Practice Job Talk: Mike Bertrand

“Metaphysical Explanation by Constraint”

Metaphysical explanation has enjoyed a surge of recent interest. But
attention paid to metaphysical explanation has focused nearly
exclusively on just one kind: those that work by providing information
about what grounds what.

Not all metaphysical explanations are grounding explanations. I
identify and account for a before-now unrecognized kind of
metaphysical explanation, called metaphysical explanation by
constraint. Metaphysical explanations by constraint are interesting
because they belong to a novel category of metaphysical explanation.
They also promise to expand the explanatory reach of metaphysics by
licensing new explanations that are not accessible in other ways. But
metaphysical explanations by constraint are not grounding
explanations. By overlooking non-grounding explanations like these,
the dominant, grounding-centric view results in an impoverished
understanding of the way in which a metaphysical explanation can be.