Setting the story straight: fictionalism about grounding

Abstract

This paper explores a middle way between realism and eliminativism about grounding. Grounding-talk is intelligible and useful, but it fails to pick out grounding relations that exist or obtain in reality. Instead, grounding-talk allows us to convey facts about what metaphysically explains what, and about the worldly dependence relations that give rise to those explanations.

No Grounds for Fictionalism

“…I have focused on Thompson's (2022) fictionalist proposal about grounding and shown that it is unmotivated. Perhaps there is another development of grounding fictionalism that will avoid my objections, but I cannot think of one.…”

“…Thanks to Thompson (2022), grounding fictionalism is now officially on the table. Thompson defends hermeneutic fictionalism on which sentences about grounding are actually used non-literally to convey claims about what metaphysically explains what.…”

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I argue that fictionalism about grounding is unmotivated, focusing on Naomi Thompson's (2022) recent proposal on which the utility of the grounding fiction lies in its facilitating communication about what metaphysically explains what. I show that, despite its apparent dialectical kinship with other metaphysical debates in which fictionalism has a healthy tradition, the grounding debate is different in two key respects.

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How to be an antirealist about metaphysical explanation

“…Extant antirealist accounts of grounding (e.g. Miller & Norton, 2017; Thompson, 2022) have as part of their motivation the idea that grounding is an explanatory relation, and that explanation should be understood as constrained along various epistemic, psychological, and pragmatic dimensions. Grounding‐first unionism might thus be a natural view for anybody who is already an antirealist about grounding.…”

“…7 Versions of antirealism about grounding are developed in Miller andNorton (2017, 2022) and in Thompson (2018Thompson ( , 2022.…”