 Our next speaker is Bruno Borje from the University of Buenos Aires who will be talking about fundamentality and non-symmetric dependence. Sorry for running a bit out of time here due to technical difficulties, so we will just like go five minutes into the coffee break. I'll try to make it in 25 minutes, so I'll have a longer discussion. Thank you. I won't say sorry for my English, I should, but I will say that you can interrupt me at any time if you want me to clarify or rephrase. We work in Argentina mainly in Spanish, so English is not usually my thing. Well, this presentation deals with fundamentality and ontological dependence, and I'll try to show a way in which a non-symmetric notion of ontological dependence can be think to be compatible with the standard picture of reality as a layered distribution of levels of ontological dependence. So this talk maybe runs the way between science and metaphysics all the way around. It starts with metaphysics and goes to science, but still I think it would be interesting or I hope it to be interesting, point out some interesting facts about fundamentality both in metaphysics and in science. So I will start talking about what is usually called the layered conception of reality. This layered conception of reality depends, well it depends on maybe the word, it's closely related to a notion of ontological dependence that establish a strict partial order between ontological levels. So in order to that to happen we need our notion of ontological dependence to be anti-symmetrical. So then I will try to present some problems, issues, worries about what happens if we drop the symmetry as a logical property of our notion of ontological dependence. I will review an argument by Rabin that says that we can have a notion of ontological dependence that is non-symmetric, at the same time preserve the so-called layered conception of reality. I will criticize some aspects of this argument and I hopefully should show a new route to what I call weak compatibility, trying to put forward a noble notion of ontological dependence that restores some kind of non-symmetricity. So let's start with this layered conception of reality, this cake-like conception of reality as constituted by ontological levels. The usual way of the orthodox way of conceiving reality in this way involves many thesis, the main ones are now on the slide. I will concentrate here in the first one, which is the idea that there is a hierarchy of layers of levels that is structured by our relation of ontological dependence that give rise to a strict partial order. And in order that to happen we need our notion of ontological dependence to be reflexive, transitive and anti-symmetric. This way ontological dependence is closely related with fundamentality. In fact we are used to define what it is to be a fundamental entity as being independent of any other entity. But it usually happens that the three formal properties of ontological dependence has been questioned in recent literature and I will do the same here trying to defend a non-symmetrical notion of ontological dependence. But first, why ontological dependence should remain anti-symmetric? There are no many positive arguments for the anti-symmetricity of ontological dependence. Mainly what is maybe closer to an argument are intuitions that ontological dependence should be anti-symmetrical. And some paradigmatic cases in which we find instances of ontological dependence that are clearly anti-symmetric. But the main argument for the anti-symmetricity of ontological dependence is this more negative argument. And it points out the fact that if we abandon an ocean, if we replace anti-symmetricity by a different formal property, the whole idea of the layered conception of reality shall fall apart. We need anti-symmetry in order to the whole hierarchical picture remain. Of course there are many ways in which we can abandon anti-symmetricity. Of course we can go for a symmetric notion of ontological dependence which makes the whole layered conception collapses in one flat level of mutually dependent entities. So that it's metaphysical coherentism, some sort of Buddhist ontology in which everything it plays at the same ontological level happens to depends upon everything else. But the usual way to go in this matter is to replace an anti-symmetrical notion of ontological dependence by a non-symmetrical notion of ontological dependence. That is a notion of ontological dependence that admits both symmetric and non-symmetric instances of dependence. Of course there are many ways to do that. I will skip mainly the technical details but at the end of the day what it gives raise is to loops of dependence. Loops of dependence are not harmful by themselves. In fact if we are willing to admit symmetric instances of dependence you are admitting loops because if a depends upon b and b depends upon a you have a loop. What is worrying about loops of dependence, and I will try to show you that later on, is that whenever you have loops of dependence we have isolated niches of metaphysical coherentism. We have not the whole building isolated niches. I isolated, thank you, sex stores of the building that collapse into one flat level of mutually dependent entities. I will give an example and a clarification later so this point can you raise it in a few minutes. So loops of dependence are harmful because of that reason that I will show you in a few minutes. So moral of the story dependence should remain anti-symmetric. So there are two standard answers to this fact. The first is what I call divorce. Well if we need necessarily a notion of ontological dependence that is anti-symmetric in order to defend the layer conception of reality. So we should separate the talk of fundamentality from the talk of ontological dependence and find a different kind of relation called a building relation, grounding, whatever notion you prefer in order to articulate our talk about fundamentality. But ontological dependence and fundamentality should not share any room. And that's mainly the idea behind Elizabeth Barnes' answer to this topic. But the answer I'm interested in is one from Rabin who takes ground to be a subspecies of ontological dependence that is relevant to the talk of fundamentality. At the end of the day the point is non-symmetric ontological dependence and the layer conception of reality are compatible. So let's just take a look at the argument. So what Rabin says is that in the orthodox talk of fundamentality and this layered conception of reality we should accept what he calls the simple principle and it goes this way. If x grounds y then x is at a lower level or it's more fundamental than y. Well we should drop that principle, Rabin says, and we should replace it with what he calls the slightly less simple principle that is if x grounds y and x does not ground x then x is more fundamental or a lower level. This opens the question on what happens when the instance of the relation actually is symmetric. And that gives you, gives us two options, Rabin says. The first one is to think that they share the same level in our ontology. The second option is to think that they are incommensurable. So he takes the first one for many reasons. One has to do with the preserve, the transitivity of dependence and he thinks that incommensurability on this matter are, it's not desirable in the first place. So whenever we have symmetric instances of ontological dependence both relata should be placed at the same ontological level. Well I have many objections to this idea. I will just mention three that I will present as two. The first one is that this slightly less simple principle, let's just call it LS, SL, SP principle generates some counterintuitive cases of mutually dependent entities that we don't think should be placed at the same level in our picture of ontology. And the second one is what I mentioned earlier and I will try to explain it a little bit more is that we have loops of dependence and that gives rise to restricted olism and also a weak form of incommensurability. So let's start with this. I will pass these examples quickly because I will back to some of them later. These are paradigmatic cases that motivates the development of non-symmetric notions of ontological dependence. So just for taking one let's take the relationship between facts and constituents being fact fundamental category of reality. If facts and constituents are mutually dependent entities as some things they are and they depend symmetrically on each other, facts and its constituents should be placed at the same level of a hierarchy of ontology. So that doesn't seem to be intuitive since we want facts to be more fundamental such as substance or whatever than its constituents. So the other problem is holism. So if dependence is thought to be non-symmetric and we preserve the other formal properties what we have is a preorder and whenever you have a preorder by transitivity that is a formal property that we want to preserve what we have is that every element in the subset of elements that instance symmetric instances of ontological dependence depends on each other. So we have a flat level of entities. So let me give a quick example. We have this simple domain of six elements. So we divide it into sub-domains. The first one A, B, C are structured by traditional asymmetric instances of ontological dependence and the others of domain B, E, F and D are structured by symmetric instances of ontological dependence. So what we have is that in the second sub-domain the one that relates D, E and F everything depends upon everything in one flat level and this is not only an undesirable consequence for the so-called layered conception of reality but also it implies a form of incommensurability. If we try to relate one specific element of any of the subsets with the other that new element collapses into this flat level of metaphysical coherence. So what we have now is subsets in with metaphysical coherence obtains and that happens to be incommensurable regarding ontological level with the other parts of the set. So my own solution is to put forward a noble notion of ontological dependence that not having a better name I will call the dependence star and the intuition... I can't receive options. Let's make it a contest. So dependence star, sorry again, is built upon the intuition that we should distinguish two types of dependence relations of ontological dependence relations. One is dependence regarding existence and the other one is dependence regarding identity. So whenever x depends star upon y that means that x depends upon y for its existence but at the same time y depends upon x for its identity. So that's the intuition. Let's put some flesh in those bones. What could mean that something depends for its existence upon something else? Well the traditional way to go is what is usually called model existential analysis of ontological dependence. There are many ways to put this forward but the main idea is that definition of worship and existential dependence but I will pass this very quickly because as we may be aware this analysis of ontological dependence is not sensitive to some specific cases. Maybe the more famous ones are the ones described by Kid Fine. So let's say we have Socrates, I mean the philosopher, the guy, the human being and the set, the singleton that has its only element, Socrates. The first one is a human, the second one is an abstract entity and of course they depend on each other in some way but we limit our analysis to the model existential analysis. We have that they exist in all of the same possible worlds so they should be taken to depend metaphysically, existentially on each other but that's not intuitive. At the end of the day we tend to believe that the set exists because Socrates exists or in virtue of the existence of Socrates. So we have to move to an hyperintentional framework that can capture that more fine-grained relations of ontological dependence and that framework fine sets its the essentialist approach to dependence and in this essentialist approach to dependence we can identify two subspecies of essential dependence, essential existential dependence and identity dependence which are the two notions of ontological dependence that we are going to take in order to fill the gaps in our original definition of the beautiful named of dependence star. So what we have now is that x depends star upon y if x depends essentially existentially upon y and y depends upon x for its identity shows in the sense I illustrated in those definitions here. So what we have is not exactly a symmetric or non-symmetric notion of dependence but definitions that glue together two subspecies of ontological dependence in this essentialist view. So my first point here will be that this opens a route to what I called a weak version of compatibility. I mean a weak version of the compatibility between a non-symmetric notion of ontological dependence on the one hand and the layered conception of reality on the other hand. So we need some very simple assumptions about both identity dependence and existential dependence in order to not make the whole building of ontological dependence collapse in one flat level and not having any instances of incommensurability among ontological levels. So that is warrants. Of course the obvious immediate worry with this view is this objection that I called well there is no symmetry in the first place. Dependence start is not a non-symmetric notion of ontological dependence but just a tailor-made notion of ontological dependence that simply glues together two independent notions of ontological dependence in one theoretical construct. So I don't have a conclusive answer to that objection but I try to put forward some points that I think that would be interesting not only by for defending my view but also for pointing out some issues regarding how do we think about fundamentality both in science and in metaphysics. Okay first one they are of course distinct I cannot deny identity dependence and essential existential dependence are distinct dependence relations but they are not totally independent. First they are species of the same essential dependence relations and second they are always co-instantiated. It doesn't matter in with direction they run they are always whenever we have an instance of one of them we have an instance of the other relations and maybe more interesting they seem to be part of the same phenomenon that we can find whenever we think of fundamentality both in science and in metaphysics. So in order to show what I'm referring I will just take a few examples. The first one I thought I talked sorry about it before it's from the debate on what is the fundamental category of reality. In that debate one of the main contenders is factualism so we should regard facts as being the central fundamental category of reality. So if that's true we should say what a fact is and the usual answer from factualist is that the fact is I had two complementary categories that is the fact itself and its constituents. So facts and constituents are in a special relation that is the constituent or constituency relationship. So of course as we are talking about which is the more fundamental category of reality facts are thought to be more fundamental than its constituents but at the same time for a fact to be the fact that it is it is essential that it has those constituents and no different ones. So let me just give the example was in this slide. Sorry so see face I say this type the table is brown that's a fact and its constituents are the table and the brown let's say. So the fact is more fundamental than the table and the brown but still for being the fact that the table is brown they need to have those constituent and not different ones. So there is more or less the intuition that the fact itself is more fundamental or gives existence to the constituents but the identity of the fact itself depends upon its constituents. So I think this dependence star relation that I just try to put forward fits well with this example in the debate of on the basic ontological categories and well this is the case with the table and thank you. More or less the same can be said about the relationship between substance and accidents in a different frame the framework the substantialist framework. Of course it doesn't means that always existing dependence and identity dependence should run in different directions in many examples the majority of them they run in the same direction and this what happened in the relationship between so practice and singleton so practice identity and existential essential existential dependence run in the same direction but just in the last minutes I will skip more of the technical details. I want to try to mention symmetries and specifically some discussions in the ontology of symmetries I have more or less the same features that I try to cover with this notion of dependence star. Of course there's no need to make an ontological in interpretation of what symmetries are we are not obligated to include symmetries in our ontology but for some people the fact that symmetries have a determining role over particles fundamental properties it's a sign that we should include symmetries in our ontology and we can of course do it in many ways. The example I try to show in the screen I will try just to simplify just maybe read the bottom line the point. For philosophers such as Stephen French the fact that symmetries play a determining role over the identification of the kinds of fundamental properties that they are it's a reason to build well specifically in his case an ontology in which symmetries are thought to be the fundamental category of reality and the fundamental entity of reality. He actually articulates his eliminated form of ontic structural realism upon this assumption. Something not very far from it is the way in which we can identify fundamental properties only based on symmetry procedure. I will just skip this and well something in its vein can be said about the relationship between conservation laws and conserved quantities in the application of nether theorem. I will just skip this but the philosophical point of those cases at least of people defending and ontological interpretations of symmetries in this case can be maybe summed up in this quote by Silos that you have on screen. The fundamental properties of elementary particles seem to be determined by powerful global and local symmetries that exist in nature. So we started with the view that properties of elementary particles are unrounded because they are fundamental but in the end they are or probably are grounded in symmetries. So of course there is a lot to say about symmetries and the ontology of symmetry. We have I'm pretty sure a very interesting and illuminating talk by Christian Tomoro not in this vein but I just just want to put forward the idea that this notion star notion of ontological dependence can fit the idea that maybe fundamental particles properties depend for its existence for its identity upon symmetries while symmetries themselves depends from its existence for fundamental properties and maybe the debates between this positionalist and symmetry realist can be clarified in some sense by this notion. So just for for finishing the presentation I try to define this dependence star relationship by combining two species of essential dependence that are co-instanciated that seems to be part of the same phenomenon and they are maybe necessarily related oh the bomb my god. So so so I think and I tried to show that this opens a wave or what I call weak compatibility between the layer conception and a non-symmetric notion of ontological dependence but still if we think that that's not a truly non-symmetric notion of ontological dependence maybe this dependence star can see capture some interesting and also regular features about what we think the relationship between fundamental and dependence both in science and metaphysics thank you. So in this example for let's take this case we have a loop of dependence in the sense that e depends upon f f depends upon d but d also depends upon e so it's like a circle yeah by by transitivity but by transitivity what we should have is that everything depends on everything whenever you have a circle a loop of dependence between n entities all those entities depends on every other entity and that gives you if you accept that whenever you have symmetry you should put all those entities in the same level that you need to keep transit transitivity why sorry why do we keep why do you have to conserve transitivity well we can you can drop transitivity too but it seems to be essential to the very idea of a layered cake like conception of reality that if this is at a lower level than this and this is a lower level than what I don't have yeah I understand but third hand but at this this is at a lower level than okay yeah but isn't this the whole point of like this kind of metaphysical holism is to drop the foundational assumption in the first place so why should we keep the foundation so this sorry I think isn't the whole point of like loops of dependence or metaphysical holism as Russ Cameron calls them isn't this isn't the idea is to drop the layered version of reality so yeah but but so so if we so if you go so if you go through like we go for loops of dependence as a good way to constitute and to describe the metaphysics of reality then we wouldn't want to keep the layered version of reality at the end and we want to get rid of also that well that the whole there's a provision the whole talk that you you want to conserve the layer so so so so the main idea is this type of answer is possible that you can make this higher hierarchy the hierarchy the order layers of ontological levels and still have a notion of ontological dependence that is non-symmetric that is you have standard traditional cases in which there is symmetry but also some specific cases in with ontological dependence behave symmetrically in and these are the usual candidates for not only the only one but the usual candidates for for symmetrical dependence hey Bruno sorry no worries so I had a couple of observations the first is really just piggybacking on the last comment because I had a similar reaction but I was going to put it in terms of just wondering you know why it is or you know the layer cake conception of reality has purchased on us at all and I'm wondering if Raven in terms of your introductory remark that instead of going from science to metaphysics we're going to go from metaphysics to science but if we take this a priori metaphysical conception of the world as exhibiting this hierarchical layered structure right and then we take it to science right I think I mean one argument that I think many people may is that well what we find when we go to science is that there are lots of relations and dependence of different kinds that we can specify and it seems to provide us arguably with counter evidence for the layer cake picture so there's you know I think a substantive question as to whether once we're gone from metaphysics to science in this case we really have any strong rationality holding onto that picture so that was just one observation I wanted to know what you thought we do once we start to look at the scientific cases carefully because in those cases we have very specific relations that may just make the layer cake model not particularly attractive but then you know the more specific observation helped to do with the symmetries and now that I know that there's going to be a talk on this tomorrow I won't say much about it except to say that you know there are a lot of assumptions built in right to your example in that particular case you know that there are such things symmetries in the world that they have that the relevant relations are things like you know something having a determining role right that's a very poorly specified relation I mean what does that mean that you know particles drop out of the same what does that mean right so I mean some relations of dependence we can understand fairly well intuitively causal relations relations of supervenience and so on and so forth but dropping out in governing seemed really loosey-goosey to me so that's you know one comment that makes me think that it seems as though half of the debate is represented in the examples you gave and just a very kind of technical point on that you suggested that you know for the people to whom you're appealing there the relations made between symmetries and the properties the dependence that may go in opposite directions depending on whether we're talking about existence or ID but it seems to me that at least for some of these people like you bold and Stephen French is you right he wants the existence and identity dependence relations to go both in the same direction right but both the identity and the existence of the properties depend on the symmetries right so I wasn't sure who you had in mind as the example of the person who thinks that these relations of dependence go in opposite direction okay I will start for this last observation and then maybe I will ask you for help to remind them that the first one so the whole idea of this talk actually seems from the discussion not only among them but some discussions between Stephen French and his people and dispositionalism he says that if we take this layer conception of reality and we tell the dispositionalist story about how dynamics depends on the behavior of dispositional properties and then symmetries blah blah blah we just have to reverse engineer all of that and what we have is symmetries and conservation laws being the fundamental and maybe the only entities we have in reality but on the other hand we have people as Alexander Burt say well no no the dispositionalist story is fine and what happened with this determined role of symmetry principles and conservation law laws well we just can hope that symmetries are eliminated from future physics that that's Alexander Burt for example so so of course this notion of dependence start is not built in order to accommodate Stephen French positions and neither in order to accommodate Alexander Burt position but a way to try to conciliate both intuitions there is a sense in which what we have in nature are properties and there is also a sense in which something of that properties depends upon certain symmetries of course and I think that that takes me back to the second observation of course it's not necessary you can think about symmetries in a different way so this talk it's it's meant to be more or less like a toolbox from metaphysics to the metaphysics of science if you want to develop a ontological reading of symmetries and if you think that symmetries are items that should be include on one's ontology and you can if you want to preserve some general intuitions as the one I was mentioning before about their role well maybe there is a specific notion of ontological dependence that can be at use and we can discuss about the first one