View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository STRUCTURING REALITY By NAOMI MARGARET CLAIRE THOMPSON A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Philosophy School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham July 2014 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis explores attempts to characterise the structure of reality. Three notions stand out: Lewisian naturalness, Sider‘s ‗structure‘, and grounding, where the latter has become the most popular way to characterise the structure of reality in the contemporary literature. I argue that none of these notions, as they are currently understood, are suited for limning the metaphysical structure of reality. In the first part of the thesis I argue that, by the lights of the relevant theories, both naturalness and structure fall short of the theoretical role carved out for those posits. In the second part of the thesis I present two challenges to the ‗orthodox‘ conception of grounding. The first contests the standard assumption that grounding is asymmetric, both by citing what I take to be best described as symmetric instances of grounding, and by developing and arguing for a new theory of metaphysical structure – ‗metaphysical interdependence‘ – which takes grounding to be nonsymmetric. The second challenge concerns the relationship between grounding and (metaphysical) explanation, and leads to a dilemma for the grounding theorist. My proposed resolution to the dilemma is to adopt an antirealist approach to grounding, which I further motivate and develop in the final chapter. Acknowledgements I would like first to acknowledge the support of three supervisors I have had the pleasure to work with over the course of writing this thesis: Yujin Nagasawa, Nikk Effingham, and, in particular, Alastair Wilson, whose dedication to reading and discussing every aspect of this thesis (sometimes numerous times) have helped me immensely. I would also like to thank Nicholas Jones for providing me with extremely helpful comments and suggestions on what have become large sections of my thesis, and Kirk Surgener, who proofread the entire thesis at the last minute, and offered numerous philosophical suggestions. I would also like to thank staff and students at the University of Birmingham for providing a friendly, supportive, and stimulating environment in which to conduct my research, and participants and organisers at the many conferences and workshops at which I have presented aspects of it. For their unfailing love and support I would like to thank my family, and for their support and encouragement I would like to thank my friends. Most of all I wish to thank Darragh Byrne, who not only helped a great deal with the philosophical content of this thesis, but also provided love, support, and encouragement, and who made the last few months a great deal easier than they would have been otherwise. This research was made possible through funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Preliminaries .......................................................................................................................................... 4 1. Ontological dependence ......................................................................................................................... 4 1.1. Existential dependence ....................................................................................................................... 5 1.2. Essential dependence .......................................................................................................................... 6 2. Grounding ................................................................................................................................................. 8 2.1. Regimenting grounding claims .......................................................................................................... 9 2.2. Responding to scepticism about grounding .................................................................................. 15 2.3. Connections........................................................................................................................................ 23 3. Fundamentality ....................................................................................................................................... 29 3.1. Ungroundedness ................................................................................................................................ 29 3.2. Ontological commitment ................................................................................................................. 33 3.3. Primitivness ........................................................................................................................................ 34 3.4. Linguistic conception ........................................................................................................................ 35 3.5. Naturalness/structure ....................................................................................................................... 36 3.6. Truth-makers ...................................................................................................................................... 38 3.7. Explanation ........................................................................................................................................ 39 4. Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................................. 40 Chapter 2: Naturalness and Structure ................................................................................................................. 41 1. Naturalness .............................................................................................................................................. 41 2. The naturalness role ............................................................................................................................... 43 2.1. Empiricism and laws ......................................................................................................................... 45 2.2. Supervenience .................................................................................................................................... 46 2.3. Intrinsicality and Duplication .......................................................................................................... 51 2.4. Reference magnetism ........................................................................................................................ 53 3. How natural is perfect naturalness? .................................................................................................... 56 4. Consequences ......................................................................................................................................... 60 5. Structure .................................................................................................................................................. 62 6. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 67 Chapter 3: Metaphysical Interdependence ......................................................................................................... 68 1. Foundationalism, infinitism, interdependence .................................................................................. 70 2. Examples of nonsymmetric grounding .............................................................................................. 75 3. Arguments for metaphysical interdependence .................................................................................. 79 3.1. Part-whole grounding ....................................................................................................................... 79 3.2. Gunk and junk ................................................................................................................................... 80 3.3. Theoretical virtue ............................................................................................................................... 82 3.4. Grounding grounding ....................................................................................................................... 88 4. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 90 Chapter 4: Metaphysical Explanation ................................................................................................................