Marco geológico-estructural de la Península de Bahoruco

Grounding claims are overwhelmingly made in a realist spirit. When we say, for example, that the singleton set {Socrates} is grounded in its only member – Socrates – we make a claim about what reality is like. More specifically, we make a claim about reality‘s structure. Reality is such that there is a connection of metaphysical dependence between Socrates and {Socrates}, such that the latter depends on, and/or is metaphysically explained by, the former.

For grounding claims to be a part of reality it need not be that the grounding entity (in this case Socrates) is metaphysically fundamental. A pluralist foundationalist might hold, for example, that the only fundamentalia are mereological atoms, and so maintain that since Socrates is a composite object he

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cannot be fundamental. Since, however, Socrates is grounded in the mereological atoms that compose him (which are part of fundamental reality) and grounding is transitive, {Socrates} is firmly grounded in fundamental reality.

Recall that the recent surge of interest in grounding has been met with some resistance (see Chapter 1, section 2.2). Some are sceptical about grounding and the role that it has come to play, and this scepticism takes three main forms (see Clark and Liggins, 2012: 817-8). First, there is concern that there is no well- defined content to the notion of grounding. This arises because grounding is not given an explicit definition, but instead is introduced by example, or by citing the principles that govern it, or by the role it plays. Grounding claims are thus said to be unintelligible (see Daly, 2012). Second, the sceptic might find the notion of grounding intelligible, but be reluctant to endorse the realist interpretation of grounding claims. This could be for epistemic reasons – perhaps we could not be in a position to know about actual instances of grounding (this is a line of scepticism less often encountered in the literature, but towards which I am particularly attracted). Finally, a grounding sceptic might take grounding to be intelligible and think that there are actual instances of grounding, but think the current level of philosophical attention awarded to the notion is unwarranted. This could be because purported instances of grounding are better understood as instances of more familiar relations such as supervenience or conceptual priority. (This sort of strategy can be found in Hofweber, 2009, and J. Wilson, forthcoming).

In the last two chapters, I presented arguments that challenge the orthodox conception of grounding. Here I further challenge that view in a way that accommodates my arguments of the last two chapters. I motivate and outline antirealist approaches to grounding. The antirealism about grounding I envisage carves out something of a middle way between scepticism and realism, and has quite a lot in common with the second sceptical strategy mentioned above. I argue (in conflict with the first and third sceptical strategies) that grounding claims are intelligible, useful, and informative. They are not, however, claims about (or not best interpreted as claims about) the objective, mind-independent reality of the realist. Just as antirealists about mathematics or morality think that mathematical or moral claims are not really features of the mind-independent world, the antirealist about grounding denies that grounding claims

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truly represent mind-independent reality. There are multiple ways in which one might be an antirealist about grounding, with positions mapping roughly onto more familiar antirealisms in other areas.

I take antirealism about grounding to be consistent with taking ground to be a nonsymmetric relation (I explain this in some more detail when I discuss specific versions of antirealism about grounding), and I think antirealism about grounding provides the most promising solution to the grounding-explanation problem discussed in the last chapter. That problem was a tension between three independently plausible theses (that grounding and metaphysical explanation are closely connected; that metaphysical explanation has some pragmatic features; and that grounding is a feature of mind-independent reality). Antirealism about grounding involves a rejection of the last of the three theses. There is no tension between the claims that grounding and metaphysical explanation share a close connection and that metaphysical explanation has pragmatic features, so long as grounding is not entirely mind-independent.

My use of the term ‗antirealism‘ in this chapter differs from some ways in which the term has been understood. For example, it differs from the Dummettian proposal that antirealism is the view that the meanings of the statements in question cannot be determined in terms of (evidentially unconstrained) truth conditions (cf. Wright, 2003: 15). I use the term ‗antirealism‘ here to refer to a class of views that Wright has called ‗irrealist‘. In Wright‘s words, ‗what opposes irrealism with respect to a particular class of statements is the view that the world is furnished to play the part in the determination of their truth values which the platitude calls for, that there really are states of affairs of the appropriate species‘ (2003: 19). For my purposes then, any view whereby statements in the relevant discourse are not made true or false by a feature of the world that corresponds to the kinds of things that the statements purport to make reference to is an antirealist view. The antirealist views about grounding I am primarily interested in are those that subscribe to an additional thesis that there are some standards that determine when a grounding claim is appropriate, and that those claims are sometimes appropriate.