My Dissertation on Grounding, Causation, and a Fundamental Cause of Being

Or, why there is a turtle terminus.

For those with an interest in the grounding/ontological dependence literature, cosmological arguments, the metaphysics of causal powers, or medieval metaphysics, you might enjoy at least some of my dissertation. The dissertation is titled “Powers and the Metaphysics of Fundamentality,” and each of the three chapters, though connected, can be read on its own as a sort of stand-alone paper. Here’s a link to the dissertation, which can be read in its entirety for free online, and here’s the abstract:

In this dissertation, I address the question of whether ground, the relation that obtains between entities e1...en and a further entity e when e ontologically depends on, and is metaphysically explained by, e1...en, should be understood causally and, if so, whether this has any substantive implications. I answer both in the affirmative. I argue that ground and causation are similar enough to motivate characterizing ground as a special kind of causation, and that this can be done if we adopt a powers-theoretic account of causation. Moreover, I argue that the resultant view of ground, what I call “powerful, existential causation,” has important consequences for the debate between foundationalists, according to whom there must exist something fundamental that grounds all else, and infinitists, according to whom being might descend infinitely with nothing fundamental. Drawing on arguments and insights of medieval philosophers such as IbnSīnā, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus, I argue that if ground is understood as powerful, existential causation a strong argument can be formulated for foundationalism over infinitism. Thus, there must exist something fundamental whose existence is ungrounded, but which grounds the existence of everything else.