Peihong Xie
University of Vienna
This paper aims to reframe the enterprise of metaphysical grounding through the lens of Carnapian explication, enriched by a role-function dynamics inspired by Basic Formal Ontology. According to my proposed story, the explication of a concept of grounding can be divided into three stages. In the Requirements Assessment stage, conceptual engineers should identify important pre-theoretic roles typically associated with a concept of grounding. In the Design stage, they should design an explicatum concept to serve at least a subset of these roles, now specified as its designed functions. Finally, in the Implementation stage, when there are several theoretical explicata available, conceptual engineers should figure out the ones which gain sustained use and proliferation among intended users because of serving their designed functions well (so that the designed functions turn into etiological functions). Accordingly, a crucial task of my story of explicating grounding is to specify the basic types of grounding roles, including: the clarificatory role (in reformulating interesting philosophical questions), the structural role (in accounting absolute and/or relative fundamentality), the explanatory role (in backing or constituting metaphysical explanations), and other instrumental, pragmatic, or normative roles. Based on this role specification, I distinguish and discuss three package-deal approaches to explicating grounding lurking in the literature on grounding: a minimal clarificatory approach, a structural approach, and several explanatory approaches. Each prioritizes one basic type of role (clarificatory, structural, or explanatory) as leading, while treating others as optional. When the leading role is fulfilled, the more non-leading roles an explicatum fulfills, the better it is. Finally, this paper concludes by showing how my story of explication is compatible with a realist prospect of the grounding enterprise.
Chair: Andres Rodriguez Rojas
Time: 03 September, 16:00 – 16:30
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 