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Kind-Dependent Grounding
Analytic Philosophy ( IF 0.6 ) Pub Date : 2018-09-01 , DOI: 10.1111/phib.12134
Alex Moran 1
Affiliation  

Are grounding claims fully general in character? If a is F in virtue of being G, does it follow that anything that’s G has to be F for that reason? According to the thesis of Weak Formality, the answer is ‘yes’. In this paper, however, I argue that there is philosophical utility in rejecting this thesis. More exactly, I argue that two outstanding problems in contemporary metaphysics can be dealt with if we maintain that there can be cases of what I will refer to here as ‘kind-dependent grounding’, and, moreover, that once we allow for the possibility of such cases (in order to solve these problems), we must also hold that Weak Formality is false. The paper turns crucially on two main ideas, namely (i) that each object belongs to some fundamental kind, which can determine certain of the properties that it can have, and (ii) that grounding relations are able to hold conditionally. As we will see, in light of these two ideas we will be able to make sense of the notion of kind-dependent grounding that is central to this paper, and as a result solve two important outstanding metaphysical puzzles. If somebody claims of something named or unnamed that it moves, or runs or is white, he is liable to be asked the question by which Aristotle sought to define the category of substance: What is it that moves (or runs or is white)? Perhaps one who makes the claim that something moves does not need to know the answer to this question in order to enter his claim. It is not hard to envisage circumstances in which he can know that it moves without knowing what the thing is. Yet it seems certain...that, for each thing that satisfies a predicate such as ‘moves’, ‘runs’ or ‘white’, there must exist some...kind to which the item belongs and by reference to which the ‘what is it’ question could be answered. — Wiggins, D. (, p. ) [C]ertain conditions may produce a background to other conditions having a determinative role even though they do not themselves have a determinative role. — Fine (, p.)

中文翻译:

种类相关接地

接地声明在性质上是完全通用的吗?如果 a 由于是 G 而是 F,那么是否因此 G 的任何东西都必须是 F?根据弱形式的论点,答案是肯定的。然而,在本文中,我认为拒绝这一论点具有哲学效用。更确切地说,我认为,如果我们坚持认为可能存在我在此称为“种类依赖基础”的情况,并且一旦我们考虑到这种可能性,那么当代形而上学中的两个突出问题就可以得到解决。在这种情况下(为了解决这些问题),我们还必须认为弱形式是错误的。这篇论文关键地转向了两个主要思想,即(i)每个对象都属于某种基本类型,它可以确定它可以具有的某些属性,(ii) 基础关系能够有条件地成立。正如我们将看到的,根据这两个想法,我们将能够理解本文核心的种类依赖基础的概念,并因此解决两个重要的突出形而上学难题。如果有人声称某个命名或未命名的东西在移动、奔跑或是白色的,那么他很可能会被问到亚里士多德试图定义物质类别的问题:是什么在移动(或奔跑或是白色的)?也许声称某物在移动的人不需要知道这个问题的答案就可以提出他的主张。不难想象他在不知道事物是什么的情况下可以知道它在移动的情况。然而似乎可以肯定……对于满足谓词(例如“移动”)的每个事物,'runs' 或 'white',必须存在某种......物品所属的种类,并且可以通过参考来回答“它是什么”的问题。— Wiggins, D. (, p. ) [C] 某些条件可能会产生具有决定性作用的其他条件的背景,即使它们本身没有决定性作用。— 很好 (, p.)
更新日期:2018-09-01
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