Building the world from its fundamental constituents

What is the fundamental structure of the world? To clarify: I take fundamentality to be metaphysical priority, where ‘‘metaphysical priority’’ is best understood in the traditional sense, such that the metaphysically prior is that in which everything else consists. The fundamental structure concerns the fundamental constituents of the world, the constituents from which everything else is constructed, and the fundamental categorical structure. The fundamental categorical structure is determined by the fundamental kinds or natures of the world, i.e., by the fundamental categories. The fundamental constituents are the constituents of these categories. Unless we are nihilists or monists, to have a world, we need more than just its fundamental constituents and categories: we need a building relation as well. This relation may itself be fundamental, even if the constituents it ties together generate a less fundamental entity, the world. I hold that there is a world built from more fundamental constituents, and that the building relation is composition: the world is built by mereologically fusing its constituents. The composition intuition, as we may call it, is based on the thought that we enjoy a direct grasp of the nature of proper