...at 3:16 AM. An excerpt:
[T]he original motivation for Grounding would be obviously enthymematic to anyone familiar with work in the metaphysics of science and mind, where it has been recognized since the 1970s that modal and conceptual/representational approaches to metaphysical dependence were unsatisfactory. In the ensuing decades, philosophers working in those areas (and others) generated a large literature exploring what I call small-‘g’ grounding relations, including type and token identity, functional and other forms of realization (including subset-of-powers realization), the determinable-determinate relation, the part-whole relation, constitutive mechanisms, and so on, which against backdrop assumptions about what is fundamental (typically, in these contexts, the physical goings-on), serve as properly metaphysical dependence relations. It’s hard not to conclude that the original proponents of Grounding were simply unfamiliar with all this work. That doesn’t make any less tiresome the ensuing literature on Grounding, which mainly consists in rehearsing counterexamples to the supposed formal features, pondering spandrel questions (What Grounds Grounding? What Grounds that the Grounds Ground Grounding?) generated by the failure of this stipulated primitive to actually close explanatory gaps, and offering Grounding-based ‘formulations’ of views (naturalism, physicalism) which are generic variations on the traditional schematic starting points of more substantive formulations.
It would have been dialectically more apropos if the original line had rather been: look, there are a bunch of specific metaphysical dependence relations out there. What case might there be for there being a generic dependence relation or notion operative in all these cases? Existing literature in hand, one would then be in position to avoid certain clear dead ends. Are the specific metaphysical dependence relations formally unified? No, so stipulating that all such relations have the structure of a partial order isn’t an option. Even if they are unified in some respect, does it follow that an ontological posit corresponds to said unity? No, since (as debates over the status of determinables illustrate), in other contexts the default presumption is rather that generic notions should be given a schematic or disjunctive treatment in terms of the more specific notions, especially when we can’t do without the latter, as is the case with the small-‘g’ relations.
Even if a case can be made for a generic posit here, does it follow that the posit is primitive? No, since in other contexts generics, even if irreducible, are taken to be metaphysically dependent on the more specific notions. Methodologically, what use would a primitive notion of metaphysical dependence be? Not much, since we metaphysicians don’t have access to which direction this primitive is pointing in a given case. Supposing we go ahead and posit this primitive, should it count as either being or backing ‘metaphysical explanation?’ No, since a primitive notion of metaphysical dependence isn’t capable of closing explanatory gaps, and indeed introduces new ones (What Grounds Grounding? Why does Grounding point in one direction rather than another in a given case?). Plus, why assume that metaphysical dependence necessarily brings explanation in its wake? Certainly the majority of physicalists, who suppose that explanatory gaps (e.g., between qualitative mental states and physical states) are compatible with metaphysical dependence, do not assume this. And so on.
Defenders of Grounding, what say you? Substantive comments only!
