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170No Work for Fundamental FactsPhilosophical Quarterly 73 (4): 983-1003. 2023.Metaphysical foundationalists argue that without fundamental facts, we cannot explain why there exist any dependent facts at all. Thus, metaphysical infinitism, the view that chains of ground can descend indefinitely without ever terminating in a level of fundamental facts, allegedly exhibits a kind of explanatory failure. I examine this argument and conclude that foundationalists have failed to show that infinitism exhibits explanatory failure. I argue that explaining the existence of dependent…Read more
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77Metaphysical Explanation and the Cosmological ArgumentPhilosophical Studies 1-20. forthcoming.A premise of the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency says that no contingent fact can explain why there are any contingent facts at all. David Hume and Paul Edwards famously denied this premise, arguing that if every fact has an explanation in terms of further facts ad infinitum, then they all do. This is known as the Hume–Edwards Principle (HEP). In this paper, I examine the cosmological argument from contingency within a framework of metaphysical explanation or ground and defend …Read more
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83Metaphysical Foundationalism and the Principle of Sufficient ReasonDialogue 61 (3): 421-430. 2022.There is a ubiquitous claim in the grounding literature that metaphysical foundationalism violates the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) in virtue of positing a level of ungrounded facts. I argue that foundationalists can accept the PSR if they are willing to replace funda- mentality as independence with completeness and deny that ground is a strict partial order. The upshot is that the PSR can be compatible with both metaphysical foundation- alism and metaphysical infinitism, and so presuppo…Read more
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93Chains of Being: Infinite Regress, Circularity, and Metaphysical Explanation , Ross P. Cameron , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 252. (review)Metaphilosophy 53 (4): 555-559. 2022.Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 4, Page 555-559, July 2022.
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272Grounding, infinite regress, and the thomistic cosmological argumentInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 92 (3): 147-166. 2022.A prominent Thomistic cosmological argument maintains that an infinite regress of causes, which exhibits a certain pattern of ontological dependence among its members, would be vicious and so must terminate in a first member. Interestingly, Jonathan Schaffer offers a similar argument in the contemporary grounding literature for the view called metaphysical foundationalism. I consider the striking similarities between both arguments and conclude that both are unsuccessful for the same reason. I a…Read more
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1009Metaphysical Foundationalism: Consensus and ControversyAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 59 (1): 97-110. 2022.There has been an explosion of interest in the metaphysics of fundamentality in recent decades. The consensus view, called metaphysical foundationalism, maintains that there is something absolutely fundamental in reality upon which everything else depends. However, a number of thinkers have chal- lenged the arguments in favor of foundationalism and have proposed competing non-foundationalist ontologies. This paper provides a systematic and critical introduction to metaphysical foundationalism in…Read more
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Fundamentality |
Grounding |
Indian Philosophy |