SOURCE OF REALITY/CAUSAL CAPACITY: OUTSIDE OF THE PRIORITY CHAIN?

• Authors: Ioannou Savvas
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

I will consider two views about the structure of reality: metaphysical foundationalism (all grounded entities are fully grounded in ungrounded entities) and metaphysical infinitism (there are infinite chains of grounding that lack a foundation). Foundationalists motivate their view by appealing to an intuition that there must be a fundamental level that is the source of reality (Schaffer) or causal capacity (Trogdon) of grounded entities because a grounded entity inherits its reality or causal capacity from its ground and there would be a vicious infinite regress otherwise. I will argue that this argument is not successful as the source of reality or causal capacity of an infinite chain can be its cause. For example, this source can be the direct physical cause, the first physical cause or a Prime Mover. A vicious infinite regress is avoided this way too because there is no transference of the same status ad infinitum.

Keywords

EN

FUNDAMENTALITY; METAPHYSICAL INFINITISM

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 262 – 299

Contributors

author

Ioannou Savvas

• Department of Classics and Philosophy, University of Cyprus, 1 Eressou Street, First Floor, P.O. Box 20537, CY-1678, Nicosia, Cyprus

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3930-0807

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2025.32301