Grounding Pluralism: Why and How
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Grounding Pluralism: Why and How Kevin Richardson1 Received: 5 February 2018 / Accepted: 19 November 2018 © Springer Nature B.V. 2018
Abstract Grounding pluralism is the view that there are multiple kinds of grounding. In this essay, I motivate and defend an explanation-theoretic view of grounding pluralism. Specifically, I argue that there are two kinds of grounding: why-grounding—which tells us why things are the case—and how-grounding—which tells us how things are the case.
1 Introduction There are many ways to express metaphysical dependence. Here are a few. • • • •
Tables are reducible to atoms arranged table-wise. It’s true that people exist or unicorns exist because it’s true that people exist. Mental facts metaphysically depend on physical facts. The ball is colored in virtue of being red.
It’s become popular to think these claims correspond to a kind of dependence called metaphysical grounding. As a linguistic fact, grounding is said in many ways. But is grounding itself One or Many? If you think grounding is One, you’re a monist; you think there is a single kind of grounding.1 If you think grounding is Many, you’re a pluralist; you believe there are multiple kinds of grounding.2 Monism is the well-known orthodox view. Pluralism is the less-known heretical alternative. Pluralists are driven to heresy by the following consideration: a 1
For monism, see Rosen (2010), Schaffer (2009), Audi (2012), Leuenberger (2014), Skiles (2015) and Raven (2013). 2 For pluralism, see Wilson (2014), Koslicki (2015), Fine (2012), Cameron (2015), Bennett (2017), Griffith (2014) and Rettler (2017).
* Kevin Richardson [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, NC State University, 101 Lampe Drive, 340 Withers Hall, Campus Box 8103, Raleigh, NC 27695‑8103, USA
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monolithic grounding relation is too coarse-grained to be explanatory; the fact that P grounds Q doesn’t, by itself, isolate a specific form of metaphysical dependence. For this reason, we need a more fine-grained account of grounding, one that acknowledges the varieties of grounding. In this paper, I propose a novel theory of grounding pluralism. First, I motivate grounding pluralism by considering a puzzle where our intuitions about grounding pull in two opposite directions (Sect. 2). Second, I give an initial solution to the puzzle, one that posits two kinds of grounding: why-grounding—which tells us why things are the case—and how-grounding—which tells us how things are the case (Sect. 3). Third, I consider what the varieties of grounding have in common: metaphysical explanation (Sect. 4). Fourth, I characterize the two kinds of grounding (Sects. 5 and 6). Lastly, I explain how the two kinds of grounding relate to one another (Sect. 7).
2 Motivating Grounding Pluralism Metaphysicians use grounding to make sense of metaphysical dependence claims. They adopt monism because they think these claims can be understood in terms of one basic kind of grounding. We will have reason to b
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