Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T10:46:51.584Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Questions and Answers: Metaphysical Explanation and the Structure of Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2019

NAOMI THOMPSON Open the ORCID record for NAOMI THOMPSON [Opens in a new window]
NAOMI THOMPSON*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON AND UNIVERSITY OF [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Metaphysical explanationstructureantirealismgrounding
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 98 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Thanks to Andrew Brenner, Darragh Byrne, Nicholas K. Jones, Brian McElwee, Donnchadh O'Conaill, Alexander Skiles, Alastair Wilson, Jessica Wilson, and to two helpful referees for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks too to audiences at Structure in Metaphysics at the University of Oxford in 2016, Grounding and Explanation at the University of Leeds in 2016, Metaphysical Explanation at the University of Gothenburg in 2016, GEM Colloquium, Collège de France in 2017, Metaphysical and Mathematical Explanations: Explanation, Grounding, Dependence, in Pavia, Italy, in 2017, and at a departmental seminar at Queen's University Belfast in 2017.

References

Achinstein, P. (1983) The Nature of Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Audi, P. (2012) ‘Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation’. Journal of Philosophy, 109, 685–711.Google Scholar
Bennett, K. (2017) Making Things Up. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chalmers, D. (2012) Constructing the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dasgupta, S. (2014) ‘On the Plurality of Grounds’. Philosopher's Imprint, 14, 1–28.Google Scholar
Dasgupta, S. (2017) ‘Constitutive Explanation’. Philosophical Issues, 27, 74–97.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (2012) ‘A Guide to Ground’. In Schnieder, B. and Correia, F. (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 37–80.Google Scholar
Hempel, C. (1965) Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Koslicki, K. (2012) ‘Varieties of Dependence’. In Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, B. (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 186–213.Google Scholar
Koslicki, K. (2015) ‘The Coarse-Grainedness of Grounding’. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 9, 306–44.Google Scholar
Kovacs, D. (2016) ‘Grounding and the Argument From Explanatoriness’ Philosophical Studies, 174, 2927–52.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1983) ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’. Austalasian Journal of Philosophy, 61, 343–77.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1984) ‘Putnam's Paradox’. Austalasian Journal of Philosophy, 62, 221–36.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986) On The Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Maurin, A.-S. (2018) ‘Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation: It's Complicated’. Philosophical Studies, doi: 10.1007/s11098-018-1080-0.Google Scholar
Miller, C., and Norton, J.. (2017) ‘Grounding: It's (probably) All in the Head’. Philosophical Studies, 174, 3059–81.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1981) Reason Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Raven, M. (2012) ‘In Defence of Ground’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 90, 687–701.Google Scholar
Raven, M. (2015) ‘Ground’. Philosophy Compass, 10, 322–33.Google Scholar
Raven, M. (2017) ‘New Work for a Theory of Ground’. Inquiry, 60, 625–55.Google Scholar
Rosen, G. (2010) ‘Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction’. In Hale, B. and Hoffman, A. (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 109–36.Google Scholar
Rosen, G. (2015) ‘Real Definition’. Analytic Philosophy, 56, 189–209.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2009) ‘On What Grounds What’. In Chalmers, D., Manley, D., and Wasserman, R. (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 347–83.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2012) ‘Grounding, Transitivity, and Contrastivity’. In Correia, F. and Schnieder, B. (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 122–38.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2016) ‘Grounding in the Image of Causation’. Philosophical Studies, 173, 49–100.Google Scholar
Shapiro, S. (1997) Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sider, T. (2011) Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Strevens, M. (2008) Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Strevens, M. (2013) ‘No Understanding Without Explanation’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 44, 510–15.Google Scholar
Taylor, B. (1993) ‘On Natural Properties in Metaphysics’. Mind, 102, 81–100.Google Scholar
Thompson, N. (2016) ‘Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 116, 395–402.Google Scholar
Thompson, N. (2018) ‘Irrealism about Grounding’. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 82, 23–44.Google Scholar
Trogdon, K. (2013) ‘An Introduction to Grounding’. In Hoeltje, M., Schnieder, B., and Steinberg, A. (eds.), Varieties of Dependence (Munich: Philosophia Verlag), 97–122.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. (1980) The Scientific Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, J. (2014) ‘No Work for a Theory of Grounding’. Inquiry, 57, 1–45.Google Scholar