Abstract
Grounding, understood as a primitive posit operative in contexts where metaphysical dependence is at issue, is not able on its own to do any substantive work in characterizing or illuminating metaphysical dependence—or so I argue in “No Work for a Theory of Grounding” (Inquiry 2014). Such illumination rather requires appeal to specific metaphysical relations—type or token identity, functional realization, the determinable–determinate relation, the mereological part–whole relation, and so on—of the sort typically at issue in these contexts. In that case, why posit “big-G” Grounding in addition to the “small-g” grounding relations already in the metaphysician’s toolkit? The best reasons for doing so stem from the Unity argument, according to which the further posit of Grounding is motivated as an apt unifier of the specific relations, and the Priority argument, according to which Grounding is needed in order to fix the direction of priority of the specific relations. I previously considered versions of these arguments, and argued that they did not succeed; in two forthcoming papers, however, Jonathan Schaffer aims to develop a better version of the Unity argument, and offers certain objections to my reasons for rejecting the Priority argument. Here I present and respond to these new arguments for Grounding.
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Notes
- 1.
Nor does the rhetoric of a neo-Aristotelian “revival” of concern with metaphysical dependence make sense, for Aristotle operated with a variety of small-g relations, differently applied in different cases, rather than with a primitive big-G conception. The point here isn’t merely (anti-)rhetorical, but also indicates that no ready appeal to an Aristotelian notion in good historical standing is available to proponents of primitive Grounding.
- 2.
Note that the specific Grounding relations here, as well as the “constituent” and “feature-based” forms of dependence discussed in Koslicki 2012, are distinct from the specific “small-g” relations I’ve flagged.
- 3.
Hence Fine (2001, 15) says, “We take ground to be an explanatory relation.”
- 4.
See Schaffer (2012). Interestingly, Schaffer’s main case illustrating intransitivity (whereby a ball’s surface being dented partly grounds the ball’s having a specific shape, and the ball’s having a specific shape grounds its being more-or-less spherical, but the ball’s surface being dented doesn’t ground the ball’s being more-or-less spherical) involves mixing two different small-g relations (mereological parthood and the determinable-determinate relation). A more straightforward case (see Wilson 2014) adverts to set membership: sets metaphysically depend on their members, but set membership is not transitive.
- 5.
Note that here Schaffer’s remarks target a general relation of causation as opposed to (just) a general concept of causation. Schaffer goes on to discuss two other reasons for endorsing genus-level notions of causation and Grounding, respectively, according to which, first, the SEM formalism enables one to make useful explanatory and predictive generalizations, and second, that such general notions enable one to speak open-endedly about the species-level notions or relations. I’ll discuss these further motivations down the line when considering whether and how considerations of formal or other forms of unity motivate an associated general metaphysical posit.
- 6.
As Schaffer (this volume) says, “the theorist who refused the general notion of grounding would have no clear way to enumerate her own preferred menu of “small-‘g”’ grounding relations. Wilson herself (2014: 535) resorts to “and so on” when listing her own open-ended plurality of “small-‘g”’grounding relations, and so one must wonder how she understands her own list to continue, if not in terms of listing further species of the very genus notion that she has foresworn, namely grounding” (155).
- 7.
There are other motivations for deflationary strategies in these and other cases, including George Berkeley’s concerns about the coherence of general concepts or abstract ideas, and Jaegwon Kim’s concerns about causal overdetermination.
- 8.
- 9.
See Wilson 2010. The irreducibility at issue here is compatible with the special science entities and laws’ being posterior to the lower-level (e.g., quantum mechanical) entities and laws, as physicalists assume.
- 10.
As such, the formal unity afforded by the SEM framework in modeling, for example, “baking, making, and waking” is at best a unification of different applications of a counterfactual dependence account. But the formal unity associated with different applications of a single small-c relation is beside the point of motivating Grounding as a unifier of the diverse small-g relations.
- 11.
Nor, I think he would say, need we require (as Koslicki seems to assume) that the variables in the determinable/determinate case exactly mirror the variables in the throw/shattering case that he originally discusses, in representing the “on–off” obtaining of events or states of affairs.
- 12.
Indeed, even if the shirt is a vague object, it will still be (indeterminately) shaped.
- 13.
- 14.
Notably, Alistair Wilson, in his (in progress).
- 15.
Perhaps some small-g relations are able to fix the direction of priority on their own; in cases of set membership, for example, perhaps members are always prior to their containing sets.
- 16.
Or of what serves as fundamental; see my 2014, note 64, and below.
- 17.
Contra Schaffer’s exegesis, I do not use the expression “absolute fundamentality”, or appeal to any such notion, for reasons that I discuss in my 2014 (note 64), and upon which I will expand shortly.
- 18.
The possibility broached here might also be seen as a metaphysical version of the temporal supertask discussed in Cameron 2008, 9.
- 19.
In my 2014, I referred to such a level as “relatively fundamental”, which reference is not to be confused with Schaffer’s use of “relatively fundamental”.
- 20.
Schaffer’s commitment to a fundamental level opens the door to a fourth response to his objection—namely, to deny that it makes sense to posit a world without any fundamental base. Hence it is that in his (2010) he offers as an advantage of monism that it can accommodate both infinite decomposition and the reasonable assumption that dependence relations require “a ground of being”.
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Wilson, J. (2016). The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding. In: Aizawa, K., Gillett, C. (eds) Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground. New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56216-6_7
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