Dear all,
A reminder that today Alex Moran (Queens College) will be giving a paper
entitled "A Puzzle about Material Things: Russell's Principle and
'Grounding-qua'" (abstract below) at the Serious Metaphysics Group.
The seminar will take place at the Philosophy Faculty Board Room from
4.30 to 6.00pm. The talk should last about 45 minutes followed by
questions and discussion.
Hope to see you there,
Carlo
Abstract:
According to Bertrand Russell, it is a basic philosophical principle
that facts concerning complex objects (and hence material things
composed of particles) in some sense depend on or are constituted by
facts mentioning only the proper parts of these things and their
properties and relations. This attractive principle, however, is
threatened by two further observations. First, that it is possible for
certain material parts (e.g. some particles) to have certain properties
and relations whilst composing an object O in possible world W whilst
still having those same properties and relations in some other possible
world W* but whilst composing O* rather than O. Second, that if one fact
B is metaphysically dependent on another fact A (or if B is
metaphysically grounded by A, or if B holds in virtue of B, or if A
grounds B, or if A is constituted by B, or if A is true because of B, or
whatever), then B necessitates A, so that if B holds then so too does A.
The trouble is that these two claims plus Russell's Principle lead to
contradiction, as I will show. (I just need there to be a non-symmetric,
reflexive relation of constitutive determination--that's all I mean when
I use the word grounding; so nothing too controversial!)
Now to solve the puzzle I suggest two key moves. First, we hold that
if the Xs being G is what grounds the fact that some composite object O
(composed of the Xs) is F, then this is so only on the condition that
the Xs compose O. To make sense of this we have to invoke something like
the notion of conditional grounding or, in Ted Sider's terminology, that
of 'grounding-qua]. The idea is that the Xs being G, qua composing O
(rather than O*, say), ground the fact taht O is F.) Second, that since
we can distinguish between the grounds and the conditions of a fact, it
turns out that in some cases the fact that a composite object has an
intrinsic property can in some sense depend on extrinsic factors.
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