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Scientific Composition and Metaphysical GroundThe Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding

Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground: The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding [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.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Scientific Composition and Metaphysical GroundThe Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding

Part of the New Directions in the Philosophy of Science Book Series
Editors: Aizawa, Kenneth; Gillett, Carl
Wilson, Jessica
Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground — Nov 9, 2016
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References (33)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016. The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN
978-1-137-56215-9
Pages
171 –204
DOI
10.1057/978-1-137-56216-6_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

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.]

Published: Nov 9, 2016

Keywords: Priority Relation; Fundamental Level; Relative Fundamentality; Counterfactual Dependence; Grounding Relation

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