I provide a theory of the metaphysical foundations of identity: an account what grounds facts of the form a=b. In particular, I defend the claim that indiscernibility grounds identity. This is typically rejected because it is viciously circular; plausible assumptions about the logic of ground entail that the fact that a=b partially grounds itself. The theory I defend is immune to this circularity.

Modal metaphysics consumed much of the philosophical discussion at the turn of the century, yielding a number of epistemological insights. Modal analyses were applied within epistemology, yielding sensitivity and safety theories of knowledge as well as counterfactual accounts of the basing relation. The contemporary conversation has now turned to a new metaphysical notion – grounding – opening the way to a fresh wave of insights by bringing grounding into epistemology. In this paper, I attempt one such application, making sense of (...) the epistemic regress problem in terms of grounding. I argue that the relation that generates the epistemic regress is a grounding relation, showing that grounding can make sense of proposals by epistemic foundationalists and charting the course for similar applications to epistemic coherentism and epistemic infinitism. If it is right that grounding is involved in the epistemic regress, this points the way forward both for epistemologists and metaphysicians, revealing the prospects of solutions to the epistemic regress problem while providing grounding advocates with yet another example of grounding with which to theorize. (shrink)

Some philosophers think that knowledge or justification is both necessary and sufficient for rational action: they endorse knowledge-action or justification-action biconditionals. This paper offers a novel, metaphysical challenge to these biconditionals, which proceeds with a familiar question: What depends on what? If you know that p iff it is rational for you to act on p, do you know that p partly because it is rational for you to act on p, or is it rational for you to act on (...) p partly because you know that p? And a structurally similar question can be asked regarding justification-action biconditionals. I argue that proponents of these biconditionals cannot give a satisfactory answer to these questions. This is because each direction of these biconditionals strongly supports an opposite order of explanation to the one that is supported by the other direction. Given the traditional assumption that metaphysical explanations—even partial ones—are asymmetric, I argue that these biconditionals should be rejected. While knowledge might be necessary for rational action, and it might be sufficient, it cannot be both. And the same goes for justification. (shrink)

Este capítulo es una guía para conocer los elementos básicos de la fundamentación metafísica. Ofrece una revisión accesible de sus características y usos, comparando este concepto con otras formas de dependencia que se pueden encontrar en la literatura. Enfatiza dos roles teóricos centrales que la fundamentación supuestamente juega en la teorización filosófica: (i) dar cuenta de una forma distintiva de determinación no causal y (ii) entender mejor la estructura jerárquica de la realidad. El capítulo apunta a persuadir a las lectoras (...) de la utilidad de la fundamentación discutiendo cómo pueden mitigarse algunas objeciones dirigidas a esos roles. (shrink)

The viability of metaphysics as a field of knowledge has been challenged time and again. But in spite of the continuing tendency to dismiss metaphysics, there has been considerable progress in this field in the 20th- and 21st- centuries. One of the newest − though, in a sense, also oldest − frontiers of metaphysics is the grounding project. In this paper I raise a methodological challenge to the new grounding project and propose a constructive solution. Both the challenge and its (...) solution apply to metaphysics in general, but grounding theory puts the challenge in an especially sharp focus. The solution consists of a new methodology, holistic grounding or holistic metaphysics. This methodology is modeled after a recent epistemic methodology, foundational holism, that enables us to pursue the foundational project of epistemology without being hampered by the problems associated with foundationalism. (shrink)

The past decade and a half has seen an absolute explosion of literature discussing the structure of reality. One particular focus here has been on the fundamental. However, while there has been extensive discussion, numerous fundamental questions about fundamentality have not been touched upon. In this chapter, I focus on one such lacuna about the modal strength of fundamentality. More specifically, I am interested in exploring the contingent fundamentality thesis - that is, the idea that the fundamentalia are only contingently (...) fundamental (or, in property-terms, that the property of being fundamental is not a (weakly) necessary property). And while I think this thesis is plausible – indeed, I show here that it lurks in the unexamined shadows/assumptions of some fairly prominent positions – as far as I can tell, nothing has been said either for or against it. Here, I hope to fix this by giving the thesis a proper airing. In this way, this chapter represents a first-pass at exploring not only the modal status of fundamentality, but also offers a starting point for examining broader issues about the relationship between fundamentality and modality. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against grounding being necessarily well-founded, and provide some reasons to think it's actually not well-founded.

Discussion of a metaphysical sense of 'inheritance' and cognate notions relevant to fundamentality.

A fundamental fact is “pure” just in case it has no grounded entities—ex. Tokyo, President Biden, the River Nile, {Socrates}, etc.—among its constituents. Purity is the thesis that every fundamental fact is pure. I argue that Purity is false. My argument begins with a familiar conditional: if Purity is true, then there are no fundamental “grounding facts” or facts about what grounds what. This conditional is accepted by virtually all of Purity’s defenders. However, I argue that it is also the (...) first step toward Purity’s undoing. For, if every grounding fact has a ground, then some grounded entities have “groundmates” or distinct grounded entities that share their full grounds. But, if there are groundmates, then Purity is false. So Purity leads to a contradiction. Therefore, it is false. I close by noting that my argument against Purity also gives us a powerful reason to think that some grounding facts are fundamental. (shrink)

'Chains of Being' argues that there can be infinite chains of dependence or grounding. Cameron also defends the view that there can be circular relations of ontological dependence or grounding, and uses these claims to explore issues in logic and ontology.

Many philosophers have shown sympathy to the thought that reality is fundamentally positive. Julio De Rizzo formulates this idea precisely by means of the notion of grounding, and examines how the resulting thesis fares with respect to three much discussed classes of negative truths, namely that of negative predications, that of negative causal reports, and that of negative existential truths. By shedding light on the issues advocates of the thesis have to deal with, this work shows the positivist account to (...) be a tenable position in metaphysics. (shrink)

The doctrine of divine aseity has played a significant role in the development of classical theism. However, very little attention has been paid in recent years to the question of how precisely aseity should be characterized. We argue that this neglect is unwarranted since extant characterizations of this central divine attribute quickly encounter difficulties. In particular, we present a new argument to show that the most widely accepted contemporary account of aseity is inconsistent. We then consider the prospects for developing (...) a new account of aseity which avoids the pitfalls we have highlighted. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the concept of collective essence: that some truths are essential to many items taken together. For example, that it is essential to conjunction and negation that they are truth-functionally complete. The concept of collective essence is one of the main innovations of recent work on the theory of essence. In a sense, this innovation is natural, since we make all sorts of plural predications. It stands to reason that there should be a distinction between essential and (...) accidental plural predications if there is a distinction among singular predications. In this paper I defend the view that the concept of collective essence is governed by the principle of Monotonicity: that something is essential to some items only if it is essential to any items to which they belong. (shrink)

Separatists are grounding theorists who hold that grounding relations and metaphysical explanations are distinct, yet intimately connected in the sense that grounding relations back metaphysical explanations, just as causal relations back causal explanations. But Separatists have not elaborated on the nature of the ‘backing’ relation. In this paper, I argue that backing is a form of (partial) grounding. In particular, backing has many of the properties commonly attributed to grounding, and taking backing to be partial grounding allows Separatists to make (...) the most of their position vis‐à‐vis their Unionist opponents. (shrink)

In a recent article published in this journal, Kris McDaniel proposes a variant of Peter van Inwagen’s argument against the principle of sufficient reason that makes crucial use of plural grounding. In this response paper I object to McDaniel’s argument. I argue that there is no notion of plural grounding available that is both irreflexive in the sense required for the argument to go through and general enough to formulate the principle of sufficient reason as proposed by McDaniel.

The aim of this paper is to introduce, elucidate and defend the usefulness of a variant of grounding, or metaphysical explanation, that has the feature that the grounds explain of some states of affairs that one of them obtains without explaining which one obtains. I will dub this variant arbitrary grounding. After informally elucidating the basic idea in the first section, I will provide three metaphysical hypotheses that are best formulated in terms of arbitrary grounding in the second section. The (...) third section will be concerned with the relation between arbitrary grounding and non-arbitrary grounding. The fourth section will compare arbitrary grounding to two extant proposals in the literature. (shrink)

This is a paper about the nature of metaphysical laws and their relation to the phenomenon of vagueness. Metaphysical laws are introduced as analogous to natural laws, and metaphysical indeterminism is modeled on causal indeterminacy. This kind of indeterminacy is then put to work in developing a novel theory of vagueness and a solution to the sorites paradox.

Necessitarianism, as we shall use the term, is the view that natural properties and causal powers are necessarily connected in some way. In recent decades the most popular forms of necessitarianism have been the anti-Humean powers-based theories of properties, such as dispositional essentialism and the identity theory. These versions of necessitarianism have come under fire in recent years and I believe it is time for necessitarians to develop a new approach. In this paper I identify unexplored ways of positing metaphysically (...) necessary connections in nature, using the concepts of grounding and essential dependence. For example, I show that one could be a necessitarian by insisting that the properties of things necessarily ground their powers, and that one can maintain this while rejecting dispositional essentialism. Using different combinations of claims about grounding and essential dependence, I map out a spectrum of new positions and compare them to previous theories of natural modality. Some of these positions are compatible with Humean metaphysics while others are not. The overall aim of the paper is to provide a new metaphysical framework for understanding theories of powers and thereby launch a new necessitarian research programme. (shrink)

Argument that full grounds modally entail what they ground.

Say that metaphysical indeterminacy occurs just when there is a fact such that neither it nor its negation obtains. The aim of this work is to shed light on the issue of whether orthodox quantum mechanics provides any evidence of metaphysical indeterminacy by discussing the logical, semantic, and broadly methodological presuppositions of the debate. I argue that the dispute amounts to a verbal disagreement between classical and quantum logicians, given Eli Hirsch’s account of substantivity; but that it need not be (...) so if Ted Sider’s naturalness-based account of substantivity is adopted instead. Given the latter approach, can anything be said in order to tip the balance of the dispute either way? Some prima facie reasonable constraints on naturalness entail that the classicist is right, and the quantum world is therefore determinate. Nevertheless, there are reasons for weakening those constraints, to the effect that the dispute remains very much open. Finally, I discuss alternative accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy, and argue that they are unsuitable for framing the quantum indeterminacy debate. (shrink)

The grounding relation is routinely characterized by means of logical postulates. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I show that a subset of those postulates is incompatible with a minimal characterization of metaphysical modality. Then I consider a number of ways for reconciling ground with modality. The simplest and most elegant solution consists in adopting serious actualism, which is best captured within a first-order modal language with predicate abstraction governed by negative free logic. I also explore a number (...) of alternative strategies by revising the ground-theoretic postulates, while keeping the modal ones fixed. As I argue, each of those strategies is either unviable, highly contentious, or insufficiently motivated. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of metaphysical explanation according to which metaphysical explanations are answers to what-makes-it-the-case-that questions. On this view, metaphysical explanations are not to be considered entirely objective, but are subject to epistemic constraints imposed by the context in which a relevant question is asked. The resultant account of metaphysical explanation is developed independently of any particular views about grounding. Toward the end of the paper an application of the view is proposed that takes metaphysical explanations conceived in (...) this way to characterize reality's structure. According to this proposal, reality's structure is partly constituted by a projection of our explanatory practices onto reality. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 63, Issue 1, Page 44-61, March 2022.

One of the central puzzles in ontology concerns the relation between apparently innocent sentences and their ontologically loaded counterparts. In recent work, Agustín Rayo has developed the insight that such cases can be usefully described with the help of the ‘just is’ operator: plausibly, for there to be a table just is for there to be some things arranged tablewise; and for the number of dinosaurs to be Zero just is for there to be no dinosaurs. How does the operator (...) relate to another prominent notion that is frequently put to similar use: metaphysical grounding? In this paper I show that despite what has been argued in the literature the ‘just is’ operator can be spelled out in terms of grounding: roughly, as having the same ultimate grounds. This is good news for Rayo, for it broadens his target audience. It is even better news for the friends of ground. For it exemplifies the immense fruitfulness of the notion of grounding in its ability to incorporate philosophically highly significant subtheories. (shrink)

Among truthmaker theorists it is generally thought that we are not able to use the entailment principle to ground negative truths. But these theorists usually only discuss truthmakers for truth-functional complexes, thereby overlooking the fact that there are non-truth-functional complexes whose truth values are not solely determined by the truth or falsity of their atomic propositions. And once we expand the class of truths that require their own bespoke truthmakers to also include these, there is no reason to exempt negative (...) truths from grounding. For given that truthmaking is closed under entailment and every negative truths is entailed by some non-truth-functional complex or other, any resources rich enough to ground the truth of the latter will do the same job for the former. (shrink)

Some philosophers say that a whole is “nothing over and above” its parts. Most also take general extensilonal mereology to be treating wholes as “nothing over and above” their parts. It is not always clear, however, what exactly is meant by the phrase “nothing over and above.” Nor is it obvious why the phrase is associated with mereology, and what purpose it serves there. In the words of Peter Van Inwagen : “This slippery phrase has had a lot of employment (...) in philosophy, but what it means is never explained by its employers.” This paper sheds light on the various senses in which one might hold that a whole is “nothing over and above” its parts, and on how these senses are related both to each other and to mereology. (shrink)

Can there be grounding without necessitation? Can a fact obtain wholly in virtue of metaphysically more fundamental facts, even though there are possible worlds at which the latter facts obtain but not the former? It is an orthodoxy in recent literature about the nature of grounding, and in first-order philosophical disputes about what grounds what, that the answer is no. I will argue that the correct answer is yes. I present two novel arguments against grounding necessitarianism, and show that grounding (...) contingentism is fully compatible with the various explanatory roles that grounding is widely thought to play. (shrink)

Starting with the slogan that understanding is a ‘knowledge of causes’, Stephen Grimm and John Greco have argued that understanding comes from a knowledge of dependence relations. Grounding is the trendiest dependence relation on the market, and if Grimm and Greco are correct, then instances of grounding should also give rise to understanding. In this paper, I will show that this prediction is correct – grounding does indeed generate understanding in just the way that Grimm and Greco anticipate. However, grounding (...) examples of understanding also show that Grimm and Greco are not telling the full story when it comes to understanding. Understanding can only be generated by a particular subset of dependence relations – those dependence relations that are also explanatory. Grimm and Greco should thus appeal to a privileged class of dependence relations, relations like grounding that can also give rise to explanation. (shrink)

Traditional rationalist approaches to a priori epistemology have long been looked upon with suspicion for positing a faculty of rational intuition capable of knowing truths about the world apart from experience. Conceptualists have tried to fill this void with something more empirically tractable, arguing that we know a priori truths due to our understanding of concepts. All of this theorizing, however, has carried on while neglecting an entire cross section of such truths, the grounding claims that we know a priori. (...) Taking a priori grounding into account poses a significant challenge to conceptualist accounts of a priori knowledge, as it is unclear how merely understanding conceptual connections can account for knowledge of grounding. The fact that we do know some grounding truths a priori, then, is a significant mark in traditional rationalism’s favor, and the next frontier for those who aim to eliminate the mystery surrounding a priori knowledge. (shrink)

Most facts of grounding involve nonfundamental concepts, and thus must themselves be grounded. But how? The leading approaches—due to Bennett, deRosset, and Dagupta—are subject to objections. The way forward is to deny a presupposition common to the leading approaches, that there must be some simple formula governing how grounding facts are grounded. Everyone agrees that facts about cities might be grounded in some complex way about which we know little; we should say the same about the facts of grounding themselves. (...) The kinds of facts that might enter into the grounds of the facts of grounding are explored at length. (shrink)

Identity and distinctness facts are ones like “The Eiffel Tower is identical to the Eiffel Tower,” and “The Eiffel Tower is distinct from the Louvre.” This paper concerns one question in the metaphysics of identity: Are identity and distinctness facts metaphysically fundamental or are they nonfundamental? I provide an overview of answers to this question.

Grounding is often glossed as metaphysical causation, yet no current theory of grounding looks remotely like a plausible treatment of causation. I propose to take the analogy between grounding and causation seriously, by providing an account of grounding in the image of causation, on the template of structural equation models for causation.

Is everything about reality either qualitative or somehow determined by the qualitative character of reality itself? Metaphysical anti-Haecceitism is often taken to be the claim that this is the case, and to entail that reality is fundamentally qualitative. In this paper, I (1) argue against the idea that metaphysical anti-Haecceitism should be characterized in such terms, and (2) defend a novel way to phrase such a view. This will be done by taking the main arguments for anti-Haecceitism as a guide (...) and by singling out the proper commitments of a view that satisfies thedesideratumset forth by such arguments. The phrasing I shall offer will help tell the issue of anti-Haecceitism apart from some concerns about fundamentality that, I will contend, are orthogonal to it—among them, the question whether there is fundamentality at all. (shrink)

Is everything about reality either qualitative or somehow determined by the qualitative character of reality itself? Metaphysical anti-Haecceitism is often taken to be the claim that this is the case, and to entail that reality is fundamentally qualitative. In this paper, I (1) argue against the idea that metaphysical anti-Haecceitism should be characterized in such terms, and (2) defend a novel way to phrase such a view. This will be done by taking the main arguments for anti-Haecceitism as a guide (...) and by singling out the proper commitments of a view that satisfies the desideratum set forth by such arguments. The phrasing I shall offer will help tell the issue of anti-Haecceitism apart from some concerns about fundamentality that, I will contend, are orthogonal to it—among them, the question whether there is fundamentality at all. (shrink)

As it is presently employed, grounding permits grounding many things from one ground. In this paper, I show why this is a mistake by pushing for a uniqueness principle on grounding. After arguing in favor of this principle, I say something about it and kinds of grounding, discuss a similar principle, and consider its import on a formal feature of grounding, ontology, and ontological simplicity.

As I will use the term, an object is a mereological sum of some things just in case those things compose it simply in virtue of existing. In the first half of this paper, I argue that there are no sums. The key premise for this conclusion relies on a constraint on what, in certain cases, it takes for something to ground, or metaphysically explain, something else. In the second half, I argue that in light of my argument against sums, (...) Universalism, which is perhaps the most widely accepted answer to the Special Composition Question, is false. (shrink)

The statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it fail to share all of their kind and modal properties. Therefore, by Leibniz’s Law, the statue is not the lump. Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump of clay, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. Now a number of solutions to the grounding problem require that we substantially (...) revise our view of reality. In this paper, I provide a solution to this problem that does not require such a revision. I then show how my solution to the grounding problem can solve a related problem and answer a related question. The upshot is that the solution I offer is not only non-revisionary, but also fruitful. (shrink)

Suppose that all non-qualitative facts are grounded in qualitative facts. I argue that this view naturally comes with a picture in which trans-world identity is indeterminate. But this in turn leads to either pervasive indeterminacy in the non-qualitative, or else contingency in what facts about modality and possible worlds are determinate.

I examine three ‘anti-object’ metaphysical views: nihilism, generalism, and anti-quantificationalism. After setting aside nihilism, I argue that generalists should be anti-quantificationalists. Along the way, I attempt to articulate what a ‘metaphysically perspicuous’ language might even be.

Quine taught us the difference between a theory’s ontology and its ideology. Ontology is the things a theory’s quantifiers must range over if it is true, Ideology is the primitive concepts that must be used to state the theory. This allows us to split the theoretical virtue of parsimony into two kinds: ontological parsimony and ideological parsimony. My goal is help illuminate the virtue of ideological parsimony by giving a criterion for ideological innocence—a rule for when additional ideology does not (...) count against parsimony. I propose the expressive power innocence criterion: if the ideology of theory one is expressively equivalent to that of theory two, then neither is ideologically simpler than the other. In its favor I offer the argument from accuracy, showing that any account of a theoretical virtue that is supposed to make theories that have it more likely to be true than theories that do not must respect it. Next I consider its ramifications, eliminating rival views and passing judgment on some arguments from parsimony that can be found in the literature. Finally, I consider two objections. First: I address an objection arising from the possibility of languages with a ‘primitive’ operator that allows us to list a theory’s primitives in the object-language. Second: I address an objection raised by Nelson Goodman against attempts to reckon simplicity by expressive power. Both objections fail. (shrink)

Neste artigo trato da questão sobre o que torna uma dedução confiável. Uma resposta satisfatória a tal questão nos ajudaria a entender como dedução pode expandir ou gerar conhecimento. Eu exploro duas respostas a tal questão. A primeira faz uso da noção de acarretamento lógico-formal, enquanto que a segunda faz uso da noção de acarretamento metafísico. A última é superior à primeira, pois nos permite explicar a confiabilidade de uma classe mais ampla de deduções.

Neste artigo trato da questão sobre o que torna uma dedução confiável. Uma resposta satisfatória a tal questão nos ajudaria a entender como dedução pode expandir ou gerar conhecimento. Eu exploro duas respostas a tal questão. A primeira faz uso da noção de acarretamento lógico-formal, enquanto que a segunda faz uso da noção de acarretamento metafísico. A última é superior à primeira, pois nos permite explicar a confiabilidade de uma classe mais ampla de deduções.

ABSTRACT Bennett argues that the various building relations are all directed, necessitating and generative. This note provides interpretations of these conditions different from Bennett’s. According to Bennett, the full builders for an entity must necessitate its existence alone or in conjunction with other items that are not builders. I suggest that the full builders must necessitate the built item outright. According to Bennett, building is generative only in the sense that when the xx build y we are thereby “licensed” to (...) say that y exists/obtains because the xx exist/obtain. I suggest that the building relations are unified by the fact that when the xx build y, the xx together metaphysically ground y. This entails, contra Bennett, that causation is not a building relation. (shrink)

There has been much recent interest in a distinctively metaphysical kind of determinative explanation: ground. This paper concerns various skeptical challenges to ground’s relevance to metaphysics, such as that it is an empty posit, that the work it is supposed to do is appropriated by other notions, and that it is inapt for specific issues it should serve. I argue against these challenges. My strategy is both critical and constructive. Critical because I argue that versions of these challenges raised by (...) Elizabeth Barnes, Kathrin Koslicki, Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson are not persuasive. Constructive because we may nevertheless learn from them new work for ground. (shrink)

This essay focuses on a recently prominent notion of 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 grounds ground are explored, as well as some recent skeptical challenges to ground. (shrink)

In “How Facts Make Law” and other recent work, Mark Greenberg argues that legal positivists cannot develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets what he calls the “the rational-relation requirement.” He argues that this gives us reason to reject positivism in favor of antipositivism. In this paper, I argue that Greenberg is wrong: positivists can in fact develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets the rational-relation requirement. I make this argument in two stages. First, I offer (...) an account of the rational-relation requirement. Second, I put forward a viable positivist account of law that I argue meets this requirement. The account that I propose is a version of Scott Shapiro’s Planning Theory of Law. The version of Shapiro’s account that I propose combines (1) the account of concepts and conceptual analysis put forward by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson with (2) the account of the concept LEGAL INSTITUTION (and its conceptual connections to the concept LEGAL NORM) that we get from a certain reading of Shapiro’s Planning Theory. In addition to providing a compelling response to Greenberg’s argument in “How Facts Make Law,” I argue that the explanation for why my response to Greenberg works underscores one of the central problems facing legal antipositivism: namely, its lack of a convincing account of the nature of legal institutions. (shrink)

Metaphysical foundationalists argue that without fundamental facts, we cannot explain why there exist any dependent facts at all. Thus, metaphysical infinitism, the view that chains of ground can descend indefinitely without ever terminating in a level of fundamental facts, allegedly exhibits a kind of explanatory failure. I examine this argument and conclude that foundationalists have failed to show that infinitism exhibits explanatory failure. I argue that explaining the existence of dependent facts in terms of further dependent facts ad infinitum is (...) unproblematic by arguing for the plausibility of a ground-theoretic version of the Hume-Edwards Principle, which states that if each fact in a plurality of facts has a ground, then the plurality itself has a ground. (shrink)