A grounding-based measure of relative fundamentality

Abstract

Reality is hierarchically structured, or so proponents of the metaphysical posit of grounding argue. The less fundamental facts obtain in virtue of, or are grounded in, the more fundamental facts. But what exactly is it for one fact to be more fundamental than another? The aim of this paper is to provide a measure of relative fundamentality. I develop and defend an account of the metaphysical hierarchy that assigns to each fact a set of ordinals representing the levels on which it occurs. The account allows one to compare any two facts with respect to their fundamentality and it uses immediate grounding as its sole primitive. In the first section, I will set the stage and point to some shortcomings of a rival account proposed by Karen Bennett. The second section will present my own proposal and the third section will discuss how it can be extended to non-foundationalist settings. The fourth section discusses potential objections.

A New Argument for the Groundedness of Grounding Facts

“…Theorising about the connections between grounding, absolute fundamentality and relative fundamentality is in its infancy. So far, Bennett (2017), Werner (2020) and Correia (2021) are the only reasonably developed accounts of these connections, but it makes little doubt further accounts will be put forward in the near future. It will be interesting to figure out, for each of these future accounts, whether the argument from Settledness has some force once the account is taken on board.…”

“…For whereas the connections between grounding and absolute fundamentality have been reasonably thoroughly studied in the past few years, philosophical theorising on the connections between grounding, absolute fundamentality and relative fundamentality is greatly underdeveloped. As far as I know, there currently are only three reasonably elaborated views about these connections, one put forward in Bennett, ( 2017), one put forward in Werner (2020), and the third one explored in Correia (2021). 16 Let me examine each in turn.…”