DOCSLIB.ORG

An Analysis of the Grounding Relation By

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
An Analysis of the Grounding Relation By View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository AN ANALYSIS OF THE GROUNDING RELATION BY CHRISTOPHER ERIK HENDRICKSEN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Daniel Z. Korman, Chair Professor Timothy McCarthy Assistant Professor Jonathan Livengood Associate Professor Andrew Arana ABSTRACT This dissertation is an analysis of the grounding relation and its use in contemporary metaphysics. In the first three chapters, I consider the relation itself and its formal features. In the first chapter, I argue that there is such a grounding relation and that it is distinct from other relations. Having defended the grounding relation from skeptics, I turn to a discussion of the various features of the relation, starting with its candidate relata. In the second chapter, I analyze the nature and formal features of the grounding relation. In the third, I argue that there is a fundamental level consisting of entities which are ungrounded, and I discuss various proposals about what exists at that fundamental level. The last two chapters focus on the role that grounding can play in contemporary metaphysics. In the fourth chapter, I consider claims that certain relations, including the grounding relation, can yield an ontological free lunch. I examine what it might mean to get such a free lunch, and argue that there is no such thing. Finally, in the fifth chapter, I consider the grounding problem from material object metaphysics. The use of the grounding relation in this debate illustrates how the grounding relation can be used in metaphysics generally, and in the later part of the fifth chapter, I examine that role that the grounding relation can play. ii For Laura iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without support from many people – too many to list them all individually here. First, many thanks to my advisor, Daniel Korman, for his incredibly timely and insightful comments, for pushing when I needed pushing, and for being flexible when I needed flexibility. Also thanks to my committee members, Timothy McCarthy, Andrew Arana, and Jonathan Livengood for their comments and support. I also thank the many graduate students who read and commented on various drafts of this dissertation in seminars and colloquia. And finally, a special thanks to my friends, coworkers, and family who have supported me along the way, and especially my wife who is always there for me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF GROUNDING ........................................................ 1 CHAPTER 2: THE NATURE OF GROUNDING ....................................................................... 25 CHAPTER 3: THE FUNDAMENTALS ...................................................................................... 55 CHAPTER 4: THERE ARE NO ONTOLOGICAL FREE LUNCHES ....................................... 79 CHAPTER 5: THE GROUNDING PROBLEM ........................................................................ 102 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 127 v PREFACE There are two broad categories into which discussions of the grounding relation can be grouped. First there are discussions concerning the grounding relation itself. Second, there are discussions concerning the role of the grounding relation in metaphysics or philosophy as a whole. This dissertation will generally follow this categorization. The first three chapters will be concerned with the grounding relation itself. The last two will focus on the role the grounding relation can play in larger philosophical debates. The first issue that must be discussed is whether there is a genuine, distinct relation here, or whether what I have called the grounding relation is some other, more familiar relation, such as counter-factual dependence. Skeptics have taken the latter position, claiming that every case of purported grounding reduces to one of those other, more familiar relations. In Chapter 1, I argue against these skeptics and show that there are clear cases of the grounding relation which do not reduce to any of these other relations. Once I have shown that there is such a relation, the next question is “What does it relate?” The answer to that question makes up the remainder of Chapter 1. Most philosophers who discuss the grounding relation take it to be a relation between facts. I investigate various ways someone might hold this view, which I call factive grounding, and I argue against them. I defend the claim that, instead of factive grounding, we should hold that any entity should be a candidate relatum of the grounding relation. I call this view unrestricted grounding. vi Having argued that there is a grounding relation and having discussed what it relates, I turn in Chapter 2 to a discussion of the nature of the grounding relation. Most philosophers working in this area take grounding to be a kind of explanation, specifically metaphysical explanation. This view falls naturally out of the factive grounding that I described above, but as I argued against that, I also argue against treating the grounding relation as a kind of explanation. It is instead a kind of causation, specifically metaphysical causation. I do not deny, however, that there is also a metaphysical explanation. I claim that metaphysical causation informs metaphysical explanation in much the same way that ordinary causation often informs ordinary explanation. This discussion leads to an analysis of the formal features of the grounding relation. Grounding is often assumed to be transitive, irreflexive and asymmetric. However, the claims of both the transitivity and the irreflexivity of the grounding relation have been challenged recently in the literature. I defend both the irreflexivity and the transitivity of grounding, and that, along with its asymmetry, shows that grounding is a strict partial ordering relation. Finally, having analyzed the formal features of the grounding relation, I critique two attempts to offer a formal logic of the grounding relation. Chapter 3 is the last of the chapters that focuses on the grounding relation itself. This chapter centers on discussions of the fundamental level. The first question is whether or not there is a fundamental level. In the previous chapter I showed that the grounding relation is ordered, but I have not yet shown that it is well founded. Bradley’s regress, once adapted for grounding, calls into question the assumption that there is a fundamental level at which entities ground but are themselves not grounded. Instead there may be an infinite descending chain of grounded entities which is never firmly anchored on a fundamental level. In this chapter I show that my vii account of grounding can avoid Bradley’s regress. I then argue that there is a fundamental level and that it is composed of quantum fields. This view is contrasted with Schaffer’s priority monism view which is the view that there is only one fundamental entity: the cosmos. The first three chapters were facing inwards, focusing on the nature of the grounding relation itself. In the last two chapters, I examine what role the grounding relation can play in metaphysics or in philosophy more generally. Schaffer has suggested that consideration of the grounding relation can give us a better approach to metaphysical questions. He argues that too many debates in contemporary metaphysics focus on what does or does not exist. To Schaffer, these questions are easy – he argues we should be radically permissive with respect to existence questions. The more interesting question is which things are fundamental and which are not. A key component in Schaffer’s argument is that dependent entities are a “free lunch,” which purportedly means they are no addition to being. Schaffer is neither the first nor the last to appeal to this notion of a free lunch. Armstrong used the doctrine of an ontological free lunch to justify unrestricted composition. Cameron appeals to a similar doctrine when he discusses another recent puzzle in metaphysics. In Chapter 4 I take on this doctrine of the ontological free lunch. I analyze what such a thing as a “free lunch” with respect to ontology may be, and I argue that there can be no such thing. Finally, in Chapter 5, I examine how the grounding relation can play a role in other ongoing debates in contemporary metaphysics, and I consider future roles the relation may take on. First I consider a debate of contemporary material object metaphysics concerning the apparent colocation of a statue and the clay that composes it. I also consider the grounding relation when seen as the successor of the makes true relation found in Truthmaker theory. viii Armstrong intended Truthmaker to be a methodology for doing metaphysics, and I contend that grounding can play a similar role. ix CHAPTER 1 THE FUNDAMENTALS OF GROUNDING There is a structure to the world, and one of the aims of metaphysics is to find and elucidate that structure. The search is for the notions that are best at, as Sider puts it, “carving
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Truthmaking As an Account of How Grounding Facts Hold
    Truthmaking as an Account of How Grounding Facts Hold Jack Yip Abstract Grounding, as a way to articulate ontological dependence, faces the problem of what grounds grounding facts themselves (such as the fact that the singleton of Socrates is grounded in Socrates). This problem stems from the need to account for the holding of grounding facts, which generates the hierarchical structure of on- tological dependence. Within the grounding framework, ground- ing facts are either ungrounded or grounded. I will first argue that neither option can provide us with a satisfactory account. The main reason is that non-fundamental entities have to be counted as fundamental or involved in the essences of fundamental entities in order for either of the two options to work|the non-fundamental is being smuggled into the fundamental. My suggestion is to appeal to the notion of truthmaking and tackle the problem about the holding of grounding facts outside the grounding framework|instead of asking what grounds grounding facts, I ask what makes grounding claims true. Truthmaking is a prima facie relation holding between the representational and the non-representational such that the latter makes the former true. With the principle `if hpi is true, then it is a fact that p,' we can account for the holding of grounding facts in a derivative sense. As a proposition contains the information about its truthmaker, the nature of grounding claims will tell us how grounding facts hold. I accept a realm of concepts which make up propositions (which might be needed already if there are propositions and propositions are compositional).
    [Show full text]
  • “Grounding and Omniscience” (PDF)
    Grounding and Omniscience Abstract I’m going to argue that omniscience is impossible and therefore that there is no God.1 The argument turns on the notion of grounding. After illustrating and clarifying that notion, I’ll start the argument in earnest. The first step will be to lay out five claims, one of which is the claim that there is an omniscient being, and the other four of which are claims about grounding. I’ll prove that these five claims are inconsistent. Then I’ll argue for the truth of each of them except the claim that there is an omniscient being. From these arguments it follows that there are no omniscient beings and thus that there is no God. §1. Stage Setting The best way to get a grip on the notion of grounding – or more exactly, for our purposes, the notion of partial grounding - is by considering examples. (By “partial grounding” I mean “at-least-partial grounding”, just as mereologists mean “at-least-part of” by “part of”.) The first example hearkens back to Plato’s Euthyphro. Suppose that a theorist claims that as a matter of metaphysical necessity, a given act is morally right if and only if it is approved of by God. At first blush at least, it is plausible that this theorist owes us an answer to following question: when acts are right, are they right because God approves of them, or does he approve of them because they are right? We all understand this question right away, right when we first hear it.
    [Show full text]
  • Essential Truths and Their Truth-Grounds
    AN OPEN ACCESS Ergo JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Essential Truths and Their Truth-Grounds ROBERT MICHELS eidos – the centre for metaphysics & University of Neuchâtel This paper motivates and defends a principle which captures a systematic connection between essence, truth, and grounding. It says that if a proposition expresses an essential truth, i.e., if it is true in virtue of the nature of some objects, then there are grounds for its truth which involve these objects. Together with the assumption that a fact can only be grounded in facts which are relevant to it, this principle is then applied in an argument against the monotonicity of the Essentialist notion ‘true in virtue of the nature of’. 1. Essential Truth and Ground There is a current trend in analytic philosophy of abandoning the austere view of metaphysics set out in Quine (1948) and of theorizing not only about which enti- ties exist, but also about their essences and about structural relations of grounding which hold between facts containing them. A broadly Neo-Aristotelian approach to the notions of essence and ground has recently enjoyed much attention both in metaphysics, meta-metaphysics, and other philosophical sub-disciplines.1 An important open question about this approach, which has recently attracted con- siderable interest, is how these two notions relate.2 Inquiries into the relation between essence and ground are not only of intrinsic interest, but also promise new insights about each of the two notions, or so I will argue in this paper. The focus in this paper is on a particular principle, the Linking Principle, which Contact: Robert Michels <[email protected]> 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Grounding and Metametaphysics
    Grounding and Metametaphysics Alexander Skiles (Massachusetts Institute of Technology/University of Gothenburg) and Kelly Trogdon (Virginia Tech) Commissioned for The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics Editors: Ricki Bliss and J.T.M. Miller Introduction Metametaphysics concerns foundational metaphysics. Questions of foundational metaphysics include: What is the subject matter of metaphysics? What are its aims? What is the methodology of metaphysics? Are metaphysical questions coherent? If so, are they substantive or trivial in nature? Some have claimed that the notion of grounding is useful in addressing such questions. In this chapter, we introduce some core debates about whether—and, if so, how—grounding should play a role in metametaphysics.1 It is undeniable that in fact grounding plays at least some role in how metaphysics is conducted, and has perhaps done so since the beginning.2 Two roles stand out in particular. First, the notion of grounding is routinely used to state, at least in an intuitive way, what is at issue in various metaphysical disputes. Examples include debates over what (if anything) is the ground of mentality and what (if anything) is the ground of modality. Second, the notion is also routinely used to state, at least in an intuitive way, what various other notions of metaphysical interest amount to. Examples include what it is for a property to be intrinsic rather than extrinsic and what it is for an entity to be a substance rather than a mode. 1 For introductions to and surveys of recent literature on grounding, see Clark and Liggins (2012), Correia and Schnieder (2012), Trogdon (2013a), Bliss and Trogdon (2014) and Raven (2015) and (2019).
    [Show full text]
  • Truth, Grounding & Dependence Stenwall, Robin
    Truth, Grounding & Dependence Stenwall, Robin 2015 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Stenwall, R. (2015). Truth, Grounding & Dependence. Lund University. Total number of authors: 1 General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Truth, Grounding & Dependence Robin Stenwall DOCTORAL DISSERTATION By due permission of the Faculty of Humanities, Lund University, Sweden. To be defended at the Department of Philosophy, LUX: B237, 2015-05-28, at 10:00. Faculty opponent Professor Helen Beebee, University of Manchester Lund University Department of Philosophy Document name: DOCTORAL DISSERTATION LUND UNIVERSITY Date of issue Author(s) Robin Stenwall Sponsoring organization Title: Truth, Grounding & Dependence Abstract The subjects of this thesis are (as indicated by the title) truth, grounding and dependence.
    [Show full text]
  • A Clarification and Defense of the Notion of Grounding1
    A Clarification and Defense of the Notion of Grounding1 Paul Audi Forthcoming in Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder, eds., Grounding and Explanation (Cambridge University Press). 1 Introduction This paper defends a particular version of the idea that there is a non- causal relation of determination, grounding, often expressed by the phrase ‘in virtue of’. This relation corresponds to certain non-causal explanations, including those philosophers give, e.g., in saying that a statue has its aesthetic properties in virtue of its physical properties, or that a thing has its dispositional features in virtue of its categorical features, or that a person has a reason to believe that p in virtue of her perceptual experiences. Indeed, it is the fact that there are such explanations, together with the fact that their correctness cannot be underwritten by any causal relation, that makes it incumbent on us to recognize grounding. The claim that there is a grounding relation has been attacked from various quarters. There are those who consider the very idea of grounding incoherent. And there are those who try to undermine it by arguing that it cannot do the philosophical work its advocates want it to do. I will answer the most serious such objections below. But first, I want to sketch my own conception of grounding, and show how it differs from some of the other conceptions on the table. I believe my conception evades certain objections that the other views must tackle head-on (in part because I deny that certain cases to which some authors appeal are genuine cases of grounding).
    [Show full text]
  • What Is the Grounding Problem?
    What is the Grounding Problem? Louis deRosset [forthcoming in Philosophical Studies] June 11, 2010 The centerpieces of our discussion are a lump of clay and a statue, Lumpl and Goliath, respectively.1 According to the standard story, which we will assume is correct, Lumpl and Goliath are created and destroyed at the same times, and are to be found in exactly the same locations throughout the period when both exist. In a word, our centerpieces are coincident. How many centerpieces does our discussion have? Philosophers don't agree: monists claim that Lumpl and Goliath are identical; pluralists deny that they are.2 Pluralists argue for the distinctness of Lumpl and Goliath by noting that Lumpl has properties that Goliath lacks: it seems evident that Lumpl could survive being squashed into a ball, and that Goliath could not. For the sake of brevity, I will adopt the barbarism \squivable" to stand for this property: a thing is squivable iff it can survive being squashed into a ball. The pluralist argues that Lumpl and Goliath are distinct because Lumpl is squivable and Goliath is not. Monists argue for their position on similarly compelling intuitive grounds: if Lumpl and Goliath are sitting in the center of our table, it seems evident that there is only one thing there. Our aim is not, however, to settle the dispute between monism and pluralism. Our focus instead will be on a particular objection which monists urge against pluralists. Here is a rough statement of the objection: Lumpl and Goliath are made of all the same quarks and leptons.
    [Show full text]
  • On What Grounds What
    12 On What Grounds What JONATHAN SCHAFFER Substance is the subject of our inquiry; for the principles and the causes we are seeking are those of substances. For if the universe is of the nature of a whole, substance is its first part; ... —Aristotle (1984: 1688; Meta.1069a18–20) On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is. Metaphysics so conceived is concerned with such questions as whether properties exist, whether meanings exist, and whether numbers exist. I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. Metaphysics so revived does not bother asking whether properties, meanings, and numbers exist. Of course they do! The question is whether or not they are fundamental. In §1 Iwilldistinguishthreeconceptionsofmetaphysicalstructure.In §2 IwilldefendtheAristotelianview,coupledwithapermissivelineon existence. In §3 I will further develop a neo-Aristotelian framework, built around primitive grounding relations. 1 Three Conceptions of Metaphysical Structure Contemporary textbooks usually introduce metaphysics through the Quine- Carnap debate, with Quine awarded the victory. The main resistance comes from neo-Carnapians who challenge Quine’s laurels. But why start with the Quine-Carnap debate? Why think that the best understanding of metaphysics is to be found in a debate between a positivist teacher and his post-positivist student, both of whom share explicitly anti-metaphysical sympathies? Among the many assumptions Quine and Carnap share is that metaphysical questions are existence questions,suchaswhethernumbersexist.Theyonly disagree on the further issue of whether such questions are meaningful (at 348 jonathan schaffer least as the metaphysician might pose them).
    [Show full text]
  • Social Construction and Grounding
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Philosophy and Phenomenological Research doi: 10.1111/phpr.12376 © 2017 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC Social Construction and Grounding AARON M. GRIFFITH College of William & Mary The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been (or could be) leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Eliza- beth Barnes (2014), Mari Mikkola (2015), and Jessica Wilson (2014). 1. Introduction It is common to hear claims about this-or-that being “socially constructed.” Race, gender, class, mental illness, quarks, and even the whole of reality have been the alleged products of social construction. The notion figures centrally in a number of disciplines, projects, and social and political causes. Despite (or better because of) its pervasive use, there is no universally accepted account of social construction. There is disagreement about what gets constructed, what does the constructing, the nature of such construction, and the extent of construction, i.e., how much of reality, if any, is socially constructed. The aim of this paper is not to answer all or even most of these questions. It is to characterize an important form of social construction in terms of the notion of metaphysical grounding (‘grounding,’ henceforth), which has received significance attention in recent meta- physics.1 Understanding social construction in terms of grounding allows us to articulate dependence structures within social reality in such a way that constructed items are real but also derivative of other aspects of social reality.2 Section 2 introduces the relevant notions of social construction and grounding.
    [Show full text]
  • The Philosophy of Richard Rorty Interpreted As a Literary Philosophy of Education
    The Philosophy of Richard Rorty Interpreted as a Literary Philosophy of Education Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Todd Aaron Bitters Graduate Program in Education: Policy and Leadership The Ohio State University 2014 Committee: Philip Smith, Advisor Bryan Warnick, Co-Advisor Ann Allen Copyrighted by Todd Aaron Bitters 2014 Abstract The central question of the dissertation is: what significance do Richard Rorty’s ideas have for education and for philosophy of education, broadly defined? Three major themes dominate Rorty’s scholarship, from Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature to his late work, that have consequences for education. One, we should suspend correspondence theories of truth and, instead, focus on a pragmatic concept of truth that eschews Cartesian models of epistemology. Two, people can be viewed as having two distinct sides—one, public, and one private. Each side may share common attitudes with the other, but one’s public and private outlooks are not necessarily reconcilable. Three, literary criticism, or literary study, is the ultimate intellectual enterprise. The primary claim of the dissertation, resulting from the interpretation of Rorty’s three ideas, is that a culture rich in literary study—based on a literary philosophy of education—is preferable to a culture in which only an elite few enjoy the benefits of serious engagement with literature. I review works by a series of scholars, published in the field of philosophy of education, that address Rorty’s ideas and their connections to education. I argue that, for the most part, scholars in the field have ignored the intersection of literary criticism and education in Rorty’s work.
    [Show full text]
  • Grounding and Philosophy of Mind
    Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense Alyssa Ney Forthcoming in Scientific Compositon and Metaphysical Ground. K. Aizawa and C. Gillett, eds. Palgrave-Macmillan 1. Introduction One of the major trends in metaphysics in recent years has been in the development and application of novel conceptual frameworks for representing facts about realism, fundamentality, and metaphysical priority. Of particular interest have been the concepts of grounding (proposed by Paul Audi (2012), Kit Fine (2001), Gideon Rosen (2010), and Jonathan Schaffer (2009) among others)1, the concept of the real (proposed by Fine (2001)), and that of metaphysical structure (proposed by Ted Sider (2011)). All of these have been proposed as new primitive concepts, and often their introduction is motivated by the argument that other notions metaphysicians use in order to frame their positions are inadequate for the task of characterizing the important metaphysical issues. Formulations of metaphysical problems and views in terms of existence, quantification, and modal notions should be replaced (Fine, Schaffer) or supplemented (Audi, Rosen, Sider) with formulations in terms of these new distinctively metaphysical notions. Schaffer is especially direct. He complains that “contemporary metaphysics, insofar as it has been inspired by the Quinean task [of determining what exists], has confused itself with trivialities” (2009, p. 361). This confusion about what the important issues are is tied to not having the conceptual tools to represent the issues that matter. The deep questions are “not whether there are such things, but how.” We want to know not what exists, but what is grounded in what. Sider, in his Writing the Book of the World, 1 Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon (2005) defend a related “in virtue of” notion.
    [Show full text]
  • From Nature to Grounding
    From Nature to Grounding Mark Jago Forthcoming in Fundamentality, ed. Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest. Draft of April 2016. Abstract: Grounding is a powerful metaphysical concept; yet there is widespread skepticism about the intelligibility of the notion. In this paper, I propose an account of an entity’s nature or essence, which I then use to provide grounding conditions for that entity. I claim that an understanding of an entity’s nature, together with an account of how logically complex entities are grounded, provides all we need to understand how that entity is grounded. This approach not only allows us to say what grounds what, it also sheds light on the formal features of the grounding relation. It provides a principled argument for the orthodox view that grounding is irreexive, asymmetrical, and transitive; but it allows that it may not be well-founded. The resulting approach gives us a powerful framework for understanding nature, grounding, and the relationship between them. Keywords: Grounding, nature, essence, fundamentality, ontology, real denition 1 Problems with Grounding etaphysics aims to articulate the structure of reality: to discover the dependencies between things, their identities, and the possibilities M they afford. In asking how things metaphysically depend on other things, for their identities and for the ways they are, we are asking about how things are grounded: ‘investigation into ground is part of the investigation into nature’ (Fine 2012, 76). An understanding of grounding has broad applications throughout metaphysics: to the nature of truth and truthmaking (Liggins 2008; Schaffer 2010a), to physicalism about the mind (Fine 2012), to metaphysical fundamentality (Schaffer 2010b), and to what intrinsic properties are (Barker and Jago 2015; Rosen 2010).
    [Show full text]