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  1. Il contributo della metafisica analitica all'ontologia giuridica: Brian Epstein e Jonathan Schaffer.Novelli Claudio - 2023 - Ragion Pratica: Rivista semestrale 60 (1):317-341.
    The essay analyses the contribution of contemporary analytical metaphysics to socialand legal ontology. In particular, the focus is on two authors: Brian Epstein and JonathanSchaffer. I discuss Epstein’s use of analytical metaphysics notions to explain the structureof social kinds and facts, providing a unique model based on three relations: grounding,anchoring, and framing (GAF).This model offers a new reading of the origin and nature ofsocial entities and brings innovative arguments to the debate in legal ontology. Schaffer’sviews represent a competing thesis, which (...)
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  2. Degrees of Reality.Damian Aleksiev - 2024 - In Yannic Kappes, Asya Passinsky, Julio De Rizzo & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Facets of Reality — Contemporary Debates. Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 20-30.
    This essay outlines a hierarchical framework of Reality that allows for degrees of Reality. I use Reality (with a capital “R”) to designate reality in a primitive, metaphysical sense. Reality, grounding, and essence are the key elements of the framework presented here. I assume that Reality must have a fundamental level and all fundamental phenomena must be Real. Moreover, I postulate that everything non-fundamental is ultimately grounded in the fundamental Real. But what about the Reality of the non-fundamental? I argue (...)
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  3. História e memória da organização do conhecimento no Brasil: percursos e releituras.Tatiana de Almeida & Gustavo Saldanha (eds.) - 2021 - Rio de Janeiro, Brasile:
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  4. Aristotelian universals, strong immanence, and construction.Damiano Costa & Alessandro Giordani - 2024 - Synthese 203 (2):1-15.
    The Aristotelian view of universals, according to which each universal generically depends for its existence on its instantiations, has recently come under attack by a series of ground-theoretic arguments. The last such arguments, presented by Raven, promises to offer several significant improvements over its predecessors, such as avoiding commitment to the transitivity of ground and offering new reasons for the metaphysical priority of universals over their instantiations. In this paper, we argue that Raven's argument does not effectively avoid said commitment (...)
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  5. From Multilevel Explanation to Downward Causation.David Yates - 2024 - In Alastair Wilson & Katie Robertson (eds.), Levels of Explanation. Oxford University Press.
    The causal closure of the physical poses a familiar causal exclusion problem for the special sciences that stems from the idea that if closure is true, then fundamental physical properties do all the causal work involved in bringing about physical effects. In this paper I aim to show that the strongest causal closure principle that is not ruled out by some simple physics in fact allows for a certain kind of downward causation, which in turn makes room for robust special (...)
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  6. Janus-Faced Grounding.Christopher Frugé - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10.
    A common view in the metaphysics of ground is that all grounding facts are grounded. This generates an infinite regress of ever more grounding of grounding facts, but most grounding theorists take the regress to be harmless. However, in this paper, I argue that the regress is in fact vicious, therefore some grounding facts are ungrounded. Since the regress appears to fall out of two plausible principles of fundamentality, I offer a new interpretation of them that allows for ungrounded grounding (...)
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  7. Agential Possibilities.Christian List - 2023 - Possibility Studies and Society.
    We ordinarily think that we human beings have agency: we have control over our choices and make a difference to our environments. Yet it is not obvious how agency can fit into a physical world that is governed by exceptionless laws of nature. In particular, it is unclear how agency is possible if those laws are deterministic and the universe functions like a mechanical clockwork. In this short paper, I first explain the apparent conflict between agency and physical determinism (referring (...)
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  8. Determination from Above.Kenneth Silver - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):237-251.
    There are many historical concerns about freedom that have come to be deemphasized in the free will literature itself—for instance, worries around the tyranny of government or the alienation of capitalism. It is hard to see how the current free will literature respects these, or indeed how they could even find expression. This paper seeks to show how these and other concerns can be reintegrated into the debate by appealing to a levels ontology. Recently, Christian List and others have considered (...)
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  9. Next Best Thing—What Can Quantum Mechanics Tell Us About the Fundamental Ontology of the World?Bixin Guo - manuscript
    Many discussions in the metaphysics and philosophy of physics literature aim to use physics as a guide to elucidate what the world really, fundamentally is like. However, we don’t yet have a confirmed fundamental theory of physics—what’s the next best thing we can possibly say about the fundamental that is properly informed by our best theories of physics? This paper offers a starting point to address this question. It focuses on the literature on the ontology of quantum mechanics, where the (...)
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  10. La fundamentación no es una medida adecuada de la complejidad física.Carlos Romero - 2024 - Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso (25):91-111.
    Después de introducir el artículo (§1), repasaré los aspectos más generales y centrales de la literatura sobre la fundamentación (§2); esta tarea me parece valiosa ya que no existen revisiones generales y actualizadas en español sobre el tema. Después, argumentaré que la fundamentación no es una medida de complejidad física, y que, sin un vínculo necesario con la complejidad, quedan pocas razones para pensar que la fundamentación une a los diferentes estratos de la realidad física, que es una de las (...)
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  11. A Dormitive Virtue Puzzle.Elanor Taylor - 2024 - In Alastair Wilson & Katie Robertson (eds.), Levels of Explanation. Oxford University Press.
    In Molière’s comedy The Imaginary Invalid a doctor “explains” that opium reliably induces sleep because it has a “dormitive virtue.” Molière intended this to be a satirical play on the use of opaque scholastic concepts in medicine, and since then the phrase “dormitive virtue” has become a byword for explanatory failure. However, contemporary work on the metaphysics of grounding and dispositions appears to permit explanations with a strikingly similar structure. In this paper I explore competing verdicts on dormitive virtue explanation, (...)
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  12. Functionalism, Reductionism, and Levels of Reality.Lorenzo Lorenzetti - 2023 - Philosophy of Science:1-26.
    I consider a problem for functional reductionism, based on the following tension. Say that b is functionally reduced to a. On the one hand, a and b turn out to be identical, and identity is a symmetric relation. On the other hand, functional reductionism implies that a and b are asymmetrically related: if b is functionally reduced to a, then a is not functionally reduced to b. Thus, we ask: how can a and b be asymmetrically related if they are (...)
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  13. Varieties of Grounding.Richardson Kevin - 2020 - In Michael J. Raven (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. New York: Routledge. pp. 194-208.
    Is metaphysical grounding One or Many? If you think grounding is one, you are a monist; there is one (or one fundamental) kind of grounding. If you think grounding is Many, you are a pluralist; there are multiple (or multiple equally fundamental) kinds of grounding. This essay surveys the ways in which one could be a pluralist about grounding.
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  14. The Ups and Downs of Mechanism Realism: Functions, Levels, and Crosscutting Hierarchies.Joe Dewhurst & Alistair M. C. Isaac - 2021 - Erkenntnis 88 (3):1035-1057.
    Mechanism realists assert the existence of mechanisms as objective structures in the world, but their exact metaphysical commitments are unclear. We introduce Local Hierarchy Realism (LHR) as a substantive and plausible form of mechanism realism. The limits of LHR reveal a deep tension between two aspects of mechanists’ explanatory strategy. Functional decomposition identifies locally relevant entities and activities, while these same entities and activities are also embedded in a nested hierarchy of levels. In principle, a functional decomposition may identify entities (...)
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  15. Levels of information and library and information science as a science of mentefacts.Claudio Gnoli - 2019 - Information Research 24 (4).
    Introduction. This article recosiders some basic notions in library and information science, including those of work, knowledge organization system, information and library and information science itself, in light of the theory of levels of reality. Method. This theory is briefly outlined, especially in its version by Nicolai Hartmann, which considers ideal being, matter, life, mind and spirit (culture) as major levels, and analyzes spirit into personal spirit, objective (social) spirit and objectivated (intellectual) spirit. Objectivated spirit has been further analyzed into (...)
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  16. Levels of reality as a fertile ontological model.Claudio Gnoli - 2021 - In Tatiana de Almeida & Gustavo Saldanha (eds.), História e memória da organização do conhecimento no Brasil: percursos e releituras. Rio de Janeiro, Brasile: pp. 181-199.
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  17. Functionalising the wavefunction.Lorenzo Lorenzetti - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 96 (C):141-153.
    Functionalism is the view that being x is to play the role of x. This paper defends a functionalist account of three-dimensional entities in the context of Wave Function Realism (WFR), that can explain in detail how we can recover three-dimensional entities out of the wavefunction. In particular, the essay advocates for a novel version of WFR in terms of a functional reductionist approach in the style of David Lewis. This account entails reduction of the upper entities to the bottom (...)
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  18. Lightweight and Heavyweight Anti-physicalism.Damian Aleksiev - 2022 - Synthese 200 (112):1-23.
    I define two metaphysical positions that anti-physicalists can take in response to Jonathan Schaffer’s ground functionalism. Ground functionalism is a version of physicalism where explanatory gaps are everywhere. If ground functionalism is true, arguments against physicalism based on the explanatory gap between the physical and experiential facts fail. In response, first, I argue that some anti-physicalists are already safe from Schaffer’s challenge. These anti-physicalists reject an underlying assumption of ground functionalism: the assumption that macrophysical entities are something over and above (...)
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  19. Why Astrology Works. And Why It Doesn't.Ilexa Yardley - 2022 - Https://Medium.Com/the-Circular-Theory.
    Why quantum physics works. (Why quantum philosophy works.) And why it doesn’t. It’s all about fusion guitar. You could call it 'philosophical (and physical) fusion.' .
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  20. Fundamentality and Levels in Everettian Quantum Mechanics.Alastair Wilson - 2022 - In Valia Allori (ed.), Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality: Naturalizing Quantum Theory between Scientific Realism and Ontological Indeterminacy. Cham: Springer.
    Distinctions in fundamentality between different levels of description are central to the viability of contemporary decoherence-based Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM). This approach to quantum theory characteristically combines a determinate fundamental reality (one universal wave function) with an indeterminate emergent reality (multiple decoherent worlds). In this chapter I explore how the Everettian appeal to fundamentality and emergence can be understood within existing metaphysical frameworks, identify grounding and concept fundamentality as promising theoretical tools, and use them to characterize a system of explanatory (...)
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  21. Causal Exclusion and Ontic Vagueness.Kenneth Silver - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (1):56-69.
    The Causal Exclusion Problem is raised in many domains, including in the metaphysics of macroscopic objects. If there is a complete explanation of macroscopic effects in terms of the microscopic entities that compose macroscopic objects, then the efficacy of the macroscopic will be threatened with exclusion. I argue that we can avoid the problem if we accept that macroscopic objects are ontically vague. Then, it is indeterminate which collection of microscopic entities compose them, and so information about microscopic entities is (...)
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  22. New twists on the great chain of being: Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest (eds): Reality and its structure. Essays in fundamentality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 324 pp, £50 HB. [REVIEW]Pierre Saint-Germier - 2020 - Metascience 29 (2):345-349.
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  23. An argument against Aristotelian universals.Damiano Costa - 2021 - Synthese 198 (5):4331-4338.
    I provide an argument against the Aristotelian view of universals, according to which universals depend for their existence on their exemplifiers. The argument consists in a set of five jointly inconsistent assumptions. As such, the argument can be used to argue in favour of other conclusions, such as that exemplification is no relation or that plausible principles concerning ontological dependence or grounding do not hold.
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  24. Connectionism and interlevel relations.William Bechtel - 1988 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11 (1):24-25.
  25. Causal Pluralism Without Levels: Comments on Humphreys.James Bohman - 1995 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 34 (S1):115-127.
  26. (1 other version)Whether mentality is "higher-level".Robert Francescotti - 2002 - Philosophical Inquiry 24 (3-4):65-76.
Theories of Levels
  1. The disappearing agent as an exclusion problem.Johannes Himmelreich - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (6):1321-1347.
    The disappearing agent problem is an argument in the metaphysics of agency. Proponents of the agent-causal approach argue that the rival event-causal approach fails to account for the fact that an agent is active. This paper examines an analogy between this disappearing agent problem and the exclusion problem in the metaphysics of mind. I develop the analogy between these two problems and survey existing solutions. I suggest that some solutions that have received significant attention in response to the exclusion problem (...)
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  2. An Informational Approach to Emergence.Claudio Gnoli - 2024 - Foundations of Science (2).
    Emergence can be described as a relationship between entities at different levels of organization, that looks especially puzzling at the transitions between the major levels of matter, life, cognition and culture. Indeed, each major level is dependent on the lower one not just for its constituents, but in some more formal way. A passage by François Jacob suggests that all such evolutionary transitions are associated with the appearance of some form of memory–genetic, neural or linguistic respectively. This implies that they (...)
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  3. How to be an antirealist about metaphysical explanation.Naomi Thompson - 2023 - Ratio 36 (4):260-273.
    Antirealism about metaphysical explanation is relatively underexplored. This paper maps out the territory for the antirealist, explaining what it would take to be an antirealist given various different conceptions of metaphysical explanation, and of the relationship between metaphysical explanation and grounding.
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  4. Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt (Eds.): Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences: MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2021, 336 pp., $60.000 (paperback), ISBN 9780262045339. [REVIEW]Ingo Brigandt - 2023 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 54 (2):353-356.
  5. Fundamental Things: Theory and Applications of Grounding.Louis deRosset - 2023 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    The scientific successes of the last 400 years strongly suggest a view on which things are organized into layers, with phenomena in higher layers dependent on and determined by what goes on below. Philosophers have recently explored the idea that we can make sense of this idea by appeal to a relation called grounding. This book develops the rudiments of a theory of grounding, and applies that theory to questions of independent interest. The theorizing consists in saying in more detail (...)
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  6. Non‐cognitivism about Metaphysical explanation.Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2022 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (2):1-20.
    This article introduces a non‐cognitivist account of metaphysical explanation according to which the core function of judgements of the form ⌜x because y⌝ is not to state truth‐apt beliefs. Instead, their core function is to express attitudes of commitment to, and recommendation of the acceptance of certain norms governing interventional conduct at contexts.
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  7. Non‐cognitivism about Metaphysical explanation.Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2022 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (2):1-20.
    This article introduces a non‐cognitivist account of metaphysical explanation according to which the core function of judgements of the form ⌜x because y⌝ is not to state truth‐apt beliefs. Instead, their core function is to express attitudes of commitment to, and recommendation of the acceptance of certain norms governing interventional conduct at contexts.
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  8. Non‐cognitivism about Metaphysical explanation.Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2022 - Analytic Philosophy 64 (2):1-20.
    This article introduces a non‐cognitivist account of metaphysical explanation according to which the core function of judgements of the form ⌜x because y⌝ is not to state truth‐apt beliefs. Instead, their core function is to express attitudes of commitment to, and recommendation of the acceptance of certain norms governing interventional conduct at contexts.
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  9. Levels of Description and Levels of Reality: A General Framework.Christian List - 2024 - In Alastair Wilson & Katie Robertson (eds.), Levels of Explanation. Oxford University Press.
    This expository paper presents a general framework for representing levels and inter-level relations. The framework is intended to capture both epistemic and ontological notions of levels and to clarify the sense in which levels of explanation might or might not be related to a levelled ontology. The framework also allows us to study and compare different kinds of inter-level relations, especially supervenience and reduction but also grounding and mereological constitution. This, in turn, enables us to explore questions such as whether (...)
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  10. The naturalistic case for free will.Christian List - 2022 - In Meir Hemmo, Stavros Ioannidis, Orly Shenker & Gal Vishne (eds.), Levels of Reality in Science and Philosophy: Re-Examining the Multi-Level Structure of Reality. Springer.
    The aim of this expository paper is to give an informal overview of a plausible naturalistic case for free will. I will describe what I take to be the main naturalistically motivated challenges for free will and respond to them by presenting an indispensability argument for free will. The argument supports the reality of free will as an emergent higher-level phenomenon. I will also explain why the resulting picture of free will does not conflict with the possibility that the fundamental (...)
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  11. Special-science counterfactuals.Christian List - 2022 - The Monist 105 (2):194–213.
    On the standard analysis, a counterfactual conditional such as “If P had been the case, then Q would have been the case” is true in the actual world if, in all nearest possible worlds in which its antecedent (P) is true, its consequent (Q) is also true. Despite its elegance, this analysis faces a difficulty if the laws of nature are deterministic. Then the antecedent could not have been true, given prior conditions. So, it is unclear what the relevant “nearest (...)
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  12. Top-Down Causation Without Levels.Jan Voosholz - 2021 - In Jan Voosholz & Markus Gabriel (eds.), Top-Down Causation and Emergence. Cham: Springer Verlag. pp. 269-296.
    The paper addresses a question concerning George Ellis’s theory of top-down causation by considering a challenge to the “level-picture of nature” which he employs as a foundational element in his theory. According to the level-picture, nature is ordered by distinct and finitely many levels, each characterised by its own types of entities, relations, laws and principles of behavior, and causal relations to their respective neighbouring top- and bottom-level. The branching hierarchy that results from this picture enables Ellis to build his (...)
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  13. Against Representational Levels.Nicholas K. Jones - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):140-157.
    Some views articulate reality's hierarchical structure using relations from the fundamental to representations of reality. Other views instead use relations from the fundamental to constituents of non-representational reality. This paper argues against the first kind of view.
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  14. Review of Physicalism Deconstructed: Levels of Reality and the Mind-Body Problem, by Kevin Morris. [REVIEW]Jessica M. Wilson - 2020 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 1.
    Morris’s book is a valuable contribution. For the reasons below, I don’t think his case against NRP succeeds, and his version of EP faces a serious difficulty. Even so, this is an admirably clear, subtle, and well-informed brief, and philosophers interested in the structure of natural reality have much to gain from Morris’s insightful discussion and argumentation.
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  15. Metaphysical Emergence.Jessica M. Wilson - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to (...)
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  16. Unity of Science.Tuomas E. Tahko - 2021 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the disunity of science are the new norm, and higher-level natural kinds and special science laws are considered to have an important role in scientific practice. What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? How (...)
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  17. Quantum Considerations in the Metaphysics of Levels.Ryan Miller - 2025 - Dissertation, Université de Genève
    Amie Thomasson challenges advocates of layered conceptions of reality to explain “how layers are distinguished” and “what holds them together” by “examining the world” (2014). One strategy for answering such questions is mereological, treating inter-layer relations as parthood relations, where layers exist whenever composition does, and the number of layers will be equivalent to the number of answers to Peter Van Inwagen’s Special Composition Question, while answers to his General Composition Question explain what holds the layers together (1987). Various answers (...)
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  18. (1 other version)The Levels of Scientific Disciplines.Samuel Elgin - manuscript
    It is the aim of this paper to develop and defend an interpretation of level of scientific discipline within the truth-maker framework. In particular, I exploit the mereological relation of proper parthood, which is integral to truth-maker semantics, in order to provide an account of scientific level.
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  19. Is Building Built?Naomi Thompson - 2019 - Analysis 79 (2):315-327.
    Karen Bennett’s Making Things Up argues that talk of generation and construction, giving rise to, and getting one thing out of another are to be understood in terms of building. Building-talk is commonplace if not ubiquitous in philosophy, and so building is one of the most important philosophical notions. Making Things Up offers a refreshing perspective on the debate about structure and fundamentality. Whilst Bennett of course engages with the recent literature, she sets things up in her own terms, and (...)
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  20. No Work for a Theory of Grounding.Jessica M. Wilson - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (5-6):535-579.
    It has recently been suggested that a distinctive metaphysical relation— ‘Grounding’—is ultimately at issue in contexts in which some goings-on are said to hold ‘in virtue of’’, be ‘metaphysically dependent on’, or be ‘nothing over and above’ some others. Grounding is supposed to do good work in illuminating metaphysical dependence. I argue that Grounding is also unsuited to do this work. To start, Grounding alone cannot do this work, for bare claims of Grounding leave open such basic questions as whether (...)
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  21. Ditching Dependence and Determination: Or, How to Wear the Crazy Trousers.Michael Duncan, Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2021 - Synthese 198 (1):395–418.
    This paper defends Flatland—the view that there exist neither determination nor dependence relations, and that everything is therefore fundamental—from the objection from explanatory inefficacy. According to that objection, Flatland is unattractive because it is unable to explain either the appearance as of there being determination relations, or the appearance as of there being dependence relations. We show how the Flatlander can meet the first challenge by offering four strategies—reducing, eliminating, untangling and omnizing—which, jointly, explain the appearance as of there being (...)
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  22. Mechanistic Levels, Reduction, and Emergence.Mark Povich & Carl F. Craver - 2017 - In Stuart Glennan & Phyllis McKay Illari (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy. Routledge. pp. 185-97.
    We sketch the mechanistic approach to levels, contrast it with other senses of “level,” and explore some of its metaphysical implications. This perspective allows us to articulate what it means for things to be at different levels, to distinguish mechanistic levels from realization relations, and to describe the structure of multilevel explanations, the evidence by which they are evaluated, and the scientific unity that results from them. This approach is not intended to solve all metaphysical problems surrounding physicalism. Yet it (...)
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  23. Natural Kinds and Crosscutting Categories.Muhammad Ali Khalidi - 1998 - Journal of Philosophy 95 (1):33.
    There are many ways of construing the claim that some categories are more “natural" than others. One can ask whether a system of categories is innate or acquired by learning, whether it pertains to a natural phenomenon or to a social institution, whether it is lexicalized in natural language or requires a compound linguistic expression. This renders suspect any univocal answer to this question in any particular case. Yet another question one can ask, which some authors take to have a (...)
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  24. From being ontologically serious to serious ontology.Michael Esfeld - 2006 - In John Heil: symposium on his ontological point of view. New Brunswick, NJ: Ontos. pp. 191--206.
    The paper first argues that if one takes current fundamental physics seriously, one gets to a metaphysics of events and relations in contrast to substances and intrinsic properties. Against that background, the paper discusses Heil’s theory of properties being both categorical and dispositional and his rejection of levels of being. I contrast these views with a Humean metaphysics. My concluding claim is that Heil’s account of properties opens up the perspective of a conservative reductionism, which avoids the common reservations against (...)
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