Logic and Ontological Pluralism∗

According to ontological pluralism, there are different modes of being — dif-ferent ways to exist. The view has been thought dead for a long time, destroyed by the Quinean doctrine that to be is to be needed as the value of a variable bound by an existential quantifier. Announcements of its death were premature. Ontological pluralism is con-sistent with the Quinean doctrine if there are multiple existential quantifiers. We can have two modes of being — perhaps one for abstracta and another for conc-reta — and still stay broadly within the Quinean tradition if we also have two quantifiers, say ‘∃a ’ and ‘∃c ’ for abstracta and concreta, respectively. To be (in the abstract way) is to be needed as the value of a variable bound by ‘∃a’; to be (in the concrete way) is to be needed as the value of a variable bound by ‘∃c’. A defense of this sort of pluralism requires movement on many fronts. In recent work, Kris McDaniel (2009, forthcoming) and I (2010) have developed the view, and defended it against several objections each of which, if correct, would show the view false. But a further objection has yet to be addressed: th