning
‘numerically distinct’, hardly anyone counts as a Humean—including many, like
David Lewis, who self-identify as such. After all, anyone who believes that some
things are deterministically built out of other things believes that some things are
necessitated by others (at least in the circumstances). The only people who would
endorse this kind of Humeanism would be those who deny that anything is
built—flatworlders, I’ll call them in Chapter 8—or those who think that building
is genuinely indeterministic in the sense I discussed in §3.3. I do not know that
there are any such people.
Now, there are other ways to interpret the ‘distinct’ in ‘there are no necessary
connections between distinct existences’ (see Stoljar 2008, Wilson 2010 for useful
discussion). One natural option is to interpret it as meaning ‘not-building-
related’. Then Hume’s dictum is more plausible. Still, I will set it aside. For
present purposes, I’d like to instead turn to a different traditional way of thinking
about Humeanism.
 BUILDING BUILDING ? 

I have in mind the doctrine of Humean Supervenience, putatively the doctrine

that “all there is to the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact,
just one little thing and then another” (Lewis 1986d: ix). I say “putatively”
because, given the amount of time that Lewis spends trying to account for
phenomena distinct from any particular fact in the mosaic—causation, laws,
chances, properties—it is natural to understand the passage as including a silent
“fundamentally”. That is, it is natural to instead understand the doctrine of
Humean supervenience as the claim that all there fundamentally is in the world
is the vast mosaic. All the rest is built from it. After all, if this is not what Lewis
meant, if he actually did mean that literally all there is, period, is the vast mosaic,
why did he talk about supervenience at all? If there is only the vast mosaic, there is
nothing else that supervenes on it. And that is not how the doctrine of Humean
Supervenience is understood, either by Lewis or by those after him. It is instead
understood to be the doctrine that laws, causation, and so forth are perfectly real,
but derivative, and they can be accounted for in terms of the sparse materials of
the mosaic. They are built. Humeanism understood as endorsing this version of
the doctrine of Humean Supervenience is quite different from—indeed, entails
the falsity of—Humeanism understood as the claim that there are no necessary
connections between distinct things.
According to Humeanism thus construed, there is no fundamental pushing
and pulling, there are no fundamental connections, necessary or otherwise. The
connections are secondary to the local matters; the local matters build the
connections. It is in this sense that I say that upwards anti-primitivism is
Humean in a way that connectivism is not. It is Humean in that the “local
matters” individually are enough to generate the connections. a alone grounds
b, and the fact that it grounds b. Connectivism, in contrast, seems to require that
general connections generate particular facts. And the Armstrong-inspired anti-
primitivism I briefly suggested is, of course, anti-Humean to the core. There are
arguments to be made against these views—I have offered some. But choosing
sides on such matters sometimes seems to be driven by philosophical sensibility
as much as by argumentation. Philosophers deciding what to believe about the
laws of nature choose sides quickly and rarely change; there is some flexibility in
deciding which arguments are convincing, and which are not. And this is why
I gesture, hopelessly vaguely, at the undercurrent of something like Humeanism
and anti-Humeanism in these disputes about what builds the building facts.
These brief ruminations on Humeanism may obscure rather than enlighten.
If so, please dismiss them as the “false creation of a heat-oppressed brain”,
(MacBeth) and consider the chapter to have ended a few pages ago.
 8
In Defense of the Nonfundamental

I have spent the past seven chapters painting a detailed picture of what makes a
relation count as a building relation, how building and causing are related, how
relative and absolute fundamentality reduce to certain patterns of building relations,
how the building facts are built. All of this has assumed that there are building facts,
that building relations do obtain, that some things are more fundamental than other
things, and thus that some things are not fundamental. In wrapping up the book,
I want to take a look at these assumptions. Are there any built entities—any
nonfundamentalia? I also want to ask a related question: if there are nonfundamen-
talia, ought any of them be treated as a worthy topic of metaphysical investigation?
I will answer ‘yes’ to both questions. First I will argue that there in fact are
nonfundamentalia—equivalently, to argue against what I have elsewhere called
‘flatworldism’ (2011a). Then I will argue that some nonfundamentalia are among
the proper subject matter of metaphysics. This goes against the common thought
that the proper topic of metaphysics is the fundamental nature of reality, the
basic or ultimate structure of the world. Instead, the proper topic of metaphysics
includes the fundamental nature of reality, whether there are any less fundamen-
tal entities, how they are built from the fundamental, and at least some of those
nonfundamental entities themselves. In what follows, then, I will defend both the
existence of nonfundamentalia and their worthiness of metaphysical study.

8.1 Flatworldism
Flatworldism is the view that nothing is built, that there are no nonfundamenta-
lia, that everything is absolutely fundamental. Everything is metaphysically on a
par. The world has no layered structure, but is instead flat. Nothing projects
upward from the bottom; there is nothing but the bare sea floor.1

1
On my views about the connections between fundamentality and building, these various
characterizations of flatworldism are equivalent.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

If flatworldism is true, all appearances of nonfundamentality are misleading.

Each apparently nonfundamental entity is actually either fundamental, or else
does not exist after all. (Recall that ‘entity’ is intended to be fully general. The
flatworlder doesn’t believe in nonfundamental objects, properties, facts, etc.)
Presumably, the flatworlder will make different moves in different cases. In
some cases, the claim that some (putative) entity or fact is fundamental is a
nonstarter, and the only plausible claim is the eliminativist one. Cars and music
festivals are surely not fundamental; the flatworlder is much more likely to deny
that they exist at all. But in other cases, it is eliminativism that is the nonstarter.
Consider, for example, your (putative) experience of reading this page right now.
That experience exists; Descartes was surely right about that much. Whether or
not the page exists, whether or not there is any unified self doing the reading—the
experience exists. Here, the eliminative move is sufficiently implausible that the
flatworlder is probably better off adopting the other strategy, and claiming that
the experience is fundamental. (If you like: flatworldism plus the cogito yields
some form of dualism.) So some cases are fairly clear. The flatworlder should
probably deny that there are music festivals, and should probably claim that
experience is fundamental. But other cases might be more up for grabs, and
different versions of flatworldism can be reached by filling in the details about
what to say about each seemingly nonfundamental phenomenon.
Let me reiterate that flatworldism is a very, very strong claim. It is much
stronger than the mere denial of some particular kind of nonfundamental entity.
So, for example, it is much stronger than compositional nihilism (Dorr 2005, Sider
2013, van Inwagen 1990, and Merricks 2001 adopt a restricted version of the
view). Compositional nihilists only deny the existence of composite objects, not all
built entities. The view is simply silent on other building matters: are there sets?
realized properties? grounded facts? Further, extant versions of compositional
nihilism typically rely upon an abundance of nonfundamentalia. Often, these are
nonfundamental properties: being arranged chairwise and being arranged table-
wise, not to mention more complex structured properties like (being arranged
chairwise) arranged row-wise (see my 2009, 59–60, 64). However, some nihilists
are nominalists who do not like to speak of properties. For such people, the
nonfundamentalia they endorse are instead predicates in their nonfundamental
ideology (see Sider 2013, 4). Either way, though, the compositional nihilist relies
upon nonfundamentalia, and thus endorses a weaker view than flatworldism.
Another weaker cousin of flatworldism is existence monism, the view that
there is only one object. Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč defend a version they
call ‘blobjectivism’ (2000), according to which the single object is the entirety of
the universe. The universe does not have parts, but nonetheless “has enormous
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

spatiotemporal structural complexity, and enormous local variability” (249). This

view, too, is consistent with the claim that there are lots of nonfundamentalia—
just not nonfundamental objects. For example, the universe can have lots of
nonfundamental properties, and there may be grounded facts about how the
universe is in various regions.
Finally, flatworldism is stronger than ontological nihilism, the view that there
are no objects at all. As articulated by both John Hawthorne and Andrew Cortens
(1995) and Jason Turner (2011, 2016), ontological nihilism2 just says that there
are no things, no objects. It accepts that there are facts, structure, that the world is
a certain way. This view, too, is consistent with the claim that there are non-
object nonfundamentalia. One can reject a thing ontology without thereby
thinking that all that remains is on a par.
To my knowledge, full-on flatworldism has never been defended. (Views in the
aity include Cameron 2008a, 2010; Sider 2011; deRosset 2013b and forthcoming)
It is nonetheless worth arguing against. For one thing, we ought to be able to
defend the things we believe in. For another, the flatworlder’s picture is clean, and
those with a taste for desert landscapes will certainly be drawn to it. Flatworldism
is as sere as it gets. Finally, flatworldism is the result of taking to its extreme the
thought that nonfundamentalia are less than fully real. I myself have never seen
the appeal of this thought; I think existence and reality are on-off and do not
come in degrees. But for those that do think reality comes in degrees (e.g.
McDaniel 2010 and 2013), there’s something to be said for taking the thought
all the way home. That would be to move beyond the claim that only fundamen-
tal entities are fully real to the more extreme claim that only fundamental entities
are real at all.
So why not believe flatworldism?

8.2 Against Flatworldism

Basically, because I don’t want to, and don’t see why I should. But before
unpacking that terse reaction, I want to quickly set aside a natural argument
against flatworldism that does not work.
The idea is that flatworldism requires that there are fundamental entities—but
we do not know whether or not there are. I have been neutral about this
throughout the book, and rejected a number of arguments for metaphysical
foundationalism in §5.5. For all I know, some or all building chains fail to
terminate in something fundamental; for all I know, it’s turtles all the way

2
Turner calls it ‘factalism’ in the 2016 book.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

down. So why not use this possibility to argue against flatworldism? Such an
argument would parallel Sider’s argument against compositional nihilism from
the possibility that the world is gunky—that everything has parts (1993).
However, neither argument works, for reasons that Sider himself lays out
(2013, §10).3 The problem is that everything I have said concerns the epistemic
possibility that there is no bottom level. And that is not in conflict with there in
fact being one. Indeed, the flatworlder should presumably agree with me that it is
epistemically possible that she is wrong. Now, the claim that it is actually true that
there is no bottom level would indeed threaten flatworldism.4 But why should we
think that? To simply assume it would obviously beg the question, and whatever
reasons there are for believing it will equally well apply directly against flatworld-
ism. So it does not look as though there is much of use here, and I will move on to
my own preferred line of attack.
So, why do I not believe flatworldism? It is tempting to just gesture around,
indicating all the people, cars, colors, beliefs, and so forth. But of course such a
gesture is not going to convince a flatworlder any more than pointing to a
tangerine is going to convince a compositional nihilist. Still, one can elaborate
on the basic sentiment to reach a more compelling argument, along the following
lines: it seems like there are nonfundamentalia, and there is no good reason to
deny that there are any. So we should go ahead and believe in them.
My strategy, then, will be to undermine what I take to be the main motivation for
flatworldism. One could, of course, instead argue against flatworldism by directly
arguing in favor of the existence of some particular kind of nonfundamentalia. But
my strategy happens to involve matters that are independently interesting.
In particular, I take it that the best reason to be a flatworlder, to deny that
there are any nonfundamentalia, is simplicity or parsimony (I use these terms
interchangeably). I have already pointed out that fans of desert landscapes will
find the view appealing. And it is certainly true that flatworlders believe in far
fewer things—fewer objects, fewer events, fewer properties, fewer facts—than
the rest of us. Indeed, they might not even believe in all of those ontological
categories. For example, if facts are supposed to be structured entities built out of
constituent objects and properties, the flatworlder will say that there are no

3
Sider’s own argument (against his earlier self) relies on his views about modality; my version
does not.
4
So would the claim that it is metaphysically possible that there is no bottom level, at least on the
assumption that metaphysical hypotheses like flatworldism are necessarily true if true at all. Then
the metaphysical possibility that there is no bottom level would entail the metaphysical possibility of
flatworldism’s falsity. If flatworldism is necessarily true if true at all, then it is actually false as well.
This line of thought faces the same dialectical difficulty outlined in the main text, as well as
objections to the extra premise about the necessity of metaphysical hypotheses.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

facts at all. Further, the flatworlder need not believe in building relations, either.
She can eliminate them from her ontology and ideology, just as Sider says the
compositional nihilist can eliminate parthood (2013). So isn’t the simplicity of
the view reason to believe it?
No. This line of thought fails badly, for two independent reasons. First,
parsimony does not just say that we should prefer the simpler theory; it says
we should prefer the simpler theory that explains whatever it is that needs
explaining. In order for flatworldism’s simplicity to be a reason to believe it, it
must be able to explain the appearances of nonfundamentalia. I will argue in
§8.2.1 that it cannot do this. Second, flatworldism is actually not any simpler than
alternatives. It has fewer ontological commitments, yes, but not every ontological
commitment counts against the simplicity of a theory. I will pursue this point in
detail in §8.2.2 and §8.2.3.
8.2.1 Flatworldism cannot explain the appearances
The flatworlder and I both assume that simplicity is a guide to truth. But, of course,
it is not a particularly handy, easy-to-read guide. Ockham’s Razor does not tell us to
make do with less; it tells us to make do with as little as possible—and it doesn’t tell us
where to shave. Consider: the very simplest theory of the world is that there is
nothing at all. The next simplest theory is that there is one qualitatively homogen-
ous, mereologically simple thing. But despite their simplicity, neither theory is very
plausible, because neither has the resources to explain everything that needs to be
explained. In short, in order for flatworldism’s simplicity to be a reason to believe it,
it must have the requisite explanatory resources. But, I shall argue, it does not. It
cannot explain the appearances of nonfundamentalia.
All of flatworldism’s less zealous cousins—views that deny the existence of
some more restricted class of things—take themselves to bear the burden of
explaining the appearances.5 The compositional nihilist will tell some story or
other about how sentences or propositions like ‘there is a table here’ or ‘trees are a
kind of plant’ are somehow better than sentences or propositions like ‘there is a
unicorn here’. Perhaps they are true, though with different truth-conditions than
one might have expected (van Inwagen 1990);6 perhaps they are literally false, but
the truth of related sentences—like ‘there are simples arranged tablewise here’—

5
To use some terminology from my 2009, they all “difference-minimize” by “up-playing” their
expressive power.
6
van Inwagen titles the relevant chapter “Why the Proposed Answer to the Special Composition
Question, Radical Though It Is, Does Not Contradict Our Ordinary Beliefs” and says that “my
position . . . is that when people say things in the ordinary business of life by uttering sentences that
start ‘There are chairs . . . ’ or ‘There are stars . . . ’ they very often say things that are literally true” (102).
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

makes them count as in some other sense correct or apt or properly assertable.
Similarly for the existence monist. At the very beginning of their article, Horgan
and Potrč say that “numerous statements employing posits of common sense and
science are true, even though nothing in the world answers directly to these
posits”, (2000, 249) and spend a lot of time explaining how. And, finally, neither
Hawthorne and Cortens nor Turner treat ontological nihilism as entailing that all
of our ordinary beliefs are radically mistaken. Indeed, Turner takes the onto-
logical nihilist’s main task to be that of providing a story about how a funda-
mental ontology of facts gives rise to the appearance of nonfacts: “shoes and
sealing wax; planets and protons; cats and corporations . . . if [the view] is not to
be refuted by a quick glance out the window, it must tell us how the facts generate
the non-fact appearances” (2016, 10; see also 2011). Mutatis mutandis for other
views like Berkeleyan idealism and the like.
But how can the flatworlder join in discharging this burden? I claim that
she will have great difficulty explaining the appearance of nonfundamentalia.
Consider a sentence S (or proposition P) about apparently nonfundamental
matters, such as ‘there is a table in region R’. Like the compositional nihilist,
the flatworlder can perfectly well say that the relevant region contains various
fundamental bits arranged tablewise—though she also has to think that the
predicate ‘arranged tablewise’ either picks out a fundamental property, or is
shorthand for the instantiation of a bunch of fundamental relations. That
seems fairly implausible, but it is not the problem I have in mind. The problem
is rather: what has the existence of some fundamental bits standing in various
fundamental relations got to do with S?
The flatworlder cannot say that it makes S true, or even makes S properly
assertable—not if that ‘makes’ indicates a building relation, as it certainly appears
to. And even if she can somehow provide an account of truth-making (or proper-
assertability-making) on which it is not a building relation, her work is not yet
done. The flatworlder not only owes us a metaphysical story about how S is made
true by worldly matters, but also a philosophy of language story about how S
manages to mean what it does—and that latter story cannot involve a compos-
itional semantics of any kind. The true flatworlder cannot say that the meaning of
a sentence is built from the meaning of its constituent expressions, or built in any
other way at all. This is very strange. I simply cannot understand how a language
could be such that it is just basic that each sentence means what it does. Indeed,
Zoltan Szabo opens an essay for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by
saying that “anything that deserves to be called a language must contain mean-
ingful expressions built up from other meaningful expressions” (2004).
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

In short, the flatworlder just has very few tools with which to explain the
appearances. And the fact that she has such a paucity of resources puts her in a
very different position than views that deny a more restricted class of things. She
is not successfully making do with less; she is just doing less with less.
8.2.2 Flatworldism is no simpler than (foundationalist) alternatives
Here is an entirely independent reason to reject the parsimony argument for
flatworldism: although flatworldism does have a smaller ontology than views that
additionally posit various nonfundamentalia, it does not follow that it is simpler
in ways that make it any more likely to be true. Flatworldism is no simpler than
views that additionally posit various nonfundamentalia, because those nonfun-
damentalia do not count against the ontological simplicity of a theory. Simplicity
in the fundamentals is a theoretical virtue, but simplicity full stop is not;
Ockham’s Razor does not even ‘see’ the nonfundamentalia about which the
flatworlder and her opponent disagree. So flatworldism is no simpler than its
rivals, and thus no more likely to be true.
That argument relies upon a claim about how we ought to calculate ontological
simplicity:

Built entities do not count against the simplicity of a theory. (Equivalently,

only fundamental entities count against the simplicity of a theory.)
Jonathan Schaffer calls this principle “the Laser” (2015) in a paper that was
written at the same time as a near final draft of this chapter. I actually do not
think the Laser is quite the best formulation to adopt, but I also think that in the
current dialectical situation, it serves perfectly well. I will explain these points in
due course. For now, the question on the table is, why ought we think it, or
something close to it, is true? Since Schaffer and I offer some similar arguments,
I will flag the main points of overlap. (Sider 2013, 4, and Schaffer 2009, 2010b also
endorse the principle, but without argument.) Let me be clear, too, that the
question here is not about why we ought to believe some version of Ockham’s
Razor in the first place, why we ought to think that simplicity is any kind of guide
to truth. Both the flatworlder and I are assuming that it is; the question is instead
how exactly to reckon the simplicity of a theory. So, assuming that simplicity
matters somehow, why think only simplicity in the fundamentals matters?
I will offer three related reasons. The first two are perhaps not so much
arguments for the truth of the Laser, but rather ways of showing that it is what
many of us already implicitly believe. The third is a direct reason to believe it.
The first reason to believe the Laser is that it makes better sense of our actual
methodological practices than does a version of Ockham’s Razor not restricted to
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

the fundamentals (c.f. Schaffer 2015, 648). If we really counted fundamental and
nonfundamental entities equally, we would have no grounds for choosing
between two theories which posit all the same entities, one of which calls them
all fundamental, and the other of which grounds some of them in the others. Both
theories are equally simple in the eyes of the traditional Razor. But surely the
second theory is simpler in the way that matters.
The background thought here is that we all think that things ought to be
explained wherever possible. We don’t rest content believing in water; we want to
know what water is made of, and how exactly those components come together to
behave as water does. This is what drives science: we want to account for some
things in terms of other things. All else equal, we prefer things to be built. Indeed,
we prefer things to be built from components to which we are already committed.
When scientists are faced with some interesting new phenomenon, they first try
to explain it in terms of things they already believe in. Of course, they may
eventually have to posit some new fundamental entity or force to explain it, or
may even have to accept the phenomenon as itself fundamental. But that is a last
resort, not where they start. They never jump immediately to “oh, well, I guess
that’s basic, then”. All this is to say that we have a bias towards the built. It is best
to manage to account for phenomena in terms of things we are already commit-
ted to, and second best to account for them by postulating new fundamental
entities that have wider explanatory power, that account for other things as
well. It is a distant third to postulate new fundamental entities that only account
for the phenomena we start with, or to take those phenomena as themselves
fundamental.
In short: we are all committed to the idea that it is in some sense better to
explain things than to leave them fundamental. (This thought is, perhaps, a
weaker sibling of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.) This means that we would
rather keep our stock of built entities and phenomena large relative to our stock
of fundamentalia. And that in turn suggests that what we care about is not how
many things (or kinds of thing) there are, but how many fundamental things (or
kinds of thing) there are. We only care about keeping our stock of fundamentalia
small. Which is what the Laser says.
The second reason to believe the Laser—at least, to believe that we already
believe it—is that it makes sense of the common thought that some things are
“nothing over and above” others, and therefore “ontologically innocent” (Lewis
1991, 81), “no addition to being” (Armstrong 1997, 12), and even an “ontological
free lunch” (Armstrong 1989, 56). (For much the same point, c.f. Schaffer 2015,
647–8.) Such metaphors are by no means specific to Lewis and Armstrong; many
of us engage in such talk. And they do seem to provide a compelling description
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

of the relevant cases. Assuming physicalism, mental states are “nothing over and
above” physical ones; assuming unrestricted composition, mereological fusions
are “nothing over and above” their parts, etc. But on the other hand, this talk is
rather opaque. van Inwagen is quite right to complain that such phrases are
“slippery”, and that no one ever spells out what they mean (1994, 210). The
problem is that, on the usage in question, these phrases do not indicate numerical
identity, which makes it unclear in what sense the relevant things are no addition
to being.
The Laser—the claim that only fundamental entities count against the simpli-
city of a theory—enables a tidy answer to van Inwagen’s challenge. Nonfunda-
mental entities are ontologically innocent in the sense that postulating them does
not reduce the simplicity of a theory in a way that reduces its likelihood of being
true. Nonfundamentalia are no addition to fundamental being, which is all
parsimony cares about. But they are an addition to being full stop. They are
numerically distinct from—and thus in that sense “something over and above”—
whatever builds them. What I am suggesting is that, contra Lewis (1991, 81)7,
nonfundamentalia do “count ontologically” toward the total number of things. If
you are counting up how many entities or kinds of entity exist according to a
theory, you have to count them all, nonfundamental and fundamental alike. But
if you are instead reckoning which theories are simpler in the way that makes
them more likely to be true, you only count the fundamental ones. This account
of the ontological innocence of supervenient, fully built entities is both plausible
and straightforward.
Again, this second line of thought is not exactly an argument for the Laser.
I have merely said that it provides a natural way to make sense of the thought that
nonfundamental entities are ontologically innocent. But that is just to say that if
you already like the ontological innocence thought, you should also like the Laser.
It does not constitute an argument for the truth of the Laser, because it does not

7
Lewis says that “given a prior commitment to cats, say, a commitment to cat-fusions is not a
further commitment . . . if you draw up an inventory of Reality according to your scheme of things, it
would be double counting to list the cats and then also list their fusion” (1991, 81). He may just be
indulging in a rhetorical flourish here. But taken at his word, he is saying that built entities do not
count towards the total number of things that exist. This is a very strange view given that building
relations fall short of strict numerical identity. (And although the Lewis quote appears in a section
titled “Composition as Identity”, he clearly does not mean that composition literally is numerical
identity (see 84, especially note 12). See my 2015 for a bit more discussion.) Further, such a view
falsifies what is usually taken to be a consequence of mereological universalism (plus the assumption
that universalism is necessary if true): namely, that it is not possible for there to be exactly two
things.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

constitute an argument that nonfundamental entities indeed are ontologically

innocent. The third line of thought is a simple argument for that claim.8
Let T– and T+ be two theories that agree on all fundamental matters. Accord-
ing to T–, that’s all there is; according to T+, there are also a variety of
nonfundamental matters. My claim is that T+’s extra ontological commitments
do not tell against its simplicity in a way that makes it less likely to be true. And it
can easily be seen that T+ is no less likely to be true than T–. The key point is that
according to T+, its extra ontological commitments are necessitated by the
fundamental matters. To be nonfundamental is to be built; to be built is, in
part, to be necessitated. So T+ effectively says that there are the nonfundamental
matters F, the nonfundamental matters NF, and various necessitation relations
between F and NF. Thus T+’s statements about the nonfundamental matters NF
are—by its lights—entailed by statements about the fundamental matters F. And
the following is a theorem of the probability calculus:
if A |– B, Pr(A) = Pr(A&B)
It follows that according to T+, the probability of F is the same as the probability
of F and NF. This means that—again according to T+—T+ is exactly as likely as
T–. Its extra ontology does not make it less likely to be true.
Now, T+ is less likely to be true than a theory T that agrees with T+ and T–
about what is fundamental, but remains agnostic about the nonfundamental
matters that T+ postulates and T– denies. T is more likely to be true than either
T– or T+, simply because it says less about the world, and thus is less likely to say
something false. It is less epistemically risky to believe T than either T– or T+. But
this is not because T has fewer ontological commitments than T+. It is the
neutrality, the silence, rather than the lack of ontological commitment that
makes T more likely to be true.
An objection arises. “What happened to your avowed neutrality about meta-
physical foundationalism, the claim that all building chains terminate in some-
thing fundamental? You seem to be assuming that it’s false. T– and T+ agree on
fundamental matters—but aren’t you leaving open whether there are any? And if
there can be nonterminating building chains, there can be cases in which the
Laser delivers intuitively strange results. For example, the Laser says that a theory
that postulates a huge number of infinitely descending chains is just as onto-
logically simple as a theory that postulates a single three-step circle of building: a
builds b builds c builds a. After all, neither theory posits anything fundamental at
all, so the Laser says that both theories are maximally simple—simpler than any
theory that postulates any fundamental entities”.

8
Thanks to Kenny Boyce for discussion that led to this argument.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

I agree with some of this complaint. In fact, I elsewhere (ms) explore in detail
the problems that nonterminating cases pose for the Laser, and offer a replace-
ment principle that I argue should be preferred to either of Schaffer’s two
responses to the issue (2015, 662–3). However, none of this matters for current
purposes. It doesn’t matter for current purposes because if foundationalism is
false, so is flatworldism.
This makes the dialectic interesting. Let me try to clarify it in three steps. First,
there are at least two substitute parsimony principles available—principles that
capture much of the intuitive idea of the Laser, but which fare better with respect
to nonterminating chains.9 Schaffer offers one called the Phaser (2015, 663), and
I argue that we should instead prefer a weaker one that I call the Taser (ms).
Either could do much of the work I am asking the Laser to do.
However—second step—there is no reason to wheel them in here. That’s
because both the Taser and the Phaser collapse into the Laser if foundationalism
is true. More precisely, they yield the same verdict as the Laser about the relative
simplicity of all foundationalist theories. If the Laser says foundationalist theory
A is simpler than foundationalist theory B, so too does the Phaser and the Taser
(and vice versa). I relegate the details to a footnote.10
And—third step—in the current context, I have to restrict attention to foun-
dationalist theories, which are the only ones that the flatworlder thinks have a
shot at being true. That is, I have to treat foundationalism as true. I certainly

9
When I say that we should prefer the Taser to the Laser, I do not mean that I think the Taser is
true and the Laser is not. It is rather that I don’t know whether the Laser is true. It is false if
metaphysical foundationalism is false, so because I am agnostic about foundationalism, I have to be
agnostic about the Laser as well. I prefer the Taser not because I think only it is true, but because
I think it is a safer choice given uncertainty. (Similar remarks go for my preference for the Taser over
the Phaser.)
10
Here is a brief explanation of what the Phaser and the Taser say, and why they yield the same
verdict as the Laser about the relative simplicity of all foundationalist theories. Schaffer’s Phaser says
that
The Phaser: Theory T1 is more ontologically economical than theory T2 iff there is a level L such
that, if L were fundamental, then the Laser would prefer T1 over T2, and such that, for every level
L- lower than L, if L- were fundamental then the Laser would prefer T1 over T2. (2015, 663)
But if T1 and T2 are both foundationalist, the counterfactual supposition is moot. Both posit a
fundamental “level” L, which is up for assessment by the Laser.
The Taser, too, yields the same results as the Laser about foundationalist theories. It says that
The Taser: Entities that are ultimately built of fundamental entities do not count against the
simplicity of a theory (where ‘ultimately built of ’ means ‘stands in the ancestral of a building
relation to’).
On any foundationalist theory, every built entity is ultimately built of something fundamental. So
the Taser effectively says that built entities do not account against the simplicity of such theories—
i.e., it yields the same results as the Laser.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

cannot assume that it is false; that would beg the question against the flatworlder,
who is committed to its truth. And I don’t want to argue that it is false. That
would be a completely different argumentative strategy against flatworldism, one
that would render all discussion of simplicity moot. Besides, I don’t have any
good reason to think it is false. I just am not convinced by the arguments that it
is true. Since I am not going to argue that it is false, and cannot assume that it is
false without begging the question, I must ignore the potential difference between
the Laser and the Taser.
To sum up the dialectical issues: I myself prefer a principle I call the Taser to the
Laser because of uncertainty about foundationalism. But the flatworlder has no such
uncertainty, so in this context it is dialectically acceptable—even required—to rely
on the Laser instead. Complex issues about how to reformulate the parsimony
principle in light of the epistemic possibility of nonterminating building chains are
best pursued elsewhere (ms), as that possibility is off the table in the current context.
To sum up where we stand: if foundationalism is false, so is flatworldism. If
foundationalism is true, the Laser/Taser shows that flatworldism has no parsi-
mony advantage over competing theories that agree about the fundamental
matters. The excess nonfundamental ontology posited by such theories does
not count. Such theories are no more ontologically complex and therefore no
less likely to be true.

8.2.3 Objections
Various further objections presumably arise at this point; I will discuss three. The
first is an objection to the claim that restricting the parsimony principle along
the lines of the Laser undermines the parsimony argument for flatworldism. The
second is an objection to the Laser itself. And the third is an objection to the
combination of the Laser with the claim that causation is a building relation.
Objection 1: Suppose for the sake of argument that Schaffer and I are right that
built entities do not add to the complexity of a theory. Then it is clear that the fact
that the flatworlder does not countenance nonfundamentalia like cars and music
festivals does not make her theory more likely to be true than a theory that does
posit such things. But, goes the objection, that’s not the right appeal to parsi-
mony. The better appeal is one that instead calls attention to the fact that the
flatworlder does not countenance building relations. The idea here is a general-
ization of Sider’s recent argument for compositional nihilism (2013): he agrees
that only simplicity in the fundamentals is any kind of guide to truth, and thus
does not claim that the compositional nihilist’s rejection of composites is a reason
to believe the theory. Rather, it is her rejection of composition or parthood itself
that is a reason to believe it. Sider prefers to put the point in terms of ideology
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

than ontology—that compositional nihilism eliminates ‘part’ from its fundamen-

tal ideology, rather than that compositional nihilism eliminates the parthood
relation from its fundamental ontology—but this issue is not relevant to the
points I am making here, and I will speak in terms of ontology for convenience.
The claim is that flatworldism does have a smaller fundamental ontology than
competitors that endorse some nonfundamentalia; it does not include any build-
ing relations. So even the restricted parsimony principle that I have endorsed does
provide support for flatworldism.
Response: this line of argument assumes that building relations are fundamen-
tal. I deny this. Indeed, I deny this for completely independent reasons, which
I rehearsed in the last chapter. One consideration against the fundamentality of
building relations derives from Sider’s purity principle (2011, §§7.2 and 8.2.1),
which entails that no relation between the fundamental and the nonfundamental
can be itself fundamental. A more compelling consideration against the funda-
mentality of building is the recombination argument: if building were funda-
mental, some worlds would be possible that I have argued are impossible. So
I respond to the objection by denying that the relations belong to the fundamen-
tal ontology, and thus denying that they are within the scope of Ockham’s Razor
properly understood. The flatworlder is back where she started. (Note too that
my point here only requires anti-primitivism about building; it does not require
the particular upwards version that I defend.)
In sum: for a parsimony argument for flatworldism to have any force at all, it
has to be the case either that simplicity in nonfundamental matters is a reason to
believe a theory, or else that building relations must be fundamental if they exist
or obtain at all. I do not think either claim is true.
Objection 2: if something like the Laser is the correct parsimony principle, the
parsimony argument for flatworldism is no good. But there’s reason to think it
cannot be the correct parsimony principle—it cannot do all the work that
simplicity needs to do. It’s common for theories to posit nonfundamental entities
to do explanatory work, and sometimes they do so inappropriately or unneces-
sarily. The best way to argue against such theories is to appeal to simplicity, but
the Laser doesn’t allow that. Here’s a fanciful example: a theory that posits the
Loch Ness monster to explain some mysterious occurrences in the lake is, let us
suppose, worse than one that does not. More realistic examples come from the
special sciences: a psychological theory that posits multiple redundant memory
systems is, let us suppose, worse than one that does not.11 But in neither case is

11
Thanks to David Chalmers for pressing me about the fact that the special sciences are full of
what seem to be appeals to simplicity.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

the posited entity claimed to be fundamental. So it might look as though my and

Schaffer’s view about simplicity takes away the only grounds on which an
opponent could criticize these theories.
Response: This is not correct. There are at least two other grounds on which
such theories can be criticized.
For one thing, positing extra nonfundamentalia also involves positing extra
fundamentalia out of which the nonfundamentalia are built. So theories that posit
the Loch Ness monster or extra memory systems do have more things in their
fundamental ontologies than competing theories that do not, even though the
posited entities are not themselves supposed to be fundamental. A world just like
ours but also containing the Loch Ness monster has more fundamental bits too: it
has whatever composes, constitutes, or otherwise builds the monster. In at least
some cases, these extra fundamental bits significantly count against the simplicity
of the theory. Exactly how many cases depends on whether one thinks that mere
quantitative parsimony is a theoretical virtue, or whether one thinks that only
qualitative parsimony matters (Lewis 1973b, 87; Nolan 1997). If the Loch Ness
monster is just supposed to be a hitherto undiscovered species of freshwater
animal, the world in which it exists will contain extra fundamentalia, but not any
new kinds of fundamentalia. So if quantitative parsimony carries little or no
weight, then the Loch Ness monster world does not count as any more complex
than ours. But if the Loch Ness monster is instead supposed to be in some way
magical, this presumably means that the world in which it exists does contain
new kinds of fundamental entity, and thus that it is qualitatively more complex
than our world. So in some cases, positing nonfundamental ontology does trickle
down and increase the complexity of a theory, even though complexity is not
measured in terms of the nonfundamentalia themselves.
And there is a second reason to deny that my view about simplicity under-
mines our ability to argue against theories like the ones in question. In discussing
this second reason, I will assume for the sake of argument that the only kind of
simplicity that is a theoretical virtue is qualitative simplicity in the fundamentals.
On that assumption, the double-memory systems theory and the nonmagical
Loch Ness monster theory are, by the Laser, no less simple than theories without
them. But it does not follow that there isn’t a problem with those theories. There
is a problem, namely that they fail to have a different theoretical virtue: elegance.
Some theories generate more complex explanations than others. Indeed, two
theories with the same ontological commitments can differ in the complexity of
the explanations they offer. When we choose to believe the one with ‘simple’,
short explanations over the one with convoluted explanations, when we choose
the one with explanations that unify the phenomena under investigation, we are
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

not choosing on the basis of parsimony. We are choosing on the basis of elegance.
Elegance has to do with the explanation a theory offers; simplicity has to do with
what a theory says exists or obtains.
Elegance and parsimony can be difficult to untangle in practice. But I do think
that disputes in the special sciences that can perhaps sound like they involve
ontological parsimony really just involve elegance. Consider the two psycholo-
gists arguing about the number of memory systems. Or consider two biologists
arguing about whether some group of birds ought to count as one species or two.
The psychologist and biologist whose theory has fewer memory systems or
species might say that her theory is simpler. But what she means is that her
theory has simpler explanations, not that it has a smaller ontology. The problem
with her opponents’ views isn’t the sheer bean-counting population of things
(facts, kinds, properties, etc.). The problem isn’t about ontology at all. It’s about
complexity of explanation. After all, nobody has any antecedent opinion about
how many species we would like there to be, or preference for there being fewer.
What we care about is carving up the individuals into groups in a way that is most
revealing, sheds most light on the history, reflects what actually happened, etc.
The mere headcount of species is not at issue.
Now, I do not claim to have anything particularly illuminating to say about
what counts as a complex explanation, or how best to characterize elegance. I am
just making the familiar point that ontological simplicity is not the only theor-
etical virtue (Baker 2010 is useful on this point). It is therefore not the only tool
available to criticize theories that seem to posit unnecessary but nonfundamental
entities.
Objection 3: the Laser interacts badly with my claim that causation is a building
relation. Together they entail both that effects are nothing over and above their
causes, and that effects do not count against the simplicity of a theory! And those
two claims are just bananas.
Response: let’s clear the decks by getting clear on what I am and am not
committed to. “Effects are nothing over and above their causes” certainly sounds
bad, I’ll admit. But recall the interpretation of ‘nothing over and above’ that
I offered: to say that b is nothing over and above a is not to say that b is identical
to a, and it is not to say that b does not count towards the number of things there
are (or events that occur, etc.). So I certainly am not committed to the absurd
claims that effects are identical to their causes, or do not count towards the total
number of events that occur. Rather, saying that b is nothing over and above a
just means that postulating b does not contribute to the complexity of a theory in
a way that makes it less likely to be true than a theory that only postulates a. So
really, there is only one potentially problematic claim here, not two.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

So the question is just whether it is legitimately strange to suggest that effects

do not count against the simplicity of a theory. It’s a little hard to think about,
because we do not usually find ourselves in the position of deciding between
theories that differ only on whether or not certain events occur. We do, however,
decide between theories that differ on what causal structure they posit—that
differ on whether certain events known to occur are caused, and by what. And
reflection on both sorts of decision suggests that it is eminently reasonable to say
that effects do not count against the simplicity of a theory.
First, compare two theories of the world. T1 says that only a exists. T2 says that
both a and b exist, and that a deterministically causes b. The very same prob-
abilistic reasoning I used a few pages ago concerning T+ and T– shows that T2 is
no less likely to be true than T1. Of course, the choice between T1 and T2 is not a
kind of theory choice we engage in very often. But now compare T2 to T3, a
theory according to which both a and b exist, but are not causally related. T2 is
not only probabilistically more likely; it’s intuitively simpler as well. (Here, again,
the bias towards the built shows itself.)
When properly understood, then, I think it is not that strange to say that
“causes are nothing over and above their effects”, or that deterministically caused
effects do not contribute to the complexity of a theory in a way that makes it less
likely to be true. But I would like to conclude my discussion of this objection by
pointing out that here, as in §6.6.2, I could perfectly well back down on this.
I could reformulate the Laser to say that entities built by building relations other
than causation do not count against the complexity of a theory. (Or, a notational
variant: I could use the term ‘building’ for the subset of building relations other
than causation, and introduce a new label for the broader category, discussed in
Chapter 4, that includes both causation and other building relations. Then
I could keep the current formulation of the Laser.) Again, I choose not to do
this, for two reasons. First, I do not find the putatively problematic result
problematic when properly understood. Second, accepting the result that causes
are nothing over and above their effects highlights rather than obscures the fact
that ‘nothing over and aboveness’ can be understood in the same way in the case
of causation and in the case of more traditional ‘vertical’ building. My decision is,
again, at least partly a rhetorical move.
So: I see no reason to believe flatworldism. I believe in nonfundamentalia.
Which nonfundamentalia? I am inclined to think the world is teeming with them.
I am inclined to believe in—and deny the fundamentality of—composite objects,
sets, states of affairs that are grounded in others (and states of affairs themselves,
which I do not take to be a fundamental ontological category), mental states, a
variety of nonfundamental properties that are realized or microbased in other
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

more fundamental ones, and so on and so forth. But I am not going to defend the
existence of any of those things here. Doing so would require an extra book, and
besides, it doesn’t matter for present purposes just what nonfundamentalia there
are. All that matters is that there are some. So if you believe in sets but not
composite objects, or composite objects but not nonfundamental properties, you
are still on my team.

8.3 Metaphysics is Not the Study

of Fundamental Reality
If there are nonfundamentalia—which I will assume in what follows—a question
arises: are any of them among the proper subject matter of metaphysics? If
metaphysics is the study of the ultimate nature of the world, or the “fundamental
structure of reality” (Sider 2011, 1) then the answer is clearly ‘no’. But I think the
answer is instead ‘yes’. I deny that metaphysics is best understood as the study of
the fundamental nature of reality, because that claim violates three plausible
constraints on an adequate characterization of the nature of metaphysics. (The
below reprises some material from my 2016. Elizabeth Barnes (2014) also rejects
the claim that metaphysics is only about the fundamental.)
Here is the first constraint: an adequate characterization of metaphysics must
go some distance towards distinguishing it from science. I say “go some distance
towards” because the line is unlikely to be very clear. But it is nonetheless
appropriate to flag characterizations of metaphysics that make no progress at
all on this issue. For example, consider the idea that metaphysics—or at least
ontology—is the study of what there is. Well, chemistry, astrophysics, and
zoology also study what there is, as does the U.S. Department of Census. But it
is at best misleading to say that zoologists and census takers are doing meta-
physics when they respectively try to discover ‘new’ species or new people.12 Thus
metaphysics is not best understood simply as the study of what there is.
For the same reason, metaphysics is also not best understood as the study of
what there fundamentally is, or the study of the fundamental nature of reality.
This characterization also violates the first constraint. Although it does success-
fully distinguish metaphysics from zoology, chemistry, and census-taking, it does
not successfully distinguish metaphysics from physics. Physics, too, tries to
discover the fundamental nature of reality.

12
‘New’ species are merely hitherto undiscovered; new people are those who were not yet born at
the time of the preceding census.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

Here is the second constraint: an adequate characterization of metaphysics

ought to allow metaphysics to have a subject matter even if reality fails to have a
fundamental nature or structure—even if some or all building chains fail to
terminate in something unbuilt. Again, I take this to be a live epistemic possibil-
ity. If it turns out to be the case, metaphysicians will certainly take notice—but
they will not give notice, and resign their jobs. Indeed, a large part of what
currently passes for metaphysics could go on much as before. Some particular
views would be reassessed, and some particular claims would be reformulated,
but that is all. So this second constraint rules out—for the second time—the idea
that metaphysics is the study of fundamental reality.
Here is the third constraint, which perhaps underwrites the second: an
adequate characterization of metaphysics must to some extent respect the actual
practices of actual metaphysicians. This constraint is hedged, as the first one was.
I am certainly not making the absurd claim that an adequate characterization
ought to ensure that everything that actual metaphysicians talk about automat-
ically falls within the proper subject matter of metaphysics. (Metaphysicians do
occasionally talk about other things.) And I am not even making the more
reasonable claim that everything that actual metaphysicians talk about when
they would describe themselves as talking about metaphysics automatically falls
within the proper subject matter of metaphysics. That is because providing a
characterization of metaphysics is not a purely descriptive task, but a normative
one as well. The question is not “what does the discipline in fact concern itself
with?”, but rather “what ought the discipline concern itself with?” This question
might get a revisionary answer; it might be the case that some topics that have
been traditionally considered metaphysical are not ones that metaphysicians
ought to worry about at all. Nonetheless, even a revisionary answer is constrained
to some extent by the actual practices of actual metaphysicians. If we ignore all of
the sociology and history, if we ignore what is and has been called ‘metaphysics’,
we risk changing the subject entirely. For example, I cannot claim that raccoons
ought to be the sole topic of metaphysics; that is a clear nonstarter.
The claim that metaphysics is the study of the fundamental nature of reality
violates this third constraint as well as the first and second. It is of course not as
implausible as the claim that metaphysics is the study of raccoons, but it still
moves too far away from the subject matter of metaphysics traditionally con-
ceived. Traditionally conceived, metaphysical questions include the following:
What is the place of persons in an otherwise physical, law-governed world? Is
there any room for free agency? What is consciousness? What are laws anyway—
do they really govern, or merely describe? Are there any abstract objects? What are
numbers? What is causation? What is time? What is going on when we say that
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

two things are both red, that they share their color—is there really some one thing,
redness, that they both have? What is the difference between change and destruc-
tion? And, of course, many others. If this list sounds like the description of an
(overly ambitious) undergraduate metaphysics class, I have done my job correctly.
Here is the point to notice: many of the questions on this list precisely give rise
to disputes about whether some phenomenon is fundamental. Consider the
question about the nature of laws: this more or less comes down to the question
of whether nomic force is basic, whether the list of fundamentalia has to include
some kind of pushing and pulling in addition to, say, “local matters of particular
fact” (Lewis 1986d, ix–x). But that, in conjunction with the idea that metaphysics
is the study of the fundamental nature of reality, means that whether or not the
laws of nature are among the proper topics of metaphysics depends upon who
wins! If anti-Humean realists like David Armstrong, Michael Tooley, and John
Carroll turn out to be correct, then they can remain on our syllabi. But if the
Humeans like Lewis win, the laws are not among the proper subject matter of
metaphysics. This is crazy. The dispute is a properly metaphysical one, whichever
side is correct. And the point here is by no means confined to the dispute about
the nature of laws; the same issue arises with respect to the nature of conscious-
ness, properties, persistence, numbers, and so forth.
Thus far I have only claimed that respecting the actual practice of actual
metaphysicians requires counting as properly belonging to metaphysics disputes
about whether certain phenomena are fundamental as properly belonging to
metaphysics. But something stronger is true. Respecting the actual practice of
actual metaphysicians also requires counting as metaphysics disputes about the
nature of phenomena agreed by all (sensible) parties to be nonfundamental.13
Here are a host of examples.
First, consider building or grounding itself. If you are convinced by either of
the two arguments for anti-primitivism from §7.2—the argument from purity
and the argument from recombination—you think building relations are non-
fundamental. But they are obviously something in which metaphysicians take a
keen interest. Second, consider discussions of the status of the special sciences.
The whole point of calling them “special” is that they are nonfundamental. The
interesting questions are about how exactly they arise from more fundamental
reality, whether their generalizations deserve the status of laws, and so forth.
Third, consider disputes about the nature of color properties, or secondary or
response-dependent properties more generally. Fourth, consider possible worlds.
Some people think modality is unanalyzable, but no one thinks possible worlds

13
Thanks to Elizabeth Barnes here and in what follows.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

are. Those who believe in possible worlds, either take them to be complex
concrete objects (as Lewis 1986c does), or complex abstract objects—maximal
consistent sets of sentences, or something (e.g. Adams 1974, Plantinga 1974).
Fifth, consider works of art. There are lively debates both about what it is for
something to count as a work of art, and about the nature of reproducible
artworks like symphonies and books. But as far as I am aware, no one thinks
things like symphonies are fundamental. Certainly, that would be a very odd and
implausible view. Sixth, consider social ontology. What are groups? What are the
persistence conditions of, say, clubs or corporations?14 What are political parties?
Are there such things as race and gender, and if so what are they? Again, no one
thinks any of these things are fundamental. Although I could continue this list of
examples indefinitely, I think these six will do.
Now, I suppose that someone might turn up their nose and insist, perhaps in a
poshly sneering tone of voice, that such disreputable topics ought not count as
metaphysics. But tone is not argument, and I see no reason to be taken in by this.
First, how else should these topics be classified? Some that I have listed may lie at
the intersections of multiple subfields—questions about the nature of artworks lie
at the intersection of metaphysics and aesthetics, questions about the nature of
race and gender at the intersection of metaphysics and political philosophy—but
lying at the intersection of A and B does not mean lying in neither A nor B, but in
both. And, second, why must such putatively disorderly elements be excluded? It
would be question-begging to simply answer that they involve nonfundamenta-
lia. I agree with Barnes (2014) that there is no good reason to treat fundamen-
tality as the gatekeeper to metaphysics.
In short, adequately respecting the actual practice of actual metaphysicians,
past and present, requires recognizing that metaphysicians do not merely talk
about the fundamental. We talk about the nonfundamental too. We also spend
much of our time trying to figure out what is fundamental, and whether anything
is. We argue about what is fundamental and what is derivative, about what is
more fundamental than what, about what can be accounted for in terms of other
things (and just which other things). We try to solve what Jackson calls “the
location problem” for various phenomena (1998, 4–5), and we try to decide what
builds what.15 These practices are so very central to the practice of metaphysics
that respecting the third constraint requires acknowledging them.

14
Really this is an instance of a more general set of questions about the persistence conditions of
things of kind K, where Ks are nonfundamental. For many values of K—chairs, tables, etc.—
metaphysicians don’t have much interest in answering such questions in detail, focusing instead
on what persistence is and how it works.
15
C.f. Schaffer 2009, 347, though I disagree with him about how easy existence questions are.
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

At this point I should admit that in this section I have more or less been
attacking a straw person. I don’t know of anyone who explicitly argues for the
strong claim that only fundamental things are the proper targets of metaphysical
inquiry. It is more a claim that people make unthinkingly. For example, I earlier
quoted Ted Sider as making the claim, and he has since retracted it, largely under
pressure from Barnes: “I think that metaphysics includes many questions other
than those about fundamental reality . . . and I wish I hadn’t suggested otherwise”
(forthcoming). But, like the true flatworlder, this particular straw person is worth
attacking. The fact is that sentences like “metaphysics is about the fundamental
nature of reality” fall readily from our lips; it is a very, very common thing to say.
And we should not say it.
At this point, I have accomplished the second goal of this chapter. I have
shown that metaphysics is not merely the study of fundamental things, and that
some nonfundamentalia, as well as their relations to the fundamental, are among
the proper targets of metaphysical inquiry. But it is important to see that all
I have done is claim that a certain characterization of metaphysics is inadequate.
(I use the three constraints to do the same for several other characterizations of
metaphysics in my 2016). I have not myself provided an adequate one. So what is
metaphysics, if not the study of the fundamental nature of reality?
I do not have a fully satisfactory answer to this question. And it does not really
matter that I do not, as I have already said enough to vindicate the place of the
nonfundamental in metaphysics. Still, an interesting question deserves attention,
so here are a few brief remarks. (For more detail, again see my 2016; I do not wish
to distract from the focus on the nonfundamental).
I am not convinced that metaphysics can be given a single unified character-
ization (neither are Merricks 2013 nor van Inwagen and Sullivan 2014). But it can,
I think, be given a disjunctive one that at least sorts its projects into two kinds.
One of these projects involves investigating the nature of certain particularly
puzzling phenomena that seem somehow recalcitrant to purely empirical inves-
tigation: consciousness, freedom, time, laws of nature, modality. I have little to
say about why these are thus recalcitrant, nor why exactly these questions rather
than others. I merely flag that this is part of what the metaphysician studies.
The other project involves investigating the categories, tools, and notions upon
which other philosophers (and non-philosophers) uncritically rely. This role can
be characterized both in terms of maintenance and in terms of inspection. We
maintain the toolbox, keeping the tools sharp and well-oiled. We also inspect the
inner workings of the machine, assess the wiring and pipes, double check the
girders that hold up the building. These metaphors are intended to convey
the following idea. Philosophers of all stripes make claims using prima facie
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

somewhat mysterious expressions like ‘must be’, ‘depends upon’, ‘property’, ‘fact’,
‘object’, ‘part’, ‘event’, ‘cause’, and many others. The second goal of metaphysics
is to figure out what worldly matters, if any, answer to this kind of pervasive
“toolbox” philosophical vocabulary.
Some examples might help. While it is the metaethicist who claims that there
are (or are not) moral facts or properties, it is the metaphysician who wonders
what facts and properties might be, or whether we can somehow do without
them. Or consider building talk—from the beginning of the book, I have been
clear that it is ubiquitous both within philosophy and outside it. It is the job of
metaphysics to train the spotlight on this talk, to try to unpack it, to see whether
anything really answers to it, and so forth. Building is in the philosopher’s toolkit;
metaphysicians examine it to see whether it is in good working order. I am
talking about building because everyone else engages in building talk.
This disjunctive characterization of metaphysics is not perfectly precise, and
can probably be improved upon, but it does meet all three constraints. It respects
the actual practice of actual metaphysicans, and does not hold metaphysics
hostage to the existence of a bottom level of absolutely fundamental entities. It
also distinguishes metaphysics from science, or at any rate distinguishes the
second metaphysical project from science. Science does not try to figure out
what worldly matters, if any, answer to or make true the expressions and
concepts that are seemingly crucial to the rest of philosophy—expressions and
concepts like ‘could have been’, ‘property’, and ‘in virtue of ’.
And, of course, my characterization of metaphysics leaves the door wide open
for nonfundamentalia. It practically hands them a welcome cocktail. The phe-
nomena that seem resistant to empirical investigation may or may not be
fundamental. And similarly for whatever, if anything, answers to various pieces
of toolbox vocabulary. Nonfundamentalia are neither outsiders to nor anomalies
in metaphysics. They pervade it.

8.4 The Overall Picture

My project in this book basically amounts to articulating and defending what is
sometimes called the “layered model of reality” (e.g. Kim 1993, 337). I have just
argued both that the upper layers exist and that at least some of them are the
proper subjects of metaphysical inquiry. The world contains more and less
fundamental things,16 the less fundamental generated by the more

16
I reiterate for the umpteenth time that I use ‘entities’ or ‘things’ as shorthand ‘object or
property or fact or event or . . . ’
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL

fundamental—existing, obtaining, or being instantiated in virtue of them. Indeed,

what it is to be more or less fundamental is to generate and be generated, to build
and be built in the ways I spelled out in Chapter 6. The world is hierarchically
structured by a plurality of building relations.
But while I do consider myself an advocate of the “layered model of reality”,
I also think that metaphor obscures as much as it illuminates. What it illuminates
is grouping or categorization. That is, the metaphor emphasizes the way various
entities at roughly the same level of fundamentality can be classified together: the
chemical level, the biological level, and so forth. But the metaphor obscures—or
at least fails to illuminate—several things. It leaves at least three important things
in shadow.
First, the metaphor does not call attention to the generative connections
between layers. Higher-level entities do not just sit, statically and independently,
on top of lower ones like layers on a cake. Now, I do not think anybody who uses
the metaphor really thinks they do; for example, in the passage cited above, Kim
says that the layers are connected mereologically. I merely think it worth noting
that the metaphor itself brings out no such connection. Still, the next two
challenges to the metaphor are perhaps deeper, and indicate ways in which
I depart from the standard understanding of the “layered model”.
Second, the metaphor suggests that there is a single correct layering. But, as
I have argued, matters are not so simple. There are a multiplicity of building
relations, each of which generates its own notion of relative fundamentality;
claims that something is more or less fundamental than something else are
implicitly indexed to a particular building relation (see §6.6.1). Let me be clear
that it is compatible with this that most building relations, most of the time, do
run in sync, or at least the same direction. And it is also compatible with this that
the relative fundamentality structures generated by certain building relations are
more conceptually central than others: for example, perhaps the priority ordering
given by grounding is more conceptually central than that given by causation. But
the fact is that on my picture there isn’t a single building structure, which means
that there may be more than one way to carve the world into layers.
Third, and relatedly, the metaphor suggests that each layer goes straightfor-
wardly on top of the prior, more fundamental layer. Given the standard implicit
thought that verticality represents a simultaneous, noncausal relation of gener-
ation and relative fundamentality, it is fair to say that the metaphor thus suggests
that all generation and relative fundamentality is like that. However, I have
argued that it is not. Causation is a building relation, and there are other building
relations that obtain in virtue of causal facts. There is no clear distinction between
causal and noncausal determination; there is just determination, or building. The
 IN DEFENSE OF THE NONFUNDAMENTAL 

class that consists of all the building relations is more natural than the class that
consists only of the noncausal ones. This claim is not reflected in standard
understandings of just how reality is layered, and it is not reflected in the visual
metaphor of the layer cake.
It would be nice to close the book with a different visual metaphor, with
something that captures my more complex picture of the world in a way that
the image of a layer cake or Jello parfait does not. Unfortunately, it is not easy to
find one. I cannot think of a metaphor that brings out the multiplicity of building
structures in any useful way. But if we fix a single building relation, and intend
the metaphor to capture only one building structure—or, perhaps, to generalize
about those that do run in sync—all that really needs to be added is the
representation of directed pressure, of generation. Perhaps a better metaphor,
then, is that of a growing plant, unfolding upwards and outwards. Perhaps. At
any rate, it is fitting to close the book by noting that the productive, generative,
determinative notion of building is usefully captured by a causal metaphor.
Appendix: Objections to the Second
Grade of Causal Involvement

I noted back in Chapter 4 that what I there called “the second grade of causal involve-
ment” seems to prompt a lot of objections. Here are six. The first five are to the effect that
I have illicitly assumed some controversial doctrine or other; the final one is to the effect
that there is something wrong with Truth Conditions 2.
Objection 1: “You’ve assumed that ‘vertical’ composition occurs. What about
compositional nihilism, à la van Inwagen (1990), Merricks (2001), Dorr (2005), and
Sider (2013)?”
Well, yes, I did assume that composition occurs. But this really does not matter very
much. Remember that although my examples in §4.3.2 were very composition-ish, my
general point is intended to be broader than that. Those who do not believe in compos-
ition almost certainly believe in other vertical building relations. Consider the sort of
claim often attributed to nihilists who wish to recapture ordinary talk by paraphrasing it
in ways that do not quantify over composites1—for example, that although there are
no tables, there indeed are simples-arranged-tablewise. But what is this property
being arranged tablewise that the simples plurally instantiate? Whatever it is, it surely is
not fundamental; simples plurally instantiate it in virtue of instantiating other properties,
some physical, some functional.2 So the nihilist who wishes to recapture ordinary talk
needs to say that there are building relations between properties. That is, your average
compositional nihilist holds a view much weaker than true “flatworldism”, as
I characterize it in Chapter 8—i.e., much weaker than the view that there are no building
relations at all, and that nothing is more fundamental than anything else. At the time of
writing, I know of no true flatworlders. And I see no reason to doubt that the basic gist of
§4.3.2 can be recapitulated in terms of some other vertical building relation.
It is also worth noting that not even compositional nihilism itself is very widespread.
Sider (2013) and Dorr (2005) do defend a full-blown version, according to which nothing
is ever part of anything else. But Merricks and van Inwagen instead defend weaker views.
van Inwagen believes in composite living organisms (1990), and Merricks believes in
composite conscious beings (2001). These things are presumably put together by means of
diagonal building, as per the second grade of causal involvement. Indeed, van Inwagen is
fairly explicit that this is what happens when a sperm and an egg come together to make a
zygote (1990, 151–3).

1
Difference-minimizing nihilists who wish to up-play their expressive power, as I put it in
my 2009.
2
I have argued elsewhere that compositional nihilists who wish to recapture ordinary talk are
committed to countenancing properties which non-nihilists need not countenance (2009, 64). Here,
however, I am not relying on that strong claim.
 APPENDIX

Objection 2: “You’ve assumed eternalism. No presentist will buy this.”

I admit that much of the chapter is, for simplicity, written in eternalese—I have, for
example, quantified over times in a way that is easiest to interpret given eternalism.
However, but there is no stable dialectical position from which there is an objection here.
Eternalists will obviously not care if accommodating diagonal building requires eternal-
ism. Presentists will care, but they should not believe that it does. Presentists are often
accused of having trouble accounting for cross-time relations, and they typically attempt
to resist the accusation one way or another (e.g. Markosian 2004). Diagonal building is a
cross-time relation, to be sure—that is one of the main points—but in that respect it is just
like many others: admiring Lincoln, missing your dead mother, causation, motion.
Whatever solution the presentist endorses in the other cases will be equally successful
here. If there is no satisfactory solution, so much the worse for presentism.
Objection 3: “You’ve assumed that things come into and go out of existence. What
about necessitism—the view that everything that exists necessarily exists (Linsky and
Zalta (1994, 1996); Williamson (2002, 2013))?”
The idea here is this: if everything necessarily exists, then nothing is ever created or
destroyed. If nothing is ever created or destroyed, then it is never the case that makings are
destroyed as a composite comes to be. And if the makings are never destroyed, there are
no cases of the sort that drove me from Truth Conditions 1 to Truth Conditions 2 of
diagonal building; if composites never come to be at all, there is no diagonal building in
the first place. Either way, there is no reason to take seriously a diachronic building-as-a-
process relation distinct from (though analyzable in terms of) purely vertical building.
I myself do not believe necessitism; I share Robert Stalnaker’s (2012 contingentist
inclinations (see my 2005, 2006)). But even assuming that necessitism is true, the
objection fails. Here’s why.
Necessitists always try to do some justice to the intuition that some things exist only
contingently. (In principle they need not do this, but in practice they always do.) So while
they deny that anything exists contingently, necessitists instead say that there is a special
property that some things have only contingently. Both Williamson and Linsky and Zalta
take concreteness to be this special property. On their view, both the eggs and the cake
exist necessarily, but are only contingently concrete. The eggs are not destroyed by the
mixing and baking process, they just lose a lot of properties, and become nonconcrete.
Similarly, the cake is not brought into being, but merely brought to concreteness.
So is our Williamsonian objector correct to say that, since everything always exists,
nothing is diachronically built? No, and it should be clear why. Even if neither the cake
itself nor the fact that it exists is built from the earlier ingredients, the fact that it is
concrete, is a cake, and has various other properties is so built. By both Linsky and Zalta
(1994, 446)3 and Williamson’s lights (2002, 245–6), nonconcrete entities have no non-
modal properties. The cake, however, has many, including being a cake. In short, although
I did assume that some things are created and destroyed, the assumption is dispensable.

3
Linsky and Zalta’s view is more subtle than this, but the added complexity does not affect my
basic point.
 APPENDIX 

The arguments of §4.3.2 can be revised to reflect the view, which I myself do not hold, that
everything exists necessarily.
Objection 4: “You’ve assumed the falsity of classical extensional mereology—in par-
ticular, the falsity of the axioms of unrestricted composition and extensionality.”
No, I didn’t. Regardless of whether or not those axioms really are false, §4.3.3 should have
made clear that I would prefer that my arguments not turn on such controversial
assumptions. So let me explain why it might seem as though my arguments assume the
falsity of the axioms of unrestricted composition and extensionality, and then explain why
they in fact do not.
The axioms in question are as follows. Unrestricted composition says that any things
whatsoever have a fusion; composition is automatic. Extensionality, or uniqueness, says
that no two things can have the very same parts—that x and y have the same parts just in
case ‘they’ are identical. The reason it might appear that I have assumed that these axioms
are false is that they appear to generate another route to the claim that no composites are
ever created or destroyed. Like the challenge from Williamson, Linsky, and Zalta, this
would mean that there is no pressure to acknowledge a diachronic building relation
distinct from purely vertical building. (Unlike that challenge, it does not involve the claim
that everything exists necessarily—nor even that all composites exist necessarily.)4
Here is why it might appear that uniqueness and unrestricted composition together
entail that no composite object can be created or destroyed. Consider an egg that I use to
make the cake. I break it and beat it and spread its parts around. But the parts still exist, so
by unrestricted composition they still compose something. That is, there is a thing
composed of exactly the same parts that once composed the egg. Since uniqueness says
that sameness of parts is sufficient for identity, it follows that the egg is identical to that
scattered thing. That renders my breaking rather ineffective; all I did was spread the egg
out over a larger spatial area. So I didn’t destroy it in making the cake after all. Mutatis
mutandis for my putative ‘making’ of the cake itself. Really, all I did was change the
properties of and relations between the parts of a pre-existing fusion. I didn’t in fact create
anything at all.
This line of thought is mistaken. Even if the axioms do entail that fusions cannot be
created or destroyed—which is unclear at best, given that the axioms are silent about what
it is for a fusion to persist over time—they do not entail that ordinary objects cannot be.
That is because it is natural to deny that ordinary objects are fusions of spatial parts. One
option is to claim that ordinary object terms like ‘egg’ refer to fusions of spatial and
temporal parts. On this perdurantist line, the egg has temporal parts before it is broken
and sufficiently mixed at t, but not after. It is not relevant that the spatial parts of the egg
continue to exist and, by unrestricted composition, have a fusion after t; that fusion is not

4
Even assuming (a) the truth of unrestricted composition, (b) uniqueness, and (c) that they
together entail that no composites are ever created or destroyed (which I deny in the main text), it
still would not follow that all composites exist necessarily. If it is contingent what simples exist, it is
contingent what fusions exist. Further, Ross Cameron has argued that the principle of unrestricted
composition is itself contingent (2007)—on that view, it is contingent what composites exist, even
holding fixed what simples exist, and assuming the actual truth of unrestricted composition.
 APPENDIX

a temporal part of the egg. (Mutatis mutandis for the cake; there can perfectly well exist a
fusion of the spatial parts of the before the first temporal part of the cake itself.)
Another option, compatible with endurantism, is to claim that ordinary object terms
refer to fusions that instantiate certain properties. If ordinary things of kind K are
essentially F, then a fusion that once is a K ceases to be a K when it ceases to be F.
Suppose for simplicity (this is clearly false) that eggs essentially have intact shells. Then
the fusion that was the egg before the shell is cracked continues to exist when the shell is
broken, but it ceases to be an egg. Similarly, in making the cake, I perhaps do not cause it
to be the case that some parts compose some fusion, but I do cause it to be the case that
that fusion instantiates the complex property of being a cake. On this line, the diagonal
building relation would have to be analyzed in terms of the instantiation of nonfunda-
mental properties rather than the composition of nonfundamental objects—but this
matters not, as it is building either way.
Objection 5: “Truth Conditions 2 does not accurately state the truth conditions for
diachronic building sentences. The right hand side is not sufficient[5] for the truth of any
diachronic building sentence.

5
Two possible objections to the necessity of Truth Conditions 2 are perhaps worth mentioning,
though only in a footnote.
First, suppose one thought that the identity and existence of parts depended upon the identity and
existence of the thing of which they are parts. (Aristotle, for example, thought that nothing could be
an eye or a kidney unless it was part of a functioning human body. The view in question here goes
further. It is not just that a certain lump of flesh ceases to be a kidney when removed from the body
to which it belongs, or when that body is destroyed; rather, that lump of flesh ceases to exist
altogether, and is replaced by a numerically distinct object.) On such a view, ordinary cakes are not
diachronically composed of their ingredients. No parts of the eggs survive to become parts of the
cake, and so by Truth Conditions 2 the eggs do not diachronically compose the cake. (Thanks to
Ross Cameron here.)
I am not very concerned about this objection. The letter of Truth Conditions 2 does presuppose
that such a view is incorrect, which I think is not a crazy presupposition. Besides, the spirit of Truth
Conditions 2 survives. Anyone wishing to endorse the above view simply needs to modify it slightly.
The eggs still diachronically compose the cake in virtue of underlying causal processes; the cake does
not come to be exnihilo. It is just that on this view, those underlying causal processes do not involve
persistence.
The second objection to the necessity of Truth Conditions 2 can be seen by reflecting upon a
version of the ship of Theseus case. Suppose it was originally composed of pine planks, which have
gradually been replaced over time so that the ship is now composed of pieces of aluminum, and has
no matter in common with the pine planks of which it was originally built. Is the ship made from
those pine planks? If it is, then Truth Conditions 2 is not necessary for the sort of diagonal
composition in question. (If not, there is no puzzle here.) I myself occasionally feel a bit of pressure
to say that Theseus’ ship is made from the pine planks, though I do not really endorse this intuition,
and find that it is not widely shared.
If that intuition is correct, though, there is a relatively simple fix. Accommodating Theseus-style
gradual replacement of the things that compose the xxs, just requires moving to a two-stage definition
that allows for stepwise chains. First, call Truth Conditions 2 a definition of direct diachronic r diagonal
composition. Second, say that the xxs stand in the diachronic composition relation to y iff
Either the xxs directly diachronically compose y, or
There is a stepwise chain of direct diachronic composition between the xxs and y.
That will handle the ship of Theseus case.
 APPENDIX 

Suppose that instead of baking a cake out of the ingredients I have put on the counter,
I hurl them all around the kitchen, making an epic mess. Doesn’t the relationship between
the ingredients and the mess meet Truth Conditions 2? The mess shares a lot of parts with
the ingredients—arguably more than the intact cake does. Yet to say that the mess is built
from or diagonally composed of the ingredients seems . . . odd. True, we do say ‘Karen
made a mess’, but surely it isn’t exactly a thing that I made. Or suppose that I do bake a
cake, but then rip it into chunks for fondue or trifle. The relation between the cake and the
chunks—as well as the relationship between the ingredients and the chunks—also seems
to meet Truth Conditions 2. But isn’t that relation decompositional? It is a matter of
taking things apart, not putting things together.
My main reply here is very short: if Truth Conditions 2 is false, so much the better for
me. I simply assumed that it is true, and argued that its truth provides no reason to deny
that there are diachronic building relations. If it is not true, well, then it certainly provides
no reason to deny that there are diachronic building relations! And matters look even
better for diachronic building if it further turns out that mild tweaking doesn’t help, that it
is simply not possible to provide truth-conditions for diachronic building sentences that
do not mention diachronic building. In that case, the motivation to take diachronic
building as nonfundamental disappears. So worries about Truth Conditions 2 are all in
my favor.
Still, I am inclined to think Truth Conditions 2 is true, and that the issues raised by this
objection are independently interesting. I thus step aside from the main dialectic of the
chapter to explore this further.
Could Truth Conditions 2 be refined to avoid classifying activities like making messes
and piles of crumbs as building processes? One could try. A natural option would be to
insist further upon a feature that is in fact already part of Truth Conditions 2 as
formulated: that diachronic building be many–one. This would block the crumbs case,
and arguably the mess case.6 But this move seems to miss the point. For one thing,
I explicitly allowed disunifying building back in Chapter 3. For another thing, there are
other examples that are many–one, but challenge the sufficiency of Truth Conditions 2 in
related ways. Suppose I make compost from a pail of vegetable scraps, take it out to the
garden, and some ‘volunteer’ tomato plants grow from seeds that were in the compost.
This case meets Truth Conditions 2 even holding fixed its many–one structure: a lot of the
parts of the scraps, at some level of decomposition, persist as parts of the (single) tomato
plant. But it still sounds odd to say that the tomato plant is made from or built out of the
vegetable scraps.
An alternative way to modify Truth Conditions 2 would be to include some constraint
on how much time can pass between t1 and t2, or perhaps better, on how much macrolevel
qualitative change can occur between t1 and t2. Or perhaps the purposely vague “most of
the zzs are among the xxs, and vice versa” clause could be precisified. There are
presumably other moves available.
Still, though, this project strikes me as hopeless. We don’t have firm enough judgments
about every single case to be sure exactly which ones to rule in and which to rule out; an

6
Ruling out the mess example on the grounds that it isn’t many–one would require denying that
the mess is a single entity, which in turn would having an account of what a single entity is.
 APPENDIX

extensionally adequate analysis is not a meaningful possibility here. And revising Truth
Conditions 2 even in just the ways above would yield artificial distinctions. Consider, for
example, the idea that somehow the tomato plant case must be ruled out because there is
too long a time lapse, or too much qualitative change, since the pail of scraps in the
kitchen. That is nonsense. There is no real difference in kind between the amount of time
and qualitative change involved in the change from scraps to tomato plant and the
amount of time and qualitative change involved when grapes are made into wine—or,
even further down the road, into cognac or vinegar. Not all of our initial intuitions here
are to be trusted,7 and we should take care to avoid endless and pointless ad-hoc
refinements.
So what is my attitude towards the putative counterexamples to Truth Conditions 2? It
is this: let them go. We should not take the ‘troublesome’ cases as clear counterexamples
to the sufficiency of Truth Conditions 2, and we should not scramble to revise and repair
in light of them. The proper response, instead, is to take them at face value, as somewhat
fringe examples of the concept under investigation. It is a mistake to insist that there are
hard and fast lines between the ‘troublesome’ cases raised here and the ones I have been
treating as central examples of diagonal building.
Further, insofar as the troublesome cases are troublesome, it has little to do with the
diagonality or building and everything to do with the mereologicalness of the cases. That is,
it matters that I have, for clarity, focused on examples that centrally involve composition.
What bothers us here are a host of interrelated questions about what counts as creating an
entity, rather than destroying one, or merely rearranging some stuff. Addressing such
issues requires answering the Special Composition Question, and telling us what counts as
a single composite object. But notice what remains, even leaving such questions alone. It is
®
indisputable that all of these cases—from making a Lego castle to making a cake to
making a mess or growing a tomato plant—involve rearranging microlevel entities into
new configurations. That is why they meet the basic shape of Truth Conditions 2. But
what is it to rearrange microlevel entities into new configurations, changing what macro-
level entities exist, and what macrolevel properties are instantiated? It is to bring about
various changes in what builds what. The ‘macrolevel’ is the built. Thus all of these cases—
all of them—involve diagonal, diachronic building. Perhaps they do not all involve
diagonal composition, as captured in the letter of Truth Conditions 2. But they all involve
diagonal building, perhaps versions involving grounding, realization, or microbasing. Any
talk of changing the macrolevel by changing the microlevel is talk of diagonal building.
The fact is that these cases—the castle, cake, mess, and tomato plant—shade into each
other. They all involve the rearrangement of underlying smaller bits; they all involve
matter that composes-or-grounds-or-realizes-or-microbases something coming to
compose-or-ground-or-realize-or-microbase something else. As soon as we get anywhere
near an adequate answer to the question of what diagonal building is, we cannot help but

7
We should not, for example, expect the fact that we say that wine is made from grapes, but
speak of ‘wine vinegar’ rather than ‘grape vinegar’ (and ‘cider vinegar’ rather than ‘apple vinegar’), to
be reflected in a real metaphysical difference between the relation between these grapes and that
bottle of wine and the relation between those grapes and that bottle of vinegar. There is no relevant
difference between the cases.
 APPENDIX 

slide into what might seem to be a more general idea—something like things turning into
other things, becoming other things. The scraps eventually turn into the plants, just as the
eggs and flour and so forth first become batter, then cake, then crumbs. The only way to
stop this slide into general becoming is to stop quite early on, at my move from Truth
Conditions 1 to Truth Conditions 2, and insist that making a cake does not involve the
same relation(s) as making a castle out of Legos .®
In short, there is a continuum, ranging from straight-up, synchronic/vertical compos-
ition at one extreme, through the diachronized but still essentially vertical version that is
captured in Truth Conditions 1, through the truly diagonal version captured by Truth
Conditions 2, through to various other forms of becoming, change, and decomposition at
the other extreme. This is no problem for my overall claims about the second grade of
causal involvement, nor for my discussion of the second kind of causal taint more
generally. Once we start thinking diachronically, about building as a process, the notion
of building gets tangled up with notions of causation and persistence.
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Name Index

Adams, Robert 233 Earley, Joseph 88–9 n.29

Armstrong, David 10 n.4, 14, 14 n.9, 15 n.11, Epstein, Brian 147 n.11
19 n.17, 20 n.19, 22 n.22, 37, 37 n.5, 54,
72, 188, 193 n.12, 198, 211, 211 n.24, Faller, Augie 146 n.9
213, 221, 232 Fine, Kit 4, 12, 12 n.7, 14, 14 n.10, 22 n.22, 29,
Anscombe, G. E. M. 50 33, 39 n.9, 46, 49, 53 n.20, 55, 56–7, 59 n.24,
Audi, Paul 12, 33, 53, 61, 69, 193 n.12 61, 61 n.27, 73, 103, 105, 105 n.3, 114, 118,
124, 134–5, 153 n.17, 199–201, 203, 205–6,
Baker, Alan 228 206 n.19, 212
Baker, Lynne 9, 33 Foerster, Thomas 146 n.9
Balashov, Yuri 95 n.36 Funkhouser, Eric 19
Ballantyne, Nathan 93 n.33
Baron-Schmitt, Nathaniel 159 n.21 Gibbard, Allan 44–5, 45 n.16
Barnes, Elizabeth 34, 36–7, 37 n.8 and n.9, 43, Gillett, Carl 9–10, 10 n.3
46, 65 n.33, 105 n.2, 108, 230, 232 n.13, 233–4 Gilmore, Cody 97 n.40
Baron, Sam 63, 85 n.25 Ginet, Carl 91 n.32
Baxter, Donald 9 Goldman, Alvin 17 n.13
Bedau, Mark 11, 65 n.32
Bennett, Karen 2, 3, 4 n.3, 9, 12, 14 n.10, 18 Hawley, Katherine 22 n.22
n.16, 21, 22, 24, 33 n.2, 49, 54, 63, 72, 76 n.10 Hawthorne, John 126, 130 n.27, 133, 216, 219
and n.12, 189, 193, 196, 197, 198, 202, 215, Heim, Irene 176
218 n.5, 222 n.7, 230, 234, 239 n.1 Hitchcock, Christopher 80 n.16
Bliss, Ricki 34, 36, 37, 40, 119 n.18 Hoberman, Mary Ann 20 n.20
Bishop, Robert 28 Hodes, Harold 125 n.25
Blackburn, Simon 14 n.10, 71 Horgan, Terry 215, 219
Bonevac, Daniel 170 n.29 Hrbacek, Karel 9, 18
Boyce, Kenneth 223 n.8 Hume, David 212
Boyd, Richard 89 n.29
Bricker, Phillip 125 n.23 Jackson, Frank 2 n.2, 19 n.17, 233
Jech, Thomas 9, 18
Cameron, Ross 9, 49, 51, 73, 121, 193, 193 n.12, Jenkins, Carrie 24, 36–8, 44, 44 n.14, 108, 123
216, 241 n.4, 242 n.5 Johnston, Mark 9
Carroll, Lewis 31, 207, 211, 232
Cartwright, Helen 94 n.35 Kennedy, Christopher 176
Chalmers, David 51, 226 n.11 Kim, Jaegwon 10, 10 n.4, 11, 27–8, 27 n.32, 68,
Chisholm, Roderick 84, 84 n.23 75, 76 n.11, 84, 162, 235–6
Cortens, Andrew 216, 219 Kirk, Robert 51
Cotnoir, Aaron 9 Koslicki, Kathrin 9, 21–4, 54, 68, 94 n.35
Cresswell, M. J. 176 Kovacs, David 37 n.6, 110 n.7, 165

Dasgupta, Shamik 4, 12, 17, 32 n.1, 61, 189 n.4, Leslie, S.-J. 80 n.16
192, 197 n.13, 198, 199–213 Leuenberger, Stephan 49, 52, 52 n.19, 53
Della Rocca, Michael 69 Lewis, David 9, 14 n.11, 17 n.15, 18 n.16, 22
deRosset, Louis 105, 138 n.3, 189, 196, 198, 202, n.23, 25 n.26, 34, 37 n.7, 44–6, 48 n.18, 55, 62
206 n.18, 216 n.28, 68, 68 n.1, 72, 72 n.3, 73, 81, 93 n.33, 96,
Dever, Josh 170 n.29 103, 108, 110–11, 123, 123 n.22, 124–34, 139,
Dixon, T. Scott 118 n.15 151, 181, 188, 193 n.12, 212–13, 221–1, 222
Dorr, Cian 15 n.12, 126, 130 n.28, 215, 239 n.7, 227, 232, 233
Dretske, Fred 211 Liebesman, David 80 n.16
 NAME INDEX

Lin, Martin 73 Sellars, Wilfrid 1

Linsky, Bernard 240, 240 n.3, 241 Shapiro, Lawrence 9, 10 n.3
Litland, Jon 34 n.4, 61, 170 n.29, 173 n.30, Sharvy, Richard 22 n.22, 94 n.35
189 n.2, 192, 193 n.10 Shoemaker, Sydney 9–11, 33 n.2, 53, 75 n.9, 84,
Loss, Roberto 189 n.2 84 n.20, 181
Sider, Theodore 4, 9, 15 n.12, 62 n.29, 71 n.2,
Markosian, Ned 53, 240 73, 86–7, 96, 96–7 n.39, 107, 110–11, 113
McDaniel, Kris 4, 14 n.9, 22 n.22, 216 n.10, 120, 123, 124–8, 131–2, 139, 189, 189
McKay, Thomas 9 n.3, 197 n.13, 215, 216, 217, 217–18 n.3, 220,
McLaughlin, Brian 2, 11, 12, 14 n.10, 33 n.2 225, 226, 230, 234, 239
Melamed, Yitzhak 73 Simons, Peter 17 n.13, 22 n.22
Mele, Alfred 81 Skiles, Alexander 49, 52, 53
Melnyk, Andrew 9, 10 n.3, 84, 84 n.21 Stalnaker, Robert 240
Merricks, Trenton 15 n.12, 215, 234, 239 Stoljar, Daniel 212
Millikan, Ruth 159 n.20 Strawson, Galen 72
Montero, Barbara 119 n.18 Strawson, Peter F 116
Murphy, Daniel 193 n.12 Sullivan, Meghan 234
Swarup, Shruta 191 n.6
Needham, Paul 94 n.35 Swinburne, Richard 181
Nolan, Daniel 198, 227
North, Jill 53 n.21 Thomasson, Amie 71, 93
Thompson, Naomi 126
O’Connor, Timothy 10, 10 n.4, 11, 65 Thomson, Judith Jarvis 9, 102
Tooley, Michael 72, 211, 232
Pap, Arthur 19 n.17 Trogdon, Kelly 21–2, 49, 61
Paul, L. A. 14, 22 n.23, 108 Turner, Jason 216 n.2, 219
Pereboom, Derk 75 n.9
Plantinga, Alvin 233 Unger, Peter 48
Poland, Jeffrey 9
Polger, Thomas 9, 10 n.3 van Gulick, Robert 11, 11 n.5
Potrč, Matjaž 215, 219 van Inwagen, Peter 9, 15 n.12, 17 n.14 and n.15,
Priest, Graham 119 n.18 21–2, 53, 86–7, 93 n.33, 95–6, 98, 215, 218,
Prior, A. N. 19 218 n.6, 222, 239
Varzi, Achille 17 n.14, 46
Quine, W. V. O. 31, 44–45, 83, 83 n.19
Wallace, Megan 9
Rabern, Brian 118 n.15 Wang, Jennifer 190 n.5
Rabin, Gabrial Oak 118 n.15 Wasserman, Ryan 9
Rayo, Agustín 35, 91 Weatherson, Brian 48
Rescher, Nicholas 46 Weisberg, Michael 88 n.29
Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo 14, 34, 34 n.4 Williams, J. Robert G. 73 n.5
Rosen, Gideon 12, 13, 33, 35, 46, 46 n.17, 53, 61, Williamson, Timothy 109, 240–1
119 n.18 Wilson, Alistair 68
Russell, Bertrand 116, 205 Wilson, Jessica 9, 12, 21–2, 24, 24 n.24, 30,
33 n.2, 34–8, 43–6, 84, 103, 108, 110, 111,
Sattig, Thomas 98 n.42 133, 134–6, 212
Schaffer, Jonathan 4, 12, 14, 16, 23, 27–8, 27 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 19
n.31, 33, 39, 46, 50, 60–1, 68, 73, 93, 104, 105, Wong, Hong Yu 10 n.4, 11, 65
107, 108, 108 n.4, 110–11, 114–15, 115 n.12, Wood, Rega 88 n.29
118, 120–2, 123, 124, 126, 130, 132 n.30, 139
n.4, 140, 153 n.18, 162, 189 n.4, 202, 220–1, Yablo, Stephen 75 n.9
224–5, 227, 233 n.15
Schechtman, Anat 69 Zalta, Edward 240, 240 n.3, 241
Searle, John 19 Zimmerman, Dean 9, 73, 94 n.35
Subject Index
absolute fundamentality 102–36
completeness 107–24
independence 105–7, 111–18, 122–4, 126–34
naturalness 124–34
primitivism about 103, 134–6
anti–Humeanism 72, 212–13, 232
asymmetry or antisymmetry 26–8, 33–47, 60,
80–1, 119–20, 160, 162–3, 166–7,
176–8, 208
B!MFT 40–7, 63–5, 81 n.17, 82–3, 119–20,
141, 143, 148, 154, 157, 163, 178–80
objection to 178–80
role in the account of building 63–4, 143
building relations
basic characterization 32, 59–60
disagreement about 15–16
examples 8–15
bundle theory 14
causal taint
two kinds characterized 68–71
independence of the two kinds 99–101
causation and relative fundamentality 81–3,
101, 167–70
causation as a building relation 67–83
analogies between vertical building and
causing 71–8
effects less fundamental than their
causes? 81–3, 101, 167–70
effects nothing over and above their
causes? 228–9
indeterministic 80–1
symmetric 80–1
completeness 107–11
vs. independence 111–18, 122–4
composition 8–9, 15–16, 17–18, 21–2, 85–6
conceptual analysis 31–2, 39, 50, 104, 129, 140,
181–2
connectivism
arguments against 206–11
characterized 200, 212–13
constitution 9
counterfactual dependence and building 47–8
deflationism about relative fundamentality 40,
46, 139–40, 161–2, 167–70, 174–5,
180–2
determinism, building 49–55
arguments for 50–1
characterized 51–2
compared to causal determinism 80–1
compared to building necessitarianism
52–5
elegance 227–8
emergence 11–12, 64–5
equifundamentality 141, 145–6, 152–3, 170–4
explanation 61–2, 135, 201–3
extensionality 25–6, 241–2
foundationalism, metaphysical 72–4, 114–17,
118–22, 129, 149, 152–5, 172–3
fundamentality
absolute. See absolute fundamentality
relative. See relative fundamentality
generalism 22–3, 26
generalist monism 13, 23–8, 59, 113, 162–3
arguments against 24–8
characterized 23
generalist existence monism 23
generalist priority monism 23
generalized more fundamental than
relation 164–7
generativity 57–9
realism vs. conventionalism about 58–9,
184–5
grounding 12–13, 59 n.24, 60–1, 72–3, 77, 105,
107, 114–15, 135, 138, 183, 185, 189,
199–201
Humeanism 72, 72 n.3 and n.4, 212–13, 232
independence 105–7
vs. completeness 111–18, 122–4
vs. naturalness 126–34
indeterministic
building 49–52
causation 80–1
irreflexivity 33–47
Laser, the 220–5, 226–9
metaphysics, characterizing 230–5
methodology 4–5, 16, 30–2, 39, 78–9, 104–5,
140, 180–2, 220–1
MFT account of the more fundamental than
relation 155–62
naturalness 124–34
necessary truths or existents 56, 240–1
 SUBJECT INDEX

necessitarianism, building 51–5 extent to which the account is

characterized 52 revisionist 169, 180–2
compared to building determinism 51–5 generalized 164–7
necessitation. See necessitarianism, building, indexed 42, 162–4
and determinism, building MFT account 155–62
nonfundamental, the 4, 214–38 neglect of topic 137–8
primitivism about
Ockham’s razor 218, 220. See also simplicity extreme 140–3
sophisticated 143–4, 182–5
parsimony. See simplicity see also primitivism about relative
personal identity 181 fundamentality
primitivism about absolute singular vs. general 179
fundamentality 103, 134–6 Toy account
primitivism about relative explained 145–9
fundamentality 140–4, 182–5 rejected 149–55
extreme
arguments against 140–3 set formation 9, 18
characterized 140 simplicity 92–3, 183–4, 217–18, 220–9
sophisticated structures, plurality of building 107, 167, 236–7
arguments against 182–5
characterized 143–4 time travel 80, 154
property realization 9–10, 33 n.2 transitivity 46, 165, 177

recombination, modal 50, 140–1, 190–1, 226
relations, fundamental 187–8
relative fundamentality 137–86
deflationism about 40, 46, 139–40, 161–2,
167–70, 174–5, 180–2
unified group of properties or relations 18–24
upwards anti–primitivism 192–8, 201–5
well–foundedness 72–4, 114–17, 118–22, 129,
149, 152–5, 172–3, 197