In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the instantiation of the grounding relation that connects the various entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I seek to utilise the explanatory framework of Richard Swinburne within a specific metaphysical context, a ground-theoretic context, which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of grounding. And thus, given (...) the truth of this type of explanation, we will have a further reason to believe in the existence of God. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the existence of the infinite plurality of concrete and abstract possible worlds, posited by David K. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga. This assessment will be carried out within the (modified) explanatory framework of Richard Swinburne, which will lead to the conclusion that the existence of God provides a true fundamental explanation for these specific entities. And (...) thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we have another good abductive argument for God’s existence and grounds for affirming a weaker form of the principle of methodological naturalism in our metaphysical theorising. (shrink)

This article explores three ways in which physics may involve counterpossible reasoning. The first way arises when evaluating false theories: to say what the world would be like if the theory were true, we need to evaluate counterfactuals with physically impossible antecedents. The second way relates to the role of counterfactuals in characterizing causal structure: to say what causes what in physics, we need to make reference to physically impossible scenarios. The third way is novel: to model metaphysical dependence in (...) physics, we need to consider counterfactual consequences of metaphysical impossibilities. Physics accordingly bears substantial and surprising counterpossible commitments. (shrink)

In recent years Mullins and Craig have argued that there is a problem for a timeless God creating, with Mullins formulating the argument as follows: (1) If God begins to be related to creation, then God changes. (2) God begins to be related to creation. (3) Therefore, God changes. (4) If God changes, then God is neither immutable nor timeless. (5) Therefore, God is neither immutable nor timeless. In this paper I argue that all the premises, (1), (2), and (4) (...) are false, and then provide a revised formulation of the argument which more clearly represents what Mullins and Craig wish to argue, given the explication and commentary they give when discussing this objection to timelessness. I then call into question this argument, and conclude by stating what I think Mullins and Craig should really be arguing given the specific views they have about creation ex nihilo and in virtue of what timelessness requires. (shrink)

Analyzing causation in terms of Woodward's interventionist theory and describing the structure of the world in terms of causal powers are usually regarded as quite different projects in contemporary philosophy. Interventionists aim to give an account of how causal relations can be empirically discovered and described, without committing themselves to views about what causation really is. Causal powers theorists engage in precisely the latter project, aiming to describe the metaphysical structure of the world. In this paper, I argue that interventionism (...) can benefit from incorporating considerations about causal powers. I describe a previously undiscussed problem for Woodward's definition of an intervention variable that arises when interventionist causal models include disjunctive variables. This problem is solved not by excluding disjunctive (or logically compound) variables per se, but by excluding variables whose values represent disjunctions of too different causal powers. This suggests that interventionism and causal powers theories may be less distant from each other than is often assumed. (shrink)

Proponents of grounding often describe the notion as "metaphysical causation" involving determination and production relations similar to causation. This paper argues that the similarities between grounding and causation are merely superficial. I show that there are several sorts of causation that have no analogue in grounding; that the type of "bringing into existence" that both involve is extremely different; and that the synchronicity of ground and the diachronicity of causation make them too different to be explanatorily intertwined.

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)

I introduce an argument for Platonism based on intra-mathematical explanation: the explanation of one mathematical fact by another. The argument is important for two reasons. First, if the argument succeeds then it provides a basis for Platonism that does not proceed via standard indispensability considerations. Second, if the argument fails it can only do so for one of three reasons: either because there are no intra-mathematical explanations, or because not all explanations are backed by dependence relations, or because some form (...) of noneism-the view according to which non-existent entities possess properties and stand in relations-is true. The argument thus forces a choice between nominalism without noneism, intra-mathematical explanation and a backing conception of explanation. You can have any two, but not all three. (shrink)

Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wave function) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this chapter I explore how the Everettian appeal to fundamentality and emergence can be understood within existing metaphysical frameworks, identify grounding and concept fundamentality as promising theoretical tools, and use them to characterize a system of explanatory (...) levels (with associated laws of nature) for EQM. This Everettian level structure encompasses and extends the ‘classical’ levels structure. The ‘classical’ levels of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are recovered, but they are emergent in character and potentially variable across Everett worlds. EQM invokes an additional fundamental level, not present in the classical levels picture, and a novel potential role for self-location in interlevel metaphysics. When given a modal realist interpretation, EQM also makes trouble for supervenience-based approaches to levels. (shrink)

The paper investigates the kind of dependence relation that best portrays Machian frame-dragging in general relativity. The question is tricky because frame-dragging relates local inertial frames to distant distributions of matter in a time-independent way, thus establishing some sort of non-local link between the two. For this reason, a plain causal interpretation of frame-dragging faces huge challenges. The paper will shed light on the issue by using a generalized structural equation model analysis in terms of manipulationist counterfactuals recently applied in (...) the context of metaphysical enquiry by Schaffer (2016) and Wilson (2017). The verdict of the analysis will be that frame-dragging is best understood in terms of a novel type of dependence relation that is half-way between causation and grounding. (shrink)

Recent years have seen increasing interest in interventionist analyses of metaphysical explanation. One area where interventionism traditionally shines, is in providing an account of explanatory depth; the sense in which explanation comes in degrees. However, the literature on metaphysical explanation has left the notion of depth almost entirely unexplored. In this paper I shall attempt to rectify this oversight by motivating an interventionist analysis of metaphysical explanatory depth (MED), in terms of the range of interventions under which a metaphysically explanatory (...) generalization remains invariant. After elucidating the notion through a toy-example, I demonstrate the important work which MED can perform in characterizing debate within contemporary metaphysics. Focusing upon rival approaches to explaining the identity and distinctness of concrete objects, I argue that the progress achieved in this debate can be characterized in terms of increasing explanatory depth. Having made an initial case for the utility of MED, I then turn this analysis to the metaphysics of explanation itself. By adopting an interventionist framework with respect to MED, I will show that we can assess the depth of competing theories of explanation. This application has two interesting results: first, it suggests that an interventionist analysis of explanation provides deeper explanations of the connection between explanans and explanandum than rival accounts; and second, it suggests that explanations provided by interventionism become deeper still, if one accepts that this methodology ranges over metaphysical, as well as causal, instances. (shrink)

The advocates of moral perception claim that we can literally perceive moral properties such as goodness and badness. One of the objections to the thesis of moral perception is that since we are not able to causally interact with moral properties and these properties are causally inert, thus they do not fall into the scope of our perception. In reply, the advocates propose different solutions: 1) moral properties supervene on natural properties, 2) moral properties are secondary natural properties, and 3) (...) moral properties are non-secondary natural properties. Each of these proposals aims to attack a different premise of the objection. In this paper, I am going to propose the thesis that assuming that moral properties are grounded in natural properties, Wilsonian grounding can be a new reply to this objection. I will try to explain how Alastair Wilson’s account of grounding in addition to a grounding thesis about the relation between moral and natural properties can prevent accidence without setting moral properties aside from perceptual scope. (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.

O desenvolvimento da filosofia acadêmica no Brasil é direcionada, entre vários fatores, pelas investigações dos diversos Grupos de Trabalho (GTs) da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia (ANPOF). Esses GTs se dividem de acordo com a temática investigada. O GT de Metafísica Analítica é relativamente novo e ainda tem poucos membros, mas os temas nele trabalhados são variados e todos centrais no debate metafísico contemporâneo internacional. A sua investigação se caracteriza pelo rigor lógico e conceitual com o qual aborda esses (...) tradicionais tópicos da metafísica. Embora os assuntos tratados tenham sido, em sua grande maioria, tópicos abordados e discutidos em reuniões remotas do GT, nem todos os membros do nosso grupo estão aqui representados. Esperamos apresentar seus trabalhos em futuros livros. Por enquanto, queremos apenas divulgar ao público acadêmico algumas de nossas produções, trabalhadas e produzidas exclusivamente para este livro. Segundo a caracterização tradicional, com a qual plenamente concordamos, a metafísica se ocupa com a natureza mais íntima e geral da realidade. Essa metafísica é, por um lado, ambiciosa: não pretende apenas expor a realidade segundo o modo como ela se apresenta para nós, mas como ela é ‘em si mesma’. Por outro lado, ela é modesta: ela sabe da sua dívida para com as outras disciplinas, especialmente lógica, linguagem e epistemologia. Além disso, ela se entende como sempre tentativa, provisória, aberta a críticas e revisões. Neste livro, tratamos temas como as categorias ontológicas fundamentais e as suas relações de dependência e de fundamentalidade, a natureza da composição mereológica, da persistência temporal e do próprio tempo, a natureza dos objetos abstratos e dos mundos possíveis, as naturezas do mundo quântico, da causalidade nômica do mundo físico, e, finalmente, de um dos objetos mais característicos da presença humana no nosso mundo físico, que é o objeto de arte. É claro que essa coletânea está longe de apresentar exaustivamente todos os tópicos da metafísica. Tentamos selecionar e organizar os textos da forma mais fluida possível, de modo que eles possam levar tanto a uma reflexão específica quanto a uma reflexão geral sobre a natureza da realidade. Ainda que tenha uma inerente incompletude, o livro serve à finalidade de levar o/a estudante de graduação e pós-graduação a refletir sobre temas contemporâneos da Metafísica Analítica. Justamente por ter esse objetivo de formentar a pesquisa em metafísica analítica nacional, optamos por traduzir muitos termos do inglês que ainda não tem uma tradução canônica, a fim de evitar anglicismos e contribuir para uma leitura mais natural. Muito mais do que leitores complacentes, esse livro pede por leitores críticos, debatedores corajosos, que estejam dispostos a contribuir e a propor novas teorias e argumentos. Agradecemos a todos os membros do GT de Metafísica Analítica da ANPOF e a todos os autores deste livro, que decidiram apresentar publicamente suas pesquisas à academia; aos membros do Grupo de Pesquisa Investigação Filosófica, que decidiram pela publicação deste livro; à Pró-Reitoria de PósGraduação e Pesquisa da Universidade Federal do Amapá, que o financiou; e ao NEPFIL Online e à Editora da UFPel, que o editaram e publicaram. [Guido Imaguire e Rodrigo Reis Lastra Cid, Organizadores] . (shrink)

I develop a reduction of grounding to essence. My approach is to think about the relation between grounding and essence on the model of a certain conceptof existential dependence. I extend this concept of existential dependence in a coupleof ways and argue that these extensions provide a reduction of grounding to essenceif we use sorted variables that range over facts and take it that for a fact to obtain is forit to exist. I then use the account to resolve various (...) issues surrounding the concept of grounding and its connection with essence; apply the account to paradigm cases andto the impure logic of grounding; and respond to objections. (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)

It is often assumed that theorizing in terms of natural properties is more objectively valuable than theorizing in terms of non-natural properties. But this assumption faces an explanatory challenge: explain the greater objective value of theorizing in terms of natural properties. In this paper, I answer that challenge by proposing and exploring three different accounts of the objective value of naturalness. Two appeal to constitutive natures: it is part of the constitutive nature of explanation, or of objective value, that theorizing (...) in terms of natural properties is more objectively valuable. The third appeals to the theoretical role that naturalness plays. (shrink)

This paper outlines a non-reductive counterfactual account of grounding along interventionist lines, and uses the account to argue that taking grounding seriously requires ascribing non-trivial truth-conditions to a range of counterpossible counterfactuals. This result allows for a diagnosis of a route to scepticism about grounding, as deriving at least in part from scepticism about non-trivial counterpossible truth and falsity.

Explanations are backed by many different relations: causation, grounding, and arguably others too. But why are these different relations capable of backing explanations? In virtue of what are they explanatory? In this paper, I propose and defend a monistic account of explanation-backing relations. On my account, there is a single relation which backs all cases of explanation, and which explains why those other relations are explanation-backing.

The paper discusses from a metaphysical standpoint the nature of the dependence relation underpinning the talk of mutual action between material and spatiotemporal structures in general relativity. It is shown that the standard analyses of dependence in terms of causation or grounding are ill-suited for the general relativistic context. Instead, a non-standard analytical framework in terms of structural equation modeling is exploited, which leads to the conclusion that the kind of dependence encoded in the Einstein field equations is a novel (...) one. (shrink)

Nomic realists have traditionally put laws to work within a theory of natural modality, in order to provide a metaphysical source for causal necessitation, counterfactuals, and dispositions. However, laws are well-suited to perform other work as well. Necessitation is a widespread phenomenon and includes cases of categorial, conceptual, grounding, mathematical and normative necessitation. A permissive theory of universals allows us to extend nomic realism into these other domains. With a particular focus on grounding necessitation, it is argued that the sorts (...) of reasons for positing laws in the natural causal domain also apply in other domains. Laws might well be the source of all first-order modality. (shrink)

Characterization of a form of explanation involving grounding on the model of mechanistic causal explanation.

Roles remain nebulous entities, notwithstanding their extensive interdisciplinary research. This paper argues through a meta-ontological conceptual tool of grounding that there are three key facets of roles: a role position, a role specification, and a role potential. A foundational perspective on roles can be specified by “role choices” as to which facet of roles is primary. Role choices are illustrated with theories of roles that are built in compliance with four well-known upper ontologies: GFO, DOLCE, BFO, and UFO. The relationship (...) between such three facets of roles and the GFO-based three kinds of roles (relational, processual, and social) is closely examined. These three facets are also comparatively studied from linguistic (e.g. ‘have a role’ versus ‘play a role’) and methodological (realism versus conceptualism regarding ontology design) perspectives. Furthermore, the family resemblance view of roles as “epistemic trackers” is proposed: the general notion of role is merely (partially) unified by its three facets and helps to keep track of some entity with respect to its role-related aspects. Finally, defining characteristics of roles in conceptual modeling are considered in terms of the three-facet theory. This work provides the grist for future practical development of an ontological module for generic role representation. (shrink)

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

In response to widespread use of automated decision-making technology, some have considered a right to explanation. In this paper I draw on insights from philosophical work on explanation to present a series of challenges to this idea, showing that the normative motivations for access to such explanations ask for something difficult, if not impossible, to extract from automated systems. I consider an alternative, outcomes-focused approach to the normative evaluation of automated decision-making, and recommend it as a way to pursue the (...) goods originally associated with explainability. (shrink)

Facts about explanation are often taken as a guide to facts about metaphysics. Such inferences from explanation to metaphysics typically rely on two elements: explanatory realism, the view that it is a characteristic and necessary aspect of explanation to give information about metaphysical structure, and a backing model of explanation, according to which explanations are backed by supporting relations, such as causation. Combining explanatory realism with a backing model permits conclusions about metaphysics to follow straightforwardly from facts about explanation, and (...) those who endorse backing models of explanation have typically endorsed explanatory realism. In light of recent critiques of explanatory realism, in this paper I explore the prospects for a backing model without explanatory realism. I articulate a non-realist backing model and argue that this model can satisfy most of the motivations for a realist backing model, and that it can also play a central and illuminating role in the practice of metaphysics. (shrink)

My central thesis is that presentism is incompatible with all of the main theories of persistence: endurance, exdurance and perdurance.

According to metaphysical coherentism, grounding relations form an interconnected system in which things ground each other and nothing is ungrounded. This potentially viable view’s logical territory remains largely unexplored. In this paper, I describe that territory by articulating four varieties of metaphysical coherentism. I do not argue for any variety in particular. Rather, I aim to show that not all issues which might be raised against coherentism will be equally problematic for all the versions of that view, which features far (...) more nuance and diversity than is typically ascribed to it. (shrink)

In this paper I address two concerns with Kelly Trogdon’s grounding mechanism view, i.e. the idea that metaphysical explanation can be modeled on causal-mechanical explanation. The first concern threatens to undermine the unity that grounding-mechanical explanations imposes on metaphysical explanation; and the second concern requires the grounding mechanic to put forth a formal condition on grounding-mechanical models. After having discussed both of these, I provide a solution to the first and argue that the second concern is unwarranted.

Remember how Kim Mental causation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993b) used to argue against non-reductive physicalism to the effect that it cannot accommodate the causal efficacy of the mental? The argument was that if physicalists accept the causal closure of the physical, they are faced with an exclusion problem. In the original version of the argument, the dependence holding between the mental and the physical was cashed out in terms of supervenience. Due to the work or Fine and others, we have (...) since come to realize that modal notions are not well-suited to perform the work of properly characterizing dependence. As a consequence of this, an increasingly larger community of contemporary metaphysicians prefer to spell out mental-physical dependence in terms of a non-causal and non-reductive notion called grounding, which is intended to target a particular sort of metaphysical relation that takes us from ontologically less fundamental features of the world to that which is more fundamental. In this paper I join forces with those who think that this shift in focus is on the right track. More specifically, I will argue that the grounding physicalist can solve the exclusion problem in a way that is preferable to the supervenience-based nonreductive physicalist solution, as well as in a way that is compatible with the externalist picture of the mental. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose a functionalist theory of grounding (functionalist-grounding). Specifically, I argue that grounding is a second-order phenomenon that is realized by relations that play the noncausal explanatoriness role. I also show that functionalist-grounding can deal with a powerful challenge. Appeals to explanatory unificationism have been made to argue that the success of noncausal explanations does not depend on the existence of grounding relations. Against this, I argue that a systematization involving functionalist-grounding is superior to its anti-relational counterpart.

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. (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)

Whereas many philosophers take backwards causation to be impossible, the few who maintain its possibility either take it to be absent from the actual world or else confined to theoretical physics. Here, however, I argue that backwards causation is not only actual, but common, though occurring in the context of our social institutions. After juxtaposing my cases with a few others in the literature and arguing that we should take seriously the reality of causal cases in these contexts, I consider (...) several objections. These objections involve whether the cases should be reinterpreted, whether they are properly within the institution, whether they involve necessitation or else Cambridge changes, whether and how they involve changing the past, and whether this should call us to question institutional reality. I end by suggesting that it is a virtue of our institutions that they allow backwards causation, that this is a kind of technology that they are often built to incorporate. (shrink)

This article aims to provide an explication of the doctrine of the monarchy of the Father. A precisification of the doctrine is made within the building-fundamentality framework provided by Karen Bennett, which enables a further clarification of the central elements of the doctrine to be made and an important objection against it to be answered.

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the existence of certain entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I assume the cogency of Swinburne’s explanatory framework and seek to resituate it within a new philosophical context-that of the field of contemporary metaphysics-which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of the non-fundamental entities that fill (...) up the various levels of the layered structure of reality. And thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have one more good reason to believe in the existence of God. (shrink)

This paper argues that the semantic facts about ‘because’ are best explained via a metaphorical treatment of metaphysical explanation that treats causal explanation as explanation par excellence. Along the way, it defends a commitment to a unified causal sense of ‘because’ and offers a proprietary explanation of grounding skepticism. With the causal metaphor account of metaphysical explanation on the table, an extended discussion of the relationship between conceptual structure and metaphysics ends with a suggestion that the semantic facts about ‘because’ (...) tell against grounding-causation unity. (shrink)

This paper presents evidence that ‘because’ is importantly ambiguous between two closely related senses covering what are usually called causal explanations, on the one hand, and grounding or metaphysical explanations, on the other hand. To this end, it introduces the lexical categories of monosemy, polysemy and homonymy; describes a test for polysemy; and discusses the results of the test when applied to ‘because’. It also shows how to understand so-called hybrid explanations in light of the semantic facts established by the (...) analysis. (shrink)

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.

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.

The paper focusses on two claims about metaphysical structure: Atomism and Fundamentalism. The first of these claims says that there are mereological atoms, i.e. minimal elements in the mereological structure of reality. The second says that there are fundamental truths, i.e. minimal elements in the grounding structure of reality. A philosopher who defended both of these claims was Bernard Bolzano; the present paper is an exploration of his views on the matter.

In this paper, I both propose and discuss a novel account of truthmaking. I begin by showing what truthmaking is not: it is not grounding and it is not correspondence. I then show what truthmaking is by offering an account that appeals both to grounding and what I call ‘deep correspondence’. After I present the account and show that it is an account that unifies, I put it to work by showing how it can overcome an objection to truthmaking, how (...) we can get truthmaking from correspondence, what it says about truthmaker necessitation, and how it can explain a connection between truthmaker maximalism and pluralism about truth. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of metaphysically opaque grounding, a largely neglected form of metaphysical grounding that challenges the commonly held assumptions that grounding is an especially intimate and powerful connection between facts and that it is necessarily connected with the essences of things. I provide a definition of opaque grounding, identify some interesting philosophical views that are committed to it, and explore some consequences for the general theory of grounding. Finally, I briefly address some natural initial doubts about opaque (...) grounding and find them unwarranted. The upshot is that the notion deserves more attention than it has previously received. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the largely neglected issue of whether metaphysical grounding – the relation of one fact’s obtaining in virtue of the obtaining of some other (or others) – can be given a reductive account. I introduce the notion of metaphysically opaque grounding, a form of grounding which constitutes a less metaphysically intimate connection than in standard cases. I then argue that certain important and interesting views in metaphysics are committed to there being cases of opaque grounding (...) and demonstrate that four representative accounts of grounding available in the literature are unable to accommodate such cases. This is argued to constitute a problem for those accounts that is likely to extend to other possible reductive accounts of grounding that employ the popular strategy of explaining grounding in terms of other hyperintensional phenomena. Unless the reductionist is willing to opt for some sophisticated modalist account, the possibility of opaque grounding cases thus provides indirect support for primitivism about grounding, a view that has previously been widely embraced but rarely supported by argument. (shrink)

According to an increasingly popular view among philosophers of science, both causal and non-causal explanations can be accounted for by a single theory: the counterfactual theory of explanation. A kind of non-causal explanation that has gained much attention recently but that this theory seems unable to account for are grounding explanations. Reutlinger :239-256, 2017) has argued that, despite these appearances to the contrary, such explanations are covered by his version of the counterfactual theory. His idea is supported by recent work (...) on grounding by Schaffer and Wilson who claim there to be a tight connection between grounding and counterfactual dependence. The present paper evaluates the prospects of the idea. We show that there is only a weak sense in which grounding explanations convey information about counterfactual dependencies, and that this fact cannot plausibly be taken to reveal a distinctive feature that grounding explanations share with other kinds of explanations. (shrink)