Abstraction principles and grounding can be combined in a natural way (Rosen in Hale B, Hoffmann A (eds) Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 109–136, 2010; Schwartzkopff in Grazer philosophische studien 82(1):353–373, 2011). However, some ground-theoretic abstraction principles entail that there are circles of partial ground (Donaldson in Noûs 51(4):775–801, 2017). I call this problem auto-abstraction. In this paper I sketch a solution. Sections 1 and 2 are introductory. In Sect. 3 I start comparing different solutions to the problem. In Sect. 4 I contend that the thesis that the right-hand side of an abstraction principle is (metaphysically) prior to its left-hand side motivates an independence constraint, and that this constraint leads to predicative restrictions on the acceptable instances of ground-theoretic abstraction principles. In Sect. 5 I argue that auto-abstraction is acceptable unless the left-hand side is essentially grounded by the right-hand side. In Sect. 6 I highlight several parallelisms between auto-abstraction and the puzzles of ground. I finally compare my solution with the strategies listed in Sect. 3.
Grounding and auto-abstraction
Zanetti L.
2020-01-01
Abstract
Abstraction principles and grounding can be combined in a natural way (Rosen in Hale B, Hoffmann A (eds) Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 109–136, 2010; Schwartzkopff in Grazer philosophische studien 82(1):353–373, 2011). However, some ground-theoretic abstraction principles entail that there are circles of partial ground (Donaldson in Noûs 51(4):775–801, 2017). I call this problem auto-abstraction. In this paper I sketch a solution. Sections 1 and 2 are introductory. In Sect. 3 I start comparing different solutions to the problem. In Sect. 4 I contend that the thesis that the right-hand side of an abstraction principle is (metaphysically) prior to its left-hand side motivates an independence constraint, and that this constraint leads to predicative restrictions on the acceptable instances of ground-theoretic abstraction principles. In Sect. 5 I argue that auto-abstraction is acceptable unless the left-hand side is essentially grounded by the right-hand side. In Sect. 6 I highlight several parallelisms between auto-abstraction and the puzzles of ground. I finally compare my solution with the strategies listed in Sect. 3.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
