Abstract

I present an argument for causal fundamentality, understood as the thesis that the causal history of every being, whose existence has a causal explanation, includes some uncaused beings. I argue that this thesis is a consequence of an actualist account of metaphysical modality whose novelty lies in its hybrid dispositional-essentialist foundation. I argue that my modal theory is extensionally correct and minimalistic. Its range of metaphysical necessities and possibilities is just as wide as needed to capture the pre-theoretical notion of modality. Moreover, my theory is immune from the necessitism of standard essentialist accounts of modality and addresses the challenge of global possibilities facing dispositionalist modal theories thanks to its essentialist component.

Highlights

  • Recent metaphysics has seen a growing interest in the question of fundamentality

  • If one agrees with Wilson that grounding is a type of causation (Wilson, 2018), there seems to be reasonable prospects that the results of reasoning in terms of causation between concrete beings could be generalized to answer the question of fundamentality when the explanatory relation is grounding

  • If we recognize further that there is nothing in the essences, the real definitions, of the independent beings that are all external to H, that necessitates the existence of some members of this causal history, we arrive to the conclusion that it is not true in virtue of the essences of any plurality of independent beings that some of the members of H exist

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Summary

Introduction

Recent metaphysics has seen a growing interest in the question of fundamentality. As Bliss observes, “It is without question the prevailing view amongst contemporary analytic metaphysicians that there is something fundamental.” (Bliss, 2019, p. 361). The question that I would like to investigate is that of the existence of causally fundamental concrete beings whose existence does not have a causal explanation. This is an older question which is intimately related to that of worldview choice which is, arguably, one of the objectives of any systematic and complete metaphysical theory. If one agrees with Wilson that grounding is a type of causation (Wilson, 2018), there seems to be reasonable prospects that the results of reasoning in terms of causation between concrete beings could be generalized to answer the question of fundamentality when the explanatory relation is grounding.

Causation and modality
The argument
Defending the premises
The commitment to independent beings
Conclusion
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