Metaphysically explanatory unification

Kovacs, David

doi:10.1007/s11098-019-01279-z

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Schaffer (2017: 308), who offers a causal model in other work, expresses concern that DN accounts of metaphysical explanation cannot adequately account for the asymmetry of metaphysical explanation. Kovacs (2019) expresses skepticism towards the idea that metaphysical explanations are "backed" and instead gives an account in terms of unification. All of these approaches have merits and drawbacks, which I will not attempt to evaluate here.…”

Section: Metaphysical Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, I think that resolving disputes over particular causal explanatory claims, e.g., whether smoking causes cancer, are much easier to resolve than disputes over particular grounding explanatory claims, e.g., whether the nature of an ordinary object is grounded in its function, history, arrangement of parts, or material composition, especially if we treat metaphysical grounding and explanation as non-conceptual. 22 Schaffer (2009Schaffer ( , 2016Schaffer ( , 2017, Kment (2006Kment ( , 2014, Sider (2011), Rosen (2015Rosen ( , 2017, Bennett (2018), Kovacs (2019) and many others seem to endorse either substantive claims or substantive features in general, as well as rely on these claims or features in their accounts of metaphysical explanation. Fine (2001Fine ( , 2012 and Dasgupta (2014Dasgupta ( , 2017 seem to be less committal, though they seem to be committed to metaphysical explanations being non-conceptual.…”

Section: Metaphysical Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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Section: Metaphysical Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Metaphysical Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metaphysical Explanations for Modal Normativists

Locke¹

2020

Metaphysics

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“…Influenced by Hempel and Oppenheim's Deductive‐Nomological account, Wilsch () defends a DN model of metaphysical explanation, according to which explanations are deductively valid arguments with no non‐redundant premises, at least one of which is a law of metaphysics . In my own work (Kovacs , 2019) I take inspiration from Kitcher () and defend a unificationist account, according to which metaphysical explanation is a holistic matter: an argument is explanatory just in case it instantiates an argument pattern that belongs to the most unified set of arguments, where the extent of unification is settled by a weighted set of criteria that (simplifying a bit) balance strength, simplicity and naturalness. And there may well be further, as of yet unoccupied, positions in logical space that also construe metaphysical explanations as arguments; the literature on scientific explanation witnessed countless variations and attempted improvements on the DN model, and many of these may be at least as defensible in the metaphysical as in the scientific realm.…”

Section: The Question Of Explaining Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… I first introduced this terminology in Kovacs . Views of metaphysical explanation that explicitly decline to assign any role to “underlying” or “backing” relations have been defended by Shaheen (), Kovacs (, 2018, 2019) and Miller and Norton (, 2019) and seriously considered by Thompson () and Dasgupta (). …”

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confidence: 99%

Four Questions of Iterated Grounding

Kovacs

2019

Philos Phenomenol Research

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The Question of Iterated Grounding (QIG) asks what grounds the grounding facts. Although the question received a lot of attention in the past few years, it is usually discussed independently of another important issue: the connection between metaphysical explanation and the relation or relations that supposedly "back" it. I will show that once we get clear on the distinction between metaphysical explanation and the relation(s) backing it, we can distinguish no fewer than four questions lumped under QIG. I will also argue that given some plausible assumptions about what it would take for a relation to back metaphysical explanation, many salient views about grounding allow us to give "easy" answers to these questions-easy in the sense that we can straightforwardly derive them from the respective conception of grounding without getting into the sorts of complexities that typically inform answers to QIG. The paper's main upshot is that we cannot expect to make much progress on QIG without first addressing the difficult issue of how exactly grounding is related to metaphysical explanation.

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“…13 For unificationism about scientific explanation, see Friedman (1974) and Kitcher (1989); and for applications to metaphysical explanation, see Kovacs (2020) and Baron and Norton (2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

There Is No Distinctively Semantic Circularity Objection to Humean Laws

Kovacs

2021

Can. J. of Philosophy

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Humeans identify the laws of nature with universal generalizations that systematize rather than govern the particular matters of fact. Humeanism is frequently accused of circularity: laws explain their instances, but Humean laws are, in turn, grounded by those instances. Unfortunately, this argument trades on controversial assumptions about grounding and explanation that Humeans routinely reject. However, recently an ostensibly semantic circularity objection has been offered, which seeks to avoid reading such assumptions into the Humean view. This paper argues that the new semantic version tacitly relies on the familiar metaphysical one and, therefore, it ultimately brings nothing new to the table.

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Metaphysically explanatory unification

Cited by 23 publications

References 56 publications

Metaphysical Explanations for Modal Normativists

Metaphysical Explanations for Modal Normativists

Four Questions of Iterated Grounding

There Is No Distinctively Semantic Circularity Objection to Humean Laws

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