A Defense on the Usefulness of ‘Big-G’ Grounding

Abstract

Contemporary metaphysics has undergone a change of perspective due to the irruption of Grounding in discussions of metaphysical dependence. Proponents argue that Grounding is the primitive relationship of determination underlying many of the traditionally posited idioms of metaphysical dependence. In a recent line of scepticism Jessica Wilson has argued that the inability of the notion to be informatively effective regarding substantial matters of metaphysical determination renders it useless in the face of theoretical work. To supply this lack of informativeness proponents must resort to the already available set of specific ‘small-g’ relations, which renders the formulation of ‘big-G’ Grounding pre-theoretically unmotivated. In response two motivations are said to remain: The priority and unity arguments. Wilson insists that neither of these motivations succeeds in establishing ‘big-G’ Grounding as theoretically useful. I argue that none of Wilson’s critiques succeeds in establishing eliminative scepticism.

Scientific explanation as a guide to ground

“…First, we can avail of extant responses defending the usefulness of the coarsegrainedness of ground (e.g., Dasgupta, 2017;Kortabarria, 2023;Schaffer, 2016b). These replies support the shared idea that big-G ground and small-g grounding relations are not in competition.…”