Month: February 2020

Is There Such a Thing as Metaphysical Explanation?

M. L. writes,
 
I've been enjoying your critique of [Peter] van Inwagen. [The reader is presumably referring to  my "Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method" in Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism, 2015, vol. 12, no. 2, 99-125]  I was initially astonished at his claim that metaphysics/ontology doesn't explain, but it also got me curious about where the explanation is going on in ontological accounts (especially of properties, however construed).
 
I'm doing a Ph.D. in metaontology and I'm contrasting neo-Quinean (van Inwagen) and neo-Aristotelian (Lowe) approaches. 
 
Can you direct me to where you might have written about, if indeed you have, how it is ontology/metaphysics explains?
 
Well, I haven't discussed the issue head-on in a separate publication, but I have discussed it en passant in various contexts. Below is a re-do of a 2012 weblog entry that addresses the question and may spark discussion. Combox open.
 
………………………
 

Let 'Tom' name a particular tomato.  Let us agree that if a predicate applies to a particular, then the predicate is true of the particular.  Predicates are linguistic items.  Tomatoes are not. If Tom is red, then 'red' is true of Tom, and if 'red' is true of Tom, then Tom is red. This yields the material biconditional

1. Tom is red iff 'red' is true of Tom.

Now it seems to me that the following question is intelligible:  Is Tom red because 'red' is true of Tom, or is 'red' true of Tom because Tom is red?  'Because' here does not have a causal sense.  So the question is not whether Tom's being red causes 'red' to be true of Tom, or vice versa.  So I won't speak of causation in this context.  I will speak of metaphysical/ontological grounding.  The question then is what grounds what, not what causes what.   Does Tom's being red ground the application (the being-applied)  of 'red' to Tom, or does the application (the being-applied) of 'red' to Tom ground Tom's being red?

I am not primarily concerned with the correct answer to this question, but with meaningfulness/intelligibility of the question itself.

Grounding is asymmetrical: if x grounds y, then y does not ground x.  (It is also irreflexive and transitive.)  Now if there is such a relation as grounding, then there will be a distinctive form of explanation we can call metaphysical/ontological explanation.  (Grounding, even though it is not causation, is analogous to causation, and metaphysical explanation, even though distinct from causal explanation, is analogous to causal explanation.)

Explaining is something we do: in worlds without minds there is no explaining and there are no explanations, including metaphysical explanations.  But I assume that, if there are any metaphysical grounding relations, then  in every world metaphysical grounding relations obtain.  (Of course, there is no grounding of the application of predicates in a world without languages and predicates, but there are other grounding relations. For example, if propositions are abstract objects that necessarily exist, and some of the true ones need truth-makers, then truth-making, which is a grounding relation, exists in worlds in which there are no minds and no languages and hence no sentences.)

Grounding is not causation. It is not a relation between event tokens such as Jack's touching a live wire and Jack's death by electrocution.  Grounding is also not a relation between propositions.  It is not a logical relation that connects propositions to propositions.  It is not the relation of material implication, nor is it entailment (the necessitation of material implication), nor any other logical relation wholly situated at the level of propositions.  Propositions, let us assume, are the primary truth-bearers. 

In our example, grounding is not a relation between propositions — it is not a logical relation — since neither Tom nor 'red' are propositions. 

I want to say the following.  Tom's being red grounds the correctness of the application of 'red' to Tom.  'Red' is true of Tom because (metaphysically, not causally or logically) Tom is red, and not vice versa.  'Red' is true of Tom in virtue of  Tom's being red.  Tom's being red is metaphysically prior to the truth of 'Tom is red' where this metaphysical priority cannot be reduced to some ordinary type of priority, whether logical, causal, temporal, or what have you.  Tom's being red metaphysically accounts for the truth of 'Tom is red.' Tom's being red makes it the case the 'red' is true of Tom.  Tom's being red makes 'Tom is red' true.  

I conclude that there is at least one type of metaphysical grounding relation, and at least one form of irreducibly metaphysical explanation. 

We can ask similar questions with respect to normative properties.  Suppose Jesus commands us to love one another.  We distinguish among the commander, the act of commanding, the content of the command, and the normative property of the commanded content, in this case the obligatoriness of loving one another.  If Jesus is God, then whatever he commands is morally obligatory. Nevertheless, we can intelligibly ask whether the content is obligatory because Jesus/God commands it, or whether he (rightly) commands it because it is obligatory.  The 'because' here is neither causal not logical.  It is metaphysical/ontological.
 
This of course a variation on the old Euthyphro Dilemma in the eponymous Platonic dialog.
 
I freely admit that there is something obscure about a grounding relation that is neither causal nor logical. But of course logical and causal relations too are problematic when subjected to squinty-eyed scrutiny. 
 
I conclude with a dogmatic slogan. Metaphysics without metaphysical explanation is not metaphysics at all.  

What the 2020 Election is About

"More than anything, this election is about President Trump." (Mara Liasson, NPR, 2/2/2020)

Not so! The election is a key engagement in the battle for the soul of America. It is not so much about Trump as it is about the defense of our constitutional republic. The Democrat party, in the control of the hard Left, aims to subvert our constitutional order.  They are taking aim at the Electoral College, the Second Amendment, and the First as well. For a leftist, dissent from their positions is 'hate speech.'  The Democrats have become illiberal. Mirabile dictu, conservatives are now the new (classical) liberals! We stand for individual liberty; they for an ever-more invasive State apparatus.

The Constitution herself is at risk. For despite their mendacious invocations, the Democrats do not care at all about the Constitution, as is evident from their vicious attempts at blocking the Kavanaugh appointment. They oppose the originalism that alone honors our great founding document. The Democrats are also assaulting bedrock American commitments such as limited government, the presumption of innocence, national sovereignty, the rule of law, the very notion of a citizen and the related distinction between legal and illegal immigration. The political weaponization of the impeachment provision of the Constitution is a spectacularly clear example of their destructive leftism. The Democrats embrace such outrages as sanctuary jurisdictions. I could go on.

So 2020 is not about Trump the man but about the preservation of the Republic. Trump is 'merely' carrying the fight to the Democrats, exposing them for what they are, and teaching fellow Republicans how to develop their political cojones and fight as they must if we of the Coalition of the Sane are to prevail.

Metaphysical Joy and Sadness

There is a rare form of joy that some of us have experienced, a joy that suggests that at the back of this life is something marvellous and that one day this life may open out onto it.  It goes together with a kind of sadness, call it metaphysical nostalgia, a sort of longing for a lost homeland, so far back in time that it is outside of time. This is the joy that C. S. Lewis describes in Surprised by Joy, and that Nietzsche may have had in mind when he had his Zarathustra exclaim, "All joy wants eternity, deep, deep eternity!"

Coming Together and Moving Apart

Is it an unalloyed good that people be 'brought together'? I rather doubt it. Mark Zuckerberg would seem to agree by his actions if not by his words. The man who touts his Facebook as bringing people together has had a huge wall built around his Hawaiian compound. Apparently, those who engineer 'bringing together' think of themselves as very special people who have every right not to be brought together with those they bring together.

The Infirmity of Truth

Having the truth is no defense in the court of the politically correct. For that court lies in the precincts of power, and here below truth is no match for power unless those who are truthful also have power.  But the paths to power are often paved with lies and their necessity. Rare then is the truthful one who attains power with his truthfulness intact.