No Entity Without Distinction: Intrinsic Difference as a Meta-Ontological Condition

An earlier paper argued that distinction is intrinsic: relation cannot constitute the distinctness of its own terms, and determinacy itself presupposes non-constituted distinguishability. This paper asks what that result implies about the status of distinction, and answers that distinction is meta-ontological, presupposed by the applicability of every ontological category while belonging to none. The argument has three components, no one of which suffices alone. Universality: the principal instruments of contemporary ontology (quantification over a domain, the identity apparatus, grounding, and joint-carving structure) each presuppose the distinctness of what they operate on, a presupposition that survives quantifier variance and every regimentation of ground. Non-additionality: distinctness-facts are real but increase the world's inventory by nothing; their truthmakers are the beings themselves, as with identity. Non-constitutability: any candidate entity posited as the distinctness of two beings is itself a determinate item and so presupposes what it was introduced to constitute. The reification of distinction is not false but impossible (the Reification Result). Jointly, these establish that distinction is not an item within any ontology but the condition of any ontology's having determinate content. The Fregean worry that such a condition cannot be spoken of is met by a regimentation doctrine on which "distinction" refers to the beings themselves under a formal aspect, committing to nothing further. Rival occupants of the role (structure, process, ground) recur only derivatively, and the one exempt position, the denial of determinacy altogether, is occupiable only in silence.