Grounding, Understanding, and Explanation

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (4):791-815 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Starting with the slogan that understanding is a ‘knowledge of causes’, Stephen Grimm and John Greco have argued that understanding comes from a knowledge of dependence relations. Grounding is the trendiest dependence relation on the market, and if Grimm and Greco are correct, then instances of grounding should also give rise to understanding. In this paper, I will show that this prediction is correct – grounding does indeed generate understanding in just the way that Grimm and Greco anticipate. However, grounding examples of understanding also show that Grimm and Greco are not telling the full story when it comes to understanding. Understanding can only be generated by a particular subset of dependence relations – those dependence relations that are also explanatory. Grimm and Greco should thus appeal to a privileged class of dependence relations, relations like grounding that can also give rise to explanation.

Similar books and articles

Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation.Naomi Thompson - 2016 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (3):395-402.
Should explanation be a guide to ground?Alexander Skiles & Kelly Trogdon - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (12):4083-4098.
Grounding-mechanical explanation.Kelly Trogdon - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (6):1289-1309.
Understanding and the Norm of Explanation.John Turri - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (4):1171-1175.
Metaphysical Explanation by Constraint.Michael Bertrand - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (6):1325-1340.
The ground of ground, essence, and explanation.Michael Wallner - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 6):1257-1277.
Explanation.Martin Glazier - 2020 - In Michael J. Raven (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. London: pp. 121-132.
Metaphysically Opaque Grounding.Henrik Rydéhn - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (7):729-745.
Four Questions of Iterated Grounding.David Mark Kovacs - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (2):341-364.
Explaining understanding (or understanding explanation).Wesley Van Camp - 2014 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 4 (1):95-114.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-09-16

Downloads
364 (#50,336)

6 months
111 (#29,369)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Wes Siscoe
University of Notre Dame

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Monism: The Priority of the Whole.Jonathan Schaffer - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (1):31-76.
No Work for a Theory of Grounding.Jessica M. Wilson - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (5-6):535-579.
Grounding in the image of causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):49-100.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Knowledge and its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):200-201.

View all 64 references / Add more references