 Metaphysical foundationalism is the view that reality has a foundation—that there is a “fundamental level”, in a sense that needs to be specified. The most common way to specify the idea of having a foundation is in terms of well-foundedness, but as we have seen in  section 2,  set-theoretical well-foundedness may be too strong to capture metaphysical foundationalism. Metaphysical foundationalism comes in a variety of strengths, depending on how much the well-foundedness requirement is weakened. It seems reasonable to say that until quite recently metaphysical foundationalism was the default position (R. Cameron 2008; Schaffer 2009; 2010a; Bennett 2011a). The relevant intuition is often captured with the much-cited phrase that without a foundation, “a ground of being”, “[b]eing would be infinitely deferred, never achieved” (Schaffer 2009: 376; 2010a, 62).