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7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding

[how we should understand the grounding relation]

25 ideas
Men say they prefer order, not realising that we imagine the order [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: Men prefer order to confusion, as if order were something in nature apart from our own imagination.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp)
The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel's logic reveals that the true ground of something is not something other than it is, but the substance of that thing itself, or the rational concept that makes the thing what it is.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: This seems to be classic Aristotelian essentialism, though Aristotle was also interested in dependence relations.
Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil]
     Full Idea: What is sovereign in this world is determinateness, limit. Eternal Wisdom imprisons this universe in a network, a web of determinations.
     From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growth')
     A reaction: Love this, because I take 'determination' to be the defining relationship in ontology. It covers both physical causation and abstract necessities.
2+2=4 is necessary if it is snowing, but not true in virtue of the fact that it is snowing [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: It is necessary that if it is snowing then 2+2=4, but the fact that 2+2=4 does not obtain in virtue of the fact that it is snowing.
     From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.01)
     A reaction: Critics dislike 'in virtue of' (as vacuous), but I can't see how you can disagree with this obvervation of Fine's. You can hardly eliminate the word 'because' from English, or say p is because of some object. We demand the right to keep asking 'why?'!
If you say one thing causes another, that leaves open that the 'other' has its own distinct reality [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: It will not do to say that the physical is causally determinative of the mental, since that leaves open the possibility that the mental has a distinct reality over and above that of the physical.
     From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.02)
     A reaction: The context is a defence of grounding, so that if we say the mind is 'grounded' in the brain, we are saying rather more than merely that it is caused by the brain. A ghost might be 'caused' by a bar of soap. Nice.
An immediate ground is the next lower level, which gives the concept of a hierarchy [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: It is the notion of 'immediate' ground that provides us with our sense of a ground-theoretic hierarchy. For any truth, we can take its immediate grounds to be at the next lower level.
     From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.05 'Mediate')
     A reaction: Are the levels in the reality, the structure or the descriptions? I vote for the structure. I'm defending the idea that 'essence' picks out the bottom of a descriptive level.
'Strict' ground moves down the explanations, but 'weak' ground can move sideways [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: We might think of strict ground as moving us down in the explanatory hierarchy. ...Weak ground, on the other hand, may also move us sideways in the explanatory hierarchy.
     From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.05 'Weak')
     A reaction: This seems to me rather illuminating. For example, is the covering law account of explanation a 'sideways' move in explanation. Are inductive generalities mere 'sideways' accounts. Both fail to dig deeper.
We learn grounding from what is grounded, not what does the grounding [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: It is the fact to be grounded that 'points' to its ground and not the grounds that point to what they ground.
     From: Kit Fine (Guide to Ground [2012], 1.11)
     A reaction: What does the grounding may ground all sorts of other things, but what is grounded only has one 'full' (as opposed to 'partial', in Fine's terminology) ground. He says this leads to a 'top-down' approach to the study of grounds.
If you make 'grounding' fundamental, you have to mention some non-fundamental notions [Sider on Fine,K]
     Full Idea: My main objection to Fine's notion of grounding as fundamental is that it violates 'purity' - that fundamental truths should involve only fundamental notions.
     From: comment on Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.2
     A reaction: [p.106 of Sider for 'purity'] The point here is that to define a grounding relation you have to mention the 'higher' levels of the relationship (as in a 'city' being grounded in physical stuff), which doesn't seem fundamental enough.
Something is grounded when it holds, and is explained, and necessitated by something else [Fine,K, by Sider]
     Full Idea: When p 'grounds' q then q holds in virtue of p's holding; q's holding is nothing beyond p's holding; the truth of p explains the truth of q in a particularly tight sense (explanation of q by p in this sense requires that p necessitates q).
     From: report of Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 15-16) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.1
     A reaction: This proposal has become a hot topic in current metaphysics, as attempts are made to employ 'grounding' in various logical, epistemological and ontological contexts. I'm a fan - it is at the heart of metaphysics as structure of reality.
Formal grounding needs transitivity of grounding, no self-grounding, and the existence of both parties [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The general formal principles of grounding are Transitivity (A«B, B«C/A«C: if A helps ground B and B helps C, then A helps C), Irreflexivity (A«A/absurd: A can't ground itself) and Factivity (A«B/A; A«/B: for grounding both A and B must be the case).
     From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], 4)
Things could be true 'in virtue of' others as relations between truths, or between truths and items [Rosen]
     Full Idea: Our relation of 'in virtue of' is among facts or truths, whereas Fine's relation (if it is a relation at all) is a relation between a given truth and items whose natures ground that truth.
     From: Gideon Rosen (Metaphysical Dependence [2010], 07 n10)
     A reaction: This disagreement between two key players in the current debate on grounding looks rather significant. I think I favour Fine's view, as it seems more naturalistic, and less likely to succumb to conventionalism.
Different types of 'grounding' seem to have no more than a family resemblance relation [MacBride]
     Full Idea: The concept of 'grounding' appears to cry out for treatment as a family resemblance concept, a concept whose instances have no more in common than different games do.
     From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6)
     A reaction: I like the word 'determinations', though MacBride's point my also apply to that. I take causation to be one species of determination, and truth-making to be another. They form a real family, with no adoptees.
Which has priority - 'grounding' or 'truth-making'? [MacBride]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers define 'grounding' in terms of 'truth-making', rather than the other way around.
     From: Fraser MacBride (Truthmakers [2013], 1.6)
     A reaction: [Cameron exemplifies the first, and Schaffer the second] I would have thought that grounding was in the world, but truth-making required the introduction of propositions about the world by minds, so grounding is prior. Schaffer is right.
If ground is transitive and irreflexive, it has a strict partial ordering, giving structure [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: By treating grounding as transitive (and irreflexive), one generates a strict partial ordering that induces metaphysical structure.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
     A reaction: Schaffer's paper goes on to attach the claim that grounding is transitive, but I didn't find his examples very convincing.
As causation links across time, grounding links the world across levels [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Grounding is something like metaphysical causation. Just as causation links the world across time, grounding links the world across levels. Grounding connects the more fundamental to the less fundamental, and thereby backs a certain form of explanation.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
     A reaction: Obviously you need 'levels' for this, which we should take to be structural levels.
Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics [Schaffer,J]
     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.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2)
     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.
Priority was a major topic of dispute for scholastics [Pasnau]
     Full Idea: For a scholastic author, hardly anything was so likely to precipitate a lengthy disputatio as talk of priority, in its various kinds.
     From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.3)
Avoid 'in virtue of' for grounding, since it might imply a reflexive relation such as identity [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: We should not use 'in virtue of' where it might express a reflexive relation, such as identity. Since grounding is a relation of determination, and closely linked to the concept of explanation, it is irreflexive and asymmetric.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
     A reaction: E.g. he says someone isn't a bachelor in virtue of being an unmarried man, since a bachelor just is an unmarried man. I can't disagree. 'Determination' looks like the magic word, even if we don't know how it cashes out.
Ground relations depend on the properties [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: On my view, grounding relations depend on the natures of the properties involved in them.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
     A reaction: I'm cautious about this if we don't find out more exactly what properties are (and they had better not just be predicates). Maybe properties are the only apparatus we have here, though I prefer 'powers' for the fundamentals.
A ball's being spherical non-causally determines its power to roll [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: The fact that a given thing is spherical non-causally determines the fact that it has the power to roll.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3)
     A reaction: Quine won't accept this, because you have added something called a 'power' to the ball (intrinsically, it seems), over and above its observable sphericity. Does being a ball 'determine' that it can't be in two places at once? Order of explanation?
Ground is irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, non-monotonic etc. [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: The logical principles about grounding include irreflexivity, asymmetry, transitivity, non-monotonicity, and so forth.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.8)
     A reaction: [It can't ground itself, there is no mutual grounding, grounds of grounds ground, and grounding judgements are not fixed]
The best critique of grounding says it is actually either identity or elimination [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: I think the most promising skeptical strategy is to insist on either identity or elimination wherever grounding is alleged to hold.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.9)
     A reaction: This comes after an assessment of the critiques of grounding by Oliver, Hofweber and Daly. So we don't say chemistry grounds biology, we either say biology is chemistry, or that there is no biology. Everything is just simples. Not for me.
Is existential dependence by grounding, or do grounding claims arise from existential dependence? [Correia/Schnieder]
     Full Idea: We may take existential dependence to be a relation induced by certain cases of grounding, but one may also think that facts about existential dependence are prior to corresponding ground claims, and in fact ground those claims.
     From: Correia,F/Schnieder,B (Grounding: an opinionated introduction [2012], 4.3)
     A reaction: I would vote for grounding, since dependence seems more abstract, and seems to demand explanation, whereas grounding seems more like a feature of reality, and to resist further intrinsic explanation (on the whole).
Grounding is intended as a relation that fits dependences between things [Baron/Miller]
     Full Idea: Grounding is a posit introduced by metaphysicians in an attempt to devise a relation that can accommodate dependence between things in the world.
     From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.6)
     A reaction: Grounding is a recent concept which seems to have lots of enemies, but I assume you can only reject it if you reject the concept of dependence - yet that seems a fairly obvious fact to me. My favoured metaphysical relation is 'determination'.