We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Grounding: Necessary or Contingent?
- Authors
Trogdon, Kelly
- Abstract
Recent interest in the nature of grounding is due in part to the idea that purely modal notions are too coarse-grained to capture what we have in mind when we say that one thing is grounded in another. Grounding not being purely modal in character, however, is compatible with it having modal consequences. Is grounding a necessary relation? In this article I argue that the answer is 'yes' in the sense that propositions corresponding to full grounds modally entail propositions corresponding to what they ground. The argument proceeds upon two substantive principles: the first is that there is a broadly epistemic constraint on grounding, while the second links this constraint with Fine's Aristotelian notion of essence. Many think grounding is necessary in something like the sense specified above, but just why it's necessary is an issue that hasn't been carefully addressed. If my argument is successful, we now know why grounding is necessary.
- Subjects
IDEA (Philosophy); NOTIONS (Philosophy); MEMORY (Philosophy); RELATION (Philosophy); ARISTOTELIANISM (Philosophy); ESSENTIALISM (Philosophy)
- Publication
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2013, Vol 94, Issue 4, p465
- ISSN
0279-0750
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/papq.12009