 Hello, I'm JJ Joaquin and welcome to Philosophy and What Matters, where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Joining me in this episode is my good friend, Martin Vacek, chair of analytic philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and we will talk about metametaphysics. Now, metaphysics is often described as the philosophical study of the fundamental structure of reality. Traditionally, it is first philosophy, science of things that do not change in the science of first principles and ultimate causes of things. But how should we conduct such a study? Could we ever arrive at the fundamental structure of reality? Now, asking these questions lead us to metametaphysics, a brewing philosophical industry that tackles epistemic and methodological questions about doing metaphysics. Now, guiding us through metametaphysics and why it matters is Jonathan Schaffer, distinguished professor of philosophy at Dr. Pierce University. Hello, Professor Schaffer, welcome to Philosophy and What Matters. Hi, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so before getting into the main topic, let's first discuss your philosophical background. So how did you get into philosophy? Well, when I was in high school, I was into debate. That was my passion in high school. I thought I would be a lawyer. And then I got to college and I took an intro to philosophy course and I got hooked. I remember coming home during the winter break of my second year in college and realizing that I was of my own free will, reading my school books. And that's how I knew I was hooked and I've just kept going ever since. Okay, so who influenced you to pursue an academic career in philosophy? Well, in many ways, my father is really sort of the main person who influenced me in that way because he comes from a kind of family of academics. His father is a physics professor, his sister is a math professor. And so my father always had a kind of great reverence for academia. He used to say of the men who he really respected that so and so as a scholar and a gentleman. So I thought maybe I could at least be one of the two. And then going forward, when I got to Rutgers, Tim Modlin, Barry Lauer, Brian McLaughlin were huge influences on the intellectually, but I'd say the person who influenced me most of all was David Lewis, who I encountered when I sat in on some courses at Princeton. I mean, he was one of the most brilliant and clear minded thinkers I've ever encountered. It was just stunning to be in a room with him. But also he showed such charity and kindness towards his students that he is a role model for me and as a teacher, as well as a philosopher. So David Lewis, so what inspired you to go to the ANU, Australian National University? Right. So, well, after I graduated from Rutgers, I took a job at the University of Houston and then I was at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for about six years. And then my friend, David Chalmers sent me an email saying they had an opening and asked if I might be interested. And it just seemed like such an exciting adventure to travel around the world and be with such an amazing group of people. Yeah, so let's go now to our main topic, some metaphysics. You are one of the best metaphysicians that we have around, but let's get a handle of what metaphysics is first. How is metaphysics different from other disciplines like sciences, for example, physics and other branches of philosophy like the symbology or ethics? That's really a great question. And I've come to think that there's a particular sort of inquiry that most deeply interests me, which is inquiry into the nature and structure of reality. And you're sort of alluding to this idea of the fun, what's fundamental and the structure of reality, what depends on that. So I'd like to say that that's a call that inquiry into what grounds what. And I think of that as the kind of inquiry that I find most fascinating and it connects to the sciences in so far as we think maybe that physics is most fundamental at our world. So that might give us some guidance there, and it connects to epistemology in so far as, you know, we want to be able to know the answers to our questions and only engage in inquiries that we can have some reason where we can have some reasonable chance of knowing the answer. And though that said like this inquiry into what grounds what there's some sort of traditional metaphysical questions like, is there free will that maybe are separate from that. And maybe there's some sense in which inquiry into what grounds what also incorporates some scientific inquiry at like perhaps into physics and things like that. So I guess what I really want to say at the end of the day is metaphysics is a label and it can be a helpful label. But there's a certain point which I just want to know about the nature and structure of reality. Okay, so metaphysics go at that point. How is it different from science though so physics is about reality as well so it's about well structure of reality from an empirical point of view so how is metaphysics at least a philosophical side of metaphysics different from science. I would say it's, and this is a kind of Aquinian attitude that it's more as quite continuous with science. I guess I think, first of all that, you know, I mean obviously there's there's many sciences physics and chemistry and biology and we want to know not just, you know what sort of picture of reality these different sciences are giving us, but also how those different pictures hang together. And for me this is kind of taking us towards the idea that some things might be dependent on others so I'd like to think that there are, you know, chemicals, and maybe there are also subatomic particles. But you wouldn't have told the whole story, unless you also added that the chemicals are dependent on the subatomic particles in some, you know, interesting way to be explored. And also there's sort of these more general questions that the sciences don't pursue directly, which is, you know, what we often think of the world in terms of objects with properties, and questions about the general nature of objects and the general nature of properties are also part of questions that are about the fundamental structure of reality that aren't directly in, in the site of scientific inquiry. Okay, so, but there have been many complaints against metaphysics, at least fundamental metaphysics throughout the history of philosophy. So most notably, you have the logical positivists. So what are these complaints all about? Well, there's, I mean, there's a lot to complain about metaphysics really and philosophy generally I mean we don't really seem to answer many of our questions, if any of them. So, I guess I, I do want to say that I'm sympathetic to the prospect that there are general methodological or epistemological worries about what we're doing when we do philosophy, and whether we're to get anywhere in philosophical inquiry. I have a kind of a sort of practical exploratory attitude, which is, you know, I get, I get interested in questions. And sometimes I feel like I can find some reasons to prefer some answers to others. And then I just want to see how far we can get with that. And it may be that there's real limits to how far we can get but I don't think that's the kind of thing that can be determined in advance. So I want to quote some other philosophical thesis about, you know, what reality is like and our access to it that's itself a philosophical thesis and also to be explored. So I feel like they're all just different philosophical these season we have to just kind of explore what can get us to the most sort of overall explanatory picture in the end. There are like you mentioned, you mentioned the positivists and there are specific people have it various kinds of worries that are specific to metaphysics, specific to our epistemic access to the world or to our capacity to use language in a way that meaningfully distinguishes metaphysical pieces. So I mean, there are those words, I guess I do think that all of these worries kind of equally afflict inquiry into ethics and into philosophy of language itself. I mean, if you think for instance that there's limitations that are of us as finite creatures in, you know, knowing what the world outside us is like. It's hard to think that there also aren't the same limitations that we would face and knowing what what meaning and reference are in the philosophy of language that could guide that that could, you know, be, you know, part of a skeptical charge against metaphysical inquiry. I would take the view that there is real grounds for skepticism about philosophy generally our track record's not great. I don't believe that there are specific problems with metaphysics that don't afflict other parts of philosophy. Okay, so that's a cool thing to say. So metaphysics is not alone with this problem, the epistemic and methodological problem. So, okay, fair enough. But one interesting episode in 20th century metaphysics is the Quine-Karnap debate. So here's Quine, the youngster during that time, and Karnap, the old guard of logical positivism. But how should we understand this debate and how did it spark new life in metaphysics? Yeah, I mean, the Quine-Karnap debate has really, at least for a long time, been like at the center of the kind of textbook story of how metaphysics in this, you know, over the last maybe 50 to 70 years has gone. The textbook story is like, as you said, like there's the old guard positivist anti-metaphysics, anti-metaphysical champion, Karnap, and then there's the new blood, the supposedly pro-metaphysics Quine. And then the story usually, not always, but usually gets told is like Quine won the debate and that freed us to do metaphysics ever since. Yes, an inspiring story, but I think there's a lot that's not very accurate about the story. A main point is that both Quine and Karnap considered themselves pragmatists who opposed traditional metaphysics. And within their pragmatism, they had differences. Karnap, or Quine, is more of a wholist and rejects the analytic sympathetic distinction, and that allows him a way to get a methodology to answer questions about what there is. But from my perspective, this is actually something that's led into some of my own work and other people's work on grounding. From my own perspective, what's maybe most interesting about the Quine-Karnap debate is a kind of point of agreement that they have that they don't ever call into question. They both start off by saying that metaphysics is about what there is. And then they go on to have a debate over whether that's the kind of inquiry that we can get anywhere with or that's meaningful. I think there's something very puzzling about thinking that questions about like, do numbers exist? Those are the kind of questions that were supposed to be paradigmatic metaphysical questions. There's something very puzzling about seeing those questions as like these really hard, deep questions about the world. Because look, we all, I mean, everyone who's had any math education knows that there are prime numbers. Anyone would know that, well, there are two numbers between 7 and 10. And from the claim that there are prime numbers or that there are two numbers between 7 and 10, it just follows immediately that there are numbers. So it seems like it's just the claim that there are numbers is obvious consequence of some obvious truths. So if that's what metaphysics is about, it's puzzling that this is like a deep and interesting field of inquiry. So what I have thought instead is that metaphysics is more about this idea of fundamental structured reality. So if we get to particular issues like the status of numbers, I think the best way to understand the question or at least a deep and interesting question in that vicinity is, are numbers fundamental constituents of reality, or are they dependent. And if they're dependent, what are they dependent on? Are they dependent on our minds and our conceptual scheme? Are they mind dependent? Are they dependent on some sort of pre-numerical structures out in the world? So those are views that, you know, granting that there are prime numbers and there are numbers. That just leaves open whether numbers are fundamental entities or dependent on our minds or dependent in some other way. I feel I've defended the view that that's where at least a very interesting line of questions remains. I think Martin has a question about this. Martin, are you unmuted, I think, Martin? We can't hear you. Still muted. We can't hear you, man. Well, I'll ask a question for you, Martin. Is that all right? So Martin has a question about this side. So since it's like some philosophers have pointed out that fundamental existence questions like numbers are trivial. For example, as you mentioned, if there are two apples on my desk, there is a number two, and therefore there are numbers, or if there's a number between five and eight, there are numbers. There are numbers because six and seven are between five and eight. But what do they mean by this? So how would your idea of grounding again help us think about this kind of puzzle? It seems that existence questions would be trivial if we're just asking, are there numbers? Because we could have such arguments. So what's the punchline of the grounding theory? Right, great. Yeah, so I do think that the existence, at least most of the questions like the question about numbers that have been regarded as the central, that have been regarded as the central metaphysical questions, do numbers exist? I think those are mostly trivial questions. Where grounding is supposed to help, is it supposed to point us to something interesting, fascinating and deep that's left over? Once we settle that numbers exist, we've still left open whether they exist fundamentally, whether they're fundamental entities, or whether they exist dependently. So just to shift examples, take persons like we probably will all agree that human persons like all of us exist. But that leaves open whether persons or take the mind and consciousness, we all probably all agree that minds and consciousness exists in our aspects of reality. But that leaves open whether we should think of a mind as a fundamental constituent of reality and the way that a dualist or an idealist might, or whether we want to think of mind as a dependent or human persons as dependent aspects of reality, a materialist might want to think about things. So, just like maybe shifting to the consciousness question can help see what I'm trying to do to that with the numbers question. With the consciousness question, I hope you can see that it's, I mean, it's obvious that there is consciousness, but there's still this deep question about whether consciousness is a fundamental ingredient of reality or perhaps dependent on the physical. And so I want to say with numbers that it's also obvious that there are numbers, but there's still this deep question of whether numbers are fundamental constituents of reality, or dependent on something else. Okay, so there's a kind of layering, or distinction between what's fundamental and derivative in your view. Okay, but can conclusions and metaphysics contribute to results in science. Probably not. I mean, in a certain sense, when you say results in science, I guess, I do think that there is a kind of continuous swath of inquiry. I do see, I think that, you know, philosophers of physics have often, I think, you know, made real contributions towards clarifying some of the foundational issues that are arising within physics like an interpreting quantum mechanics and issues like that. There's some interplay, but I think to be honest, often it's, it's the philosopher learning from the scientist and trying to, you know, take what they've learned about the theory and, you know, fit that into a metaphysical picture. That's the direction of learning typically goes that way, and very seldom goes back where the scientist goes like, oh, philosopher, I see what you've done and now I have to revise my equations to accommodate your philosophical theory. It doesn't seem. It doesn't happen. It won't happen. So scientists won't consult you, for example, in doing their experiments. No, you know, I, no, they shouldn't. They shouldn't. They should, they should, they should largely do their experiments. And, you know, I do think sometimes it can be inspired. I think it often is very, I think scientists are often deeply interested in the metaphysical inquiry and they can be inspired by a certain metaphysical on just to bring in a separate topic. I've also defended a kind of monistic idea that what's most fundamental is the cosmos as a whole, rather than individual particles. And I've had some, I think some really interesting conversations with physicists who inspired me, but also some of them have taken some inspiration from those ideas and used that kind of as a kind of guiding idea to try to, you know, come up with some more detailed physical theory so that there can be some something in that direction but it's not it's not that much. Okay, so let's go to metametaphysics. So metametaphysics is a growing field in 21st century philosophy. And you're part of this group that started a question about metametaphysics. But could you give us a picture of what the field is all about. Yeah, great. So metametaphysis is definitely a growing field. I mean, I guess, maybe the, the first thing to say about it is kind of an attempt to characterize what metaphysics is, and it's typically accompanied by a further question of whether whether metaphysics is any good, whether it's worth worth doing. That's the kind usually the kind of this is you'll get like a similar like metaphysics is about this. And this is a good thing or this is a bad thing or you know or you know. One of the things and this this came out and one of the first comments that I made is, I tend to think that at a certain point the notion of metaphysics is worth just dropping and there's just a lot of very particular questions that we might ask, many of those are together but not all of which do. So I would myself want to focus on these questions about the nature and structure of reality. I think those are fast. Those are questions that fascinate me. I hope they're worth pursuing though, you know, I think that these are the kind of things where one just has to pursue the question as far as one can and you don't find out whether it's worth pursuing. I was going to say you don't find out until the end but you don't even find out then you just you just keep going and maybe it inspires someone else to keep going. Okay, so let's have this. So you talk about free will a while ago and you're not concerned about free will you don't think that that's a kind of fundamental question. So what distinguishes a question that you think will be part of fundamental metaphysics and question in metaphysics is not really a fundamental question. All right, oh yeah, so I didn't mean to say that free will couldn't be incorporated in this only meant to say that some of the ways that the debate tends to go. Are just about things other than grounding like whether whether freedom is compatible with causal determinism or something like that questions of the compatibility of human freedom with certain physical images of the world I think are largely separate questions which isn't to say that they're not like fascinating and legitimate questions. Anyway, it's just to say that it's just it's just a different line of inquiry and it's, it gets considered to be part of metaphysics as well. Perhaps, I mean, who knows that I mean there's sort of certain historical reasons why that the sort of academic subdiscipline of metaphysics includes certain things are not others but I don't think that that always corresponds to kind of a deep joints and intellectual reality. Okay, so metaphysicians, if I may use the term are often divided into ontological realist and ontological anti realist so what is distinction all about. And which side are you leaning towards. So within meta metaphysics, the key distinction is I understand it between the realist and the anti realist is the realist are the people who think, hey metaphysics is worth doing. And the anti realist think it's garbage. So like we look, you know, people take up that there's like, there's all these traditional metaphysical debates like one debate that there's been a lot of discussion of late has been the, the the analogy debate which is like when you have a collection of things, under what conditions do they compose a whole special position question. As Peter von Wangen put it, some people say always every collection of things composes something. Some people say never. And some people say only under certain select conditions like maybe when the things are kind of connected and integrated enough maybe only then do they form a whole. If anyone who in is happy to engage in that debate and thinks one of those views might be right is a meta metaphysical realist because they, at least with respect to this debate, because they think this is a debate worth pursuing, whereas other people look at this debate and think this is garbage like and, and there's different ways that people can have this kind of anti realist reaction. For some people it's an epistemic reaction. How could we ever know which is the right answer. For other people it's more of a kind of philosophy of language kind of reaction there's this idea that we see in people like Eli Hirsch that in some sense it's just a verbal debate you could speak either way you could kind of speak a language in which you said that everything composes or speak a language and we said that nothing composes and kind of just translate back and forth between those languages in some way. So those are different sort of anti realist pictures that people would endorse. You asked about my own view, I, I call myself a kind of provisional realist provisional provisional, provisional, which which is that. And this is something I was mentioning earlier you know I look at these questions like whether you know under what conditions do departs compose a whole. Okay, I think I understand what this question means. I think some answers and think that doesn't seem good there seem probably shouldn't be problems with that and I can get myself to think oh I have some reasons to prefer some of these answers. And so that gets me into kind of this exploratory provisional mode of like, oh, let's see how far we can get into answering this question but I'm open to the idea that I'm especially open to the kind of epistemic doubts that maybe in the end, we're not going to. We don't have enough access to the world or aren't going to be able to know which answers ultimately correct or we just have to try. I like the professional so there's a kind of condition. So perhaps, given the provider that we could know this one. Here's my answer. Is that is that the idea of having that professional realism. It's even more modest than that. It's, I mean I don't even want to say here's my answer it's like okay to the best I've been able to consider the reasons bearing on the question. It seems to me that the balance of reasons favors this answer. That's kind of the attitude that I take. And I, one has never found every reason that can bear on the issue. And, you know, one just encounters new reasons as one talks to new philosophers or thinks through the issues more and you know so you have to be open to changing your mind and you may find a different argument you'd be open to arguments that you might think oh wait the balance of reasons now seems to have shifted. Yeah, I just like to the to the as with respect to the total reasons that I've encountered so far. The balance seems to favor this view, but I'm open to revising that as new reasons come on the table, and I'm open to thinking that reason really isn't going to be able to give us much of a reason to prefer any view in the end if it, you know, it might come out that way. Yeah, so Martin has a question. Can you use your mic now. Still not working. It's quite unfortunate man. Sorry Martin. Can you, can you try it. Maybe you could send a chat message. I have his question so I could ask it. Is that alright Martin. Sorry about this. It's 2am there. I'll just edit this part. Okay, so Martin asks metaphysicians usually talk about like you talked about balance of reasons but these are theoretical virtues as well as these are guides to metaphysics or to truth. Consistency or so many simplicity or explanatory power. So how can, or how should we understand these notions, these theoretical virtues. Great question I just want to emphasize that these are issues that arise not just in metaphysics, and not just in philosophy, but also in the sciences I mean, when scientists choose between competing theories they invoke matters of simplicity and elegance and other theoretical values in theory choice. So there is this very general reliance, I think in all areas of intellectual theorizing on reliance on theoretical virtues for theory choice. And then there is a divide you know how should we think of this one sort of view is that these theoretical virtues are truth conducive. The simpler theory for it to just to focus on simplicity as an example is more likely to be true. And another perspective is would be me and there's you can have more aesthetic perspective is just more beautiful or something like that. I tend to think that the more virtuous theories are more likely to be true. And that's the way that I myself would want to think of it is, if we think about what kind of credences over theories are rational theorizer must have. Here's a claim. She must, as it were, start life, biased towards the simpler, more elegant and overall more virtuous theories. And that's, I think that's just a condition on rationality that one prefers simpler theories. And if they prefer that means takes them to be more likely true. So simplicity, beauty, these elements will be part of our judgment. I heard somewhere like some Nobel Nobel Prize winners prefer neat, beautiful equations, because they really picture reality as it is. Well, yeah, about like a beautiful and elegant, whether it's an equation or statement or we know whatever form you're theorizing in that just feels right and deep. And then there's this great philosophical question about why should we prefer simpler theories. I couldn't reality be messy. Martin. Can you hear me now. Yes, we do. Okay, welcome back. Can we talk a bit more about the ontology ideology distinction because probably that's paves the way to theoretic virtues. So, the ontology ideology distinction as I guess I understand it is, if you think about our best theory of the world. There's various terms that our best theory might use. And I'd say any terms that that theory is using, we can speak of as being part of the ideology of the theory. But then there's going to be particular terms used in the theory that are referring terms. And those referring terms on at least a sort of fairly orthodox we kind of think of as a kind of model theoretic picture of reference on which terms referred objects in the world. Those referring terms are going to refer to things in the ontology to things in the world. So I think that ontology is what's in the world. The ontology is our best way to talk about it, which will include referring to the things in the world but might also include things like certain logical connectives that might not correspond to entities, and things like that like it might be that presumably our best theory will have to have like, you know, and and or and other, you know, and other other other other logical connectives in it but you could think that those are entities in some way but you might just think those are just those are just terms that we need to talk about the entities. I like the picture so you have the ideology, which is your body of language that talks about the ontology reality. Now, I think Ted Cider has something on that as well so you need our coin for that matter you need to have a balance of your ideology and your ontology. If you have too much ontology, little ideology, and that's a bad theory. If you have too much ontology, sorry, ideology in a little ontology, then that's also bad theory. So where do you get the balance here. Yeah, so there's this kind of picture which we get from quine that ontology and ideology trade off in the sense that if you want to try and do without certain entities in your ontology. Often it just sort of, this is a kind of the kind of provisional thing where you just have to try it, and you see what happens, and it just happens that often, you have to introduce all sorts of new terms to get to avoid referring to, to certain entities that you didn't want to refer to. So that's the idea that there there there seems to be this kind of fairly consistent trade off between ontology and ideology. Okay, so how does you have a paper on Occam's razor, we're calling it Occam's laser instead of a razor. So it's a laser. So what's doing the work there in your, your, your idea and getting into the fundamental metaphysics. Occam's razor is this classical principle that says, don't multiply entities without necessity, and it's usually read by people as supporting kind of radically minimalist ontologies do you want to pause it as little as possible in the world so maybe we could, for instance just to illustrate like maybe we could just pause it subatomic particles and nothing else. No, nothing bigger no tables no chairs no persons, because hey if you know where all the particles are maybe in some sense that's, you know that's that's all you need to explain any to explain anything else. Whereas the laser is this rival principle that says, instead of saying don't multiply entities without necessity, it says don't multiply fundamental entities without necessity, but it allows that you can help yourself to believing in derivative metaphysics, and the basic idea as well. If you have the fundamental basis for something else that's something else kind of comes along for free from the from its fundamental basis, maybe a good way to see the difference between these views is to think is to bring an ideology to think about what these principles would look like with respect to ideology or conceptual economy. So you could have a principle that says, don't multiply ideology without necessity, or don't multiply concepts without necessity, or you could have a different principle that says, don't multiply primitive concepts without necessity, but help yourself to define concepts because if you can define them they're free. And I think if you think about how things go on the conceptual side. Well, our very best conceptual systems get by with a handful of primitive notions, they try to minimize the primitive notions, but they try to put those primitive notions to great use and in defining a wealth of defined notions on that basis. So you have a system, a compact system of primitives. So you're working with three primitive notions. And it turns out, oh hey, and you, and you've, you've discovered that you can, from those three primitive notions, define up these 10 interesting defined notions. And now you discover, oh, I can define up an 11th interesting defined notion. So you have a great, like a bit of progress for your theory hey you figured out how to define something else useful. But if you were worried about minimizing the number of concepts you'd have to think like, oh no, I've suffered a setback. I've admitted a new concept into my system, but rather the appropriate attitude there is this is great. I've kept my sparse basis of only three primitive concepts, and I've shown how to put them to more use. So we want to take the same attitude on the ontological side. We want to keep if we can a sparse and minimal basis of fundamental entities. But if we can put those fundamental entities to use in showing how they can ground further things like tables and chairs and chemicals and persons and minds, then that's a great advance. So I'd love to, you know, see a theory that posited a sparse I would say maybe I would say physical and I might also say kind of holistic or monistic basis, but use that sparse basis to give an account of all else that there is on that basis. So that needs to see your view grounding theory. So this is the big idea that you have and of course priority monism, but you have rivals as well. So Ted Sider has his view about fundamentality, which uses fundamental semantics or in reference magnetism to get at the fundamentals. So we have Dave Shaw versus crucibility thesis, and he's identifying the compact class of concepts that you use to derive everything else. But how is your view different from these proposed views in metaphysics. That's a really hard question and I can say a little bit but it's kind of scratching. This is just scratching the surface of some of the differences. So with Sider, I'd say, loosely speaking that the main differences, grounding is a little more ontological and his metaphysical semantics is a little more languagey. That's kind of back there right but that's a, and what I mean, maybe the, the best way to put it is in sort of a, the kind of upshots that these approaches tend to have. So Sider tends to go, he goes in for one of these very sort of radically minimalist ontologies he, he speculates that maybe all there, all that exists in the most fundamental sense that exists are just space time points and sets. And then when we get to claims like there are tables or there are persons. So he'll want to say that those claims are true in English, but he'll want to so just take, you know, you know, take like here is a cup. Sider will want to say that's a true claim of English, but he won't want to say that it's true because there's a cup in the world. Rather what he'll want to give us a kind of metaphysical semantic treatment of how the space time points have to be for that, for that English claim to come out true. Whereas on a ground theory, I just want to say there's a cup in the world. It's true, because, well, cup refers to this thing in the world and there is one in the, in the location. And that issue in the context. So, um, that's the, I think the primary difference between grounding theory and metaphysical semantics. And they tend to differ with respect to how much one puts in the ontology and how much one wants to handle in the on the semantic side of things. With respect to scrutability a kind of just like first pass at what Thomas is up to, is the idea of what's a kind of minimal. What's a kind of informational basis that you could use to figure out all there is all the all the information about the world. What packet of information could you use to recover the rest. And I would want to say as a metaphysician that among the things that needs to be in any packet of information you would use to recover or screwed the rest of the world, there need to be metaphysical principles. So to take the case of parts and holes, suppose you were given the information about where all the particles are. Would you know whether there were any tables. No, I think no, because unless you're also told when parts compose a whole. You don't know yet just from knowing where the particles are, whether you're in a kind of myriological neolist scenario on which there are just particles arranged table wise but no tables, or in a robust compositional scenario, in which in addition to the particles arranged table wise, there's also the table that they compose. This leads to a big difference with respect to philosophy of mind. So Chalmers puts his views to work among other things and defending a kind of dualist picture on which the physical isn't enough information to figure out what kind of conscious experience people are having. So I want to say, I actually agree with that, but just it's in the part whole case where I want to say well we also need to have metaphysical principles like when parts compose a whole to figure out whether there are any tables. I would want to say that in addition to the information let's say that where all the particles are some physical information. We also need principles about, in this case not principles about how parts compose holes, but principles about how physical systems generate minds to know where the minds are and what kind of experiences they're having. What I think grounding theory involves is these metaphysical principles that could be fed into a scrutability based if one wants and when fed into a scrutability base can be used to defend physicalism. Are you a physicalist. Yeah, I am. I'm not a dualist because, again, for Dave Chalmers he would take in the quality as part of the fundamental structure, then he'll derive everything else from there. So the physical the quality there. Actually his base is quite what do you call it ecumenical it's friendly to everyone you could arrange the stuff there. So grounding is your key idea, but grounding plus priority monism. What's that about. So, well priority monism is a particular claim made within a grounding theoretic framework about what's most fundamental at least to concrete reality. And so the claim the the priority monist claim is that among the concrete is that what's most fundamental to concrete reality is the cosmos as a whole. And you and I and tables and chairs and particles are derivative fragments of a unified whole. So there's a kind of perspective that a lot of people have that kind of flows naturally from this picture that I was kind of implicitly operating with on which it's sort of subatomic particles at the base that like that's what what's fundamental are a bunch of tiny little particles and bigger things are derivative from these particles. And got a quite standard picture that a lot of us have been trained under this kind of picture and says that the particles themselves are abstractions maybe from, you know, pervasive quantum fields. So this is ultimately kind of a physical question about what we should think is the physical basis of things so this is connecting out to the sciences where you know this does become continuous I think with physical inquiry. But from the monist perspective what's most fundamental is the cosmos as a whole as a single unified holistic entity. And other things are there and this is the priority or the ground theoretic aspect of the view so this isn't the kind of monism that says there is only the one and nothing else exists. Yeah, so I was thinking about pantheism here when you were talking about monism, but it's not the view. It's not your view. Right. Right now the monist view is, and there's different ways of being a monist so the particular maybe I should say the particular version of priority monism that I would go for is a is a is a physicalist view on which there's this physical cosmos that maybe began with the big bang with this explosion. And everything else is a kind of a fragment of this unified thing that exploded at the beginning and continues to evolve through time. But this is not the kind of space time warm that David Lewis was thinking about. So it's a big blob where we are all in. Well, I mean, even I mean on a Lewis picture, we can have space time worms for bigger and smaller things. So, I'm looking for a good prop here. Yeah, so, so we have a space time worm for a book, and then we have a space time worm for a page. And you might think, and this is the kind of non monistic or pluralist perspective that like the pages are more fundamental and the whole book is kind of some kind of construction based on the pages and the Mona and we can think of both of them as space time so there's the sort of the big fat worm, the little skinny worms or threads. And so from a Mona's perspective, we can think of shift metaphors a little bit. The cosmos is like a single integrated tapestry. And instead of thinking of the tapestry as built out of threads, we think of the threads as things that you can pull out abstract away from the tapestry but the tapestry comes first. Interesting. Martin, you have any follow up. Yes, I've got a question about the relation between grounding and modality. Can we reduce one to each other. I doubt it, but I'm more skeptical of the reduction of grounding to modality than I am of the reduction of modality to ground in. So, people thought and this was something that I see in people like my hero David Lewis, that notions of reduction and dependence could all were best understood in modal terms maybe in terms like in terms of supervenience in terms that like, you know, can't vary these without varying those. One of the main arguments that grounding theorists have given against that picture is the idea that grounding is hyper intentional and cuts finer than any modal distinction can cut. So, for instance, to go to the realm of pure sets. We might think that we say we believe in sets, and we think well there's the empty set. And there's also it's singleton, the set who's one and only member is the empty set. And if you think about the way sets get generated stage wise sort of starting from the empty set and then building up recursively from there. The empty set comes in at stage zero, and the singleton of the empty set gets generated out of the empty set at stage one. So it's natural from that kind of perspective to think that the singleton of the empty set is grounded in or dependent upon the empty set. But given that the pure sets exists at all worlds, you're never going to get any modal distinction between them they're just going to be like locked in constant across all worlds. So that's, I mean there's more to say but that's a kind of first pass reason for thinking that grounding is just cutting things more finely than any modal distinctions can cut. In the other direction we've seen people like keep fine talked about various reductions of modality. So what I've seen in all the attempts to reduce modality to grounding is there's the quantifiers involved are always possible list quantifiers that have to range not just over all the actual objects but over all the possible objects. I want to talk more about some of these particular theories. I haven't seen a way that satisfies me of trying to reduce modality to grounding that I doesn't that I don't think secretly uses, you know, modal notions of like possible objects. Yeah, we talk about impossible objects right. This is a different brand so if you plug in impossibilities there, how would grounding handle these things. So how would we speak of the grounds for impossible objects. Well, if you think that there are impossible objects. Then you've got this question of whether they're fundamental or whether they're grounded in anything deeper. And so one way I mean there's different ways of try one way that I've seen people try to construct impossible worlds, which would I guess be where the impossible objects are housed. One is by starting with the possible worlds and then like gluing them together, you know, doing various operations where you take like a plurality of possible worlds. And that would be a ground theoretic account of how you got the impossible objects out of the possible objects through those operations. We'd have to know where the possible objects came from. But one way of understanding impossible and impossibilia is from starting with the possibility and doing some doing some operations on. You know, the possible objects out of the possible objects through those operations, we'd have to know where the possible objects came from but you know again like you can treat them all as, you know, fundamental and it's kind of a modal realist perspective, or you could think the possible the merely possible and non actual objects as derivative and then we'd have to think about how that could work. The impossibilia is primitive, like grand priests perhaps. Okay, so as an active research area in philosophy, what do you think is metaphysics and meta metaphysics heading. Right, so it's hard to read the tea leaves, you know, but it's hard to know what the future holds. The surrounding has been at the center of meta metaphysical inquiry for a decade. People are still really interested in a fun, you know, you have to think that at some point people are going to move on to other topics, but it's it's hard to guess what's what's next. I think, if I have to guess I think one topic that I've seen a lot of people getting interested in that I myself have gotten quite interested in is social ontology, where people want to do something that maybe has among other things has some sort of practical application to sort of real world political issues and they want to get into the metaphysics of the social world. Yeah, gender class, how do you ground that to fiscal reality, perhaps, so I think that's a new project. Whether grounding is even the right tool there or that's a debate too. Okay, so on a more personal note, you've been one of the best philosophers that we had, so you have encountered a lot of things in your career. So what's your advice for those who want to get into or pursue an academic career in philosophy. So there's real cause famous advice to a young poet, which is basically, don't do it. And if you find that like, stop yourself and you really just have to, then run away again and still don't do it. And if you find you just can't stop doing it then okay. I mean, philosophy is hard. It's hard to get sort of get jobs in academia. It's very demanding intellectually. I think it's hard. But that said, I'd say that if you really have the passion and you sort of can't but do it, the main two things, my words of my main two words of wisdom are the first thing that I would say is to treasure the questions and not the answers because you're not going to get the answers but the questions themselves are fascinating so appreciate the questions for what they are. And the second maybe somewhat related piece of wisdom I'd pass on is enjoy the process and not the results. And what I mean by that is a lot of philosophy at the professional level is the craft of writing and revising papers. So a lot of your professional activity if you become an academic philosopher is going to be pouring over, you know, the seventh draft of a paragraph to try to get it to say the right thing. Learn to love that. Some people, you know, they find they find that arduous and hard to bear and they just want this like polish gem to emerge from their from them without without their revision work and maybe there's a few people whose minds are so extraordinary that that can happen. For most of us our best work only comes through an arduous revision process and so there's a craft of writing and revising to be practiced every day and you have to, you have to love that. What is a career in philosophy worth it. It was worth it for me it's been worth it for me I hope it will continue to be worth it for me. I've had an incredible experience I feel like I've had the opportunity to engage with some of the deepest questions in the world and speak to some of engage with some of the deepest minds. Wonderful. I also think I've been incredibly lucky and had a lot of privilege to get to where I am in philosophy. I don't know if I feel like whether it's worth it for everyone I don't, I don't know I think that might depend on how things go, but I wouldn't do it any other way myself. Thanks again Professor Shaffer for sharing your time with us. On behalf of Martin Vatschek, thank you. Thank you. Join us again for another episode of philosophy and what matters where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Cheers.