Gideon Rosen (Princeton): 'The Cement of the Universe is Explanation'
Abstract: The paper is a programmatic defense of non-reductive realism about explanatory dependence: the view that in addition to the various particular facts and laws governing their connections, there exist compound facts of the form [A because B] which knit the universe into a cosmos. On the version of the view I favor, the ‘because’ that figures in the formulation of these facts is univocal.
More determinate explanatory relations like grounding and causation are species of a single generic explanatory relation, the same in physics, ethics, metaphysics, etc.. Moreover, the facts involving this relation are as real and objective as any fact can be, obtaining independently of our practices and attitudes. The apparent context-sensitivity and interest-relativity of explanatory discourse is a pragmatic phenomenon, in the sense that our interests bear only on the ‘felicity’ of an explanatory remark, never on its truth. Finally, since explanatory discourse is manifestly hyperintensional, the case for explanatory realism supports the case for worldly hyperintensionality. If I have time I’ll take up recent objections to this idea due to Williamson.
Jowett Society Organising Committee: Joshua Loo, Zachary Lang, Xavier Morales Zayas and Sepehr Razavi | Jowett Society Website
