 Why does fundamentality defined in terms of  (AI)  seem too strong? One major reason for this is that many things that we might normally regard as fundamental turn out to be dependent on other things in one sense or another. For instance, let us suppose that there is a mereologically fundamental level, that is, there are mereological atoms that do not have any proper parts. If mereological dependence runs from the wholes to their parts contra priority monism of the type defended by Schaffer (2010a), these mereological atoms are clearly independent in a mereological sense and most philosophers would probably want to regard them as fundamental. But even if these mereological atoms are mereologically independent, they could still metaphysically depend on other entities in another sense.