Argument that priority monism is best understood as being a contingent thesis.

In this paper, I argue that perdurantism is incompatible with priority monism: the view that the universal mereological fusion, U, is fundamental. For the monist’s fundamental object can neither persist by being a trans-temporal object (i.e., a space-time ‘worm’) nor by being an instantaneous stage. If U persisted via being a worm, it would be grounded in its temporal parts, meaning that it would not be fundamental as it would not be ungrounded. If U were a stage, on the other (...) hand, it would face a problem from the possibility of ‘temporal gunk’. But if U persisted by neither being a worm nor a stage, then U could not persist via having temporal parts, and thus perdurantism would be false. Given that a similar combination of perdurantism and priority pluralism also faces a problem from temporal gunk, I conclude that perdurantism does not sit well with mereological based accounts of fundamentality. (shrink)

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

ABSTRACT In Making Things Up, Bennett defends the intriguing idea that causation should be included among the building relations. I critique Bennett’s arguments for inclusion, and claim that inclusion distorts her own treatments of causation, relative fundamentality, and absolute fundamentality. Instead, I argue for treating causation and grounding as separate species of generative, explanatory difference-making.

Schaffer offers us in the last section of “On What Grounds What” (2009) an applied illustration of his allegedly Aristotelian metaontological position. According to this illustration, Schaffer’s metaontological position, supplemented with a few Aristotelian theses about substance and grounding, would converge in a view remarkably similar to his priority monism (Philosophical Studies, 145, 131–148, 2009b; Philosophical Review, 119, 31–76, 2010a), the view that there is one single fundamental substance. In this paper, I will argue against Schaffer’s suggestion that priority monism (...) represents a viable development of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, I will hold that the most plausible version of Schaffer’s priority monism by Aristotelian standards fails to satisfy basic Aristotelian tenets about dependence, composition, change, and persistence, and suggest that this is evidence that Aristotelians are more at home with a pluralism rather than a monism about substance. (shrink)

I will defend two claims. First, Schaffer's priority monism is in tension with many research programs in quantum gravity. Second, priority monism can be modified into a view more amenable to this physics. The first claim is grounded in the fact that promising approaches to quantum gravity such as loop quantum gravity or string theory deny the fundamental reality of spacetime. Since fundamental spacetime plays an important role in Schaffer's priority monism by being identified with the fundamental structure, namely the (...) cosmos, the disappearance of spacetime in these views might undermine classical priority monism. My second claim is that priority monism can avoid this issue with two moves: first, in dropping one of its core assumptions, namely that the fundamental structure is spatio-temporal, second, by identifying the connection between the non-spatio-temporal structure and the derivative spatio-temporal structure with mereological composition. (shrink)

In a series papers, Jonathan Schaffer defended priority monism, the thesis that the cosmos is the only fundamental material object, on which all other objects depend. A primitive notion of dependence plays a crucial role in Schaffer’s argu- ments for priority monism. The goal of this paper is to scrutinize this notion and also to shed new light on what is at stake in the debate. I present three familiar arguments for priority monism and point out that each relies on (...) a connecting principle that ties dependence to other metaphysical relations. I then argue for two desiderata: the relation between dependence and other metaphysical relations needs to be strong enough to establish that other metaphysical relations are relevant to the direction of dependence but not so strong as to leave no room for revisionary versions of priority monism. I propose a particular way of meeting these desiderata, according to which the target notion of dependence is graded rather than all-or-nothing. One upshot is that we should be less preoccupied with priority monism itself and should instead focus on specific aspects of a broader monistic worldview. (shrink)

Priority monism is the doctrine that there is only one basic object: the entire cosmos. Priority monists often take this to be a metaphysically necessary thesis. I explore the consequences of modalizing the priority monist thesis. I argue that, modulo some assumptions, the modalized thesis entails the necessary existence of the actual cosmos. I further argue that, if the modalized thesis is true, and the actual cosmos necessarily exists, then the only possible concrete objects are the actually existing ones.

Monism, characterized by Jonathan Schaffer as the thesis that the cosmos is the one and only basic actual concrete object, has been the subject of a great deal of recent interest. Spinoza is often taken, rightly, to be an important forebear. This article seeks to explain the distinctive content and basis of Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics and to compare it to contemporary Monism. It then argues that although Spinoza’s monistic metaphysics is not strictly a version of Monism as defined, it has (...) a number of theoretical advantages that make central aspects of it worthy of serious consideration. (shrink)

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the basic concrete entity on which each of its parts depend. Kovacs has recently argued that none of the classical notions of dependence could be used to spell out priority monism. I argue that four notions of dependence – namely rigid existential dependence, generic existential dependence, explanatory dependence, and generalised explanatory dependence – can indeed be used to spell out priority monism, and specify the conditions under which this is possible.

Priority monism is roughly the view that the universe is the only fundamental object, that is, a concrete object that does not depend on any other concrete object. Schaffer, the main advocate of PM, claims that PM is compatible with dependence having two different directions: from parts to wholes for subcosmic wholes, and from whole to parts for the cosmic whole. Recently it has been argued that this position is untenable. Given plausible assumptions about dependence, PM entails that dependence has (...) only one direction, it always goes from wholes to parts. One such plausible assumption is a principle of Isolation. I argue that, given all extant accounts of dependence on the market, PM entails No Isolation. The argument depends upon a particular feature of the dependence relation, namely, necessitation and its direction. In the light of this, I contend that the argument is important, insofar as it suggests that we should distinguish dependence from other cognate notions, e.g. grounding. Once this distinction is made, I suggest we should also distinguish between two different notions of fundamentality that might turn out to be not-coextensive. (shrink)

Steinberg has recently proposed an argument against Schaffer’s priority monism. The argument assumes the principle of Necessity of Monism, which states that if priority monism is true, then it is necessarily true. In this paper, I argue that Steinberg’s objection can be eluded by giving up Necessity of Monism for an alternative principle, that I call Essentiality of Fundamentality, and that such a principle is to be preferred to Necessity of Monism on other grounds as well.

The notion of fundamentality, as it is used in metaphysics, aims to capture the idea that there is something basic or primitive in the world. This metaphysical notion is related to the vernacular use of “fundamental”, but philosophers have also put forward various technical definitions of the notion. Among the most influential of these is the definition of absolute fundamentality in terms of ontological independence or ungroundedness. Accordingly, the notion of fundamentality is often associated with these two other technical notions.

This entry focuses on two of the more historically important monisms: existence monism and priority monism . Existence monism targets concrete objects and counts by tokens. This is the doctrine that exactly one concrete object exists. Priority monism also targets concrete objects, but counts by basic tokens. This is the doctrine that exactly one concrete object is basic, which will turn out to be the classical doctrine that the whole is prior to its parts.