No Work for Fundamental Facts

Philosophical Quarterly 73 (4):983-1003 (2023)
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Abstract

Metaphysical foundationalists argue that without fundamental facts, we cannot explain why there exist any dependent facts at all. Thus, metaphysical infinitism, the view that chains of ground can descend indefinitely without ever terminating in a level of fundamental facts, allegedly exhibits a kind of explanatory failure. I examine this argument and conclude that foundationalists have failed to show that infinitism exhibits explanatory failure. I argue that explaining the existence of dependent facts in terms of further dependent facts ad infinitum is unproblematic by arguing for the plausibility of a ground-theoretic version of the Hume-Edwards Principle, which states that if each fact in a plurality of facts has a ground, then the plurality itself has a ground.

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Thomas Oberle
University of Alberta

Citations of this work

Fundamentality.Tuomas E. Tahko - 2023 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Monism: The Priority of the Whole.Jonathan Schaffer - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (1):31-76.
Grounding: Toward a Theory of the I n-Virtue-Of Relation.Paul Audi - 2012 - Journal of Philosophy 109 (12):685-711.
Ground.Michael J. Raven - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (5):322-333.
On the Plurality of Grounds.Shamik Dasgupta - 2014 - Philosophers' Imprint 14.

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