Introducción

If the positive, atomic sentences of a domain of discourse are systematically false (e.g. because they make reference to non-existent entities) then we might initially assume that we ought to discourage people from using those sentences. If, however, we can provide an account of why those sentences, though false, are useful and assertible, we need not seek such a change. Fictionalists inspired by Field (e.g. 1980) take up the task of providing an account of the assertability of such sentences in the face of eliminativist antirealist arguments in a given domain (i.e. arguments that show that sentences in the domain are strictly and literally false). Field (1980) goes to great lengths to show that numbers are in fact dispensable to science. Strictly speaking, science doesn‘t need numbers, but it is far easier to do science with them than it is to do it without them. Number-talk is a very useful way to simplify science, and so it is worth engaging in even if there are in fact no numbers. A Field-style fictionalist about grounding must show that even if grounding talk is strictly and literally false because there is no mind-independent relation of grounding, it can still be worthwhile to make grounding claims.

Before I discuss how the fictionalist about grounding might carry out this task, we should note that if ‗grounds‘ refers to ‗grounds in the fiction‘ (and so fictionalism is a semantic thesis – a thesis about the referents of grounding locutions) then it might seem as though fictionalists about grounding ought to prefer the predicate over the operational formulation of grounding claims so as to give a fictionalist treatment of the predicate ‗grounds‘ whilst leaving the other elements of the sentence untouched. I don‘t think this is required by the Field-style model, however. The Field-style fictionalist about grounding can take the ‗because‘ in an operational formulation of grounding claims (e.g. PQ because P) to pick out something like ‗becausefiction‘ – a fictional sentential operator (which might operate on non-fictional

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consistent with Field-style fictionalism to take entire sentences to mean something bound by an implicit ‗within the fiction‘ operator. So, an utterance of the sentence ‗Socrates‘ singleton is grounded in Socrates himself‘ means ‗within the fiction of grounding, Socrates‘ singleton is grounded in Socrates himself‘, or an utterance of ‗PQ because P‘ means ‗within the fiction of grounding, PQ because P‘.

The most plausible Field-style fictionalism about ground is a revolutionary fictionalism. It is somewhat implausible to suppose that philosophers engaged in grounding talk have been aiming at truth within the fiction of grounding all this time, but none of them have ever mentioned it. It is also hard to make sense of the realist rhetoric of influential authors such as Fine and Rosen if hermeneutic fictionalism is a proper account of the practice.55

The revolutionary fictionalist owes an account of how the benefits of engaging in grounding discourse can be reaped in the face of the literal falsity of claims about grounding. The first step is to rehearse the benefits of engaging in grounding talk in the first place. As we have seen (e.g. Chapter 1, section 2.2, and section 2.3 above) proponents of grounding such as Rosen (2010) and Schaffer (2009) argue that much is gained by incorporating the idioms of grounding into our ‗analytic toolkit‘ (Rosen, 2010: 110). Doing so enables us to restate and sometimes to offer a solution to familiar puzzles (I discuss an example in section 7, and demonstrate that the solution goes through even if we are antirealist about grounding), and to systemize and simplify discourse in numerous areas of philosophy.

Even though grounding claims are literally false, it can be pragmatically useful to behave as though they are true. If we can give a unified antirealist treatment of grounding claims then we can still appeal to grounding to systematise and simplify. In Field‘s mathematical fictionalism, the appeal of number-talk is the role it plays in simplifying scientific discourse. There is no need to be realist about number-talk for us to take the discourse to play a simplifying role. Similarly for grounding talk; if grounding talk really does

55 _{Perhaps this is a little quick. It can be a part of hermanautic fictionalism that speakers don‘t really understand the nature of}

what they are saying, and so the fact that proponents of grounding talk don‘t take themselves to be making pretend-assertions about grounding ought not to be considered a decisive objection. Nevertheless, I think this argument has more weight as applied to philosophers working on grounding than it does in the moral case where we might think it more plausible that ordinary speakers could be somewhat in the dark about the nature of their moral utterances. As both hermeneutic and revolutionary fictionalists can give similar motivations for engaging in the pretence, I‘ll assume that most of what I say below applies to both accounts.

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have a role in simplifying and systematising metaphysics, then this is an advantage that even a fictionalist about grounding can enjoy.56

Here is one kind of example. Recourse to grounding talk in a given domain of discourse provides a simplification that is often welcome, especially to those unfamiliar with the relevant theories. When the moral theorist claims that moral facts are grounded in natural facts, she shies away from giving a thorough specification of how the moral facts relate to the natural facts. What she does do by using the grounding locution is convey something important about the nature of the connection – she tells us that there is one, that the connection is somehow explanatory, the direction the connection runs in, and that it matters in theorising about her discipline. All of this is possible in the absence of any mind- independent grounding relation.

Field-style fictionalism about grounding has a ready account of why it is that intuitions seem able to reveal facts about grounding. The fiction of grounding is created and sustained by those who appeal to it. In the technical, philosophical context, it has been developed and formalised by philosophers educated within the same tradition and engaging with one another‘s work. As co-authors of the fiction, we should expect those individuals making grounding claims to be able to appeal to their own intuitions as a fairly reliable guide to the truth of some relevant fictional claim. Disagreement about some claim within the fiction arises because the grounding fiction is a collective work, and so some authors have slightly different ideas about particular features of the fiction. (Imagine for comparison a book written by a group of people, where the authors disagree about the motivation for some action performed by the main protagonist.) Authors of the fiction are in a position to know the most salient explanation of any given fact within the fiction, and so appeals to explanation to make grounding claims are, like appeals to intuition, likely to be truth-within-the-fiction-conducive.

Appeals to collective authorship might be plausible in the case of the technical notion of grounding discussed in the philosophy room, but what of the everyday use of ‗in virtue of‘ and cognates in folk

56 _{Field (1980) works hard to show that mathematical theories are conservative over nominalistic ones. A fictionalist about}

grounding of the kind described above should ideally be able to demonstrate that anything we can say using grounding talk can also be said without it. The difficulty in accomplishing this task might be a reason to favour Yablo-style ficitonalism about grounding. (Then again, perhaps the burden of proof is on the non-fictionalist, who must find some grounding claim that cannot be expressed in other terms.)

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discourse? I think it plausible to suppose that this too is an instance of collective authorship. Any folk appeals to such terms ought to be (and to be interpreted as being) made in a fictional spirit, and the claims that involve those fictional terms are made on the basis of appeal to intuition and explanation, and are mostly veridical because they are made by the authors of the fiction. Thus, when a mother says to her child ‗it‘s wrong to hit your brother because it hurts him‘, she makes the claim that the wrongness is grounded in the natural property of the pain caused to the child‘s brother, but her claim is only to be understood as true within the fiction of grounding. In making that claim, she contributes to the fiction.

The fictionalist about grounding might here appeal to the way in which intentions play a role in semantics in order to give an account of truth within the fiction of grounding. At least part of the way in which the referents of at least most expressions are determined is by the way in which the expression in question is used by members of the linguistic community. Analogously, truth within a fiction is determined (at least in part) by the intentions of the authors of the fiction. If enough people making grounding claims take moral properties to be grounded in natural properties, then it becomes true within the fiction of grounding that moral properties are grounded in natural properties (even if, in fact, there are objective moral properties).

This idea can be supported by the kind of social externalism found in Tyler Burge (e.g. 1986). Burge argues that the contents of some thoughts and beliefs are determined by the linguistic community of the speaker. The idea can be explained using one of Burge‘s arguments for his position, which runs as follows. Imagine an agent, Art, who goes to the doctor complaining of arthritis in his thigh. He is unaware that arthritis is in fact a disease of the joints, and so he expresses a false belief when he sincerely utters ‗I have arthritis in my thigh‘. We can then imagine a counterfactual scenario where Art has the same history and the same internal states, but grew up in a community where the word ‗arthritis‘ is used to apply to a different disease, call it tharthritis, with includes rheumatoid conditions of the thigh as well as the joints. Now when Art says ‗I have arthritis in my thigh‘ he expresses a true belief about tharthritis. Since neither he nor anybody else in his linguistic community has a concept of arthritis, it cannot be that his belief is really about arthritis. But because Art‘s internal states and history are identical in both cases,

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what makes his belief true or false is dependent on the concept the linguistic community takes the word ‗arthritis‘ to express.

We might be sceptical about the reach of Burge‘s social externalism, but the area in which it has been taken to be most plausible is where the concepts involved are deferential (see e.g. Loar, 1990). Appeal to social externalism will therefore be particularly well motivated for defenders of grounding who are uncomfortable with the idea that folk grounding claims add to the fiction of grounding, on the basis that grounding is a semi-technical notion. If we take grounding to be a deferential concept and give a social externalist analysis of such concepts, we can explain how it is that grounding claims can be made in ordinary discourse, without such claims having much effect on the fiction of grounding itself. The folk can participate in the grounding story without themselves being very productive authors of it.