A Defence of Ontological Innocence: Response to Barker

ABSTRACT

In a recent paper in this journal, Jonathan Barker argues against the claim that grounded entities are ontologically innocent. In this paper I defend the ontological innocence of grounded entities against Barker's argument. I tease out an assumption that is crucial for the success of Barker's argument and I show that the defender of ontological innocence can deny this assumption in a motivated way.

KEYWORDS:

• Grounding
• Ontological Innocence
• Explanation

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Vera Hoffmann-Kolss, Yannic Kappes, and two anonymous referees. They provided me with excellent comments that led to significant improvements.

Notes

1 For dialectical reasons I will follow Barker in assuming that grounding allows for a variety of relata: Facts can ground facts, but also entities of various other categories can stand in grounding-relations. For a critical discussion of this assumption see Correia and Schnieder 2012.

2 See §2 and §4 of Barker's paper for a defence of (3) and §5 for a defence of (4).

3 I fudge the property/predicate-distinction by using ‘$F$’ both as the name of a property and as a predicate expressing this property. For this reason, I will indiscriminately speak about $x$'s having the property $F$ and x's being $F$.

4 As it is customary, I use square brackets as a notational device to transform formulas into names for facts.

5 Below I will discuss whether a grounding-principle, or law of metaphysics, should be added to the ground.

6 Some might hold that the further fact that Socrates is a human should be added to the ground. This could be done without leading to any problems, for clearly there is a ground of Socrates being human that does not involve {Socrates}.

7 Accepting [{Socrates} has Socrates as its member] as fundamental is an unpromising option, given that necessarily, this fact only obtains if Socrates exists (for things can only be set members if they exist) and that grounding should help to explain this modal covariance.

8 Recent contributions to the debate that cast doubt on it being essential to $x$ that $\phi$ can ground (the fact that) $\phi$ include Glazier 2017; Zylstra 2019; Kappes 2020.

9 But what should those who reject the proposed essence-story say about the grounds of [{Socrates} has Socrates as its member]? One option is to say that this fact is fully grounded in Socrates' existence, for Socrates existence is all that is needed for him to be a member of his singleton. If this option was adopted, then Groundmate Individuation would fail.

10 See Wilsch 2016 for a proposal on how to link grounding with metaphysical laws.

11 Or facts about the generic essence of what it is to be a set. Correia 2006 offers a defence of generic essences.

12 I thank anonymous referees for bringing these points to my attention.