Kind-Dependent Grounding

In the present paper I focus, after a sketchy presentation of the contents of the papers making up this volume, on the proposals on how to extend the notion of rigidity to general terms presented in their contributions by Corine Besson, on the one hand, and Genoveva Martí and José Martínez, on the other. I argue that neither of these proposals is successful. As regards Besson’s proposal, it seems to me that it may seem plausible so long as one does not give a precise explanation of the way in which complex predicative expressions designate, but that the notion she defines becomes either trivial or irrelevant, according to the more specific explanation one accepts. Concerning the proposal by Martí and Martínez, I argue that their attempted defence of the view of rigidity as identity of designation from the charges of trivialization and overgeneralization also fails.

Synthese, 2021

I offer an account of fundamentality for facts in terms of metaphysical grounding. The account does justice to the idea that whether a fact is absolutely fundamental, and whether a fact is more fundamental than, or as fundamental as, another fact, are a matter of where in a grounding-induced hierarchy of kinds of facts these facts appear.

Many philosophers have recently been impressed by an argument to the effect that all grounding facts about “derivative entities”—e.g. the facts expressed by the (let us suppose) true sentences ‘the fact that Beijing is a concrete entity is grounded in the fact that its parts are concrete’ and ‘the fact that there are cities is grounded in the fact that p’, where ‘p’ is a suitable sentence couched in the language of particle physics—must themselves be grounded. This argument relies on a principle, Purity, which states that facts about derivative entities are non-fundamental. Purity is questionable. In this paper, I introduce a new argument—the argument from Settledness—for a similar conclusion but which does not rely on Purity. The conclusion of the new argument is that every “thick” grounding fact is grounded, where a grounding fact [F is grounded in G, H, …] is said to be thick when at least one of F, G, H, … is a fact—a condition that is automatically satisfied if grounding is factive. After introducing the argument, I compare it with the argument from Purity, and I assess its cogency relative to the relevant accounts of the connections between grounding and fundamentality that are available in the literature.

Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2017

This is part two of a two-part paper, in which we develop an axiomatic theory of the relation of partial ground. The main novelty of the paper is the of use of a binary ground predicate rather than an operator to formalize ground. This allows me to connect theories of partial ground with axiomatic theories of truth. In this part of the paper, we extend the base theory from the first part of the paper with hierarchically typed truth-predicates and principles about the interaction of partial ground and truth. We show that our theory is a proof-theoretically conservative extension of the ramified theory of positive truth up to 0 and thus is consistent. We argue that this theory provides a natural solution to Fine's " puzzle of ground " about the interaction of truth and ground. Finally, we show that if we drop the typing of our truth-predicate, we run into similar paradoxes as in the case of truth: we get ground-theoretical paradoxes of self-reference.

Philosophia, 2010

There is an assumption common in the philosophy of mind literature that kinds in our sciences—or causal kinds, at least—are individuated by the causal powers that objects have in virtue of the properties they instantiate. While this assumption might not be problematic by itself, some authors take the assumption to mean that falling under a kind and instantiating a property amount to the same thing. I call this assumption the “Property-Kind Individuation Principle”. A problem with this principle arises because there are cases where we can sort objects by their possession of common causal powers, and yet those objects do not intuitively form a causal kind. In this short note, I discuss why the Property-Kind Individuation Principle is thus not a warranted metaphysical assumption.

Unpublished, author's contact: jyh@ cs. cornell. edu, 1997

CiteSeerX - Document Details (Isaac Councill, Lee Giles): Predicative type theories are powerful tools for giving foundational interpretations of programming languages. Due to their explicit inductive construction, predicative type theories have multiple mathematical models that provide ...

Theoria, 2008

T h i s paper presents a one-sorted version of the simple theory of types with ' E ' as its sole primitive predicate. This system will be called SST while the many-sorted version of the simple theory of types which also has ' E ' as its only primitive predicate will be called ST.2 Because SST contains a partial formalization of the type concept, its axioms do not contain schematic type indices and are more similar to the axioms of the standard set theories than those of ST and QST-Quine's one-sorted translation of ST.3 Moreover, SST is easily modified to treat negative types; and while ST and QST can be translated into SST, metatheorems two and three of Section Four show that SST is not stronger (in a technical sense) than these systems. (These results also obtain when axioms of infinity are added to all three systems.)

2012

There has been some recent interest in a structural relation of metaphysical determination and dependence, one that corresponds to talk of "in virtue of" and "grounds". 1 This grounding relation structures the layers of reality by mapping the relations of dependence between entities. In what follows, I show at least one way that this grounding relation can be put to work. Namely, given a grounding relation, you have the resources to recover a relation of comparative naturalness, one suited to play certain theoretical roles akin to those devised by David Lewis in his "New Work for a Theory of Universals". 2 In what follows, I highlight some aspects of the naturalness package provided by Lewis ( §1), contesting one key element, and, then, in §2, draw a picture, starting with the grounding relation, that seems to provide an adequate alternative to this Lewisian package. Finally, in §3, I draw out some consequences of the system developed in §2, with particular focus on key similarities and differences from the package sketched in §1.

Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2019

I explore the logic of ground. I first develop a logic of weak ground. This logic strengthens the logic of weak ground presented by Fine in his ‘Guide to Ground.’ This logic, I argue, generates many plausible principles which Fine’s system leaves out. I then derive from this a logic of strict ground. I argue that there is a strong abductive case for adopting this logic. It’s elegant, parsimonious and explanatorily powerful. Yet, so I suggest, adopting it has important consequences. First, it means we should think of ground as a type of identity. Second, it means we should reject much of Fine’s logic of strict ground. I also show how the logic I develop connects to other systems in the literature. It is definitionally equivalent both to Angell’s logic of analytic containment and to Correia’s system G.