Abstract
A popular principle about grounding, “Internality”, says that if A grounds B, then necessarily, if A and B obtain, then A grounds B. I argue that Internality is false. Its falsity reveals a distinctive, new kind of explanation, which I call “ennobling”. Its falsity also entails that every previously proposed theory of what grounds grounding facts is false. I construct a new theory.
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Notes
What facts are is unimportant for purposes of this paper, so long as they are fine-grained and abundant. In particular, I assume that some modally equivalent facts are distinct, and that facts can be logically complex: there are disjunctive, conjunctive, and negative facts. Facts might be true structured propositions, or concrete parts of the world. Alternatively, we could avoid mention of facts, and render talk of grounding using a sentential connective (see Fine 2012).
A full ground of some fact B needn’t contain all of B’s partial grounds, since there can be multiple full grounds. In (4), I have reason to lend my friend the book because I promised to. But suppose the book contains medical information crucial to saving her life; then I also have reason to lend it because it would save her life.
This example is based on Dancy (2004, pp. 39–40).
I distinguish the restrictedly quantified fact [Roger’s students are all wise] from the unrestrictedly quantified fact [everything is such that if it is one of Roger’s students, then it is wise]. The latter is partially grounded in its instances, such as [if Kevin is Roger’s student, then he is wise]. The former is grounded in its instances, such as [Kevin is wise]. Sometimes grounding theorists appear to focus on the grounds of [∀x(Fx ⊃ Gx)] (although they sometimes refer to it using the name “[all Fs are G]”). I focus on restrictedly quantified facts; this will be important later. (Skiles 2015, footnote 28, also mentions this issue.)
Higher-order enabling might be a counterexample to Necessitation*. A second-order enabler, for instance, would explain why E enabled X to ground B, without enabling X to ground B. Then perhaps B is not necessitated by X + E. But B is necessitated by X + enablers of all orders. We could define grounding+ by including grounds and enablers of all orders; grounds+ (so defined) necessitate what they ground+.
Call someone a radical antinecessitarian if they deny even this—if they think that grounds+ enablers of all orders don’t always necessitate. Then the move of defining up a new relation of grounding+ will not work to specify a relation that necessitates. Wasserman (2017) defends the coherence of radical antinecessitarianism. Not many philosophers clearly commit themselves to radical antinecessitarianism. One who does is Emery (2019). She claims that chancy laws fully ground their instances. For instance, A = [it is a law that an event of type T has a 75% chance of occurring] could ground B = [an event of type T occurred], even though A doesn’t necessitate B, and there are no facts that plausibly could be treated as enablers (of any orders) that could, together with A, necessitate B. Bennett (2017, p. 54) argues, roughly, that the debate between necessitarians and nonradical antinecessitarians is not a deep one; she says that it is “matter of bookkeeping”. Bennett rejects radical antinecessitarianism.
See Leuenberger (2014), Skiles (2015), Bader (2015), Bennett (2017), Moran (2018), and Cohen (2020). The terminology of “grounding+” comes from Skiles. Bennett and Cohen seem to think that both grounding+ and the more restrictive conception of grounding are interesting and deep (Bennett (2017, pp. 53–55) and Cohen (2020, Sect. 2).
One idea in Cohen (2020) is that grounding has more interesting order-theoretic properties than grounding+. Cohen suggests that grounding, but not grounding+, is asymmetric.
Thomson (2003).
Bradford Skow (2018, Chapter 2) defends this view at length. I do not actually endorse it (see Baron-Schmitt 2020, §6.3). I worry that this way of drawing the cause/background condition distinction may lead to the conclusion that there are no background conditions after all. Consider a state that, but for its status as a state, we would rightly have classified as a partial cause. Plausibly, there is some event that could take over the state’s role as a partial cause. In the match example, even though the presence of oxygen cannot be a cause, the circulation of oxygen can. But if the circulation can take over as the partial cause, then there is no need to count the presence of oxygen as a background condition after all. And this might generalize to other cases, so that although states cannot be causes, there is no need to count them as background conditions either, since there are enough events to do all the causal work.
Someone with a less abundant conception of facts than mine might think that certain enablers, such as absences, are not facts, and so cannot be grounds. Bader (2015, p. 32) argues: “Absences…do not exist and do not instantiate any properties. As such, they cannot play a grounding-role. Since absences cannot be…grounds…it follows that the role that they play cannot be a grounding-role but only a condition-role.” By contrast, I have an abundant conception of facts, and I take absences to be negative facts that can both ground and be grounded.
Moran (2018, Sect. 3.2) similarly compares the ground/enabler distinction to the cause/background condition distinction, and he suggests that both distinctions are deep. Cohen (2020) holds the opposite view of mine: she thinks that it is easier to defend the depth of the ground/enabler distinction than that of the cause/background condition distinction. Trogdon (2013) claims that the cause/background condition distinction is “almost certainly pragmatic”, and so the ground/enabler distinction is probably pragmatic too.
Plausibly it is physical, since it will say something like “every ungrounded fact is identical to F or to G or to H …” where F and G and H … are all physical facts. All its constituents—some physical facts, the property of being an ungrounded fact, a universal quantifier, identity, and disjunction—are at least arguably physical. And a fact with only physical constituents is physical too. But it is not totally clear, because someone might wonder whether the property of being an ungrounded fact is physical. By contrast, a totality fact in a nonphysicalist world is clearly nonphysical.
I mean every attempt to answer the question in full generality: that is, to give a full ground of [X grounds B] for every X and B such that X grounds B. Some discussions of what grounds grounding do not presuppose Internality. For instance, Sider (2018) sketches a number of possible views of what grounds [[p] grounds [pvq]], and he does not presuppose Internality.
The example is inspired by Lewis (2000).
This is a popular view of the grounds of negative existentials; see Fine (2012) for instance.
I borrow the term from Yablo (2004).
The term “disqualified” comes from Muñoz (2019). Muñoz discusses the epistemological upshot of similar cases; he argues at length that this notion of disqualifying is important for epistemology, especially for the epistemology of testimony.
I’m now assuming that [Roger has no students who aren’t Kevin, Ginger, or Nicole] is a partial ground, rather than an enabler. This is only for simplicity’s sake. Roger’s Students is a case of contingent grounding either way.
An alternative view, loosely based on a remark of Kit Fine’s (2012, p. 62), is that [all Fs are G] is grounded in [a is G]… + [a, b … are exactly the Fs]. On this view, there is no ennobler. But I think that [a, b … are exactly the Fs] is grounded in [a is F] + [b is F] … + [there are no Fs besides a, b …], and that only this last fact is a partial ground of [all Fs are G]. [a is F], [b is F]… do not help explain why [all Fs are G] obtains. Far from explaining it, they hinder it, since increasing the number of Fs makes it harder for all Fs to be G.
Internality* may seem subject to the following counterexample. Actual world: same as in Fire or Hold?. Counterfactual world: a fourth character, Supergeneral, commands Private to fire, while Sergeant still commands him to fire, and General commands nothing. Then Supergeneral’s command, not Sergeant’s, grounds [Private’s orders are to fire]. [Sergeant commands Private to fire] and [General doesn’t command him to hold] and [General doesn’t command him to fire] all obtain, but Sergeant’s command doesn’t ground [Private’s orders are to fire].
Here are two possible responses. (1) I misidentified the ennobler. It shouldn’t be that General doesn’t order Private to fire, but that no officer outranking Sergeant orders Private to fire. This rules out the possibility of Supergeneral commanding Private to fire. (2) I didn’t fully spell out the ground in Fire or Hold?. I should have also included the fact that Sergeant is outranked only by General. I’m convinced that (1) or (2) is right, and I lean toward (1).
The converse is false: noncontingent grounding can be ennobled. Here’s an example. Humans have two notable features. First, they are all under 10 feet tall. Second, they are each essentially human. Now, applying the principle Restricted Generalizations: [All humans are under 10’] is grounded in [Abby is under 10’] + [Bernhard is under 10’]… + [there are no humans besides Abby, Bernhard…], ennobled by [Abby is human] + [Bernhard is human]… But Abby, Bernard, and all other humans are essentially human. So there is no world in which Abby or Bernard fails to be human while still having a height under 10’. And so the grounding obtains in every world in which the grounds all obtain.
I mean every general view. See footnote 18.
Or at least that many of them are. Perhaps not all. It is compatible with physicalism that [P1 grounds P2] is ungrounded, if P1 and P2 are both physical facts. See Sider (2011, p. 170) for a more general argument.
Dasgupta ultimately denies this, instead saying that physicalism entails that every fundamental fact is physical.
Litland himself (2015) observes that Internality is entailed by Necessitation + the Bennett-deRosset-Litland view, and by Necessitation + Dasgupta’s view.
I do not endorse the view that [X grounds B] is fully grounded in X + any ennoblers. This is a modified version of the Bennett-deRosset-Litland view, and there are reasons to worry about both their view and this modified version (see Dasgupta 2014, pp. 571–574). Rather, I endorse a general recipe for accommodating cases of contingent grounding: if an account of the grounds of grounding facts would be a good account if not for its inability to handle counterexamples to Internality, then the modification of that account that adds ennoblers to the grounds of grounding facts is a good account.
Here I am assuming that the modified version of the Bennett-deRosset-Litland view is true. Again, I do not actually endorse this modified view. If, instead, a modified version of Dasgupta’s view is true, then we should give a slightly different definition of ennobling: X grounds B, ennobled by E just if [X grounds B] is grounded in X + E + some facts about what is essential to B and B’s constituents.
Skow (2016, p. 111) defends this view.
Skow (2018, Chapter 2).
One option available to antinecessitarians is to appeal to contrastive grounding, and say that ennoblers and enablers explain the same fact, but relative to different contrasts. On this approach, an ennobler explains why B is grounded in X, as opposed to having some other ground, whereas an enabler explains why B is grounded in X, as opposed to not obtaining at all.
Bernstein (2016) suggests that the truth of Internality is bad news for grounding theorists. She defends a skeptical stance toward grounding by arguing that causation and grounding are not very similar; one of her arguments is that grounding is always internal, whereas causation is extrinsic in cases of trumping preemption.
Thanks to Karen Bennett, Kevin Richardson, Alex Skiles, and Quinn White for helpful discussion. Thanks to David Balcarras, David Builes, Jon Litland, Fred Schmitt, Ginger Schultheis, Ted Sider, Bradford Skow, Jack Spencer, Steve Yablo, and two anonymous referees for comments on the paper. Special thanks to Daniel Muñoz, who had the idea of turning Lewis’ trumping preemption example into a case of grounding, and who provided help and encouragement at every stage.
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Baron-Schmitt, N. Contingent grounding. Synthese 199, 4561–4580 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02991-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02991-8