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Full Idea
Grounding should be taken as primitive, as per the neo-Aristotelian approach. Grounding is an unanalyzable but needed notion - it is the primitive structuring conception of metaphysics.
Gist of Idea
Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics
Source
Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2)
Book Ref
'Metametaphysics', ed/tr. Chalmers/Manley/Wasserman [OUP 2009], p.364
A Reaction
[he cites K.Fine 1991] I find that this simple claim clarifies the discussions of Kit Fine, where you are not always quite sure what the game is. I agree fully with it. It makes metaphysics interesting, where cataloguing entities is boring.
| 13734 | Modern Quinean metaphysics is about what exists, but Aristotelian metaphysics asks about grounding [Schaffer,J] |
| 13739 | Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J] |
| 13743 | We should not multiply basic entities, but we can have as many derivative entities as we like [Schaffer,J] |
| 13741 | If 'there are red roses' implies 'there are roses', then 'there are prime numbers' implies 'there are numbers' [Schaffer,J] |
| 13744 | The cosmos is the only fundamental entity, from which all else exists by abstraction [Schaffer,J] |
| 13740 | 'Moorean certainties' are more credible than any sceptical argument [Schaffer,J] |
| 13742 | There exist heaps with no integral unity, so we should accept arbitrary composites in the same way [Schaffer,J] |
| 13748 | Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics [Schaffer,J] |
| 13747 | Supervenience is just modal correlation [Schaffer,J] |
| 13751 | If you tore the metaphysics out of philosophy, the whole enterprise would collapse [Schaffer,J] |
| 13749 | Belief in impossible worlds may require dialetheism [Schaffer,J] |
| 13752 | The notion of 'grounding' can explain integrated wholes in a way that mere aggregates can't [Schaffer,J] |