Recent interest in the nature of grounding is due in part to the idea that purely modal notions are too coarse‐grained to capture what we have in mind when we say that one thing is grounded in another. Grounding not being purely modal in character, however, is compatible with it having modal consequences. Is grounding a necessary relation? In this article I argue that the answer is ‘yes’ in the sense that propositions corresponding to full grounds modally entail propositions corresponding (...) to what they ground. The argument proceeds upon two substantive principles: the first is that there is a broadly epistemic constraint on grounding, while the second links this constraint with Fine's Aristotelian notion of essence. Many think grounding is necessary in something like the sense specified above, but just why it's necessary is an issue that hasn't been carefully addressed. If my argument is successful, we now know why grounding is necessary. (shrink)

I argue that there is an important similarity between causation and grounding. In particular I argue that, just as there is a type of scientific explanation that appeals to causal mechanisms—causal-mechanical explanation—there is a type of metaphysical explanation that appeals to grounding mechanisms—grounding-mechanical explanation. The upshot is that the role that grounding mechanisms play in certain metaphysical explanations mirrors the role that causal mechanisms play in certain scientific explanations. In this light, it becomes clear that grounding-mechanical explanations make crucial contributions (...) to the evaluation of a variety of important philosophical theses, including priority monism and physicalism. (shrink)

According to experiential revelation, phenomenal concepts reveal the nature of the phenomenal properties they refer to. Some see experiential revelation as posing a direct challenge to physicalism. The basic idea is this: given experiential revelation, were phenomenal properties physical/functional in nature they would be presented as such when you think of them under phenomenal concepts, but phenomenal concepts don’t present their referents in this way. I argue that, while this argument on a plausible reconstruction fails, the thesis of experiential revelation (...) nevertheless indirectly challenges physicalism. In particular, it potentially undermines the so-called phenomenal concept strategy, a key defense maneuver of the physicalist for responding to dualist arguments concerning experience. The moral is that issues concerning revelation do indeed pose a problem for physicalism, but not for the reasons you might think. (shrink)

According to priority monism there are many concrete entities and there is one, the cosmos, that is ontologically prior to all the others. I begin by clarifying this thesis as well as its main rival, priority atomism. I show how the disagreement between the priority monist and atomist ultimately turns on how the thesis of concrete foundationalism is implemented. While it’s standard to interpret priority monism as being metaphysically non-contingent, I show that there are two competing, prima facie plausible conceptions (...) of metaphysical necessity—the essence-based and law-based conceptions—on which it is reasonable to view its modal status differently. This, I suggest, is good for the priority monist—various objections to the thesis presuppose that it’s metaphysically non-contingent, while there are arguments for the thesis that don’t make the presupposition. (shrink)

Rae Langton and David Lewis have proposed an account of "intrinsic property" that makes use of two notions: being independent of accompaniment and being natural. We find the appeal to the first of these promising; the second notion, however, we find mystifying. In this paper we argue that the appeal to naturalness is not acceptable and offer an alternative definition of intrinsicality. The alternative definition makes crucial use of a notion commonly used by philosophers, namely, the notion of one property (...) being had in virtue of another property. We defend our account against three arguments for thinking that this "in virtue of" notion is unacceptable in this context. We also take a look at a variety of cases in which the definition might be applied and defend it against potential counterexamples. The upshot, we think, is a modest but adequate account of what we understand by "intrinsic property.". (shrink)

Central to the programme of sparse ontology is a hierarchical view of reality; the basic entities form the sparse structure of being, while the derivative entities form the abundant superstructure. Priority pluralism and priority monism are both theses of sparse ontology. Roughly speaking, the priority pluralist claims that wholes and their properties ontologically depend on parts and their properties, while the priority monist claims that it goes the other way around. In this paper I focus on Ted Sider's recent argument (...) that priority monism is probably false because it is incompatible with our best account of intrinsicality. In response I propose an account of intrinsicality that is compatible with both priority monism and priority pluralism. I argue that the account, in addition to having the virtue of being neutral between priority monism and priority pluralism, is independently plausible. (shrink)

Some see concrete foundationalism as providing the central task for sparse ontology, that of identifying which concreta ground other concreta but aren’t themselves grounded by concreta. There is, however, potentially much more to sparse ontology. The thesis of abstract foundationalism, if true, provides an additional task: identifying which abstracta ground other abstracta but aren’t themselves grounded by abstracta. We focus on two abstract foundationalist theses—abstract atomism and abstract monism—that correspond to the concrete foundationalist theses of priority atomism and priority monism. (...) We show that a consequence of an attractive package of views is that abstract reality has a particular mereological structure, one capable of underwriting both theses. We argue that, of abstract foundationalist theses formulated in mereological terms, abstract atomism is the most plausible. (shrink)

What is it for a work of art to be complete? In this article, we argue that an artwork is complete just in case the artist has acquired a completion disposition with respect to her work—a disposition grounded in certain cognitive mechanisms to refrain from making significant changes to the work. We begin by explaining why the complete/incomplete distinction with respect to artworks is both practically and philosophically significant. Then we consider and reject two approaches to artwork completion. Finally, we (...) set out and defend our own account. (shrink)

Stoljar’s book has three parts. In the first part, he discusses the “problem of experience”: though we have experiences, it isn’t clear that the experiential fits into the actual world, given that the actual world is fundamentally non-experiential. Stoljar focuses on what he views as one facet of the problem of experience, the “logical problem”, which consists of three jointly inconsistent claims: (T1) there are experiential truths; (T2) if there are experiential truths, every experiential truth is entailed by some non-experiential (...) truth; and (T3) if there are experiential truths, not every experiential truth is entailed by some non-experiential truth. The logical problem is a problem, according to Stoljar, because each of T1–T3 is prima facie plausible. In the second part, Stoljar sets out his solution to the logical problem, the “epistemic view”, and defends it against various objections. According to the epistemic view, (i) we’re ignorant of a special type of empirical experience-relevant non-experiential truth; (ii) were we to come to understand truths of this type, we would see that the modal arguments against physicalism (i.e. the zombie and knowledge arguments) fail; and (iii) given (i) and (ii), we should reject T3 in order to resolve the logical problem. In the third part Stoljar argues that alternative solutions to the logical problem either fail or collapse into the epistemic view. While this is certainly the most careful and extended defense of the epistemic view to date (a view, by the way, in various forms, with which many seem to find sympathy), the epistemic view as Stoljar develops it faces a formidable problem. The central problem.. (shrink)

Materialism, as traditionally conceived, has a contingent side and a necessary side. The necessity of materialism is reflected by the metaphysics of realization, while its contingency is a matter of accepting the possibility of Cartesian worlds, worlds in which our minds are roughly as Descartes describes them. In this paper we argue that the necessity and the contingency of materialism are in conflict. In particular, we claim that if mental properties are realized by physical properties in the actual world, Cartesian (...) worlds are impossible. (shrink)

According to metaphysical foundationalism, it’s necessary that any non-fundamental entity be fully grounded by fundamental entities. Jonathan Schaffer has recently proposed an argument for metaphysical foundationalism that appeals to the notion of reality inheritance. After clarifying the argument, I argue that it is unsuccessful. Then I suggest that there are more plausible arguments that appeal to the notion of causal capacity inheritance instead. But, as these arguments target special cases of metaphysical foundationalism, I conclude that if considerations involving inheritance are (...) to provide a route to metaphysical foundationalism, the route will be indirect. (shrink)

Two competing views in sparse ontology are monism and pluralism. In Trogdon 2009 I propose an account of intrinsicality that I argue is both compatible with monism and pluralism and independently plausible. Skiles 2009 argues that my account fails on both fronts. In this note I respond to his two objections.

One central issue concerning philosophical methodology is this: what concepts should go into our philosophical toolbox? That is to say, what notions are appropriate to rely on in doing philosophy? This issue is relevant not only to how we should go about addressing philosophical problems but also how we’re to formulate those problems in the first place. There is a burgeoning literature on the notion of grounding. I’m a proponent of grounding – I think the notion of grounding is coherent (...) and theoretically useful.1 Supposing that the notion of grounding belongs in our philosophical toolbox, what consequences might this have for familiar philosophical problems? In this chapter I focus on what Jackson calls placement problems, problems concerning how the manifest facts “fit into” the world given that the world is ultimately physical in nature. If we formulate placement problems in terms of grounding, we should expect new possibilities to open up with respect to how to solve them. My goal in this chapter is to show that this is precisely what happens with respect to the content placement problem, the problem of how to fit facts concerning mental content into the actual world given that it’s ultimately physical in nature. (shrink)

A major stumbling block for non-reductive physicalism is Kim’s disjunctive property objection. In this paper I bring certain issues in sparse ontology to bear on the objection, in particular the theses of priority monism and priority pluralism. Priority pluralism (or something close to it, anyway) is a common ontological background assumption, so in the first part of the paper I consider whether the disjunctive property objection applies with equal force to non-reductive physicalism on the assumption that priority monism is instead (...) true. I ultimately conclude that non-reductive physicalism still faces a comparable problem. In the second part, I argue, surprisingly enough, that what I call ‘fine-grained reductionism’, a particular version of which Kim proposes as an alternative to non-reductive physicalism, may work better in the monist framework than the pluralist one. I conclude that issues in sparse ontology, therefore, are more relevant to the debate about physicalism than one may have thought. (shrink)