Getting priority straight

“If Schaffer’s historical claims in Schaffer (2009a, 2010) are correct, then priority theory has a long and distinguished pedigree reaching back to Plato.”

“Louis deRosset (2010) offers a sophisticated version of this style of argument.39 Say that a confounding case for an explanatory proposal of the form ‘‘p because q1, q2,…’’ is any possible scenario in which ‘‘p’’ is false yet ‘‘q1’’, ‘‘q2’’,… are all true.”

“Fine (2012a) both endorses (∨I-L) and (∨I-R) (58) and admits infinite disjunctions (60-62).”

“Cf. also deRosset (2010) and Rodriguez Pereyra (2015).”

“66deRosset [2010], p.”

“Among those who favour this necessitarian view of grounding are Audi (2012a), Dasgupta (2014), deRosset (2010), Fine (2015), Rosen (2010) and Trogdon (2013).”

“9 See [Audi, 2012], [Correia, 2010], [deRosset, 2010, 2011, 2013], [Fine, 2001], [Rosen, 2010], [Schaffer, 2009], and [Trogdon, 2009].”

“DeRosset (2009) suggests that we distinguish between necessary relations like these, and necessary connections, though he does not offer a criterion whereby to distinguish them.”

“31 For a dissenting voice, see deRosset (2010).”

“And there are also objections that target common elements of priority monism and atomism. deRosset (2010), for example, argues that the priority monist and atomist are both committed to an implausible principle concerning explanation, viz. the existence and features of the concrete objects alleged…”

“14Necessitation is the ‘default view among proponents of grounding’ (Bliss and Trogdon 2014, §5), endorsed by Correia (2005, Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon (2005), deRosset (2010), Rosen (2010), Audi (2012a, 2012b), Trogdon (2013), and Dasgupta (2014).”

“This is the complete explanation response (deRosset 2010; Trogdon 2013a).”

“(2015: 199) 13 Note that the truth of Generality would also help to explain why a related principle is true, which, following deRossett (2010), we can refer to as the Determination Constraint.”

“For instance, the orthodox (e.g. deRosset 2010; Fine 2015) view of grounding is that if Γ (fully) grounds Β , then it is metaphysically necessary that Β exists if Γ does.”

“See (Yi, 1999) and (deRosset, 2010, §6) for criticism of Lewis’s contention.”

“14 (Schaffer 2009; deRosset 2010; Audi 2012; Dasgupta 2014).”

“6 For this default view, according to which grounding is a kind of necessary relation see Audi (2012b), Dasgupta (2014), deRosset (2010), Rosen (2010) and Trogdon (2013).”

“…of answers have been given; specifically, metaphysicians have suggested that ‘is fundamental’ can apply to truths (Williams 2010, Sider 2011), facts (deRosset 2010, Rosen 2010, Fine 2012, Audi 2012, Raven forthcoming), states of affairs (Armstrong 1997), concrete and abstract objects (Schaffer…”

“Nonetheless, in contrast with necessity-of-the-metaphysical-laws, there are at least some arguments in the literature for necessity-of-grounding—see, e.g., Trogdon (2013) and deRosset (2010).”

“3 deRosset (2010) presents other versions of Generalization and the motivation in the text.”

“explanation (DeRosset 2010), essence (Audi 2012b; Fine 2012b; Trogdon 2013a; Dasgupta 2014; O’Conaill 2018; Correia & Skiles 2019), metaphysical laws (Wilsch 2015), grounding internality (Lovett 2019).”

“Another argument runs roughly as follows: if A grounds C, then A provides a good explanation for C; if A provides a good explanation for C, then A does not have “confounding cases”, namely possible cases where A obtains and C does not; thus, GN is true (see DeRosset 2010).”

“Our aim here is to evaluate a recent objection to Priority Theory made by deRosset (2010). deRosset objects that Priority Theory is unpromising because its proposed explanations violate an adequacy constraint on explanations he calls theDetermination Constraint.”

“22 Bricker ( 2006 ), DeRosset (2010), Schaffer ( 2009 ), and Schaffer (manuscript).”

“See deRosset (2010), Rosen (2010), and Trogdon (2013).”

“3Among those who accept necessitarianism are: Audi (2012), Cameron (2018), Dasgupta (2014a), (2014b), deRosset (2010), (2013b), Rosen (2010), Trogdon (2013), and Wilsch (2015).”

“18 Perhaps, not all truths about the pleonastic (or any kind of entity) can be fully grounded in truths entirely about other objects, as deRosset (2010) argues.”

“We usually appeal to 2 deRosset (2010) presented a similar problem (“the determination argument”) for Priority Theories.”

“Where ‘F’ and ‘G’ are predicates that correspond to qualitative properties (the latter corresponding to the 19 deRosset (2010, 83) gets close to noticing this.”

“Interestingly, one can also opt for a different approach, arguing that “fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything else; […] one takes them as basic and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world” (Chalmers, 2010, p. 16; see also deRosset, 2010).”

“(deRosset 2010: 74 ff) ‘‘[Grounding is transitive]: just as the explanation of an explanation also explains the explanandum, so too the grounds of the grounds of the grounded also ground the grounded.’’”