TruthsquaGrounds

Abstract

A number of philosophers have recently found it congenial to talk in terms of grounding. Grounding discourse features grounding sentences that are answers to questions about what grounds what. The goal of this article is to explore and defend a counterpart-theoretic interpretation of grounding discourse. We are familiar with David Lewis's applications of the method of counterpart theory to de re modal discourse. Counterpart-theoretic interpretations of de re modal idioms and grounding sentences share similar motivations, mechanisms, and applications. I shall explain my motivations and describe two applications of a counterpart theory for grounding discourse. But, in this article, my main focus is on counterpart-theoretic mechanisms.

Varieties of Grounding Skepticism

“…Discussing this second argument would lead us too far; as Lauret-Jansson and MacBride themselves note, some grounding theorists deny that grounds necessitate what they ground (Leuenberger 2014, Skiles 2015, Baron-Schmitt 2021. One can also combine ground-theoretic metaphysics with a Lewis-inspired counterpart-theoretic interpretation of essentialist discourse (Guigon 2018). And of course, many more grounding theorists are silent on the question of essentialism, often because the purposes for which they invoke grounding don't require any stance on it.…”