LA SACRALIZACIÓN DE LA DEMOCRACIA JOHN DEWEY

In sum, the Sophisticated Grounding Theory and the Grounding-free Theory are competing attempts to explain our priority intuitions. Each will provide a story about why we have the intuitions that we do. Furthermore, each has the resources to vindicate these intuitions (should we seek vindication), and in a way consistent with a theory of metaphysical explanation (should we want it). Furthermore, these theories of

metaphysical explanation can be evaluated in terms of the listed desiderata.

In Chapter 3, I characterise grounding, and show how the existence of grounding relations can help account for the priority intuitions. The idea is a simple one: we have these intuitions—and what we intuit is true—because there are, in re, grounding relations which correspond with our intuitions, and which we are successfully tracking. However, this explanation is less theoretically virtuous than the explanation I offer in Chapter 4, and thus grounding relations are not indispensably required to do this explanatory work.

Nevertheless, it might be argued that the explanation offered by the Sophisticated Grounding Theory is the only game in town, for only it can vindicate the priority intuitions via one of a pair of ready-made theories of metaphysical explanation: the filtered and unfiltered grounding-based theories. I respond by noting that, while these theories do well according to the desiderata, there are strong reasons to dislike them. For, there is a substantial disanalogy between, on the one hand, filtered and unfiltered theories of scientific explanation, and on the other, filtered and unfiltered grounding-based theories of metaphysical explanation. In the former case, there is agreement on the nature of the candidate relation that our explanations track: what it’s like and where it obtains. For instance, filtered and unfiltered causal process theorists agree about the causal structure of the world. They merely disagree on whether a good theory of explanation should psychologistically filter the causal relations.

In stark contrast, the unfiltered and filtered grounding-based theories disagree about what grounding relations obtain, yet for the most part agree about what metaphysically explains what. The disagreement between these views, then, concerns whether there are instances of grounding that have no corresponding metaphysical explanation. I will argue that this is because the supposedly ‘unfiltered’ grounding-based theory has, in fact, been illicitly ‘pre-filtered’, for epistemic considerations have already been appealed to in establishing where in the world grounding relations are instantiated. On the other hand, I will argue that the filtered grounding-based theory is strictly worse than the theory I offer in Chapter 5, as it does equally well according to the desiderata but is less parsimonious.

Chapter 4 will provide a competing explanation of the priority intuitions, framed in terms of the overgeneralisation of a pair of evolved psychological mechanisms. I argue that this explanation is more virtuous than one in terms of grounding. If we seek explanation but not vindication, the story provided here is the whole story. In other words, by itself this explanation lends itself to explaining away, rather than vindicating our intuitions. It is parsimonious, and enjoys empirical support.

However, in Chapter 5, I show how this explanation can be framed as a way of vindicating our intuitions, and can serve as the basis for a psychologistic theory of metaphysical explanation. Such a theory has it that metaphysical explanations track the traditional modal relations, but are psychologistically filtered according to what the majority of individuals in a community find explanatory. For those friendly to an epistemic understanding of explanation, this account will both vindicate the priority intuitions and provide a theory of metaphysical explanation that does well according to the epistemic desiderata.

Subsequently, Chapters 6 and 7 will develop metaphysical variants of the DN theories. How one weights the desiderata will determine which of the theories offered in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 is the most attractive. However, as noted in Chapter 1, these theories are more virtuous than their grounding-based competitors.

57   Recall the master argument of the thesis:

1. One ought (epistemically) to be ontologically committed to all and only those entities that are indispensable to the best explanation of our observations. 2. Grounding relations are not indispensible to the best explanation of our

observations.

3. Therefore, we should not be ontologically committed to grounding relations. In Chapter 2, I described the twin observations alluded to in premise (1) and (2) of the master argument: our intuitions about which modal correlations are accidental and non- accidental, and our priority intuitions. We are well placed, now, to introduce grounding relations, and show how positing these relations can account for these explananda. While I have made clear that my focus is on the priority intuitions, I will take a moment during this chapter to articulate the grounding-based explanation of the intuitions about modal correlations. It is only by comparing the grounding-based explanation49 _{of the priority}

intuitions to my preferred explanation (offered in the following chapters) that I can demonstrate the truth of (2): that positing grounding is no part of the best explanation of these observations. As I will show, while the putative existence of grounding relations can form part of an explanation of these observations, this grounding-based explanation is less parsimonious and elegant than the explanation I offer in Chapter 4.

Furthermore, once grounding is posited to account for our priority intuitions, a pair of rival theories of metaphysical explanation naturally present themselves: the unfiltered grounding-based theory and the filtered grounding-based theory. The unfiltered theory has it that every grounding relation backs an explanation while the filtered theory admits more instances of grounding—unlike the filtered theories

considered in §2.5—and then imposes psychologistic constraints on which instances of grounding back explanations. While these theories end up identifying roughly the same class of metaphysical explanations, they do slightly differently according to the desiderata introduced in §2.4, and lend themselves to slightly different characterisations of

grounding. For, according to the unfiltered view, the features of grounding mimic those                                                                                                                

49 _{When I refer to the grounding-based explanation, I have in mind the explanation offered by the}

Sophisticated Grounding Theory, which, unlike the Basic Grounding Theory, is a genuine competitor to my Grounding-free Theory.

58   explanatory instances, one can have a more permissive stance regarding the features of grounding.

For those who are tempted by the unfiltered grounding-based theory, I will show that there are reasons to be suspicious of the fact that grounding is characterised in such a way as to allow a putatively objective theory of explanation that also has all the merits of an epistemic theory. I will argue that the view has been illicitly pre-filtered, for epistemic considerations play a substantial role in the characterisation of grounding itself. The filtered grounding-based theory fares no better, for it faces some awkward questions about the epistemology of grounding. Furthermore, this view suffers from an

unfavourable comparison with the filtered modal relations theory I offer in Chapter 5, for it fulfils precisely the same desiderata, yet posits additional ontology in the form of grounding relations.

The plan for the chapter is as follows. §3.1 will characterise grounding, and narrow our focus to the ‘relation’ view (as opposed to the ‘sentential operator’ view). I will provide an overview of some debates about the features of grounding, emphasising that such debates tend to be framed in terms of what putative metaphysical explanations we, in fact, find to be explanatory. With this characterisation in hand, §3.2 will present the grounding-based explanation of the explananda, show how it vindicates our intuitions, and describe the two grounding-based theories of metaphysical explanation gestured at above. Section §3.3 will examine whether the grounding-based explanation is

theoretically virtuous, and §3.4 and §3.5 will criticise the unfiltered grounding-based theory and the filtered grounding-based theory, respectively. §3.6 will sum up and point the way forward.