The Journal of Philosophy

Volume 120, Issue 2, February 2023

Ways of Being and Logicality

Ontological monists hold that there is only one way of being, while ontological pluralists hold that there are many; for example, concrete objects like tables and chairs exist in a different way from abstract objects like numbers and sets. Correspondingly, the monist will want the familiar existential quantifier as a primitive logical constant, whereas the pluralist will want distinct ones, such as for abstract and concrete existence. In this paper, we consider how the debate between the monist and pluralist relates to the standard test for logicality. We deploy this test and show that it favors the monist.