 A contemporary sympathizer with Leibniz’s thought is Jonathan Schaffer (2010). Unlike Leibniz, Schaffer grants the possibility of gunky objects, but thinks that this possibility is precisely a reason to deny that complex objects are (always) ontologically dependent on their  parts.[10]  Instead, Schaffer takes the possibility of there being no simple things as a reason to hold that the dependence flows in the other direction: that parts are dependent on the wholes of which they are parts, and that every thing is thereby ontologically dependent on the biggest thing that there is—the cosmos—that has everything else as a proper  part.[11]  Since classical mereology guarantees that there is a biggest thing—the thing that has all else as proper parts—but it does not guarantee that there are any smallest things—things that have no proper parts—it guarantees that if parts are dependent on the wholes of which they are parts then there will be a first, ontologically fundamental, element, whereas if wholes are dependent on their parts then there is the possibility of an infinite regress in which each thing is dependent on some further thing(s), with nothing being fundamental: a possibility in which, Schaffer (2010, 62) says (agreeing with Leibniz), “Being would be infinitely deferred, never achieved”. Leibniz and Schaffer advocate Metaphysical Foundationalism: the view that there have to be some things that are absolutely fundamental—dependent on nothing—on which all else ultimately depends.