Before any argument can begin, the words that carry it need to mean something precise. This chapter settles them: what *Reality* is, how *modal status* applies to it, what *change* is and what it requires, and what it is for something to *exist*.

Nothing here is defended at full strength; that work begins in Chapter 2. The task here is narrower and prior, to settle *what* these terms mean before the argument takes up what *must* be true of them. Where a definition will carry weight later, the page marks where its defense is owed.


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← [I. Introduction](<I. Introduction.md>) | [1.1 Reality](<1.1 Reality.md>) →
