Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism, and Holistic Explanation

Thompson, Naomi

doi:10.1093/oso/9780198755630.003.0006

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…It's not been popular in contemporary analytic metaphysics, which has inclined to thinking dependence is well-founded. But inter-dependence has not gone without defence (Barnes 2018;Thompson 2016;Thompson 2018). And whilst I'm in no rush to accept inter-dependent entities, I'm less hostile to them than other philosophers-after all, they didn't seem unintuitive to Buddhist philosophers and that fact alone should give one pause to too fervently thinking that dependence is wellfounded.…”

Section: Inter-dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Slot Theory and Slotite Theory

Effingham

2020

Philosophia

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Instantiation-directed slot theorists' believe that properties/relations have slots which are filled by their instances/relata e.g., where Abigail is taller than Bronia, there are two slots in the relation Taller Than such that Abigail fills the first slot and Bronia fills the second. This crude statement of the theory runs into 'The Problem of Filling', whereby a natural understanding of the relation between slots, filling, and instantiation leads to absurd results. This paper examines a variety of solutions to that problem, one of which is an extension of slot theory that adds an additional category of entities, 'slotites'. directed slots.) The second alternative way of understanding slots is instantiationdirected whereby slots are filled by the different relata of the relation (or instances of the property). For instance, Red's slot could be filled by a red ball which instantiates Red whilst Married's slots would be filled by pairs of spouses. In this paper, I focus solely on instantiation-directed slots, since they are the slots which I find most appeal to my metaphysical sensibilities. (Although I suspect that some of the issues discussed in this paper can be ported over to proposition-directed slots.) 1 Start by sketching a (somewhat crude) theory of instantiation-directed slots. It would have the following three pieces of (possibly primitive, possibly non-primitive) ideology:(CSs) '__ is a slot' (which holds of slots). (CSp) '__ is possessed by __' (the first relatum is a slot; the second relatum is a property/relation). (CSf) '__ fills __' (the first relatum is a relatum/instance of a relation/property; the second relatum is a slot possessed by that relation/property).For example, if some x fills the slot possessed by Red then x instantiates Red. And in the case of Taller Than-which has two slots, σ 1 and σ 2 -we would end up with the following bi-conditional:≡ CRUDE : For any x and y, x and y jointly instantiate Taller Than-and x is thereby taller than y-iff x fills σ 1 and y fills σ 2 . The Problem of Filling (POF)≡ CRUDE is too crude (Dixon (2018a: 201-04) also notes the following problem). Imagine: Abigail is taller than Bronia and both are fully grown women of a tall stature; Clare is taller than Damaris, but both are young children who are both short comparable to Abigail and Bronia i.e. neither Clare nor Damaris are taller than Abigail or Bronia. Given filling is a dyadic relation between a relation's relatum and one of its slots: Abigail fills σ 1 whilst Bronia fills σ 2 (for Abigail is taller than Bronia); Clare fills σ 1 and Damaris fills σ 2 (for Clare is taller than Damaris); but then, given ≡ CRUDE , Clare is thereby taller than Bronia. Since that's false, we have a problem. Call this the Problem of Filling (POF for short).This paper discusses how slot theorists can try to solve POF, using it as a chance to survey different slot theories. § §2-4 discuss slot theories which relativise filling to some further entity: instantiations ( §2); sums, pluralities, or ordered tuples ( §3); and spacet...

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Section: Inter-dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Slot Theory and Slotite Theory

Effingham

2020

Philosophia

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“…Thus, while a "relations first" structuralism avoids the horn of circularity (as well as that of regress), coherentism can be viewed as embracing that horn and reinterpreting apparent circularity as mutual backup. Indeed, it has been questioned that grounding is a strict partial order and argued that grounding may well relate things symmetrically (Thompson 2018).…”

Section: Asymmetry Is Of No Help Even If a Model For The Determination Of Essences Is Grantedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetry cannot solve the circularity/regress problem of property structuralism

Busse

2021

Synthese

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Strong dispositional monism (SDM), the position that all fundamental physical properties consist in dispositional relations to other properties, is naturally construed as property structuralism. J. Lowe’s circularity/regress objection (CRO) constitutes a serious challenge to SDM that questions the possibility of a purely relational determination of all property essences. The supervenience thesis of A. Bird’s graph-theoretic asymmetry reply to CRO can be rigorously proved. Yet the reply fails metaphysically, because it reveals neither a metaphysical determination of identities on a purely relational basis nor a determination specifically of identities in the sense of essences. Asymmetry is thus not by itself sufficient for a solution to CRO. But it cannot even help to answer CRO when a model for the determination of essences is taken as a basis. Nor is asymmetry necessary for a reply, as property structures may well be symmetric. A metaphysics of dispositional properties as grounded in a purely relational structure faces serious obstacles, and the properties would not be fundamental. Since essence and grounding are notions of metaphysical priority, there can be no essentially dispositional metaphysically fundamental properties, and the prospects of a “coherentist” metaphysics of basic properties are dim. A modal retreat that refrains from a post-modal conception of essence and simply claims that fundamental properties play dispositional roles by metaphysical necessity is unsatisfactory.

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“…In this sense, it is not just that backing has some pretheoretical content that puts pressure on (B=E). There are also philosophical reasons to prefer a notion of backing with the features I have highlighted.23 J Wilson (2016),Thompson (2018),. and Kovacs (2019a) also consider (B=G).24 Naturally, Sjölin Wirling would frame things using her preferred backing relatum (i.e., facts about the explanatoriness of propositions instead of explanations themselves).…”

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confidence: 99%

Backing as Truthmaking

Stamatiadis-Bréhier

2021

Can. J. of Philosophy

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Separatists about grounding take explanations to be separate from their corresponding grounding-facts. Grounding-facts are supposed to underlie, or back, such explanations. However, the backing relation hasn’t received much attention in the literature. The aim of this paper is to provide an informative definition of backing. First, I examine two prominent proposals: backing as explaining (Kovacs 2017; 2019a) and backing as grounding (see Sjölin Wirling 2020). Finally, I put forward my own proposal. I argue that under plausible assumptions about the role of backing and the nature of explanation, backing should be understood as a form of truthmaking, minimally construed.

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Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism, and Holistic Explanation

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Slot Theory and Slotite Theory

Slot Theory and Slotite Theory

Asymmetry cannot solve the circularity/regress problem of property structuralism

Backing as Truthmaking

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