Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T06:41:01.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ON WEAK GROUND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2014

LOUIS DEROSSET
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Though the study of grounding is still in the early stages, Kit Fine, in ”The Pure Logic of Ground”, has made a seminal attempt at formalization. Formalization of this sort is supposed to bring clarity and precision to our theorizing, as it has to the study of other metaphysically important phenomena, like modality and vagueness. Unfortunately, as I will argue, Fine ties the formal treatment of grounding to the obscure notion of a weak ground. The obscurity of weak ground, together with its centrality in Fine’s system, threatens to undermine the extent to which this formalization offers clarity and precision. In this paper, I show how to overcome this problem. I describe a system, the logic of strict ground (LSG) and demonstrate its adequacy; I specify a translation scheme for interpreting Fine’s weak grounding claims; I show that the interpretation verifies all of the principles of Fine’s system; and I show that derivability in Fine’s system can be exactly characterized in terms of derivability in LSG. I conclude that Fine’s system is reducible to LSG.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Symbolic Logic , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 713 - 744
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Symbolic Logic 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Armstrong, D. M. (1997). A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, R. P. (2008). Truthmakers and ontological commitment. Philosophical Studies, 140(1), 1–18.Google Scholar
Correia, F. (2008). Ontological dependence. Philosophy Compass, 3(5), 1013–32.Google Scholar
deRosset, L. (April 2013). Grounding Explanations. Philosopher’s Imprint, 13(7), 1–26.Google Scholar
deRosset, L. (2014). Better Semantics for the Pure Logic of Ground, University of Vermont, Manuscript.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (June 2001). The Question of Realism. Philosopher’s Imprint, 1(1), 1–30.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (2012a). Guide to Ground. In Schnieder, B. & Correia, F., editors, Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–80.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (March 2012b). The pure logic of ground. Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1), 1–25.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (June 2014). Truthmaker semantics for intuitionistic logic. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 43(2–3), 549–77.Google Scholar
Melia, J. (2005). Truthmaking without Truthmakers. In Beebee, H. & Dodd, J., editors, Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 67–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulligan, K, Simons, P, & Smith, B. (March 1984). Truth-Makers. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 44(3), 287–321.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1966). Reply to Professor Marcus. In The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. New York: Random House, pp. 175–82.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2003). Is there a fundamental level? Noûs, 37(3), 498–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2007). From Nihilism to Monism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85(2), 175–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2009). On What Grounds What. In Chalmers, D., Manley, D., & Wasserman, R., editors, Metametaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 357–83.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. (2010). Monism: The Priority of the whole. The Philosophical Review, 119(1) 31–76.Google Scholar