This book presents and defends a meta-ontology and an ontology. Quine has taught us to use the word 'ontology' as a label for the part of philosophy that addresses "the ontological question" - 'What is there?' Meta-ontology, then, is the part of philosophy that addresses two questions, 'What is it to be (or to exist)?' and 'How should one attempt to answer the ontological question?' Chapters 1 and 5 are devoted to meta-ontology - Chapter 1 to a defense of the "neo-Quinean" meta-ontology, Chapter 5 to an examination of various alternative meta-ontologies. The essence of neo-Quineanism is that 'x exists' and 'Something is x' and 'The number of things that are x is not 0' mean more or less the same thing'. Neo-Quineanism obviously entails that there are no non-existent things, for nothing is such that nothing is it and everything is such that the number of things identical with it is 1. Chapter 2 is an examination of various positions that imply that there are non-existent things. The
topic of Chapter 3 is the ancient "problem of universals," or the problem of the existence and nature of abstract objects. Chapter 4 is devoted to questions concerning possible worlds and other objects belonging to the ontology of modality.
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