Abstract
I argue that there is an important similarity between causation and grounding. In particular I argue that, just as there is a type of scientific explanation that appeals to causal mechanisms—causal-mechanical explanation—there is a type of metaphysical explanation that appeals to grounding mechanisms—grounding-mechanical explanation. The upshot is that the role that grounding mechanisms play in certain metaphysical explanations mirrors the role that causal mechanisms play in certain scientific explanations. In this light, it becomes clear that grounding-mechanical explanations make crucial contributions to the evaluation of a variety of important philosophical theses, including priority monism and physicalism.
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Notes
Just how to understand composition in this context is a topic that I won’t explore here. Armstrong (1997), for example, argues that the relevant notion isn’t unique in the sense that two facts can have the same constituents. I also work with what Fine calls a worldly conception of facts—roughly speaking, facts don’t have representations or modes of presentation as constituents—and I assume that facts are a distinctive kind of entity.
For a general discussion of grounding that touches on these assumptions and related issues, see Trogdon (2013a).
While I won’t consider the details of their proposals, I take it that what I go on to say about grounding is broadly compatible with both Schaffer’s and Wilson’s views mentioned above. While I’m arguing that grounding is substantively like causation in one key respect, see Bernstein (2016) and Koslicki (2016) for arguments that there are important respects in which they’re dissimilar. They don’t address, however, mechanisms in particular.
Following Fine (1994), it’s an essential truth about some entity that p just in case part of what it is to be that entity is that p. Perhaps it’s an essential truth about Socrates that if Socrates exists then Socrates is a human. While it’s a necessary truth that if Socrates exists then 1 + 1 = 2, this truth isn’t an essential truth about Socrates—the nature of Socrates “knows nothing” of arithmetic.
It may be that some relations satisfy the grounding condition yet it isn’t part of their nature to do so. Suppose that constitution and relation R are distinct but necessarily co-extensive. As the former satisfies the grounding condition, so too does the latter. Yet it’s not part of what it is to be R, we will suppose, that it satisfies this condition—the nature of this relation “knows nothing” of grounding. So R isn’t a metaphysical determination relation despite the fact that it satisfies the grounding condition.
Koslicki (2015) and Wilson (2014) consider unification-style arguments for grounding and reject them. They (independently) argue that the relevant metaphysical relations don’t seem to display the sort of unity required for us to be justified in positing a distinctive metaphysical relation as a unifier. And they (again independently) argue that, even if the relevant metaphysical relations turn out to be unified in an important way, this on its own might not license the claim that there is a distinctive metaphysical relation that unifies them in any case.
There is a substantial literature on each of the relations I’ve discussed in this section. For overviews of the literature on the determinate-determinable relation and constitution, see Wilson (2017) and Wasserman (2015), respectively. For an overview of the literature on functional and mereological realization, see Baysan (2015). (For realization aficionados, I’m open to the idea that there are still other forms of realization, such as subset realization as characterized by Wilson (1999) and others, and that these likewise count as metaphysical determination relations in my sense.) For influential discussions of set formation, see Fine (2010a) and Lewis (1991, Ch. 1). Some characterizations of these relations proposed in the literature are compatible with my claim that they’re essentially connected to grounding—see, e.g., Doepke (1999, Ch. 7) on constitution. Indeed, some of these characterizations seem to directly appeal to grounding—see, e.g., Gillett (2007) on mereological realization. Other such characterizations, however, on the face of it are incompatible with the essence claim—see, e.g., Lewis on set formation.
The main rival to the system view of causal mechanisms is the process view. Railton claims that, while a scientific explanation of some event may include reference to a covering law, it must be supplemented by “an account of the mechanism(s) at work,” where an account of a mechanism is “a more or less complete filling-in of the links in the causal chains” (1978, 748). Proponents of the process view, following Railton, conceive of causal mechanisms as concrete physical processes that transfer marks, mass-energy, or some other conserved physical quantity. Some such as Salmon (1984) and Dowe (2000) go on to propose reductive accounts of causation in terms of causal mechanisms so understood.
See Fine (2012) for discussion of similar cases—cases that seem to involve both mediate and immediate grounding—and the complications they pose for characterizing the immediate/mediate grounding distinction.
While I assume that there are both scientific and metaphysical explanations, I won’t try to characterize the scientific part of the former or the metaphysical part of the latter—see Kovacs (forthcoming) and Schaffer (2016a) for discussion.
I don’t mean to suggest that for every causal relation there is a substantive answer to the question of how the causation takes place in that case, and the same goes for grounding. The claim instead is that our theorizing about causation/grounding should help us provide substantive answers to these sorts of questions when there are such answers to be had.
Here the focus is causal mechanisms and horizontal causal relations, roughly causal relations connecting events involving entities occupying the same level of mereological aggregation. I should note, however, that there is growing interest in how causal mechanisms are related to vertical causation and other relations that involve movement across levels of mereological aggregation. Just how to think about the relationship between causal mechanisms and vertical causation and other vertical relations (and what implications this might have for grounding) is an interesting matter, but I won’t pursue it further here—see Aizawa and Gillett (2016) for discussion.
Schaffer (2016b) sees his interventionist approach as telling us “how the connection runs” in cases of grounding, as it provides structural equations that encode counterfactual truths with respect to grounds and what they ground (e.g. had Socrates not existed, {Socrates} wouldn’t have either).
In addition, some causal mechanists claim that (1) certain phenomena that the nomic-subsumer claims are explained by laws are in instead explained by causal mechanisms (Anderson 2011), (2) some of what we take to be law-statements are instead descriptions of causal mechanisms (Glennan 2002), and (3) causal mechanisms explain or sustain certain laws or law-like entities (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Cummins 2000; Glennan 2005).
Provided that there are no biological laws as some such as Beatty (1995) argue, since there are biological explanations it follows that not all scientific explanations involve the representation of laws.
Here’s another potential contrast between the grounding mechanism and metaphysical subsumption views. As we have seen, there is a systematic connection between the patterns of instantiation of relations like set formation between entities on the one hand and grounding relations between facts with those entities as constituents on the other. What explains this connection? The metaphysical subsumer might claim that the metaphysical laws explain why these relations and grounding are so connected (Wilsch 2015). Note that the grounding mechanist, by contrast, can appeal to the notion of a grounding mechanism to explain this connection. According to the grounding mechanist, part of what it is to be a relation like set formulation is that it’s systematically connected to grounding (i.e. part of what it is to be set formation is that if x stands in this relation to y then the fact that x exists grounds the fact that y exists).
Kment (2014, Ch. 6) and Wilsch (2015, 2016) endorse covering law conceptions of metaphysical explanation. There is a wrinkle here, however—they endorse the ontic view of explanation rather than the hybrid view, pushing explanations out into the world. Wilsch argues that for some facts to metaphysically explain another fact just is for the former together with the metaphysical laws to logically entail the latter in the right way. And Kment claims that any metaphysical explanation is such that its explanans logically entails its explanandum, where the explanans consists of a ground of the explanandum and a metaphysical law linking the ground to the explanandum. Just what the grounding mechanism view would look like cast in ontic terms and how it compares to the views of Kment and Wilsch is an interesting matter, but I won’t pursue it further here. My general sense, however, is that ontic covering law views of metaphysical explanation are no more plausible than their hybrid counterparts.
Note that to establish that such claims involve logical/conceptual priority, however, isn’t on its own to show that they don’t involve ontological priority (grounding), as these claims may involve multiple senses of ‘priority’.
See Schaffer (2010) for the first in a series of papers defending priority monism.
Another conception of scientific explanation is the unificationist view according to which scientific explanation is a matter of deploying arguments that fit into a systemization that generates the largest possible number of conclusions using the smallest possible number of argument patterns—see Kitcher (1989) for further discussion. The correlate of this view concerning metaphysical explanation is worth exploring and may have nothing to do with grounding—see Kovacs forthcoming for discussion. In addition to the metaphysical correlate of the unificationist view of scientific explanation, it may be that there is a distinctive form of metaphysical explanation appealing to essences rather than grounding as well—see Glazier (forthcoming) for discussion. And there may be covering law metaphysical explanations that don’t appeal to grounding.
See Shapiro (1997, Ch. 3) for more on structuralism.
One option is to drop the idea that all metaphysical determination relations are non-diachronic and argue that there are diachronic metaphysical determination relations operative in such cases. Just what these relations might be, however, isn’t clear. It seems that causation, for example, doesn’t satisfy the grounding condition discussed earlier.
I take it that questions about how the connection runs in a case of grounding and questions about why grounding facts are able to ground what they ground can potentially come apart. It seems, for example, that the interventionist claims explored by Schaffer (2016a) and A. Wilson (forthcoming) speak to the first question but not necessarily the second, and the essentialist claims explored by Dasgupta (2015), Correia (2013), and Trogdon (2013b) speak to the second question but not necessarily the first. And I take it that both of these questions can come apart from the question about what grounds the facts about what grounds what. It seems, for example, that what I’ve said about grounding mechanisms speaks to the how the connection runs question but not necessarily the what grounds grounding question, and the “super-internalist” proposals offered by Bennett (2011) and deRosset (2013) speak to the what grounds grounding question but not necessarily the grounding ability question.
I presented versions of this paper at the Metaphysical Explanation Workshop at the University of Gothenburg (September 2016) and the Grounding and Explanation Workshop at the University of Agder (March 2016). I also presented related material at the Truth and Grounds Conference in Ascona Switzerland (May 2015), the First Veritas Philosophy Conference at Yonsei University (June 2015), the University of Florida (April 2014), the American Philosophical Association Central Division (February 2014), and the 1st Annual Junior Metaphysics Workshop at Western Michigan University (November 2013). For helpful feedback I wish to thank my colleagues at Virginia Tech, as well as Ken Aizawa, Ricki Bliss, Einar Bohn, Ben Caplan, Sam Cowling, Shamik Dasgupta, Louis deRosset, Tim Fuller, Kathrin Koslicki, David Kovacs, Jon Litland, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Tristram McPerherson, Michael Raven, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Jonathan Schaffer, Alexander Skiles, Giuliano Torrengo, Tobias Wilsch, Alastair Wilson, Gene Witmer, and anonymous referees.
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Trogdon, K. Grounding-mechanical explanation. Philos Stud 175, 1289–1309 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0911-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0911-8