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Fundamentality
Edited by Alexander Skiles (Rutgers - New Brunswick)
About this topic
| Summary | It is commonplace for philosophers to ask whether a phenomenon of one kind is fundamental. Related questions are whether it is grounded in, or metaphysically dependent upon, or is less basic than a phenomenon of some other kind. Such claims raise a number of deep, unresolved philosophical questions in their own right. How are these notions of fundamentality related? What theoretical pursuits require them, and how can we come to know truths couched in terms of them? How do they relate to notions of mereology, modality, explanation, reduction, realization, substance, truthmaking, essence, provability, and causation? How is discourse about fundamentality to be regimented, and can well-behaved and interesting logical and semantic frameworks for this discourse be developed? What are the ontological commitments of this discourse? Must reality contain a sparsely populated ‘fundamental level’ of entities or facts? And how fundamental are these notions of fundamentality themselves? |
| Key works | Notions of fundamentality have been discussed in philosophy since its inception, and can be found discussed at length by Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bolzano, Husserl, Armstrong, Lewis, and Kim among many others. Interest in these notions has intensified during the first two decades of the 21st century largely (but not solely) due to the influence of Fine 1995, 2001, and 2012; Correia 2005; Schaffer 2003, 2009, and 2010; Rosen 2010; Sider 2009 and 2011; and Wilson 2014. |
| Introductions | For excellent introductions to recent work on metaphysical grounding see Clark & Liggins 2012, Correia & Schnieder 2012, and Trogdon 2013; for recent work on dependence in metaphysics see Correia 2008 and Koslicki 2013. |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Conceptual Analysis and A Priori Entailment (90)
- Determinates and Determinables (82)
- Emergence (714 | 460)
- Grounding (722 | 31)
- Interlevel Metaphysics, Misc (129)
- Metaphysical Levels (66 | 26)
- Physicalism (679 | 375)
- Realization (480 | 12)
- Reduction (1,040 | 241)
- Supervenience (626 | 29)
- Token Identity (119)
- Truthmakers (740)
Contents
464 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 464 |
- Are Skeptical Doubts about Ground Warranted?Louis deRosset - manuscriptNo. More carefully: apparently not. [This piece was published in the Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Ground (2020), edited by Michael J. Raven with the title "Anti-Skeptical Rejoinders", pp. 180-193].
- Next Best Thing—What Can Quantum Mechanics Tell Us About the Fundamental Ontology of the World?Bixin Guo - manuscriptMany discussions in the metaphysics and philosophy of physics literature aim to use physics as a guide to elucidate what the world really, fundamentally is like. However, we don’t yet have a confirmed fundamental theory of physics—what’s the next best thing we can possibly say about the fundamental that is properly informed by our best theories of physics? This paper offers a starting point to address this question. It focuses on the literature on the ontology of quantum mechanics, where the (...)
- Fundamentality and Rationally Open-Ended Endeavours: Reply to Amijee.Yannic Kappes - manuscriptAmijee ("Inquiry and Metaphysical Rationalism") argues that as long as we have not yet discovered that any fact is ungrounded, we ought to be committed to a version of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), according to which every fact is grounded. In this note I present Amijee’s argument, rebut it, and diagnose where it fails. In a nutshell, the issue with Amijee's argument is that in general, rationally searching for something/seeking something/trying to achieve something does not require believing that (...)
- What is Fundamental in Fundamental Physics?Alexander Niederklapfer - manuscriptMetaphysicians as well as philosophers of science often turn to particle physics for a description of the most fundamental entities in our universe. The common assumption is that physics readily provides a clear account of both what those fundamental building blocks are and how they come together to form more complicated objects, and, conversely, how compound objects can be seen as being composed of those fundamental entities. I argue that this picture contains a major difficulty because quantum theories allow for (...)
- A recipe for complete non-wellfounded explanations.Alexandre Billon - forthcoming - Dialectica.In a previous article on cosmological arguments, I have put forward a few examples of complete infinite and circular explanations, and argued that complete non-wellfounded explanations such as these might explain the present state of the world better than their well-founded theistic counterparts (Billon, 2021). Although my aim was broader, the examples I gave there implied merely causal explanations. In this article, I would like to do three things: • Specify some general informative conditions for complete and incomplete non-wellfounded causal (...)
- Modal Idealism.David Builes - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind.I argue that it is metaphysically necessary that: (i) every fundamental entity is conscious, and (ii) every fundamental property is a phenomenal property.
- Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge Elements in Metaphysics).Phil Corkum - forthcoming - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics comprises the topics in contemporary metaphysics which bear similarity to the interests, commitments, positions and general approaches found in Aristotle. Despite the current interest in these topics, there is no monograph length general introduction to the methodology and themes of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics. One underdiscussed question concerns demarcation: what unifies the topics that fall under the heading of neo-Aristotelianism? Contemporary metaphysicians who might be classified as ‘neo-Aristotelians’ tend towards positions reminiscent of Aristotle’s metaphysics—such as sympathy with grounding, substance ontology, (...)Remove from this listExport citation
Bookmark - What is priority monism? Reply to Kovacs.Damiano Costa - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.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.
- How It All Depends: A Contemporary Reconstruction of Huayan Buddhism.Li Kang - forthcoming - In Justin Tiwald (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.Few would deny that something ontologically depends on something else. Given that something depends on something, what depends on what? Huayan Buddhism 華嚴宗, a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of interdependence, according to which everything depends on everything else. This intriguing thesis is entangled with seemingly paradoxical claims that everything is not only identified with everything else but also contained within it. Moreover, the radical thesis of interdependence entails that dependence is pervasive and symmetric. In (...)
- Is it Possible to do Without the Fundamental?Markel Kortabarria - forthcoming - Philosophia:1-20.This article argues that one of the main arguments against metaphysical infinitism—the argument from vicious infinite regress—is unsuccessful. I suggest that a proper interpretation of the argument takes the charge against infinitism to be one of metaphysical insufficiency: without the fundamental facts fully grounding the rest of reality, derivative facts lack the necessary grounding base for their obtaining. I disambiguate the insufficiency claim by examining it from two different perspectives on the regress: the local perspective, which focuses on the obtaining (...)
- (1 other version)Modality and Essence in Contemporary Metaphysics.Kathrin Koslicki - forthcoming - In Sam Newlands and Yitzhak Melamed (ed.), Modality: A Conceptual History.Essentialists hold that at least a certain range of entities can be meaningfully said to have natures, essences, or essential features independently of how these entities are described, conceptualized or otherwise placed with respect to our specifically human interests, purposes or activities. Modalists about essence, on the one hand, take the position that the essential truths are a subset of the necessary truths and the essential properties of entities are included among their necessary properties. Non-modalists about essence, on the other (...)
- From indeterminacy in a fundamental theory to fundamental indeterminacy?Chanwoo Lee - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.In this paper, I examine a case for fundamental indeterminacy (FI) by Elizabeth Barnes and offer my counterarguments. Barnes' account of FI includes both the characterization of FI and why we need to accept it. I argue that her reasons for accepting FI can be challenged even when we accept her characterization of FI. Her main claim is that finding a fundamental proposition that our fundamental theory is indeterminate about (FPF) gives us a reason to accept FI in metaphysics. I (...)
- Ontology without hierarchy.Kristie Miller, Michael J. Duncan & James Norton - forthcoming - In Javier Cumpa (ed.), The Question of Ontology: The Contemporary Debate. Oxford University Press.It has recently become popular to suggest that questions of ontology ought be settled by determining, first, which fundamental things exist, and second, which derivative things depend on, or are grounded by, those fundamental things. This methodology typically leads to a hierarchical view of ontology according to which there are chains of entities, each dependent on the next, all the way down to a fundamental base. In this paper we defend an alternative ontological picture according to which there is no (...)
- Can Pantheism Explain the Existence of the Universe?Thomas Oberle - forthcoming - Religious Studies.Many traditional theists maintain that God is the ultimate explanation of the universe, for why anything exists at all. For the traditional theist, only a being who is fundamental and transcendent can provide an ultimate ground and explanation of the universe. This requirement that God transcend the universe in order to ultimately explain it poses a challenge for pantheism, the view that God is numerically identical with the universe. If God is identical with the universe, and God is supposed to (...)
- Derivative Indeterminacy.Kevin Richardson - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-17.Indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) if it has its source in the way the world is (rather than how it is represented or known). There are two questions we could ask about indeterminacy. First: does it exist? Second: is indeterminacy derivative? I focus on the second question. Specifically, I argue that (at least some) metaphysical indeterminacy can be derivative, where this roughly means that facts about indeterminacy are metaphysically grounded in facts about what is determinate.
- Determination Relations and Metaphysical Explanations.Maşuk Şimşek - forthcoming - Dialectica.Ross Cameron (2022) argues that metaphysical infinitists should reject the generally accepted idea that metaphysical determination relations back metaphysical explanations. Otherwise it won’t be possible for them to come up with successful explanations for the existence of dependent entities in non-wellfounded chains of dependence. I argue that his argument suffers from what he calls the finitist dogma, although indirectly so. However, there is a better way of motivating Cameron’s conclusion. Assuming Cameron’s principle of Essence, explanations for the existence of dependent (...)
- The Identity of Necessary Indiscernibles.Zach Thornton - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.I propose a novel metaphysical explanation of identity and distinctness facts called the Modal Proposal. According to the Modal Proposal, for each identity fact – that is, each fact of the form a=b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is necessary that the entities involved are indiscernible, and for each distinctness fact –that is, each fact of the form a≠b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is possible for the entities (...)
- Physicalism, Foundationalism, and Infinite Descent.Jonas Werner - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-6.This paper contributes to answering the question how physicalism can be defined for a world without fundamental physical phenomena. In a recent paper in this journal, Torin Alter, Sam Coleman, and Robert J. Howell propose a necessary condition on physicalism. They argue that physicalism is true only if there is no infinitely descending chain of mentally constituted phenomena. I argue that this alleged necessary condition faces counterexamples. An infinitely descending chain of mentally constituted phenomena is compatible with physicalism. Afterwards I (...)
- The Fundamentality First approach to metaphysical structure.Jessica M. Wilson - forthcoming - Australasian Philosophical Review.(Note: this is the lead article in a forthcoming issue of _Australasian Philosophical Review_ edited by Dana Goswick, with invited comments by Karen Bennett, Ricki Bliss, Jonathan Schaffer, Alexander Skiles. In June 2024 there will be an open call for other commentators; please contact Dana or Jessica if you are interested.) A wide range of scientific, religious/cosmological, and philosophical views presuppose that there is what I call `metaphysical structure', whereby (i) some goings-on in a given domain D are (absolutely or (...)
- The Fundamental Theorem.Ilexa Yardley - 2025 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory/.
- Intelligent Design.Ilexa Yardley - 2025 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory.Conservation of the Circle is the only dynamic in Nature. Explaining the integration of Science, Art, Religion.
- Intelligent Design.Ilexa Yardley & Strijdom van der Merwe - 2025 - Dallas, Texas USA: Intelligent Design Center, Inc..Intelligent Design integrates the work of Ilexa Yardley and Stridjom van der Merwe to demonstrate and prove Conservation of the Circle is the Only Dynamic in Nature (The Circular Theory) (Quantum Mechanics) (Metaphysical Naturalism).
- Unfamiliarity in Logic? How to Unravel McSweeney’s Dilemma for Logical Realism.Matteo Baggio - 2024 - Acta Analytica 39 (3):439-465.Logical realism is the metaphysical view asserting that the facts of logic exist and are mind-and-language independent. McSweeney argues that if logical realism is true, we encounter a dilemma. Either we cannot determine which of the two logically equivalent theories holds a fundamental status, or neither theory can be considered fundamental. These two conclusions together constitute what is known as the _Unfamiliarity Dilemma_, which poses significant challenges to our understanding of the epistemological and metaphysical features of logic. In this article, (...)
- Eight Arguments for First‐Person Realism.David Builes - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (1):e12959.According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.
- Humean Rationalism.David Builes - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (10):2563-2576.According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, every fact has an explanation. An important challenge to this principle is that it risks being a counterexample to itself. What explains why everything needs to be explained? My first goal is to distinguish two broad kinds of answers to this question, which I call “Humean Rationalism” and “Non-Humean Rationalism”. My second goal will be to defend the prospects of Humean Rationalism.
- Aristotelian universals, strong immanence, and construction.Damiano Costa & Alessandro Giordani - 2024 - Synthese 203 (2):1-15.The Aristotelian view of universals, according to which each universal generically depends for its existence on its instantiations, has recently come under attack by a series of ground-theoretic arguments. The last such arguments, presented by Raven, promises to offer several significant improvements over its predecessors, such as avoiding commitment to the transitivity of ground and offering new reasons for the metaphysical priority of universals over their instantiations. In this paper, we argue that Raven's argument does not effectively avoid said commitment (...)
- Levels of Fundamentality in the Metaphysics of Physics.Karen Crowther - 2024 - In Katie Robertson & Alastair Wilson (eds.), Levels of Explanation. Oxford University Press.Within physics there are two ways of establishing the relative fundamentality of one theory compared to another, via two senses of reduction: "inter-level" and "intra-level" (Crowther, 2018). The former is standardly recognised as roughly correlating with the chain of ontological dependence (i.e., the phenomena described by theories of macro-physics are typically supposed to be ontologically dependent on the entities/behaviour described by theories of micro-physics), and thus has been of interest to naturalised metaphysics. The latter, though, has not been considered interesting (...)$135.00 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct download (2 more)Export citation Bookmark
- The Open Systems View.Michael E. Cuffaro & Stephan Hartmann - 2024 - Philosophy of Physics 2 (1):6:1-27.There is a deeply entrenched view in philosophy and physics, the closed systems view, according to which isolated systems are conceived of as fundamental. On this view, when a system is under the influence of its environment this is described in terms of a coupling between it and a separate system which taken together are isolated. We argue against this view, and in favor of the alternative open systems view, for which systems interacting with their environment are conceived of as (...)
- Joints and Basic Ways.Christopher Frugé - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (1):215-229.Metaphysicians often distinguish between joints and basic ways. Joints are the unified and joint-carving properties that trace the structure of the world. They are theorized under the ideology of structural, perfectly natural, or sparse properties. Basic ways are the ultimate and independent properties that give rise to all others. They are theorized under the ideology of grounding, where the ungrounded properties are the basic ways. While these notions are often seen as rivals, I argue that we need both, because the (...)
- Concrete particulars: a metaphysics of spatiotemporal entities.Daniel Giberman - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge.This book presents a novel metaphysics of concrete entities. The author uses the theory developed to address three major topics in the metaphysics of concreta: fundamentality, persistence over time, and phenomenal consciousness. The book provides a new theory of what "bundles" particular property instances, or tropes, into material property bearers. The theory is based on two new ideas. The first is that the primitive nature of one sui generis monadic property called markedness bears on the bundling of other properties' tropes. (...)
- On the Necessity of Priority Monism.Stephen Harrop - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (2):685-703.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.
- Naturalized, Fundamental, and Feminist Metaphysics All at Once: The Case of Barad's Agential Realism.Rasmus Jaksland - 2024 - Hypatia 39 (2):363 - 384.An apparent antagonism exists between fundamentality-focused mainstream metaphysics such as naturalized metaphysics—a metaphysics inspired and constrained by the findings of our best science—and feminist metaphysics whose subject matter is typically non-fundamental social reality. Taking Karen Barad's agential realism as a case study, this paper argues that these may not be in conflict after all. Agential realism is a metaphysical framework founded on quantum mechanics which shares the characteristic features of naturalized metaphysics. But Barad finds warrant to extend the scope of (...)Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Metaphysical Explanation: An Empirical Investigation.Andrew J. Latham & Kristie Miller - 2024 - Philosophies 9 (3):85.The literature on metaphysical explanation contains three widely accepted assumptions. First, that the notion of metaphysical explanation with which philosophers are interested is a notion with which the folk are familiar: it is at least continuous with the folk notion. Second, that metaphysical explanations are true propositions of a certain form that are true, (or false), simpliciter. Third, that it is at least the case that mostly, if x metaphysically explains y, then y does not metaphysically explain x. On the (...)
- Metaphysical explanation and the cosmological argument.Thomas Oberle - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (6):1413-1432.A premise of the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency says that no contingent fact can explain why there are any contingent facts at all. David Hume and Paul Edwards famously denied this premise, arguing that if every fact has an explanation in terms of further facts ad infinitum, then they all do. This is known as the Hume–Edwards Principle (HEP). In this paper, I examine the cosmological argument from contingency within a framework of metaphysical explanation or ground and defend a (...)
- Measuring Ontological Simplicity.Noël B. Saenz - 2024 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11 (25):652-688.Standard approaches to ontological simplicity focus either on the number of things or types a theory posits or on the number of fundamental things or types a theory posits. In this paper, I suggest a ground-theoretic approach that focuses on the number of something else. After getting clear on what this approach amounts to, I motivate it, defend it, and complete it.
- A Defence of Ontological Innocence: Response to Barker.Jonas Werner - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (2):519-524.In a recent paper in this journal, Jonathan Barker argues against the claim that grounded entities are ontologically innocent. In this paper I defend the ontological innocence of grounded entities against Barker's argument. I tease out an assumption that is crucial for the success of Barker's argument and I show that the defender of ontological innocence can deny this assumption in a motivated way.
- Against Purity.Jonathan Barker - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9.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 (...)
- Can We have Justified Beliefs about Fundamental Properties?Darren Bradley - 2023 - Philosophical Quarterly 74 (1):46-67.An attractive picture of the world is that some features are metaphysically fundamental and others are derivative, with the derivative features grounded in the fundamental features. But how do we have justified beliefs about which features are fundamental? What is the epistemology of fundamentality? I sketch a response in this paper. The guiding idea is that the same properties cause the same experiences. I argue that a probabilistic connection between epistemic fundamentality and metaphysical fundamentality is sufficient for justified beliefs about (...)
- The Explanatory Power of Deflationary Truth.Darren Bradley - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (8):3439-3456.It is widely believed that deflationary truth has no explanatory power. I will argue that it does. Specifically, I will consider some objections to deflationary truth having explanatory power, and argue that they fail. The position which will emerge is that the deflationary concept of truth is analogous to the concept of an average. Scientists take averages to be explanatory, and I will argue that the concept of deflationary truth is explanatory in the same way. I then argue that this (...)
- Metaphysical Foundationalism and Theoretical Unification.Andrew Brenner - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (4):1661-1681.Some facts ground other facts. Some fact is fundamental iff there are no other facts which partially or fully ground that fact. According to metaphysical foundationalism, every non-fundamental fact is fully grounded by some fundamental fact(s). In this paper I examine and defend some neglected considerations which might be made in favor of metaphysical foundationalism. Building off of work by Ross Cameron, I suggest that foundationalist theories are more unified than, and so in one important respect simpler than, non-foundationalist theories, (...)
- Il contributo della metafisica analitica all'ontologia giuridica: Brian Epstein e Jonathan Schaffer.Novelli Claudio - 2023 - Ragion Pratica: Rivista semestrale 60 (1):317-341.The essay analyses the contribution of contemporary analytical metaphysics to socialand legal ontology. In particular, the focus is on two authors: Brian Epstein and JonathanSchaffer. I discuss Epstein’s use of analytical metaphysics notions to explain the structureof social kinds and facts, providing a unique model based on three relations: grounding,anchoring, and framing (GAF).This model offers a new reading of the origin and nature ofsocial entities and brings innovative arguments to the debate in legal ontology. Schaffer’sviews represent a competing thesis, which (...)
- Aristotle on Artifactual Substances.Phil Corkum - 2023 - Metaphysics 6 (1):24-36.It is standardly held that Aristotle denies that artifacts are substances. There is no consensus on why this is so, and proposals include taking artifacts to lack autonomy, to be merely accidental unities, and to be impermanent. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle holds that artifacts are substances. However, where natural substances are absolutely fundamental, artifacts are merely relatively fundamental—like any substance, an artifact can ground such nonsubstances as its qualities; but artifacts are themselves partly grounded in natural substances. (...)$35.45 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct download (5 more)Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
- (1 other version)A New Argument for the Groundedness of Grounding Facts.Fabrice Correia - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (4):1577-1592.Many philosophers have recently been impressed by an argument to the effect that all grounding facts about “derivative entities”—e.g. the facts expressed by the (let us suppose) true sentences ‘the fact that Beijing is a concrete entity is grounded in the fact that its parts are concrete’ and ‘the fact that there are cities is grounded in the fact that p’, where ‘p’ is a suitable sentence couched in the language of particle physics—must themselves be grounded. This argument relies on (...)
- The regress argument against realism about structure.Javier Cumpa - 2023 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (5):726-737.Is structure a fundamental and indispensable part of the world? Is the question of ontology a question about structure? Structure is a central notion in contemporary metaphysics [Sider 2011. Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Clarendon Press]. Realism about structure claims that the question of ontology is about the fundamental and indispensable structure of the world. In this paper, I present a criticism of the metaphysics of realism about structure based on a version of Russell’s famous regress argument against (...)
- Fundamental Things: Theory and Applications of Grounding.Louis deRosset - 2023 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.The scientific successes of the last 400 years strongly suggest a view on which things are organized into layers, with phenomena in higher layers dependent on and determined by what goes on below. Philosophers have recently explored the idea that we can make sense of this idea by appeal to a relation called grounding. This book develops the rudiments of a theory of grounding, and applies that theory to questions of independent interest. The theorizing consists in saying in more detail (...)
- Seek the Joints! Avoid the Gruesome! Fidelity as an Epistemic Value.Peter Finocchiaro - 2023 - Episteme 20 (2):393-409.A belief is valuable when it “gets it right”. This “getting it right” is often understood solely as a matter of truth. But there is a second sense of “getting it right” worth exploring. According to this second sense, a belief “gets it right” when its concepts accurately match the way the world is objectively organized – that is, when its concepts are joint-carving, or have fidelity. In this paper, I explore the relationship between fidelity and epistemic value. While many (...)
- Janus-Faced Grounding.Christopher Frugé - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10.A common view in the metaphysics of ground is that all grounding facts are grounded. This generates an infinite regress of ever more grounding of grounding facts, but most grounding theorists take the regress to be harmless. However, in this paper, I argue that the regress is in fact vicious, therefore some grounding facts are ungrounded. Since the regress appears to fall out of two plausible principles of fundamentality, I offer a new interpretation of them that allows for ungrounded grounding (...)
- (1 other version)The Fundamental Facts Can Be Logically Simple.Alexander Jackson - 2023 - Noûs 1:1-20.I like the view that the fundamental facts are logically simple, not complex. However, some universal generalizations and negations may appear fundamental, because they cannot be explained by logically simple facts about particulars. I explore a natural reply: those universal generalizations and negations are true because certain logically simple facts—call them —are the fundamental facts. I argue that this solution is only available given some metaphysical frameworks, some conceptions of metaphysical explanation and fundamentality. It requires a ‘fitting’ framework, according to (...)
- Metaphysical foundationalism, heterarchical structure, and Huayan interdependence.Nicholaos Jones - 2023 - Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2):1-23.Standard views about metaphysical structure presume that if metaphysical structure is hierarchical, any priority ordering of individuals is rigid or situationally invariant. This paper challenges this presumption. The challenge derives from an effort to interpret the kind of metaphysical structure implicit in writings central to the Huayan tradition of Chinese Buddhism. The Huayan tradition views reality as a realm of thoroughgoing interdependence. Close attention to primary sources indicates that this view does not fit comfortably in any of the metaphysical structures (...)
- Empty-Base Explanation.Yannic Kappes - 2023 - Berlin: De Gruyter.This book develops and applies a novel kind of explanation: Empty-Base Explanation. While ordinary explanations have a tripartite structure involving an explanandum, a base of reasons why the explanandum obtains, and a link that connects the reasons to the explanandum, this book argues that there are explanations whose corresponding set of reasons is empty. This novel idea is located in the theoretical background of several fundamental philosophical issues. For example, it provides a convincing kind of ultimate or final explanation that (...)
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