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Scientific Explanation as a Guide to Ground

Markel, Kortabarria and Joaquim, Giannotti (2024) Scientific Explanation as a Guide to Ground. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Ground is all the rage in contemporary metaphysics. But what is its nature? Some metaphysicians defend what we could call, following Skiles and Trogdon (2021), the inheritance view: it is because constitutive forms of metaphysical explanation are such-and-such that we should believe that ground is soand-so. However, many putative instances of inheritance are not primarily motivated by scientific considerations. This limitation is harmless if one thinks that ground and science are best kept apart. Contrary to this view, we believe that ground is a highly serviceable tool for investigating metaphysical areas of science. In this paper, we defend a naturalistic version of the inheritance view which takes constitutive scientific explanation as a better guide to ground. After illustrating the approach and its merits, we discuss some implications of the emerging scientific conception for the theory of ground at large.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Markel, Kortabarriamarkelkor96@gmail.com0000-0001-9486-9839
Joaquim, Giannottiphilosophy@joaquimgiannotti.com0000-0002-4058-4093
Additional Information: This paper has been accepted for publication in Synthese. Please cite published version.
Keywords: grounding, metaphysical explanation, scientific explanation, non-causal explanation, ground
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Causation
General Issues > Explanation
Depositing User: Dr Joaquim Giannotti
Date Deposited: 09 Jan 2024 01:41
Last Modified: 09 Jan 2024 01:41
Item ID: 22939
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Causation
General Issues > Explanation
Date: 2024
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22939

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