Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Grounding Physicalism, Zachary Kofi

Theses and Dissertations

Grounding physicalism is the thesis that fundamental physical truths ground every other truth. Ted Sider and Shamik Dasgupta have recently put forward a serious challenge to grounding physicalism. The challenge is an instance of a more general challenge concerning what grounds grounding facts, which has been powerfully presented by Karen Bennett. If A is some fundamental fact about physics that grounds some fact B about mental states, then what grounds the fact that A grounds B? The grounding physicalist who says that such facts are either grounded or ungrounded seems to face a dilemma: Either grounding facts are grounded and …