1. "The Idealist Program of Metaphysical Explanation" (ISF grant 2035/19). Period: 2019-2023
Current project member: Jack Himelright (postdoctoral fellow)
Starting in the 2019 fall semester, I'm the Principal Investigator of the ISF-funded project with the above title. Below is a brief description of †he project:
Metaphysical explanation is in the center of core debates in metaphysics and other areas of philosophy (Fine 2001, 2012; Schaffer 2009; Rosen 2010). It’s the kind of explanation that is at issue in the physicalist thesis that pain is explained by C-fiber firing, the version of consequentialism according to which an action is morally right in virtue of maximizing utility, and the often-heard claim that the singleton set of Socrates exists because Socrates the philosopher does. Most accounts of metaphysical explanation are versions of a general account of explanation known as explanatory realism (or as I call it, the “Backing Model”), according to which relations of explanation hold due to the worldly “backing” or “determinative” relations that underlie them. Scientific explanations are typically underpinned by causation, whereas the relation underlying metaphysical explanation is often taken to be grounding, a synchronic relation that ties less fundamental facts to more fundamental ones.
In past work I criticized some aspects of the Backing Model, in particular the assumption of a straightforward one-one correspondence between types of explanation and relations underlying them (Kovacs 2017) and of a principled dividing line between explanatory and non-explanatory relations (Kovacs forthcoming- 1). What I didn’t provide was a systematic alternative to the Backing Model. I hope to accomplish this task in the project proposed here. I put forth an account of metaphysical explanation and grounding that turns the received view on its head. The account has two major components. The first one is a unificationist theory of metaphysical explanation, the thesis that metaphysical explanation consists in the systematization of the target phenomena into a small number of deductively valid argument patterns organized according to certain criteria of strength and economy. The second is an idealist theory of grounding (named after an analogous view of causation), the thesis that the very concept of grounding derives from the notion of metaphysical explanation. In a nutshell, the idealist thinks that there are a great number of relations in the vicinity of grounding, none of them more natural than the others, and which one of these serves as the semantic value of ‘grounding’ depends on the behavior of our concept of metaphysical explanation. Thus, the grounding facts are what they are thanks to the patterns of metaphysical explanation, rather than the other way round (as the received view would have it).
As I plan to argue in a series of papers, the two components together form a powerful package with great problem solving potential. They provide us with an elegant epistemology of grounding and help us make progress on various first-order debates over its nature and its formal features. They help us solve the Problem of Iterated Grounding, i.e. the question of what grounds the grounding facts. Moreover, since they give us as of yet the best account of why the patterns of metaphysical explanation closely align with the patterns of the explanatory relations supposedly underlying it, they also recommend a general strategy for making sense of the connection between explanatory relations and types of explanation.
The project concludes in a workshop, titled "Metaphysical Explanation: Theory, Applications, and Prospects", also funded by the ISF (grant no. 2358/21), set to take place on June 27-29, 2022 at Tel Aviv University. More details here.
Starting in the 2019 fall semester, I'm the Principal Investigator of the ISF-funded project with the above title. Below is a brief description of †he project:
Metaphysical explanation is in the center of core debates in metaphysics and other areas of philosophy (Fine 2001, 2012; Schaffer 2009; Rosen 2010). It’s the kind of explanation that is at issue in the physicalist thesis that pain is explained by C-fiber firing, the version of consequentialism according to which an action is morally right in virtue of maximizing utility, and the often-heard claim that the singleton set of Socrates exists because Socrates the philosopher does. Most accounts of metaphysical explanation are versions of a general account of explanation known as explanatory realism (or as I call it, the “Backing Model”), according to which relations of explanation hold due to the worldly “backing” or “determinative” relations that underlie them. Scientific explanations are typically underpinned by causation, whereas the relation underlying metaphysical explanation is often taken to be grounding, a synchronic relation that ties less fundamental facts to more fundamental ones.
In past work I criticized some aspects of the Backing Model, in particular the assumption of a straightforward one-one correspondence between types of explanation and relations underlying them (Kovacs 2017) and of a principled dividing line between explanatory and non-explanatory relations (Kovacs forthcoming- 1). What I didn’t provide was a systematic alternative to the Backing Model. I hope to accomplish this task in the project proposed here. I put forth an account of metaphysical explanation and grounding that turns the received view on its head. The account has two major components. The first one is a unificationist theory of metaphysical explanation, the thesis that metaphysical explanation consists in the systematization of the target phenomena into a small number of deductively valid argument patterns organized according to certain criteria of strength and economy. The second is an idealist theory of grounding (named after an analogous view of causation), the thesis that the very concept of grounding derives from the notion of metaphysical explanation. In a nutshell, the idealist thinks that there are a great number of relations in the vicinity of grounding, none of them more natural than the others, and which one of these serves as the semantic value of ‘grounding’ depends on the behavior of our concept of metaphysical explanation. Thus, the grounding facts are what they are thanks to the patterns of metaphysical explanation, rather than the other way round (as the received view would have it).
As I plan to argue in a series of papers, the two components together form a powerful package with great problem solving potential. They provide us with an elegant epistemology of grounding and help us make progress on various first-order debates over its nature and its formal features. They help us solve the Problem of Iterated Grounding, i.e. the question of what grounds the grounding facts. Moreover, since they give us as of yet the best account of why the patterns of metaphysical explanation closely align with the patterns of the explanatory relations supposedly underlying it, they also recommend a general strategy for making sense of the connection between explanatory relations and types of explanation.
The project concludes in a workshop, titled "Metaphysical Explanation: Theory, Applications, and Prospects", also funded by the ISF (grant no. 2358/21), set to take place on June 27-29, 2022 at Tel Aviv University. More details here.
2. "Persons: material and immaterial, real and conventional (Rutgers - TAU research cooperation grant. Co-PI: Dean W. Zimmerman). Period: 2022-2024
The metaphysics of persons is among the perennial “big questions” of metaphysics. At its core lies the classic problem of personal identity: under what conditions is a person at a time identical to a person at a later time? Approaches to the problem of personal identity have been variegated, ranging from bodily (Williams 1973) and biological (Olson 1997) accounts to psychological (Parfit 1984) and phenomenal (Dainton 2008) ones. However, one common thread throughout this great variety of views is the assumption of materialism, or to put it more broadly, naturalism: persons are parts of a physical world that is fully describable in naturalistic terms.
However, naturalistic approaches easily lead to a form of conventionalism about personal identity, where questions that seem to have great normative significance turn out to be in some sense in the eye of the beholder. At least a certain subset of materialist views almost certainly leads to this result (Olson 1997); but it’s arguable that almost all materialist views need to introduce an element of conventoniality into their proposed accounts of personal identity (cf. Merricks 2001). Moreover, materialist views threaten to multiply persons (or person-like beings, at any rate) beyond necessity, leading not only to a revisionary metaphysics (Zimmerman 2003) but also to seemingly insurmountable epistemological and ethical puzzles (Johnston 2017a, Johnston 2017b).
The present proposal’s primary goal is a systematic exploration of both conventionalist accounts of personal identity and immaterialist views. Both PIs have written extensively on these topics; they and their respective teams are exceptionally well positioned to bring this project to success.
However, naturalistic approaches easily lead to a form of conventionalism about personal identity, where questions that seem to have great normative significance turn out to be in some sense in the eye of the beholder. At least a certain subset of materialist views almost certainly leads to this result (Olson 1997); but it’s arguable that almost all materialist views need to introduce an element of conventoniality into their proposed accounts of personal identity (cf. Merricks 2001). Moreover, materialist views threaten to multiply persons (or person-like beings, at any rate) beyond necessity, leading not only to a revisionary metaphysics (Zimmerman 2003) but also to seemingly insurmountable epistemological and ethical puzzles (Johnston 2017a, Johnston 2017b).
The present proposal’s primary goal is a systematic exploration of both conventionalist accounts of personal identity and immaterialist views. Both PIs have written extensively on these topics; they and their respective teams are exceptionally well positioned to bring this project to success.