Abstract
Ground offers the hope of vindicating and illuminating a classic philosophical idea: the layered conception, according to which reality is structured by relations of dependence, with physical phenomena on the bottom, and upon which chemical, then biological, and finally psychological and other phenomena reside. However, ground can only make good on this promise if it is appropriately formally behaved. The paradigm of good formal behavior can be found in the currently dominant grounding orthodoxy, which holds that ground is transitive, anti-symmetric, irreflexive, and foundational. However, heretics have recently challenged the orthodoxy. This paper examines ground’s ability to vindicate the layered conception upon various relaxations of the orthodox assumptions. It is argued that highly unorthodox views of ground can still vindicate the layered conception and that, in some ways, the heretical views enable ground to better serve as a guide to reality’s layering than do orthodox views of ground.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Reality and its Structure |
Subtitle of host publication | Essays in Fundamentality |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 37-49 |
Number of pages | 13 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780198755630 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2018 |
Keywords
- Grounding
- Grounding orthodoxy
- Hierarchy of reality
- Layered conception
- Special sciences
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities