Grounding: it’s (probably) all in the head

Miller, Kristie; Norton, James

doi:10.1007/s11098-016-0846-5

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…One notable exception is Thompson (manuscript), who explicitly aims to develop an anti‐realist approach to metaphysical explanation. Jonathan Shaheen (), and Miller and Norton (forthcoming), might also be interpreted as proposing anti‐realist views, or at any rate views that could be developed in that direction. Anti‐realism is also acknowledged as a possibility in a brief remark by Schaffer () to the effect that his relation of production can “in principle be relativized to one's practical interests or theoretical scheme” (p. 347).…”

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confidence: 99%

Constitutive Explanation

Dasgupta

2017

Philosophical Issues

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confidence: 99%

Constitutive Explanation

Dasgupta

2017

Philosophical Issues

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“…Hume (2008: §V), where causal inferences are supported by custom which "is the great guide of human life." Miller and Norton (2017) argue that grounding is "(probably) in the head" and are inclined (but not committed) to think that their argument provides reasons not to posit grounding relations. I am sympathetic to this view.…”

Section: Metaphysical Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metaphysical Explanations for Modal Normativists

Locke¹

2020

Metaphysics

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I expand modal normativism, a theory of metaphysical modality, to give a normativist account of metaphysical explanation. According to modal normativism, basic modal claims do not have a descriptive function, but instead have the normative function of enabling language users to express semantic rules that govern the use of ordinary non-modal vocabulary. However, a worry for modal normativism is that it doesn't keep up with all of the important and interesting metaphysics we can do by giving and evaluating metaphysical explanations. So, I advance modal normativism by arguing that metaphysical explanations also have a normative rather than descriptive function. In particular, non-causal explanatory claims have formal and semantic properties that make them expressively stricter than basic modal claims and so are better suited to express fine-grained aspects of semantic rules. A major payoff of my normativist account of metaphysical explanations is that it yields a plausible story about how we come to evaluate and know metaphysical explanations-we do this primarily by conceptual analysis. I also respond to a number of objections, including the objection that the epistemic payoffs of my view are not worth the metaphysical costs.

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“…This is, of course, not an argument against grounding-based formulations of structure, but it should be enough to permit us to proceed with describing some details of an alternative. (Resisting realism about grounding might provide further motivation to give an alternative account of structure; see Miller and Norton [2017], Dasgupta [2017], and Thompson [2018] for arguments against realism about grounding).…”

Section: The Structure Of Realitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Questions and Answers: Metaphysical Explanation and the Structure of Reality

Thompson¹

2019

J. of the Am. Philos. Assoc.

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This paper develops an account of metaphysical explanation according to which metaphysical explanations are answers to what-makes-it-the-case-that questions. On this view, metaphysical explanations are not to be considered entirely objective, but are subject to epistemic constraints imposed by the context in which a relevant question is asked. The resultant account of metaphysical explanation is developed independently of any particular views about grounding. Toward the end of the paper an application of the view is proposed that takes metaphysical explanations conceived in this way to characterize reality's structure. According to this proposal, reality's structure is partly constituted by a projection of our explanatory practices onto reality.

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Grounding: it’s (probably) all in the head

Cited by 28 publications

References 23 publications

Constitutive Explanation

Constitutive Explanation

Metaphysical Explanations for Modal Normativists

Questions and Answers: Metaphysical Explanation and the Structure of Reality

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