Abstract
In this paper we provide a psychological explanation for ‘grounding observations’—observations that are thought to provide evidence that there exists a relation of ground. Our explanation does not appeal to the presence of any such relation. Instead, it appeals to certain evolved cognitive mechanisms, along with the traditional modal relations of supervenience, necessitation and entailment. We then consider what, if any, metaphysical conclusions we can draw from the obtaining of such an explanation, and, in particular, if it tells us anything about whether we ought to posit a relation of ground.
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Notes
See for instance Jessica Wilson (2014).
We suppose that objects, properties or facts of type x and type y are non-diachronically correlated if instances of x and y are correlated, and said instances do not occur at different times.
We will use [square brackets] to indicate facts, which we take to be structured entities comprised of objects, properties and relations.
We use ‘because’ as a neutral way of expressing these claims (i.e. a way that does not commit one to thinking there are grounding relations). Those who think that we need to posit a relation of grounds to explain these (and other) cases, will rearrange the relevant sub-sentential phrases and read ‘because’ as ‘grounds’.
We use <P> to indicate the proposition that P.
Whether (F) is true or (f) is true is the focus of the Euthyphro dialogue (Plato 2002).
One might think that there are jobs for grounding that go beyond explaining our grounding observations. Perhaps grounding is needed as a finer grained notion of dependence than modal dependence (Schaffer 2009), to back metaphysical explanations (Audi 2012), or to frame metaphysical positions (Raven 2012). Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out. We think that, if our preferred explanation of the grounding observations is correct, the need for grounding to do these jobs is substantially undermined. That is, if our grounding relevant judgments are best accounted for in terms of overgeneralising psychological mechanisms, it is far less clear that we do in fact need a finer grained notion of dependence. Moreover, we argue in our [blanked] that the explanation we provide here naturally lends itself to a psychologistic theory of metaphysical explanation, which can account for the truth and falsity of metaphysical explanations, and frame metaphysical positions perfectly well, without buying into a grounding-based ontology.
Though see, e.g., Rodriguez-Pereyra (2015) for a defence of some putative symmetric instances of grounding. If Rodriguez-Pereyra is right, then grounding is a non-symmetric relation. However, if grounding is non-symmetric, it is less well placed to explain why we have no symmetrical grounding relevant judgements. Thus, in what follows, we will assume that grounding is asymmetric, so as to criticise the strongest version of our opponent’s position.
Perhaps some non-symmetric relations are dependence relations. Defenders of grounding suppose that they are not, though not everyone agrees. For present purposes we will grant to the defender of grounding that only asymmetric relations are dependence relations, but nothing we say hangs on this. If some non-symmetric relations are dependence relations it is plausible that the traditional modal relations are dependence relations. In that case, our view is that the grounding observations can be accounted for in terms of traditional modal dependence relations and evolved psychological mechanisms, without any mention of a further asymmetric dependence relation in the form of grounding.
We say ‘some’ here because there are many actual non-diachronic correlations that are not instances of modal correlation: for instance, the correlation between the set containing me, and the set containing you. Yet, correlations such as this are not the kind that attracts the attention of our correlation detector. Those that do tend to be indicative of modal correlations.
But not asymmetric.
Sloman (2005).
There has been an attempt to explain our tendency towards religious belief as a spandrel (an exaptation that is not useful): it arises not because it is adaptive but as a by-product of a host of other cognitive processes (Atran 2002; Barrett 2004; Boyer 2001; Pyysiäinen 2001; Pyysiäinen and Anttonen 2002; Gould 1991:58). Notice that if this explanatory strategy is right, we do not need to suppose that we are good deity-trackers and that there are deities.
We assume that there is nothing problematic in appealing to traditional modal relations in the absence of grounding. However, one could object that grounding is required to account for the patterns of modal co-variation described by these relations. We give this objection an extended treatment in our [blanked].
We are assuming that the fact that the bicycle exists does not rigidly designate that particular bicycle.
Notice that we are making a very general claim here: we are not defending anything like the thesis that we should expect cognitive systems to be optimal in the manner in which they make these trade-offs. Clearly there are developmental constraints on the ways in which cognitive systems can solve problems which mean that systems often are not optimal.
Rigdon et al. (2009), for example, showed how such an arrangement of dots significantly increased participants’ giving behaviour. They hypothesised that this is because the dots are sufficiently face-like to cue people to act as though someone is watching to see how generous they are.
Indeed, there are those who think that our tendency towards religious belief is to be explained by an overactive agency detection model which ‘detects’ agency where there is none, leading us to posit supernatural agents (Barrett 2004).
Algebra is all about how to permute the order of the variables without changing the relations the equation expresses.
Not every intervention on Pythagoras will wiggle <a man exists> but one way to wiggle <a man exists> is to make it the case that Pythagoras exists.
In this respect, our explanation does better than the grounding-based explanation of our grounding relevant judgements. For, if our intuitions about such cases are to be explained in terms of our successfully tracking grounding relations, we would not predict the kind of disagreement we see regarding the Euthyphro case.
We take the expressions flanking the ‘because’ here to pick out facts. This can be made clear by expressing what we take to be the equivalent claim: [[Pythagoras exists] obtains] because [Pythagoras exists].
Similar considerations apply, we think, to the putative explanation of a ‘conjunctive fact’ in terms of its conjuncts (see Raven 2012). That is, prior knowledge of wholes and parts tells us that we should intervene upon a conjunct—a ‘part’—in order to intervene on the conjunction—the ‘whole’.
One might worry that, unlike other cases where the causal detection mechanism overgeneralises, our grounding observations in cases (D)–(H) are highly resistant to change on the basis of reflection. So, for example, making salient the probabilistic symmetry between abusive fathers and sons effectively constrains our tendency to overgeneralise. One difference is that in our explanation of (D)–(H), there are not two relations, one symmetric and one non-symmetric, such that the salience of one swamps the salience of the other. Instead, a single, symmetric relation, is misclassified by a cognitive system as non-symmetric. We know that the output of some sub-personal cognitive systems are (largely) immune to change on the basis of personal-level reflection. No amount of reasoning makes the lines look the same length in the Muller-Lyre illusion. We think the outputs of the causal detection mechanism are like this (or at least, lie towards this end of the spectrum).
Though, if Rodriguez-Pereyra (2015) is right that grounding is not asymmetric, then our account implies that the causation detection mechanism would likely do a bad job of identifying its symmetrical instances.
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Acknowledgements
Funding was provided by Australian Research Council (Grant No. 110100486). With thanks to the following who provided feedback on an earlier draft of this paper: Antony Eagle, Mike Raven, Alastair Wilson, Dana Goswick, and Dan Marshall, as well as the audience of the Explananza 2015 for helpful discussion of these issues, and finally, to David Norton for his meticulous proof reading.
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Miller, K., Norton, J. Grounding: it’s (probably) all in the head. Philos Stud 174, 3059–3081 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0846-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0846-5