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Ideas for 'poems', 'The Question of Realism' and 'Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis'

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2 ideas

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / j. Explanations by reduction
Grounding is an explanation of truth, and needs all the virtues of good explanations [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: The main sources of evidence for judgments of ground are intuitive and explanatory. The relationship of ground is a form of explanation, ..explaining what makes a proposition true, which needs simplicity, breadth, coherence, non-circularity and strength.
     From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 7)
     A reaction: My thought is that not only must grounding explain, and therefore be a good explanation, but that the needs of explanation drive our decisions about what are the grounds. It is a bit indeterminate which is tail and which is dog.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 3. Best Explanation / b. Ultimate explanation
Ultimate explanations are in 'grounds', which account for other truths, which hold in virtue of the grounding [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: We take ground to be an explanatory relation: if the truth that P is grounded in other truths, then they account for its truth; P's being the case holds in virtue of the other truths' being the case. ...It is the ultimate form of explanation.
     From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5)
     A reaction: To be 'ultimate' that which grounds would have to be something which thwarted all further explanation. Popper, for example, got quite angry at the suggestion that we should put a block on further investigation in this way.