Conditional and Defeasible Grounding

Let's call theories of grounding according to which (i) grounding necessitation is false and (ii)  “grounds aren't the only facts that might be difference-makers” (Muñoz 2020) disjuctivist theories of grounding. In (2015) I defended a disjunctivist account of truth-making as a defeasible relation and Muñoz (2020) recognizes this work as an antecedent to his own disjunctivism. Another important form of disjunctivism is conditional grounding theories like those of Badder or Van Oordt Faller. The main difference between conditional theories and accounts like Muñoz or mine is that while  Badder and Van Oordt Faller recognize that besides grounds, there are also enabling conditions, Muñoz and I recognize also/instead disabling or defeating conditions.

Disjunctivist accounts have recently been criticized by the likes of Fatema Amijee, who writes:

 

“The best candidate for such a view – and the only one that I am aware of – treats the totality fact as a background condition for [metaphysical]explanation rather than a partial ground. According to this conditional grounding account, a contingent negative existential can be grounded in just its instances, as long as a condition – namely, the totality fact – obtains…” [Fatema Amijee (2021) “Something from Nothing: Why some negative existential are fundamental” p. 58]

Amijee's criticisms are aimed explicitly at conditional grounding theories. My own deflationary account of contingent grounding and other similar accounts like Muñoz’s 2020, which appeals to disablers instead of defeaters is superior because it fails to have this problem. According to my account, among the necessary conditions for a fact obtaining, at least some, or perhaps all negative conditions are actually better understood not as partial grounds but as potential defeaters. Thus, the total fact is neither a negative enabler (like in the accounts Amijee criticizes) nor a fundamental fact (as Amijee defends) but the absence of a potential defeater. So for example, let A, B and C be (contingently) all the Xs in the universe. According to Amijee, this totality fact is (i) a partial ground of why no X is Y (along with whatever grounds the singular negative facts that A is not Y, B is not Y and C is not Y) and (ii) a negative existential fact (i.e. the fact that there is nothing different from A, B and C.) Instead, in my account, there is no need to appeal to his putative fact and whatever motivates us to believe that this fact is involved in metaphysically explaining why no X is Y is better captured by claiming that the grounding relation between the facts that explain why  A is not Y, B is not Y and C is not Y and this existential negative fact is defeasible and would be defeated by other positive facts, for example, if there was another X, D which was actually Y. 

Suppose that totality facts figure as mere conditions in explaining a contingent negative existential. What might explain the totality fact...? ...it would be implausible... to cite a totality fact as a condition in explaining the very same totality fact... (Amijee 2021: 80)

Stop by step, Amijee's argument is:

Abbreviation: Let [totality] be the totality fact that A, B, C, ... are (contingently) all the objects in the universe.

1. The anti-reflexivity of grounding principle: No fact can be a part of its own metaphysical explanation, neither as a ground, nor as an enabling condition.
2. First disjunctivist assumption to be reduced: For any negative existential fact of the form no Xs are Y, let x1, x2, x3, ... be all the actual Xs in the universe, then the totality fact that x1, x2, x3, ... are all the actual Xs in the universe is an enabling condition of the fact that no Xs are Y.
3. Second assumption to be reduced: No negative existential fact is fundamental.
4. From (2), it follows that [totality] is an enabling condition for there being  no Ms for any contingent property M. 
5. [Totality] is a fact, from the facticity of metaphysical explanation.
6. From (3) and (5), since [totality] is a negative existential fact, it must be grounded on other more fundamental facts.
7. Since [totality] is a negative existential, from (2), if A, B, C, ... are all the actual objects in the universe, then the totality fact that A, B, C, ... are (contingently) all the objects in the universe aka [totality] is an enabling condition for [totality].
8. [Totality] being an enabling condition of [totality] violates the anti-reflexivity of grounding principle (1), which ends the reductio.

According to this argument, conditional grounding has the problem of falling into an unacceptable circularity in so far as the totality fact would still need to be explained by something and this instead would at least require itself as an enabling condition. But since my explanation does not appeal to such a totality fact, it is immune to this criticism. In other words, since defeasible grounding rejects the first premise to be reduced (2), it can safely keep the second premise to be reduced (3). In defeasible grounding theory, [totality] is not grounded in other facts besides the existence of A, B, C, ... Yes, the explanation of negative existentials can be defeated by the existence of other entities, but this extra component of the metaphysical explanation of why no X is Y is not an extra fact that needs further grounding. Therefore, the circularity does not get off the ground.

According to me, Amijee seems to derive hypothesis (2) above from the following dilemma: If (1) is true, then either (2) or (3).

1. Premise: For any negative existential fact of the form no Xs are Ys, let x1, x2, x3, ... be all the actual Xs in the universe, if the fact that no Xs are Ys is to be at least partially explained by the particular facts about  x1, x2, x3, ... that make them Xs but not Y, then the totality fact that x1, x2, x3, ... are all the actual Xs in the universe is a necessary part of the metaphysical explanation of why no Xs are Y.
2. Anti-disyuntivist hypothesis: Every fact necessarily involved in the metaphysical explanation of a fact is one of its (at least partial) grounds.
3. Amijee's anti-disyuntivist conclusion: the totality fact that x1, x2, x3, ... are all the actual Xs in the universe is a partial ground of why no Xs are Y.
4. Disyuntivist hypothesis: Not every element of a metaphysical explanation is a ground, some are just enabling conditions.
5. Disyunctivist alternative to the Anti-disyuntivist conclusion: For any negative existential fact of the form no Xs are Y, let x1, x2, x3, ... be all the actual Xs in the universe, then the totality fact that x1, x2, x3, ... are all the actual Xs in the universe is an enabling condition of the fact that no Xs are Y.

Now, since my theory of defeasible grounding is a sort of disjunctivism, it accepts (3) but avoids (4) by rejecting also (1). So let's look back at how we got (1). It is an argument as old as Russell (1918: chapter 5, esp. 234–7):

Allegedly, logically simple fundamental facts about particulars cannot make a universal generalization true, because the facts about particulars don’t rule out the existence of a further object that’s a counter-example. (Jackson 2021: 4)

In other words,  simple fundamental facts about the actual Xs that are Y do not necessitate the contingent universal generalization that all the Xs are Y, because it is always possible that another X could have existed and it could have failed to be Y. 

Here, conditional grounding theorists jump to (1), i.e. they conclude that something extra is needed in the metaphysical explanation if we want it to necessitate what it explains, and then find the totality fact as its most natural candidate of the extra fact needed.

But defeasible grounding theory is more radically anti-necessitarian that conditional grounding theory, thus it rejects than anything extra is needed for the necessitating metaphysical explanation of contingent general facts (or contingent existential negative facts). What it claims is that all the facts that are involved in metaphysically explaining this sort of facts are just the simple fundamental facts about the actual Xs that are Y and nothing else is needed, even if there is no necessary relation between grounds and grounded. Instead, we account for the undeniable fact that  it is always possible that another X could have existed and it could have failed to be Y in terms of it being possible that another fact could have obtained, one that would have defeated the aforementioned contingent grounding relation, not in terms of there being no Xs that fail to be Y as some sort of background enabling condition. The difference is subtle but significative.

References:

Amijee, Fatema (2021) “Something from Nothing: Why some negative existential are fundamental”, in Sara Bernstein, and Tyron Goldschmidt (eds), Non-Being: New Essays on the Metaphysics of Nonexistence(Oxford, 2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Apr. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198846222.003.0004, accessed 19 May 2023.

Barceló Aspeitia, A. A. 2015. “Making Quantified Truths True.” In Quantifiers, Quantifiers, and Quantifiers: Themes in Logic, Metaphysics, and Language, edited by A. Torza, Synthese Library (Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science), Vol. 373, 323–338.

Daniel Muñoz (2020) Grounding nonexistence, Inquiry, 63:2, 209-229, https://doi.org/10.1080/oso/0020174X.2019.1658634

Van Oordt Faller, August (2020) Essays on the Metaphysics of Laws, Properties, and Groups, PhD dissertation, Cornell.