The Unity of Dependence

2010

This essay is a plea for ideological toleration. Philosophers are right to be fussy about the words they use, especially in metaphysics where bad vocabulary has been a source of grief down through the ages. But they can sometimes be too fussy, dismissing as 'unintelligible'or 'obscure'certain forms of language that are perfectly meaningful by ordinary standards and which may be of some real use.

In O. Bueno & S. Shalkowski, The Routledge Handbook of Modality, New York: Routledge, 2021

Ontological dependence and grounding are two important items in the metaphysician’s toolbox: both notions can be used to formulate important philosophical claims, and to define other notions that play a central role in philosophical theorising. Philosophical inquiry about ontological dependence and (especially) grounding has been very lively over the past few years, making it difficult to write a short review article on any of them, let alone a short review article on both. I try to reach a good compromise between a discussion of each notion taken separately and a discussion of how they relate to one another. I begin by introducing the notions and discussing a number of their connections with modality (sections 1 and 2), starting with grounding for systematic reasons (some important concepts of ontological dependence are defined in terms of grounding). I then further the discussion of how the notions are connected to each other, by arguing against the view that (partial) grounding is equivalent to (the converse of) ontological dependence between facts (section 3). Finally, I discuss their respective roles in the theory of fundamentality (section 4).

Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 1995

Most philosophers would agree that dependence relations are a key element in any metaphysical system. They agree on this in spite of the fact that they often do not agree on the question of what depends on what: do minds depend on brains, or vice versa? accidents on substances? creatures on God? Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the importance of dependence relations, however, little attention has been paid to the question of what dependence actually consists in; usually, some answer to this question is taken for granted, and consideration is given only to the subsequent questions of which things depend on which. The present paper discusses what dependence is, not for its own sake, but rather as a case study concerning the question of form in metaphysical inquiry. Distinguishing logical from metaphysical form, one can say that certain difficulties in twentieth-century theories of dependence can be traced to the error of trying to answer a metaphysical question by making use of logical form instead of metaphysical form. The paper will proceed in three steps.

2015

The subjects of this thesis are (as indicated by the title) truth, grounding and dependence. The thesis consists of an introduction and five free-standing essays. The purpose of the introduction is not merely to summarize the papers, but to provide a general background to the discussions in the essays. The introduction is divided into four chapters, each of which splits into a number of sections and/or subsections. Chapter 1. concerns the notion of ontological dependence. I start by making a distinction between two different types of ontological dependence and discuss how well these notions deal with a number of philosophical issues. I then go on to consider the role that ontological dependence plays in hierarchies of natural kinds. In Chapter 2., I discuss a related notion, namely that of grounding. I sketch the theoretical framework by specifying the logical form of grounding statements and a set of structural principles that govern grounding. The chapter ends with a brief discuss...

Philosophy Compass, 2008

‘Ontological dependence’ is a term of philosophical jargon which stands for a rich family of properties and relations, often taken to be among the most fundamental ontological properties and relations. Notions of ontological dependence are usually thought of as ‘carving reality at its ontological joints’, and as marking certain forms of ontological ‘non-self-sufficiency’. The use of notions of dependence goes back as far as Aristotle's characterization of substances, and these notions are still widely used to characterize other concepts and to formulate metaphysical claims. This paper first gives an overview of the varieties of these notions, and then discusses some of their main applications.

dependence-history-biblio.pdf, 2022

Annotated bibliography on the history of ontological dependence, metaphysical dependence and ontological priority

Dialectica (Forthcoming)

Schnieder (2020) argues, against Orilia (2009) and Koslicki (2013), that claims of existential grounding of the form "the fact that x exists is grounded in the fact that y is F" cannot be grounded in claims of existential dependence of the form "x existentially depends on y" and defends the view that the latter claims are grounded, via a definition of existential dependence, in the former. I will firstly argue that Schnieder's main point against the claim that existential grounding is grounded in existential dependence is not conclusive; I will then put forward a proposal concerning how claims of existential grounding can be grounded in claims of existential dependence. The proposal is a third way between those of Schnieder and Orilia/Koslicki which, although accepting the former's definition of existential dependence in terms of grounding, makes room for the latter's idea that existential dependence does the real job in structuring reality.

Erkenntnis, 2014

This paper is about metaphysical 'infinitism', the view that there are, or could be, infinite chains of ontological dependence. Its main aim is to show that, contrary to widespread opinion, metaphysical infinitism is a coherent position. On the basis of this, it is then additionally argued that metaphysical infinitism need not fare worse than the more canonical 'foundationalist' alternatives when it comes to formulating metaphysical explanations. In the course of the discussion, a rather unexplored parallel with the debate concerning infinitism about justification is suggested. ''Just as the epistemic foundationalist thinks all warrant must originate in basic warrant and rejects limitless chains of warrant and circular warrant, so the

grounding-biblio-pdf, 2022

I argue against a principle that is widely taken to govern metaphysical explanation. This is the principle that no necessary facts can, on their own, explain a contingent fact. I then show how this result makes available a response to a longstanding objection to the Principle of Sufficient Reason-the objection that the Principle of Sufficient Reason entails that the world could not have been otherwise (i.e. that all facts are necessary)." 9.