Grounding is not a Strict Order

Rodríguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo

doi:10.1017/apa.2014.22

Cited by 162 publications

(38 citation statements)

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“…Bliss [] and Barnes [] consider whether ground must be asymmetric. Rodriguez‐Pereyra [] argues against ground being a strict order. Well‐foundedness is implicitly assumed if seldom explicitly defended (although see Cameron [] and Schaffer []), although Rosen [] and Raven [ms] leave well‐foundedness open and Bliss [] and Tahko [] challenge it.…”

Section: Beyond the Operatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Ground

Raven

2015

Philosophy Compass

196

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This essay focuses on a recently prominent notion of (metaphysical) ground which is distinctive for how it links metaphysics to explanation. Ground is supposed to serve both as the common factor in diverse in virtue of questions as well as the structuring relation in the project of explaining how some phenomena are “built” from more fundamental phenomena. My aim is to provide an opinionated synopsis of this notion of ground without engaging with others. Ground, so understood, generally resists illumination by appeal to more familiar models of explanation. Nevertheless, its distinctive explanatory and metaphysical aspects guide us on characterizing its explanatory logic and its metaphysical features. Some issues concerning the meta‐question of what (if anything) grounds ground are explored, as well as some recent skeptical challenges to ground.

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Section: Beyond the Operatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Ground

Raven

2015

Philosophy Compass

196

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“…Again, I hope to explore in detail the analogy to Krämer and Roski's account on another occasion. 25 This solution first occurred to me while thinking through Charles Pigden's account of ethical autonomy in terms of Quine's notion of vacuity [18]. The notion of vacuity used here is different, of course, since the context is explanation, not entailment.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…The notion of vacuity used here is different, of course, since the context is explanation, not entailment. 26 Other potential cases beyond those so far mentioned, such as those in [11] and [25], involve significant further complications involving identity and truth, and again, potentially admit of independent resolution. Fine and Krämer's cases arise from basic facts about logic and the logic of grounding and are thus significantly more threatening.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…25 The notion of a vacuous ground is modeled on Quine's notion of a vacuous occurrence: for Quine, an expression ϕ occurs vacuously in the true sentence ϕ ∨¬ϕ since we could substitute any grammatically appropriate expression ψ for ϕ in ϕ ∨ ¬ϕ without disturbing its truth. Quine took this to show that (the content of) ϕ plays no essential role establishing the truth of ϕ ∨ ¬ϕ [20].…”

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confidence: 99%

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Emptying a Paradox of Ground

Woods

2017

J Philos Logic

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Sometimes a fact can play a role in a grounding explanation, but the particular content of that fact make no difference to the explanation-any fact would do in its place. I call these facts vacuous grounds. I show that applying the distinction between-vacuous grounds allows us to give a principled solution to Kit Fine and Stephen Kramer's paradox of (reflexive) ground. This paradox shows that on minimal assumptions about grounding and minimal assumptions about logic, we can show that grounding is reflexive, contra the intuitive character of grounds. I argue that we should never have accepted that grounding is irreflexive in the first place; the intuitions that support the irreflexive intuition plausibly only require that grounding be non-vacuously irreflexive. Fine and Kramer's paradox relies, essentially, on a case of vacuous grounding and is thus no problem for this account. Keywords Grounding · Paradoxes of ground · IrreflexivityInterest in the putatively explanatory relation of metaphysical grounding and, in particular, its "logic" has recently been the focus of much attention. 1 Grounding has often been taken to be a strict partial order-i.e. to be an irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive relation. However, there have been important challenges to the claim that 1 See [24] for a recent survey, [7,26,27] for the kick-off of the contemporary research program, and [23,26] for a defense of the coherence of the notion and that it is an explanatory relation.

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“…There is disagreement about whether grounding has these features; see Barnes (Forthcoming), Donaldson (Forthcoming), Jenkins (), Kleinschmidt (), Litland (), Raven (), Rodriguez‐Pereyra (), Schaffer (), and Wilson (). Strictly speaking, Barnes distinguishes ontological dependence from grounding, and she takes her comments to apply to the former only.…”

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confidence: 99%