Speaker Series: Ned Hall (Harvard)

Professor Ned Hall will give a paper in our Speaker Series, “On some connections between explanation, necessity, and grounding”.

Abstract:
Gideon Rosen begins his (excellent) paper “Metaphysical Dependence” with a “plea for ideological toleration” – of the notion of grounding (and closely related notions) in particular. While wholly in favor of such toleration, I also think there are reasons to be cautious. In brief: Suppose we have latched on to some feature F of reality that we hope to understand. (Perhaps we want to understand what F is; perhaps we want to understand why F exists.) What is it that we seek? One answer is that we seek information about metaphysically distinctive relationships that F stands in to something else. (E.g., we want to find out what grounds F.) But another answer is that we merely seek information in light of which we can locate F in an appropriately comprehensive organizing scheme. Confuse these two answers, and you’ll see metaphysically significant results where there aren’t any (e.g., the ‘result’ that sets are grounded in their members, but not vice versa).