Amijee, Fatema. 2020. "Principle of Sufficient Reason." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 63-75. New York: Routledge.

"According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (henceforth ‘PSR’), everything has an explanation or sufficient reason.The PSR was a central tenet of rationalist metaphysics but has since gone out of vogue.

(...)

But lately, interest in the PSR has been enjoying a resurgence.This has been due, at least in part, to the recent interest in grounding, and relatedly, metaphysical explanation. If the notions of ground and metaphysical explanation are in good standing, then we can formulate a version of the PSR on which ‘explanation’ picks out either ground or metaphysical explanation. Since this chapter figures in a volume on grounding, I will focus on the version of the PSR that says that every fact has a ground. My primary goal is to address three questions. First, how continuous is the contemporary notion of grounding with the notion of sufficient reason endorsed by Spinoza, Leibniz, and other rationalists? In particular, does a PSR formulated in terms of ground retain the intuitive pull and power of the PSR endorsed by the rationalists? Second, to what extent can the PSR avoid the formidable traditional objections levelled against it if it is formulated in terms of ground? And finally, how might historical discussion of the PSR shed light on the contemporary notion of grounding?" (p. 63)
———. 2022. "Principle of Sufficient Reason." In Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, edited by Jalobeanu, Dana and Wolfe, Charles T., 1670-1680. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

"Our need to understand the world, and our place in it, drives both philosophy and science. But to what extent is our world intelligible? According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (“PSR”), everything is—at least in principle—intelligible.

Everything has an explanation, even if that explanation may not be accessible to us. While the Principle of Sufficient Reason was not known by that label until the seventeenth century, the principle’s provenance goes at least as far back as Parmenides, and discussions that exploit the principle are to be found in medieval philosophers like Aquinas, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides.

But the principle takes center stage in the early modern era. It is in this period that we find direct engagement with the PSR. A first task of this entry will thus be to bring to the fore the nature of the early modern commitment to this principle, and the arguments for and against it. A second task will be to highlight how historical discussions of the PSR have shaped—and continue to shape— contemporary philosophy.

This entry will proceed as follows. In the next section, “Proponents,” I discuss the views, as well as some arguments, developed by three early modern PSR proponents: Spinoza, Leibniz, and du Châtelet. The following section, “Contemporary Proponents,” examines a few contemporary arguments for the PSR. Lastly, the section on “The PSR in Contemporary Debates” discusses some ways in which the PSR has influenced contemporary philosophy." (pp. 1670-1671)
Angioni, Lucas. 2014. "Aristotle on Necessary Principles and on Explaining X Trough the Essence of X." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:88-112.

Abstract: "I discuss what Aristotle means when he say that scientific demonstration must proceed from necessary principles. I argue that, for Aristotle, scientific demonstration should not be reduced to sound deduction with necessary premises. Scientific demonstration ultimately depends on the fully appropriate explanatory factor for a given explanandum. This explanatory factor is what makes the explanandum what it is. Consequently, this factor is also unique. When Aristotle says that demonstration must proceed from necessary principles, he means that each demonstration requires the principle that is the necessary one for the fully appropriate explanation of its explanandum. This picture also provides a key to understand Aristotle’s thesis that scientific explanation depends on essences: it is the essence of the attribute to be explained (rather then the essence of the subject-term within the explanandum) that should be stated as the fully appropriate explanatory factor."
Archambault, Jacob. 2024. "Grounding Medieval Consequence." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 129-146. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Developed out of earlier work on Aristotelian topics, syllogistic, and fallacies, by the early fourteenth century the medieval theory of consequence came to provide the first unified framework for the treatment of inference as such. With such a development came the task of unifying the various justifications for inferences treated in earlier frameworks. Prior to the appearance of theories of consequences, the task of providing a real foundation, or grounding, for good inferences is shared between theories of demonstration, such as those provided in commentaries on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, and theories of topical inference, passed on to the medievals via Boethius. But by the time of the earliest consequentiae, most consequences were grounded in the theory of supposition, which began its own development in the twelfth century. Secondary literature on supposition has generally held that in the most common form of supposition, personal supposition, a term is taken to stand for individuals falling under it. In this paper, I show that for the earliest consequentiae this is false: prior to William of Ockham’s work, personal supposition could also involve descent to concepts or types falling under a term, previously thought to be the exclusive provision of simple supposition. As such, a greater variety of ways of grounding consequence exists in the period than has hitherto been recognized."
Betti, Arianna. 2010. "Explanation in Metaphysics and Bolzano's Theory of Ground and Consequence." Logique et Analyse no. 56:281-316.

Abstract: "In (2006a, 2006b), Benjamin Schnieder criticizes truthmaking as a relation between entities in the world and the truths those entities `make true'. In (2006b), his criticism exploits a notion of conceptual explanation that is very similar to Bolzano's grounding. In the first part of this paper, I offer an analysis of Bolzano's grounding. I discuss some open problems and argue that Bolzano's grounding is not a systematization of the ordinary notion of `because' as others have maintained, but of the technical notion of explanatory proof in the context of an axiomatic conception of (proper) science. On the basis of this analysis, in the second part, I offer a critical discussion of Schnieder 2006b's arguments against truthmaking. I conclude that the latter are not very effective from a methodological point of view and that Bolzano's original position fares better in this respect; still, truthmaker theorists will be able to defend truthmaking only at a high price."

References

Schnieder, B. (2006a). Troubles with Truth-making: Necessitation and Projection. Erkenntnis 64: 61-74.

Schnieder, B. (2006b). Truth-Making without Truth-Makers. Synthese 152: 21-6.
Bliss, Ricki. 2024. "Some Work for a Theory of Grounding?" In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 307-330. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In her “No Work for a Theory of Grounding,” Jessica Wilson argues that we have no need for a theory of what she calls Big-G Grounding. The reason for this, thinks Wilson, is that the work that Big-G Grounding is invoked for can be better done by what she calls small-g grounding relations: membership, parenthood, realization, and so on. Contra Wilson, I argue that small-g grounding relations may not allow us to do all the grounding work that needs to be done. In particular, I argue that small-g grounding relations may not be adequate to the task of engaging with the work of historical Western and non-Western figures; nor do they allow us to explore the full array of possibilities regarding the overarching structure of reality. To this end, I offer two case studies: one that explores dependence relations in the work of Leibniz, and the other the cosmology of the Chinese Buddhist thinker Fazang. Although I do not defend the claim that there is in fact some work for a theory of Grounding, my argument is highly suggestive of it."
———. 2024. Grounding, Fundamentality and Ultimate Explanations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2: Ultimate ExRlanations: An Idea and Its History_

"Anyone familiar with the contemporary grounding literature will be aware that there is something of a tension or, perhaps better to say, divergence of opinion over the history of the notion. On one view, the notion of grounding is thought to be as old as

philosophy itself, with many of its most important thinkers engaging with questions pertaining to it. On this approach, although more contemporary discussions certainly take on their own flavour, the resurgence in interest in the notion is very much entangled with a return to the glorious days of good old-fashioned metaphysics. On another view, the notion of grounding is very much the plaything of contemporary analytic metaphysicians. According to this understanding of grounding, its origin myth traces itself back to Manhattan in the early naughties, where Kit Fine, Gideon Rosen and Jonathan Schaffer laid the foundations for a new and important program of research. Mutatis mutandis for the notion of fundamentality assuming it to be married to and/or defined in terms of grounding.

How is it that such seemingly juxtaposed views of the history of grounding have come to characterise the discourse?

Which one is correct? These are difficult (and partly, if not largely, sociological) questions and I won't really attempt to answer them here. What I will do, however, is try to say something more about how we might characterize these different conceptions of grounding and its relationship to history, as well as to defend the position that will illuminate the rest of this Element: the notions of grounding and fundamentality can reasonably be understood as old, if not in letter, then at least inspirit."
Cameron, Margaret. 2014. "Is Ground Said-in-Many-Ways?" Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:29-53.

Abstract: "Proponents of ground, which is used to indicate relations of ontological fundamentality, insist that ground is a unified phenomenon, but this thesis has recently been criticized. I will first review the proponents’ claims for ground’s unicity, as well as the criticisms that ground is too heterogeneous to do the philosophical work it is supposed to do. By drawing on Aristotle’s notion of homonymy, I explore whether ground’s metaphysical heterogeneity can be theoretically accommodated while at the same time preserving its proponents’ desideratum that it be a unified phenomenon."
———. 2020. "Medieval and Early Modern." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 49-62. New York: Routledge.

"To be sure, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern philosophers did not have at their disposal the theoretical terminology afforded by the recent grounding literature, including the very term “ground” as it is currently used. It is, however, well known that ground has its roots in, broadly speaking, the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition. Given the fact that Aristotle’s philosophy, and specifically his metaphysics, provided the foundation for the subject during most of this time, it should come as no surprise that we find philosophers engaging in many of the same debates and discussions regarding questions of fundamentality, ontological priority, metaphysical explanation, and dependence relations." (p. 49)
Caputo, John D. 1970. "Being, ground and play in Heidegger." Man and World no. 3:26-48.

"By the summer of 1935 what was intimated in the earlier discussion of finitude and the Nothing is made explicit. At this time the treatment of ground takes the form of what Heidegger calls the "ground-question" (Grund-frage) of metaphysics: why is there any being at all and not rather nothing? This well-known question of Leibniz, mentioned in passing in The Essence of Ground and What is Metaphysics?, is transitional to the later Heidegger. It inquires into the being and asks about its ground. Why are there any beings at all? Obviously no being can serve as the answer to the question. The ground which the question seeks is Being itself. Being sustains the being and prevents its falling back into the abyss of Nothingnes.

The ground that is sought after is sought for as the ground for the decision for being rather than for nothingness.

Being is the inner power of the being by which it is. Being is the perduring power which remains whatever fluctuations may occur within beings.

Being is the emergent power, stepping forth into the light of itself. Being as ground therefore is physis: the emergent-enduring-power (aufgehend-verweilend--Walten)." (p. 30, notes omitted)
Casati, Filippo. 2018. "Heidegger’s Grund: (Para-)Foundationalism." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki Leigh and Priest, Graham, 291-312. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This paper presents two new grounding theories (called para-foundationalism 1.0 and para-foundationalism 2.0) that, in virtue of their being inconsistent (but not trivial) theories, do not fit in the taxonomy presented by Bliss and Priest.[*] In order to do so, we will develop some metaphysical ideas proposed by Martin Heidegger.

Consistently with a vast part of the current literature, he thought that all things have whatever form of being they have because they depend on other things. In particular, he believed that every thing is because every thing depends on being. Heidegger's being is the ground [Grund] of literally everything because being is what makes any entity an entity. Chairs, stars, dreams, and the world are in virtue of being.

In Section 2, we introduce Heidegger's concept of ground by distinguishing between an ontic ground and an ontological ground. In Section 3, we focus our attention on the ontological ground. We present Heidegger's idea according to which being is the ground of every entity and being is itself ungrounded. We also discuss its relation with the Principle of Sufficient Reasons (PSR), and we describe its structural properties. Finally, we show that these structural properties are the same ones that characterize a particularly strong form of foundationalism. In Section 4 and Section 5, we show how Heidegger's characterization of being leads to a contradiction, according to which being both is and is not an entity. After that, assuming that such a contradiction is a dialetheia (namely a true contradiction), we show how Heidegger's foundationalism should be revised in order to do justice to the antinomic nature of being itself. Thus, we introduce two forms of para-foundationalism, which is an inconsistent version of foundationalism. In Section 6, using para-foundationalism, we try to give an interpretation of one of the most obscure concepts of the so-called late Heidegger, namely the last God. Finally, in the Appendix, we propose two formal models that show how, working in a paraconsistent setting, para-foundationalism does not lead to logical triviality." (p. 292, notes omitted)

[*] Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest, The Geography of Fundamentality: An Overview, (Introduction to the volume, pp. 1-33).
———. 2019. "Heidegger and the contradiction of Being: a dialetheic interpretation of the late Heidegger." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 27:1002-1024.

Abstract: "It is well known that, from the beginning to the end of his philosophical trajectory, Martin Heidegger tries to develop a fundamental ontology which aims at answering the so-called question of Being: what does Being mean?

Unfortunately, in trying to answer this question, Heidegger faces a predicament: given his own premises, speaking about Being leads to a contradiction. Moreover, according to the majority, if not all, of the interpreters who admit the existence of such a predicament, Heidegger tries to avoid the contradiction in question. But is this the only way Heidegger tries to solve the predicament? In this paper, I argue that, in some of his late works and, in particular, in the Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger also takes into serious consideration the possibility of accepting the contradiction he faces in speaking about Being as true. If this is correct, Heidegger endorses what nowadays analytic philosophers call dialetheism, namely the metaphysical position according to which some (but not all) contradictions are true."
Centrone, Stefania. 2016. "Early Bolzano on Ground-Consequence Proofs." The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic no. 2:215-237.

Abstract: "In his early Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics (1810) Bernard Bolzano tries to characterize rigorous proofs (strenge Beweise). Rigorous is, prima facie, any proof that indicates the grounds for its conclusion. Bolzano lists a number of methodological constraints all rigorous proofs should comply with, and tests them systematically against a specific collection of elementary inference schemata that, according to him, are evidently of ground-consequence-kind. This paper intends to give a detailed and critical account of the fragmentary logic of the Contributions, and to point out as well some difficulties Bolzano's attempt runs into, notably as to his methodological ban on 'kind crossing'."
Chignell, Andrew. 2012. "Kant, Real Possibility, and the Threat of Spinoza." Mind no. 121:635-675.

Abstract: "In the first part of the paper I reconstruct Kant’s proof of the existence of a ‘most real being’ while also highlighting the theory of modality that motivates Kant’s departure from Leibniz’s version of the proof. I go on to argue that it is precisely this departure that makes the being that falls out of the pre-critical proof look more like Spinoza’s extended natura naturans than an independent, personal creator-God. In the critical period, Kant seems to think that transcendental idealism allows him to avoid this conclusion, but in the last section of the paper I argue that there is still one important version of the Spinozistic threat that remains."

"The final part of our story, however—the part which Kant did not seem to notice—is that the threat of Spinozism returns when we consider how the real harmony of non-fundamental or derivative predicates (with one another, and with the fundamental predicates) is grounded. It is unclear in light of his own argument how Kant could avoid appealing to God as the ground of this harmony, and it would seem that God could only do that by actually exemplifying all possible predicates—fundamental and derivative—as modes of an infinite array of explanatorily distinct divine furcations or attributes. With respect to this second Spinozistic threat, transcendental idealism is impotent." (p. 37)
Corkum, Phil. 2013. "Substance and Independence in Aristotle." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 65-95. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Individual substances are the ground of Aristotle's ontology. Taking a liberal approach to existence, Aristotle accepts among existents entities in such categories other than substance as quality, quantity and relation; and, within each category, individuals and universals. As I will argue, individual substances are ontologically independent from all these other entities, while all other entities are ontologically dependent on individual substances. The association of substance with independence has a long history and several contemporary metaphysicians have pursued the connection. (1) In this chapter, I will discuss the intersection of these notions of substance and ontological dependence in Aristotle." (p. 65)

(1) S ee, for example, Hoffman and Rosenkrantz 1991, Lowe 2005, Gorman 2006 and Schnieder 2006. For discussion, see Koslicki forthcoming.

References

Feser, E. (ed.) forthcoming [2013] : Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hoffman, J. and G. Rosenkrantz 1991: 'The Independence Criterion of Substance'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51, pp. 835-53.

Lowe E. J. 2005: 'Ontological Dependence'. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.): The Stanford Enryclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2005 ed. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/dependence-ontological/ "Ontological dependence".

Gorman, M. 2006: 'Independence and Substance'. International Philosophical Quarterly 46, pp. 147-59.

Koslicki, K. forthcoming [2013]: 'Substance, Independence and Unity'. In Feser forthcoming. [pp. 169-195]

Schnieder, B. 2006: 'A Certain Kind of Trinity: Dependence, Substance, Explanation'. Philosophical Studies 129, pp. 393-419.
———. 2016. "Ontological Dependence and Grounding in Aristotle." In Oxford Handbooks Online in Philosophy, 1-14.

Abstract: "The relation of ontological dependence or grounding, expressed by the terminology of separation and priority in substance, plays a central role in Aristotle’s Categories, Metaphysics, De Anima and elsewhere.

The article discusses three current interpretations of this terminology. These are drawn along the lines of, respectively, modal-existential ontological dependence, essential ontological dependence, and grounding or metaphysical explanation. I provide an opinionated introduction to the topic, raising the main interpretative questions, laying out a few of the exegetical and philosophical options that influence one’s reading, and locating questions of Aristotle scholarship within the discussion of ontological dependence and grounding in contemporary metaphysics."
———. 2020. "Ancient." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 20-32. New York: Routledge.

"Is there grounding in ancient philosophy? To ask a related but different question: Is grounding a useful tool for the scholar of ancient philosophy? These questions are difficult, and my goal in this chapter is not so much to give definitive answers as to clarify the questions. I hope to direct the student of contemporary metaphysics towards passages where it may be fruitful to look for historical precedent. But I also hope to offer the student of ancient philosophy some guidance on when drawing on the contemporary discussion of grounding may be beneficial." (p. 20)
Correia, Fabrice. 2004. "Husserl on Foundation." Dialectica no. 58:349-367.

Abstract: "In the third of his Logical Investigations, Husserl draws an important distinction between two kinds of parts: the dependent parts like the redness of a visual datum or the squareness of a given picture, and the independent parts like the head of a horse or a brick in a wall. On his view, the distinction is to be understood in terms of a more fundamental notion, the notion of foundation. This paper is an attempt at clarifying that notion. Such attempts have already been undertaken (separately) by Peter Simons and Kit Fine, and the paper also contains elements of comparison of our three sets of views."

References

Fine, K. 1995, “Part–Whole”, in B. Smith (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Husserl, E. 2001, Logical Investigations, Vol. 2, London & New York: Routledge.

Simons, P. 1982, “The Formalization of Husserl’s Theory of Wholes and Parts”, in B. Smith(ed), Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology, Munich: Philosophia.
Dahlstrom, Daniel O. 2011. "Being and Being Grounded." In The Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever?, edited by Wippel, John F., 125-145. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

"The world today stands under the spell of Leibniz’s thought. Or, perhaps more carefully, we might say that the world today stands under the spell of what Leibniz thought only too well. With uncanny perceptiveness, he managed to articulate a basic principle of thinking and being in the early modern world that is arguably as vital today as it was at the outset of the eighteenth century.

(...)

I am referring, of course, to what has been called, since Leibniz’s time, the principle of sufficient reason.

Many of the foregoing sentiments were voiced by Heidegger in lectures and an address held some fifty years ago and published in 1957 as Der Satz vom Grund, the German abbreviation for Leibniz’s principle of

reason.(1)" (p. 125)

(...)

"However, as I hope to show by means of the following considerations, the issue is far more complicated than Heidegger lets on. In particular, his way of painting Leibniz’s principle with the same colors that he applies to the so-called “atomic age” is, I argue, misleading to a fault. But the main thrust of my following remarks is to establish what is wrong with Heidegger’s interpretation of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason as a means of clarifying what I take to be right about it.

My comments are divided into three parts. In the first part I discuss Leibniz’s complex account of the principle of sufficient reason with an eye to its bearing on his conception of the contingency of finite existence.

In the second part I turn to Heidegger’s account of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason and his “argument” for a different, nonconventional reading of the principle.2 In the third part I address the trenchancy of the argument." (p. 127)

(1) Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), 51 (hereafter “SvG 51“). All translations into English are my own.
de Boer, Karin, and Howard, Stephen. 2019. "A Ground Completely Overgrown: Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 27:358-377.

Abstract: "While we endorse Heidegger’s effort to reclaim Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a work concerned with the possibility of metaphysics, we hold, first, that his reading is less original than is often assumed and, second, that it unduly marginalizes the critical impetus of Kant’s philosophy. This article seeks to shed new light on Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and related texts by relating Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant to, on the one hand, the epistemological approach represented by Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience and, on the other, the metaphysical readings put forward by Heimsoeth, Wundt and others in the 1920s. On this basis, we argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant remains indebted to the methodological distinction between ground and grounded that informed Cohen’s reading and was transferred to the problem of metaphysics by Wundt. Even if Heidegger resists a ‘foundationalist’ mode of this distinction, we argue that his focus on the notions of ground and grounding does not allow him to account for Kant’s critique of the metaphysical tradition."
de Jong, Willem R. , and Betti, Arianna. 2010. "The Classical Model of Science: a millennia-old model of scientific rationality." Synthese:185-203.

Abstract: "Throughout more than two millennia philosophers adhered massively to ideal standards of scientific rationality going back ultimately to Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora. These standards got progressively shaped by and adapted to new scientific needs and tendencies. Nevertheless, a core of conditions capturing the fundamentals of what a proper science should look like remained remarkably constant all along. Call this cluster of conditions the Classical Model of Science. In this paper we will do two things. First of all, we will propose a general and systematized account of the Classical Model of Science. Secondly, we will offer an analysis of the philosophical significance of this model at different historical junctures by giving an overview of the connections it has had with a number of important topics. The latter include the analytic-synthetic distinction, the axiomatic method, the hierarchical order of sciences and the status of logic as a science. Our claim is that particularly fruitful insights are gained by seeing themes such as these against the background of the Classical Model of Science. In an appendix we deal with the historiographical background of this model by considering the systematizations of Aristotle’s theory of science offered by Heinrich Scholz, and in his footsteps by Evert W. Beth."
della Rocca, Michael. 2010. "PSR." Philosopher's Imprint no. 10:1-13.

"One can see my argument as highlighting an important dialectical advantage that our imagined rationalist (i. e., me) has over our imagined non-rationalist (i. e., you). I have been arguing that the non-rationalist who accepts some explicability arguments has no non-question-begging way to avoid the rationalist position, i. e., no non-question-begging way to avoid the PSR. By contrast, the rationalist who accepts the necessitarian implication of the PSR is not under any pressure, as far as I can see, to accept the non-rationalist position, i. e., to deny the PSR. In this way, the rationalist position is internally coherent in a way that the position of the non-rationalist who accepts some explicability arguments is not. And, of course, an internally incoherent position is worse off than an internally coherent one. So, again, we have powerful and un-rebutted reason to accept the PSR, a principle that most of us have been taught to scorn." (p. 13)
———. 2012. "Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (in Leibniz and Spinoza)." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 139-164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My central concern here – violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafter: ‘PSR’) – does indeed stem from my engagement with two figures from the history of philosophy: Leibniz and Spinoza. Both of these philosophers are big fans of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the principle according to which each thing that exists has an explanation.(1) Indeed, a strong case can be made that each of these thinkers structures his entire system around the PSR more or less successfully.(2)" (p. 139)

(...)

"But can we enter the promised land and should we? Certainly if we – like Spinoza – accept the PSR, then, given the Leibnizian arguments concerning relations, we should enter the promised land of monism.

But can we get to the promised land without invoking something as strong as the PSR? Yes, I believe that all we need to invoke is the plausible claim that relations must be grounded. Given this relatively uncontroversial claim, it follows – as we have seen – that relations are not fully real and that the only thing that fully exists is the one world.

Of course, this relatively uncontroversial claim and the PSR itself are in need of further scrutiny before we can confidently accept the results advanced in this chapter.(17)" (p. 164)

(17) In Della Rocca forthcoming, I explore in a rationalist spirit some problems for the rationalist position developed here.

References

M. Della Rocca forthcoming [2012]: Rationalism, idealism, monism, and beyond, in: Eckart Förster, Yitzhak Y. Melamed (eds.), Spinoza and German Idealism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-26.
Della Rocca, Michael, and Amijee, Fatema, eds. 2024. The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A History. New York: Oxford University Press.

Not yet published.
Di Bella, Stefano. 2005. "Leibniz's Theory of Conditions: A Framework for Ontological Dependence." The Leibniz Review no. 15:67-93.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to trace in Leibniz' s drafts the sketched outline of a conceptual framework he organized around the key concept of 'requisite'. We are faced with the project of a semi-formal theory of conditions, whose logical skeleton can have a lot of different interpretations. In particular, it is well suited to capture some crucial relations of ontological dependence. Firstly the area of 'mediate requisites' is explored - where causal and temporal relations are dealt with on the basis of a general theory of 'consequence'.

Then the study of 'immediate requisites' is taken into account - a true sample of mereological inquiry, where Leibniz strives for a unitary treatment of part-whole relation, conceptual inclusion and inherence. Far from simply conflating these relations one with another and with causality, therefore, Leibniz tried to spell them out, while at the same time understanding them within a single conceptual framework."

"A little known episode in the later history of philosophy and logic could help us to grasp the significance of these Leibnizian ideas. I am thinking of Bolzano's theory of the 'consequence' (Abfolge) relation, as it is introduced in the second part of his Wissenschaftslehre. This notion is not a purely logical one, insofar as it is distinguished from that of 'deducibility' (Ableitbarkeit, the true ancestor of our Tarskian consequence), and properly holds only for true propositions. It aims at capturing the old Aristotelian distinction between explanations 'tau oti' (that) and 'tau dioti' (why), hence it is an objective asymmetrical relation of 'grounding' between 'propositions in themselves' ('an sich'), in Bolzano's jargon. It is accurately distinguished from epistemical inference, but also from the notion of 'cause' (Ursache), that is a further specification of that relation in the sense of a 'real ground': "An object A is the cause of another B, whenever the proposition 'A does exist' contains the reason for the proposition 'B does exist' ." (21)" (p. 73)

(21) Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, III § 379, p. 497.
di Poppa, Francesca. 2013. "Spinoza on Causation and Power." The Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 51:297-319.

Abstract: "The purpose of this paper is to argue that, for Spinoza, causation is a more fundamental relation than conceptual connection, and that, in fact, it explains conceptual connection. I will firstly offer a criticism of Michael Della Rocca’s 2008 claims that, for Spinoza, causal relations are identical to relations of conceptual dependence and that existence is identical to conceivability. Secondly, I will argue that, for Spinoza, causation is more fundamental than conceptual dependence, offering textual evidence from both Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Ethics.

In particular, I will offer an interpretation of the attributes as first and foremost causal activities, or powers: this interpretation has the advantage to clarify the role of [definiton] 1D6 as a “genetic definition".”

References

Michael della Rocca 2008. Spinoza. Nw York: Routledge.
Embry, Brian. 2019. "Francisco Suárez on Beings of Reason and Non-Strict Ontological Pluralism." Philosopher's Imprint no. 19:1-15.

"Suárez explains the difference between existence and objective being in terms of intrinsicality and extrinsicality: existence is an intrinsic sort of being, and objective being is an extrinsic sort of being." (p. 6)

(...)

"But how exactly are we to understand the notion of extrinsic being?" (p. 7)

(...)

"David Lewis once informally characterized the distinction as follows:

“In general, something has an intrinsic property solely in virtue of how that thing itself is; it has a purely extrinsic property solely in virtue of how accompanying things, and its external relations to those accompanying things, are” (Lewis 2001: 384). Here Lewis characterizes the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction in terms of the in virtue of relation.

He ultimately finds this characterization unsatisfactory because we do not have a “clear enough understanding of ‘solely in virtue of’” Lewis 2001: 384).

However, the in virtue of relation has been the subject of much progress in recent metaphysics. Even critics of the in virtue of relation agree that we have a clear enough understanding of it (Wilson 2014, Koslicki 2015). Advocates note that we often say that certain facts obtain in virtue of others." (p. 7)

(...)

"This is not the place to argue for a particular analysis of intrinsicality, but I want to show how the notion of grounding can provide a better sense of what it could mean to say that something has extrinsic being." (p. 8)

References

Lewis, David. 2001. “Redefining ‘Intrinsic’.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2): 381–398.

Koslicki, Kathrin. 2015. “The Coarse-Grainedness of Grounding.” In Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Vol. 9, edited by Karen Bennett and Dean W. Zimmerman, 306–341. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wilson, Jessica. 2014. “No Work for a Theory of Grounding.” Inquiry 57 (5–6): 535–579.
Evans, Matthew. 2012. "Lessons from Euthyphro 10a–11b." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 42:1-38.

"My aim in this paper is to show that (and how) the famous argument of Euthyphro 10a - 11b, which I will call the Euthyphro Argument, can be seen to play an important role in Plato’s broader anti-constructivist project. As I interpret it, this argument is best understood as an attack on the very idea that beliefs could ground facts in the way the constructivist thinks they could."

(...)

"Here is how I will proceed. First I will provide a detailed reconstruction of the argument. Then I will try to show, on the basis of this reconstruction, that the argument can withstand many (if not all) of the most powerful lines of criticism that have been (and might be) advanced against it. Finally I will offer an assessment of the argument’s dialectical impact on constructivism in particular and naturalism in general. At each step along the way I hope to make it increasingly clear that this argument is more resilient than its critics have acknowledged, and that the naturalists among us must either learn its lessons or face defeat." (pp. 2-3)
Fine, Kit. 2022. "Some Remarks on Bolzano on Ground." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 276-300. New York: Oxford University Press.

"When I developed my own ideas on ground in the 1990s I was oblivious to Bolzano's work on the topic in his Theory of Science (henceforth WL). It was almost a couple of decades later that I became aware of his work and I was then astonished both by its level of sophistication and by the extent to which he had anticipated many of our contemporary concerns. Although the topic has had a long history, going all the way back to the ancients, there is little doubt in my mind that Bolzano deserves a special place as the first person to embark upon a systematic study of the topic; and I believe his contributions in this area to be as

great an intellectual achievement, in their own way, as his contributions to logic or real analysis." (p. 276, a note omitted)

(...)

"I wish in this paper to take Bolzano at his word and to follow through on a couple of issues raised by some of his suggestions. It would have been desirable if I had been able to show how, by following through on this suggestion, these various issues might have been resolved. Unfortunately, I was not able to do this and I can only hope to have made clear the interest of the issues and the direction in which further investigation of them might proceed." (p. 276)
Franks, Curtis. 2014. "Logical Completeness, Form, and Content: An Archaeology." In Interpreting Gödel: Critical Essays, edited by Kennedy, Juliette, 78-106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Indeed, throughout his logical investigations,Bolzano’s considerably more sustained focus was devoted, not to the Ableitbarkeit relation, but to the theory of this objectively significant consequence relation, a theory he called “Grundlehre.”

Bolzano’s 1810 Beyträge is the definitive exposition of this theory of ground and consequence." (p. 83)

(...)

"Bolzano’s two theories of logical consequence are themselves not precise enough for their correspondence with one another to be subject to proof. All the same, the question is at the center of Bolzano’s thought.

The procedural Ableitbarkeit relation provides a calculus of inference.

The ontological Abfolge relation is a feature of the world absolutely independent of our ability to reason about it. By establishing that these notions correspond, we would ensure that the logical structure of the world is accessible, that some line of thought could trace the dependencies of truths, that the reasons behind the complex facts of reality are discoverable and comprehensible." (p. 92)
Frost, Gloria. 2023. "Medieval." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 30-40. New York: Routledge.

"The first section examines medieval views on basic issues about essences. The section begins by discussing medieval conceptions of the distinction between essential and accidental features. Next the section discusses medieval positions on whether there are only species essences or also individual essences. Lastly, the section examines medieval views on the knowability of essences. The second section of the of the essay focuses on two medieval debates about essences. The first debate had to do with which features of material beings were essential to them. The Latin scholastic authors on whom this essay focuses adopted Aristotle’s theory of hylomorphism. This theory maintains that material substances are composed of matter and form. Scholastic authors debated about whether the essences of material substances were constituted merely by their forms or if their essences also contained their matter. The second debate focused on the question of whether there is a real distinction between the essence of a created substance and its existence. The debate was about whether in addition to their essence a creature was composed by a distinct actualizing principle through which the essence was the essence of a real being, rather than a merely possible one. Though this question is foreign to contemporary philosophy, it was one of the most pressing concerns regarding essences for medieval scholastic thinkers." (p. 30)
Guigon, Ghislain. 2012. "Spinoza on Composition and Priority." In Spinoza on Monism, edited by Goff, Philip, 183-205. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"In section 9.1 I argue that Spinoza agrees that there are many concrete things though there is only one fundamental concrete thing. In section 9.2 I argue that Spinoza’s view is that the fundamental concrete thing, the extended substance, is mereologically simple. However, this interpretation of Spinoza faces two challenges that I shall explore: a puzzle about the occurrence of composition in extended reality, and a puzzle about substantial simplicity. Sections 9.3 and 9.4 provide conceptual tools that will allow me to address these two challenges in sections 9.5 and 9.6: section 9.3 introduces Spinoza’s threefold distinction between kinds of composition and section 9.4 is a study of Spinoza’s doctrine about beings of reason." (p. 184)
Hocutt, Max. 1974. "Aristotle's Four Becauses." Philosophy no. 49:385-399.

"I. Introduction

What has traditionally been labelled 'Aristotle's theory of causes' would be more intelligible if construed as 'Aristotle's theory of explanations', where the term 'explanation' has substantially the sense of Hempel and Oppenheim, who construe explanations as deductions.(1) For Aristotle, specifying 'causes' is constructing demonstrations.

This interpretation has two virtues: unlike the theory of the 'four causes', it makes sense; and it shows what the logical theory of aitia in the Posterior Analytics has to do with the metaphysical treatment in the Physics and Metaphysics. On the assumption that Aristotle's metaphysics might be contaminated by his logic, Aristotle's metaphysics and logic have traditionally been kept scrupulously separate, as if they were by different men.

The result of this separation is to make Aristotle's metaphysics seem illogical. I want here to go a little way towards showing that this is not necessarily so." (p. 385, a note omitted)
Howat, Andrew. 2023. "Pragmatism." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 53-66. New York: Routledge.

"After some terminological preliminaries (§1), this chapter defends the following claims.

First, there are at least two different interpretations available of C.S. Peirce’s views on essence and essentialism (§2). One of them suggests that Peirce may have endorsed his own novel, pragmatist understandings of essence/essentialism. William James’s few remarks on the topic are somewhat ambivalent (§3), evincing a superficial anti-essentialism that seemingly anticipates Quine’s views, while remaining consistent with an anti-realist form of essentialism. Although John Dewey’s pragmatism (§4) is the most vividly anti-essentialist in spirit, once again there are prominent scholars who seemingly reject that interpretation, partly because Dewey’s attitude to metaphysics in general is difficult to establish. Some of his anti-essentialist remarks seem grounded in his own pragmatist, empirically naturalist metaphysics, while others suggest an outright metaphysical quietism that seemingly rules out “essence” and “essentialism” as meaningful terms." (pp. 53-54)
Kappes, Yannic. 2024. "Bolzano’s Tortoise and a loophole for Achilles." Synthese no. 203:1-29.

Abstract: "This paper discusses a novel response to two closely related regress arguments from Bolzano’s Theory of Science and Carroll’s What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. Bolzano’s argument aims to refute the thesis that full grounds must include propositions involving notions such as entailment, grounding or lawhood which link the respective grounds to their groundee. This thesis is motivated, Bolzano’s argument is reconstructed, and a response based on self-referential linking propositions is developed and defended against objections concerning self-reference and Curry’s paradox. Finally, the idea is applied to a reading of Carroll’s dialogue and a corresponding solution to the so-called infinite regress problem of inference is proposed."
Kasabova, Anna. 2012. "Bolzano’s Semantic Relation of Grounding: A Case Study." In Inference, Consequence, and Meaning: Perspectives on Inferentialism, edited by Gurova, Lilia, 85-103. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"Bernard Bolzano, the 19th Century mathematician and philosopher who taught at the University of Prague, worked out a semantic notion of grounding (Abfolge) for providing proofs with an objective ground (Begründung) or explanatory force. He claims that a true statement or truth is grounded or scientifically proved if and only if it is shown to be objectively dependent on other truths.(1) Bolzano holds a foundationalist view on which there are basic true propositions or axioms and basic beliefs that support derivative propositions and derivative beliefs based on the more basic propositions and beliefs. He claims that a semantic dependence relation holds between basic propositions or basic beliefs and derivative propositions or derivative beliefs, a relation he calls Abfolge, translated as the grounding relation, where grounding a statement means giving a reason for that statement." (p. 85)

(1) Beyträge II, (1810), § 12. cf. also 1817, §1 where he says that scientific proofs should be groundings (Begründungen) and introduces the terms Grundwahrheiten and Folgewahrheiten."

References

Bolzano, Bernard. (1810) Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. Prague: Caspar Widtmann. [English translation by Steve Russ in: Bolzano, Bernard. 2004. „Contributions to a better grounded presentation of mathematics.“ In From Kant to Hilbert. A sourcebook on the foundations of mathematics, vol. I, edited by William Ewald, 174-224. Oxford: Clarendon Press.]

__ (1817), Rein analytischer Beweis des Lehrsatzes, dass zwischen je zwey Werthen, die ein entgegengesetzes Resultat gewähren, wenigstens eine reele Wurzel der Gleichung liege, Wilhelm Engelmann (English translation: Purely analytic proof of the theorem that between any two values which give results of opposite sign, there lies at least one real root of the equation; in From Kant to Hilbert, cit., pp. 225-248.
Kment, Boris. 2014. Modality and Explanatory Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The goal of this book is to shed light on metaphysical necessity and the broader class of modal properties to which it belongs."

(...)

I will argue that to understand modality we need to reconceptualize its relationship to causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. While many philosophers have tried to give modal analyses of causation and explanation, often in counterfactual terms, I will argue that we obtain a more plausible, explanatorily powerful and unified theory if we regard explanation as more fundamental than modality." (p. 1)
Knappik, Franz. 2016. "And Yet He is a Monist: Comments on James Kreines, Reason in the World." Hegel Bulletin:1-17.

Abstract: "I critically discuss Kreines’s arguments against readings on which Hegel holds some version of metaphysical monism. In section 1, I address Kreines’s claim that Hegel’s revised version of Kant’s argument in the Transcendental Dialectic implies a rejection of metaphysical monism. I argue both that the argument that Kreines ascribes to Hegel does not itself rule out monism, and that there are serious exegetical problems with the way Kreines understands Hegel’s diagnosis of the antinomies and his critique of the metaphysics of the understanding. In section 2, I discuss additional reasons that Kreines gives for seeing Hegel as rejecting metaphysical monism. In particular, I argue that Hegel is much more optimistic about the intelligibility of nature than Kreines thinks: to a substantial degree, the basic structure of nature, including the laws of mechanics, is open to explanations that are ultimately based on a monistic principle."
Koslicki, Kathrin. 2014. "The Causal Priority of Form in Aristotle." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:113-141.

Abstract: "In various texts (e.g., Met. Z.17), Aristotle assigns priority to form, in its role as a principle and cause, over matter and the matter-form compound. Given the central role played by this claim in Aristotle’s search for primary substance in the Metaphysics, it is important to understand what motivates him in locating the primary causal responsibility for a thing’s being what it is with the form, rather than the matter. According to Met. Θ.8, actuality [energeia/entelecheia] in general is prior to potentiality [dunamis] in three ways, viz., in definition, time and substance. I propose an explicitly causal reading of this general priority claim, as it pertains to the matter-form relationship. The priority of form over matter in definition, time and substance, in my view, is best explained by appeal to the role of form as the formal, efficient and final cause of the matter-form compound, respectively, while the posteriority of matter to form according to all three notions of priority is most plausibly accounted for by the fact that the causal contribution of matter is limited to its role as material cause. When approached from this angle, the work of Met. Θ.8, can be seen to lend direct support to the more specific and explicitly causal priority claim we encounter in Met. Z.17, viz., that formis prior tomatter in its role as the principle and primary cause of a matter-form compound’s being what it is."
———. 2024. "Modality and Essence in Contemporary Metaphysics." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 263-293. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction. Essentialists hold that at least a certain range of entities can be meaningfully said to have natures, essences, or essential features independently of how these entities are described, conceptualized, or otherwise placed with respect to our specifically human interests, purposes, or activities. For quite some time, it was common among contemporary metaphysicians to regard essence as a modal notion: an essential truth, on this conception, is a modal truth of a certain kind (viz., one that is both necessary and de re, i.e., about a certain entity); and an essential property is a feature an entity has necessarily, if it is to exist. The essential truths, according to this approach, are thus a subset of the necessary truths; and the essential properties of entities are included among their necessary properties." (p. 263)
Koslicki, Kathrin, and Raven, Michael J. 2023. "History." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 15-17. New York: Routledge.

"Philosophers have discussed essence since antiquity. The notion of essence played a central role in ancient Greek philosophy and occupied center stage during the Middle Ages. A more critical stance towards this notion developed during the early modern era and continues, in some quarters, into the present time. The turn of the millennium saw the notion of essence falling upon especially hard times.

(...)

All this suggests that it is high time to reevaluate essence. To arrive at an adequate assessment of where we are, however, it is necessary first to appreciate the history of philosophical discussions of essence that have preceded our current vantage point. Part I of this Handbook thus begins by offering a historical survey of the role of essence in ancient Greek, medieval, and modern philosophy as well as in the contemporary traditions of pragmatism, phenomenology, and early analytic philosophy." (p. 15)
Kreines, James. 2015. Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal. New York: Oxford University Pree.

"What we are discovering, as we step through these debates, is the fundamentality of the question of what is a reason for what. We need the basic and general notion of one thing being a reason for another in order to engage any of these debates. And so we should accept that notion as basic and proceed to consider what specific forms of reason there really are, which directions they run in different cases, and how they relate to one another. This point can be expressed in contemporary terminology as well, but it requires stretching a bit beyond the usage generally intended. Schaffer, for example, speaks of “ontological dependence” and “grounding.” Part of his point is to distinguish a special sort of worldly dependence in metaphysics, parallel to but distinct fromcases like the causality of interest in the natural sciences. My point here is that we need a more general notion of worldly dependence, or (better) reason in the world, in order to open up in a parallel manner all the questions and possible positions concerning laws, causality, and so on.(13)" (p. 68)

(13) See especially Schaffer (2009). The notion of “worldly dependence” here, then, is closer not to Schaffer’s “grounding” but to Kim’s (1994) notion of a “metaphysical dependence” that is the “correlate” of explanation, where this can but need not be specifically causal.

References

Kim, J. 1994. “Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence.” Philosophical Issues 5: 51–69.

Schaffer, J. 2009. “On What Grounds What.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by D. Manley, D. Chalmers, and R. Wasserman, 347–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2016. "Things in Themselves and Metaphysical Grounding: On Allais’ Manifest Reality." European Journal of Philosophy no. 24:253-266.

"I conclude, then, as follows: There is no comparatively comprehensive interpretation of transcendental idealism that is, in my view,more successful than Allais’ ambitious Manifest Reality. With respect to Kant on things in themselves, however, I think Allais’ account retains one disadvantage common to its competitors. Escape, as I see it, requires different understanding of the extremes that a “moderate” interpretation should avoid: On the one extreme, there are indeed deflationary readings, precluding a metaphysical assertion of the existence of things in themselves as grounds of appearances.

But the other extreme is not precisely noumenalism, as Allais claims. It is rather any metaphysics asserting the existence of unconditioned grounds, or metaphysical fundamentality in this sense. The argument of the Dialectic rules these all to be unacceptably dogmatic, and for what seem to me powerfully philosophical reasons. I would think that the big interpretive challenge is to navigate between these extremes concerning things in themselves—hopefully in a manner that can retain access to the many unmatched advantages of Allais’ interpretation of Kant on appearances." (p. 264)

References

Allais, L. (2010), ‘Transcendental Idealism and Metaphysics,’ Kantian Yearbook 2:1–32.

—— (2015), Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism & his Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2016. "Fundamentality without Metaphysical Monism: Response to Critics of Reason in the World." Hegel Bulletin:1-19.

Abstract: "This article is a reply to comments by Franz Knappik and Robert Stern on my book, Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal. Issues addressed include the systematicity of Hegel’s philosophy, the prioritizing of metaphysical over epistemological questions in his arguments, Hegel’s response to Kant’s Antinomy of Pure Reason, and my conclusion that there are senses in which Hegel’s own position is both ambitiously metaphysical and also monist, but that the monism present there is epistemological, and the ambitious metaphysics is non-monist."
Kriener, Jönne. 2017. "Bolzano." In The History of Philosophical and Formal Logic: From Aristotle to Tarski, edited by Malpass, Alex and Antonutti Marfori, Marianna, 121-142. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

See Bolzano’s theory of grounding (pp. 133-137).

5.1 Grounding

Bolzano’s logic as developed so far applies equally to true as to false propositions.

However, Bolzano has more to offer: a special system for truths. True propositions are ordered by what Bolzano calls the relation of Abfolge. Let me translate it as ‘grounding’. Bolzano motivates his theory of grounding from examples of the following kind ( WL §198).

(3) It is warmer in Palermo than in New York.

(4) The thermometer stands higher in Palermo than in New York.

Both propositions are true. However, it is the truth of (3) that explains (4) and not vice versa. The truth of (3) grounds the truth of (4).

This relation of grounding stands out from Bolzano’s system in that it is not defined in terms of variation. In particular, the fact that (3) grounds (4) and not vice versa cannot be captured by deducibility: (3) can be derived from (4).

Therefore, a stronger concept is needed: (3) grounds (4).

For a long time, interpreters have found this part of Bolzano’s work ‘obscure’ ( Berg 1962 : 151). Nothing in a modern logic textbook corresponds to Bolzanian grounding. Nonetheless, the concept has a long and venerable tradition. Bolzano connects with Aristotle’s distinction between why -proofs and mere that -proofs (Aristotle 2006 : 1051b; Betti 2010)." (p. 133)

References

Aristotle ( 2006), Metaphysics Book Θ , ed. Stephen Makin , Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Berg, Jan (1962), Bolzano’s Logic. Stockholm , Almqvist & Wiksell.

Betti , Arianna ( 2010), ‘ Explanation in Metaphysics and Bolzano’s Theory of Ground and Consequence’, 211 : 281–316 .

Bolzano , Bernard (1837), Wissenschaftslehre, Sulzbach: Seidel.
Lange, Marc. 2022. "Bolzano, the Parallelogram of Forces, and Scientific Explanation." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 394-417. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The parallelogram law for the composition of forces was introduced in 1586 by Simon Stevin. It seems to have been widely recognized by Newton's day since both Pierre Varignon and Bernard Lamy stated it in the same year (1687) as Newton did in the Principia.(2) But long after the parallelogram law's truth had become uncontroversial, considerable dispute remained over why it holds. Rival approaches to its explanation were developed and criticized by many notable scientists over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Bernard Bolzano's contribution to this debate was his Attempt at an Objective Grounding of the Theory of the Composition of Forces (as Russ (2004, 684) translates the title of Bolzano (1842)). (Bolzano did not publish this paper until 1842, but some commentators have suggested that the paper was composed much earlier; for instance, Russ says that it was written 'probably in the 1810's'.(3)" (p. 394, a note pmitted)

(2) For historical background, see Dugas 1988 [A History of Mechanics. New York: Dover] and Duhem 1991 The Origins of Statics. Dordrecht: Kluwer].

(3) Russ 2004 [The Mathematical Works of Bernard Balzano. Oxford: Oxford University Press], 622.
Lapointe, Sandra. 2006. "Bolzano on Grounding or Why Is Logic Synthetic." In The Logica Yearbook 2005, 113-126. Prague: Filosofia.
MacBride, Fraser, and Janssen-Lauret, Frederique. 2022. "Why Lewis Would Have Rejected Grounding." In Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis, edited by Beebe, Helen and Fsher, A. R. J., 66-91. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In this chapter we argue that were Lewis to be writing today, he would—drawing upon the corpus of his established views—provide us with principled reasons for saying both (1) that we don’t need the notions of ‘metaphysical dependence’, ‘grounding’ or ‘ontological priority’ and (2) that they’re not intelligible notions anyway. They’re not needed because, he would have held, either there is work to be done but all the heavy lifting can be achieved by other means or there really isn’t any work that needs doing at all. They’re not intelligible, he would have continued, because they presuppose metaphysical modalities which Lewis had always held suspect. So much the worse, we conclude, for contemporary developments, whatever may be de rigueur. The tradition to which Lewis belonged cannot be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Here we use ‘grounding’ as a generic label for a range of theories which deem metaphysics stymied without metaphysical dependency, grounding or ontological priority. Although ‘metaphysical dependence’, ‘grounding’ and ‘ontological priority’ can be used differently, their proponents often share motivations and themes. We focus upon the alleged shortcomings of supervenience, the oft-cited need to invoke grounding to explain how a singleton relates to its sole member and the appeal to facts, essentialism or metaphysical necessity to explain grounding itself—all motivations and themes incompatible with Lewis’s philosophy." (pp. 66-67)
Malink, Marko. 2020. "Aristotelian Demonstration." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 33-48. New York: Routledge.

"In what follows, I give an overview of Aristotle’s argument and its historical significance (Section 2).The relevant relation of priority in nature is determined by the order of terms in acyclic chains of immediate universal affirmations (Sections 3 and 4). Given the deductive framework of Aristotle’s syllogistic theory, it can be shown that all direct demonstrations but not all indirect demonstrations proceed from premises that are prior in nature to the conclusion (Section 5). I conclude by indicating how this fact correlates with similar results in modern versions of the impure logic of ground (Section 6)." (p. 34)
———. 2022. "Aristotle and Bolzano on Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 221-243. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In 1837 Bernard Bolzano published his most important work in the area of logic, the Theory of Science: Attempt at a Detailed and in the Main Novel Exposition of Logic with Constant Attention to Earlier Authors. As indicated by the subtitle, a significant portion of the Theory of Science is devoted to a discussion of the work done by earlier theorists on the various topics covered in the treatise. Bolzano thus develops his logical theory by examining and criticizing his predecessors' views. Among the authors that figure most prominently in the Theory of Science is Aristotle. In particular, Aristotle takes centre stage in Bolzano's discussion

of grounding (Abfolge) in §§ 198-222." (p. 221, a note omitted)
———. 2023. "Ancient." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 19-29. New York: Routledge.

"The status of questions of the form “What is X?” was an important topic of discussion among Socratic thinkers. For example, Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates and opponent of Plato, examined the nature of definitions: Antisthenes was the first to define “definition” (logos), by saying: “A definition is an account revealing what a thing was or is.” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 6.3) However, unlike Socrates and Plato, Antisthenes ended up denying the possibility of defining things by specifying their essence. According to Aristotle, Antisthenes held the view that “one cannot define the essence of a thing since the definition would be a long account; but one can specify and teach of what sort a thing is” (Metaphysics H 3 1043b23–7).5 As we will see, Aristotle himself does not share Antisthenes’ skepticism, but contends that we are in fact able to define things by specifying their essence." (pp. 20-21)
———. 2024. "Aristotle on Modality." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 1-30. New York: Oxford University Press.

"While necessity figures centrally in the cosmologies presented by Plato and the Pre- Socratics, we do not have any evidence that these thinkers provided an account of the nature of necessity in general. The

first philosopher known to have provided such an account is Aristotle.

In his logical and metaphysical works, Aristotle develops a systematic theory of necessity and related modalities such as possibility and impossibility." (p. 2)
Martin, Christopher J. 2004. "Formal Consequence in Scotus and Ockham: towards an account's of Scotus logic." In Duns Scot à Paris, 1302–2002: Actes du colloque de Paris, 2–4 septembre 2002, edited by Boulnois, Olivier, Karger, Elizabeth, Solère, Jean-Luc and Sondag, Gérard, 117-150. Turnhout: Brepols.

"The status of a striking and important counter-possible conditional claim is much disputed in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Thomas Aquinas argues that the proposition “if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then it is not distinct from the Son” is true and he is followed in this by Godfrey of Fontaines and Thomas of Sutton. Henry of Ghent, to the contrary, insists that it is false and this is also the view of John Dims Scotus who claims to prove the falsity of the conditional by showing that the consequent does not follow formally from the antecedent. William of Ockham for his part argues for just the opposite, maintaining that the consequent of the conditional does indeed follow formally its antecedent, but he insists that despite this the conditional is not evidently true.

We know a good deal about Ockham’s theory of conditional propositions(1) but not very much about Scotus’ views on the subject. In this paper I will try to make some progress towards understanding Scotus’ logic by considering his account of the conditional in solving this particular theological problem and propose that his theory of formal consequence can be connected with that of the formal distinction.

I will then argue that in the light of this connection Ockham’s different theory of consequences can be understood as part of his general rejection Scotus’ metaphysics." (p. 117)

(1) Gullelmus de Ockham, Summa Logicae (OPh III-3).
———. 2024. "Abelard on Grounding in Ontology and Logic." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 103-128. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Contemporary discussions of grounding have found an historical ances

tor for their claims in Aristotle’s appeal to the four causes. In this paper I propose what I think is a much closer and certainly more developed anticipation of theories of grounding as dependence in the work of Peter Abelard. Abelard explicitly appeals to grounding in his account of the ontological structure of substance in terms of what we now call tropes. This theory itself then grounds his appeal to the theory of the dialectical topics in formulating the truth conditions of conditional propositions and the validity conditions of arguments corresponding to different grounding relationships."
Massimi, Michela. 2017. "Grounds, Modality, and Nomic Necessity in the Critical Kant." In Kant and the Laws of Nature, edited by Massimi, Michela and Breitenbach, Angela, 150-170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this section, I turn to Kant’s lectures on metaphysics to clarify why, in my view, Kant’s considered answer to the problem of inference should be searched for in his multifaceted notion of ground and consequence. I clarify three different kinds of nomic necessity that Kant saw at play in different kinds of laws, each respectively relying on a different notion of ground, qua conceptual ground (“ratio cognoscendi”), qua ground of being (“ratio essendi”), or qua ground of becoming (“ratio fiendi”). Only the latter notion captures cause–effect relations at play in empirical causal laws, I argue." (p. 169)

(...)

"The main goal of this chapter was to advance an interpretation that could vindicate Kant’s bold claim that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. To this end, I have elucidated the metaphysical aspect of the dispositional essentialist reading that I am defending on Kant’s behalf with an eye to clarifying different kinds of necessity that Kant seems to be referring to in various passages of the lectures on metaphysics. We identified three main notions of necessity (conceptual, metaphysical, and natural necessity, respectively). They are, respectively, at work in conceptual truths, theoretical identity statements, and empirical causal laws, via three different kinds of grounds (ratio cognoscendi, essendi, and fiendi). This taxonomy is far from exhaustive and is meant only to map out (tentatively) the territory of lawlike claims and their necessity in Kant." (p. 168)
McDaniel, Kris. 2024. "Modality in 20th- Century Philosophy." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 221-251. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction. It is hard to overstate how important the topic of modality was for philosophy in the 20th century. Fittingly, a comprehensive discussion of this topic and its role in the development of 20th-century philosophy in a piece this size is impossible, and as such, choices must be made about what to cover. Here is what I plan to do here. First, much of early 20th-century modal theorizing is a response, either direct or indirect, to Kant, and so I begin by outlining some key Kantian claims about modality. Second, I describe two philosophical traditions stemming from this reaction, the phenomenological tradition, with a focus on Husserl and Heidegger, and the analytic tradition, with a focus on Russell and Quine. Next, I turn to the relatively recent history of modality in the analytic tradition, and focus on work by Barcan Marcus on the formula discovered by and named after her, Kripke on the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori, and Lewis on modal realism." (pp. 221-222)
Melamed, Yitzhak Y. 2012. "Why Spinoza is not an Eleatic Monist (Or Why Diversity Exists)." In Spinoza on Monism, edited by Goff, Philip, 206-222. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"In the first part of the chapter I will present and explain the problem of justifying the existence of infinite plurality modes in Spinoza’s system. In the second part of the chapter I consider the radical solution to the problem according to which modes do not really exist, and show that this solution must be rejected upon consideration. In the third and final part of the chapter I will suggest my own solution according to which the essence of God is active and it is this feature of God’s essence which requires the flow of modes from God’s essence. I also suggest that Spinoza considered radical infinity and radical unity to be roughly the same, and that the absolute infinity of what follow from God’s essence is grounded in the absolute infinity of God’s essence itself." (pp. 206-207)
Michels, Robert. 2023. "Contemporary (analytical) tradition." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 84-99. New York: Routledge.

"Due to the strong influence of logical empiricism, the notion of essence seemed like a relic of the past to many analytic philosophers working in the first half of the 20th century. Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century, analytic philosophers considered the notion worthy of serious discussion and even relied on it in philosophical explanations and theories. This chapter gives a roughly chronological overview of the history of essence in 20th century philosophy in the analytic tradition, focusing on a number of important developments leading from the logical positivists’ opposition to essence to its current renaissance in analytic metaphysics and beyond." (p. 84)
Morscher, Edgar. 2016. Bernard Bolzanos Lehre von Grund und Folge. Eine axiomatische Rekonstruktion. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
———. 2022. "The Grounds of Moral 'Truths'." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 343-363. New York: Oxford University Press.

"From whatever area of knowledge you are approaching Bolzano's work-be it theology, philosophy, mathematics, or natural sciences-it is almost impossible not to come across a reference to Aristotle's distinction between the knowledge of 'that' (ὅτι), and the knowledge of 'why' (διότι). Bolzano's favourite examples for illustrating this distinction are taken from the natural sciences: From the information that the thermometer (or barometer) reading in location l₁ at time t is higher than in location l₂ we can infer that the temperature (or atmospheric pressure, respectively) in l₁ at tis higher than in l₂ , The higher thermometer (or barometer) reading, however, is not the ground why the temperature (or the atmospheric pressure, respectively) is higher at t in l1 than in l₂, but it is exactly the other way around: the truth that the temperature (or atmospheric pressure) is higher is the ground for the truth that the thermometer ( or barometer) reading is higher, which is its consequence.(1)

(...)

The present chapter of this book is concerned with Bolzano's application of this distinction within the field of ethics. In the introductory first section I will lay out the conceptual framework to be used in the third (main) section of this chapter. In the intermediate second section I will present a brief introduction to Bolzano's ethics." (p. 343)

(1) Similar examples can be found, e.g. in RW [Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft] I, §3: 6; WL Wissenschaftslehre] II, §162: 192f., 194; §168: 210; §177: 222;§198: 340; WL IV, §401: 34; §690: 580f.
Mulligan, Kevin. 2004. "Essence and Modality: The Quintessence of Husserl’s Theory." In Semantik und Ontologie: Beiträge zur philosophischen Forschung, edited by Siebel, Mark and Textor, Mark, 387-418. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Even the most cursory reader of Husserl’s writings must be struck by the frequent references to essences (“Wesen”, “Essenzen”), Ideas (“Idee”), kinds, natures, types and species and to necessities, possibilities, impossibilities, necessary possibilities, essential necessities and essential laws.

What does Husserl have in mind in talking of essences and modalities?

What did he take the relation between essentiality and modality to be? In the absence of answers to these questions it is not clear that a reader of Husserl can be said to understand him.

Thus in the first part of Husserl’s first major work, the “Prolegomena” to the Logical Investigations (P, LI), he mentions the essence of logic, of knowledge, the rational essence of deductive science (Preface), the essence of truth, falsity, generality, particularity, ground and consequence, affirmation and denial (§ 18), of colours and tones (§ 40), of numbers (§ 46), the essence of theoretical connections (§ 66), of process, cause, effect, time and thinking (§ 71 A). And he continues in this style throughout his later writings (cf. Smith 1989).

Husserl often mentions essences in the course of making claims to the effect that some universal proposition holds in virtue of the essence of this or that. He says that such propositions are grounded in the essence of this or that. We therefore need to understand what expressions of the form “the essence of x” mean, what Husserl took their extension to be, what he understands by “ground” and how modality, essence, grounding and universality or generality stand to one another. Answers to all these questions are required, it may seem, before we can even begin to understand Husserl’s account of the epistemology of essences and essential connections." (pp. 387-388)

Refereces

Smith, B. 1989: “Logic and Formal Ontology”, in: J. N. Mohanty & W. McKenna (eds.), Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, University Press of America: Lanham, 29-67.
———. 2020. "Austro-German Phenomenologists." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 90-101. New York: Routledge.

"Brentano’s heirs, in particular Husserl and Meinong, as well as their students and many philosophers influenced by them, rely heavily on grounding (begründen), founding (fundieren), and related ties such as dependence (Abhängigkeit) and existential relativity.

(...)

In this section, we look at how Brentano’s heirs understood grounding and foundation, in particular their relation to essentialism and modality, and say something about the variety of the claims they put forward that employ grounding and foundation. In the following sections, we look in more detail at a handful of philosophical claims formulated in terms of foundation (§2) and grounding (§§3–5)." (p. 90)
———. 2022. "Logic, Logical Norms, and (Normative) Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 244-275. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In what follows I expound and evaluate Husserl's views about 'because' and grounding (section 8.2) and then consider some specific questions where his views are opposed to those of Bolzano. I begin with Husserl's ground-theoretical argument against Bolzano's account of the general structure of a proposition (section 8.3), which bears on the controversy between operationalist and predicationalist views in the contemporary debate about grounding. I then briefly outline Husserl's very non-Bolzanian views about essence and foundation (section 8.4), and finally examine (section 8.5) Hussserl's account of the nature of logic, which he himself contrasts with Bolzano's account, and his views about grounding relations between normative facts (such as logical norms) and non-normative facts (such as logical principles)." (pp. 244-245)
———. 2023. "Contemporary (phenomenological) tradition." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 67-83. New York: Routledge.

"The phenomenologists’ confidence in their ability to intuit essences and connections between them (essential connections) seems to have done much to discredit phenomenology and to have led to a lack of interest in their views about essence and its roles, in particular its relation to modality and grounding, not least amongst later so called phenomenologists. Meinong, unlike Husserl and his followers, did not go in for intuiting essences and was never philosophically intoxicated. But he, too, thought that essences and natures play a central role in philosophy. What, then, did the phenomenologists take essences and their connections to be? What rôles, philosophical and non-philosophical, did they assign to essence? What sort of contact, epistemic and non-epistemic, with essence did they take themselves to enjoy?" (p. 67 a note omitted)

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