Grounding and the Existence of God

Abstract

In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the instantiation of the grounding relation that connects the various entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I seek to utilise the explanatory framework of Richard Swinburne within a specific metaphysical context, a ground-theoretic context, which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of grounding. And thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have a further reason to believe in the existence of God.

Modal Metaphysics and the Existence of God

“…We can thus take both of these terms to be synonymous and continue using the latter. 7 For an explication of the notion of grounding within a theistic context, see (Sijuwade 2021b) and (Sijuwade 2021d). 8 For an extended unpacking of Swinburne's understanding of the nature of general or scientific explanation, see (Swinburne 2004) and (Sijuwade 2021d).…”

“…In the context of determining the correct grounds for 'theory choice', the justificatory basis on which an explanation is judged to be a correct terminus in explanation -that is, how probable it is that this explanation is a fundamental explanation of a particular entity -centres on the extent to which it has (or can achieve a 'trade-off' between) the specific theoretical (or explanatory) virtues of minimising commitments (at the fundamental level) and maximising explanation of the data at hand. More specifically, this theoretical aim is (plausibly) achieved by a candidate explanation fulfilling the following abductive criteria: 9 9 For the attentive reader, one will notice that the conceptualisation of the abductive criteria that is about to be provided is more fine-tuned and robust than that offered in (Sijuwade 2021c) and (Sijuwade 2021d) by it taking into account -and modifying at certain points -some helpful ideas concerning theory choice that have been proposed by Graham Oppy -and thus which are not to be found in the work of Swinburne. Thus, for a further helpful explanation of the importance of the 'trade-off' between minimising commitments and maximising explanation, see (Oppy, 2019, (i) The criterion of predictive power (ii) The criterion of background knowledge (iii) The criterion of scope (iv) The criterion of parsimony For (i): the criterion of predictive power, this criterion assesses whether the postulated explanation predicts the existence of the entity, when otherwise this event or entity would not be expected to have existed.…”

“…For a further explanation of the nature of abductive reasoning, and a comparison of this type of reasoning with that of deductive and inductive reasoning, see (Douven 2021). Furthermore, the argument that features in this article is to be read as an extension of two similar arguments for the existence of God based on the existence of the non-fundamental entities that fill up the layered structure of reality, and the instantiation of the grounding relation that connects the non-fundamental entities within this structure, both of which featured in (Sijuwade 2021c) and (Sijuwade 2021d).…”