Building And Modal Recombination

In Making Things Up, Bennett defends an impressive array of theses surrounding the notion of building. My focus is on Bennett's use of modal recombination principles in her arguments, including in particular the principle that contingent fundamental entities are freely recombinable. I have argued that such principles are motivated by mere intuition, and that we have reasons to reject them. I discuss how worries about modal recombination principles affect three of her key arguments, which concern (i) whether building is necessitating, (ii) whether relative fundamentality is primitive, and (iii) whether building is fundamental. I argue that while Bennett's appeal to modal recombination is unjustified, she has other resources available to her in each of the three cases.