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Reality and its Structure

Reality and its

Structure
Essays in Fundamentality
edited by
Ricki Bliss
and Graham Priest
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
0. The Geography of Fundamentality: An Overview 1

Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest
Part I. The Hierarchy Thesis

1. Grounding Orthodoxy and the Layered Conception 37
Gabriel Oak Rabin
2. Symmetric Dependence 50
Elizabeth Barnes
3. Grounding and Reflexivity 70
Ricki Bliss
4. Cosmic Loops 91
Daniel Nolan
5. Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism,
and Holistic Explanation 107
Naomi Thompson
6. Buddhist Dependence 126
Graham Priest
7. Bicollective Ground: Towards a (Hyper)Graphic Account 140
Jon Erling Litland
Part II. The Fundamentality Thesis

8. Indefinitely Descending Ground 167
Einar Duenger Bohn
9. Inheritance Arguments for Fundamentality 182
Kelly Trogdon
10. From Nature to Grounding 199
Mark Jago
11. Grounding in Mathematical Structuralism 217
John Wigglesworth
12. Fundamentality and Ontological Minimality 237
Tuomas E. Tahko
vi contents
13. The Structure of Physical Reality: Beyond Foundationalism 254

Matteo Morganti
Part III. The Contingency and Consistency Theses

14. On Shaky Ground? Exploring the Contingent Fundamentality Thesis 275
Nathan Wildman
15. Heidegger’s Grund: (Para-)Foundationalism 291
Filippo Casati
Index of Names 313

General Index 316
List of Contributors
Elizabeth Barnes University of Virginia

Ricki Bliss Lehigh University
Filippo Casati Kyoto University
Einar Duenger Bohn University of Agder
Mark Jago University of Nottingham
Jon Erling Litland University of Texas at Austin
Matteo Morganti University of Rome Tre
Daniel Nolan University of Notre Dame
Graham Priest The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and the
University of Melbourne
Gabriel Oak Rabin New York University Abu Dhabi
Tuomas E. Tahko University of Helsinki
Naomi Thompson University of Southampton and University of Gothenburg
Kelly Trogdon Virginia Tech
John Wigglesworth University of Vienna
Nathan Wildman University of Glasgow and Tilburg University
0
The Geography of Fundamentality
An Overview
Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest
Reality is a rather large place. It contains protons, flamingos, economies, headaches,

sentences, smiles, asteroids, crimes, and numbers, amongst very many other things.
Much of the content of our reality appears to depend on other of its content.
Economies, for example, appear to depend upon people and the way they behave,
amongst other things. Some of the content of our reality also appears to be, in some
significant sense, more important than other of its content. Whilst none of us would
wish to deny the very important role that economies play in our lives, most of us would
agree that without matter arranged certain ways in space, for example, there could be
no economies in the first place.
The reality that we happen to occupy is, in some important sense, a physical one.
Accordingly, matter is afforded a special place in our story about it. Indeed, not only is
matter accorded a special place in our ontology, but some from amongst its elements
are also thought to be particularly important. Chairs and flamingos and people are
made from parts, and those parts from further parts and so on—with most folks being
of the view that at some point these dependence chains must terminate in absolutely
basic, or simple, parts which themselves have no further parts. It is these basic parts,
so the story goes, that give rise to everything else.
The content of reality to which these parts give rise is arranged relatively neatly
into layers: facts about economies and crimes reside at a higher level than facts
about biological systems, which reside at a higher level than facts about chemical
systems and so on. Or perhaps we might prefer to say that economic systems are
further up the Great Chain of Being than ecosystems, which are further up the
chain than carbon compounds.1 This picture, or something very much like it, looms
large over contemporary analytic metaphysics: a picture according to which reality is
hierarchically arranged with chains of entities ordered by relations of ground and/or
ontological dependence terminating in something fundamental.
1 The Great Chain is normally taken as running downwards, with the ground at the top; we upend it here.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
The historical literature is also littered with what appear to be variations on this
kind of view. Consider both Plato and Aristotle, for example. The former believed
that everything was grounded in the Forms, with all of the Forms being ultimately
grounded in the Form of the Good. The latter distinguished between primary and
secondary substances, with a priority ordering amongst them—along, arguably, with
making appeal to prime matter, without which there would be nothing whatsoever.
Just as very many of the Medievals (Aquinas, for example) and Early Moderns
(Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) thought that everything depended on God, the need
to establish a fundamental ground breaks out in certain of the Continental thinkers,
such as Heidegger, in the form of The Problem of Being: there must be something
(fundamental), Being, if we are to account for the fact that anything has being at all.
Turning also to non-Western traditions, we see that the idea that reality is structured
by metaphysical dependence relations, where there is something fundamental, is by
no means an unfamiliar one.2 Various of the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions
rely heavily on notions of metaphysical dependence and fundamentality. In fact,
whole schools were formed based on disagreements over the fundamental structure of
reality. According to the Indian Abhidharmika tradition, for example, there must be
dharmas—simples—as there are aggregates which are built from them. And according
to Kyoto School thinker Nishida, the ultimate ground of everything is consciousness,
which is also absolute nothingness. The idea that reality is structured, and that there
must be something fundamental, is by no means the monopoly of contemporary
Western analytic thought.
The kind of view, or cluster of views, that appear to dominate the contemporary
analytic debate can be thought of broadly as, or as species of, metaphysical foun-
dationalism. As will become clearer in due course, there are, in fact, a variety of
ways in which one can be a metaphysical foundationalist; with different species of
foundationalism involving different core commitments. Although this list is by no
means exhaustive, we assume the following to be amongst the core commitments of
metaphysical foundationalism as commonly endorsed in the contemporary literature.
1. The hierarchy thesis: Reality is hierarchically structured by metaphysical de-
pendence relations that are anti-symmetric, transitive, and anti-reflexive.
2. The fundamentality thesis: There is some thing(s) which is fundamental.
3. The contingency thesis: Whatever is fundamental is merely contingently
existent.
4. The consistency thesis: The dependence structure has consistent structural
properties.
Strictly speaking, in order to be considered a species of foundationalism, a view
needs only commit to the the fundamentality thesis: 2., then, is both necessary and
2
See Bliss and Priest 2017.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
sufficient for a view to count as a kind of foundationalism. For proponents of what we

can think of as the standard view, however, all four theses are necessary, with no one
of them being sufficient.3
Is this the only view of the fundamental, or basic, structure of reality that is available
to us, though? Of course it isn’t. To be sure, deviations from the standard view exist
in the literature.4 But the full spread of possible views has, so far as we can tell, been
both grossly underestimated and grossly underexplored.
It is important and interesting to note that in foundational epistemology—where
the structuring relations are strikingly similar to those invoked in talk of foundational
metaphysics—one can be an epistemic foundationalist (of various sorts), an epistemic
infinitist, or an epistemic coherentist. Is a similar spread of possible views available to
us in foundational metaphysics? We are inclined to think that it is, as do Morganti and
Thompson (this volume). Just as an epistemic infinitist thinks that chains of beliefs
ordered by an anti-symmetric, anti-reflexive, transitive relation orders beliefs without
termination, a metaphysical infinitist thinks that chains of entities ordered by an anti-
symmetric, anti-reflexive, transitive relation orders entities without termination. So
too for coherentism. Just as an epistemic coherentist thinks that beliefs are organized
into a highly integrated web, with justification emerging from it, the metaphysical
coherentist thinks that entities are organized into a highly integrated web with
something like being or reality emerging from it. As one might expect, there will also
be various possible shades between.
The papers contained within this volume can be thought of as contributing to a
broader discussion of the reasons for which we are supposed to believe aspects of
the standard view, the reasons we might have for embracing one or other of the
alternatives, and what those alternatives might be like. Not all of the papers in this
volume endorse types of anti-foundationalism, but each of them speaks to, and chal-
lenges, in some way or other, one or other of the core commitments of metaphysical
foundationalism as noted above. In some cases, our authors even support one or other
of the assumptions, with the aim of their contribution being to highlight weaknesses
in the arguments commonly offered in their defence. The papers in this volume are
arranged, then, according to the core assumption that they primarily address.
3 The idea that the world is ontologically ‘flat’, with everything being fundamental—a rejection of 1—
has been described by Bennett 2011 as ‘crazy pants’, for example. Just as many philosophers baulk at the
suggestion that the fundamentalia are necessary beings.
4 It is worth noting that it does not follow from the appearance of a smattering of papers challenging the
standard view that the standard view is not still just that, the standard view. A handful of dissenting papers
does not a heterodoxy make. Although some authors have challenged aspects of the foundationalist picture,
the dominant paradigm that drives many contemporary analytic research programmes is one according to
which reality has a layered structure and a fundamental level. Even though a small number of philosophers
have challenged aspects of the standard view, to the best of our knowledge, these challenges have not
resulted in research programmes of their own, nor have they impacted upon the way much research is
conducted.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
In what remains of this introduction, we take up the mantle of introducing and

engaging with some of the most important issues that we believe need to be dealt
with if foundationalism is to be a view that we actually have good reasons to endorse;
and if the alternatives are to be considered not just logically, but also metaphysically,
possible.
1 The Lie of the Land

Many philosophers accept a view according to which the world has an overarching
causal structure. Thunderstorms cause trees to fall down, and water is caused to
boil by the application of heat. This volume takes as one of its starting assumptions
that the world (also) has an overarching metaphysical structure. Of course, causal
structure is a kind of metaphysical structure; however, what philosophers tend to
mean nowadays when they speak of metaphysical structure is that this structure is
induced by relations of ground and/or ontological dependence.5 We refer to these as
metaphysical dependence relations, and they are the relations around which the ideas
presented in the following essays are centred.
There is a lot that has been, and continues to be, written on metaphysical depend-
ence relations. And there is an enormous amount of disagreement over even the
most basic of concepts in operation in the relevant literature.6 Is grounding to be
understood on the operator view or the sentential connective view? Is grounding just
explanation? How are grounding and ontological dependence related? Is grounding
unitary? These are amongst some of the many issues that those working on issues
pertaining to the structure of reality are concerned with. This volume is not primarily
concerned with most of those disagreements, however. We leave it to our contributors
to assume what they will regarding how they define their terms and the conceptual
connections that they take to be in operation; and we leave it to our readers to find
appropriate reading material if what they are interested in are those debates. For the
sake of clarity in this introduction, however, we think it wise to say something about
how we shall be understanding things.
It is not uncommon to see a distinction drawn in the literature between relations
of ground and ontological dependence. Relations of ground, say many, obtain between
facts, where relations of ontological dependence obtain between entities of any and
all categories.7 So, where one would say that the fact that the weather is miserable
today is grounded in the fact that it is pouring, one would say that the shadow
ontologically depends on the object that casts it. And where one would say that the
fact that the sky is blue or we are in Australia, is grounded in the fact that the sky
5 See Schaffer 2016 for a discussion of the relationship between grounding and causation, and a view
according to which grounding is a kind of causing.

6 See Bliss 2014 for an overview of some of the major sources of disagreement.
7 See Schaffer 2009 for the development of a view according to which grounding obtains between entities
of any and all categories and cross-categorically.

ricki bliss and graham priest 
is blue, one would also say that the fact that the sky is blue ontologically depends
on its constituents—the sky and blueness. Again, when we talk about relations of
metaphysical dependence, we mean this term to act as a covering term for both
grounding and ontological dependence. Where, in this introduction, we think it
necessary to discriminate between the two, we say as much. We also don’t think much
as regards the reasons to endorse one fundamental view of reality over another is going
to turn on whether grounding obtains between facts alone, for example. What bears
consideration when settling the kinds of matters that this volume is concerned with
will be the same, we believe, whether it turns out that ontological dependence just is
a kind of grounding or not.
It is a plank of the grounding literature that grounding is somehow involved with
metaphysical explanation. It is an open question, however, whether the relations are
merely associated with metaphysical explanation or whether they are identical with it.
Thompson (this volume) offers us some compelling reasons to think that grounding
is better thought of as being an explanatory relation. She argues that were grounding
relations to be relations that underwrite our explanations, we would still need to
account for how the relations and the explanations they back are related to one
another. If the way they are related to one another is via grounding, then we are
really in trouble, says Thompson, because the notion of a metaphysical explanation
is typically invoked to shed light on how we are supposed to understand grounding in
the first place. Trogdon (this volume), on the other hand, thinks it natural to assume
that grounding relations back metaphysical explanations. So far as we can tell, not
much turns on resolving this particular issue for what we have to say here in this
introduction. It is enough for us to point out that we assume that grounding is most
certainly involved with metaphysical explanation, however that turns out to be, and
move on.
It has been suggested that the connection between ontological dependence and
explanation is weaker than the connection between ground and explanation. Tahko
and Lowe suggest, for example, that the existence of hydrogen and oxygen—upon
which water depends—do not, alone, explain the existence of water.8 Whilst we agree
that the mere existence of hydrogen and oxygen does not fully explain the existence
of water, we struggle to understand how the existence of the two could fail to be
appealed to in an explanation of the other. Perhaps Tahko and Lowe are correct that
the connection is weaker, but we here feel confident proceeding on the assumption
that ontological dependence is sufficiently strongly tied to metaphysical explanation
nonetheless.
Let us turn now to the notion of fundamentality itself. We assume that the categories
of fundamental and derivative are exclusive and exhaustive. Some entity is either
fundamental or derivative but never both.9 The category of derivative things is just
8 9
See Tahko 2015. See Barnes 2012 for arguments against the exclusivity assumption.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
the category of metaphysically dependent things; which is just to say it is the category
of grounded and ontologically dependent entities. It is true by definition that a
derivative entity is dependent and, thus, that it has a metaphysical explanation. The
fundamentalia, on the other hand, by definition, depend upon nothing else (except
perhaps themselves) and are, thus, without metaphysical explanation (except perhaps
in terms of themselves). This is not to say, however, that being independently existent
is a sufficient condition for being fundamental (on some accounts, it’s not even
necessary). There may well be a plethora of independent entities that, nonetheless,
do not serve as candidate fundamentalia.10 Although there are alternative ways of
understanding fundamentality, such as discussed by Takho and Barnes (this volume),
Fine, and Sider, we are happy to proceed on the independence understanding.11
It is open, and indeed the case on many accounts, that the fundamental facts be
fundamental qua grounding structure and yet dependent qua ontological dependence
structure. This is because for any account according to which a fact is dependent
upon its constituents, a fundamental fact will be ungrounded and yet, nonetheless,
dependent. The term ‘fundamentalia’ can then be taken to refer to either fundamental
facts or fundamental things depending upon which ordering one wishes to fore-
ground.
We recognize that there are also subtly different ways in which the notion of
being fundamental can be formally cashed out. One distinction that we think it
particularly important to mention is that between the relation being well-founded and
it having a lower bound.12 To say that dependence relations are well-founded is to say
that (i) chains ordered by the relation downwardly terminate in a fundamentalium,
and (ii) that there is a finite number of steps between any member of a chain and
the fundamentalium that it terminates in. Although it’s not uncommon to hear
philosophers speak in the language of well-foundedness, what they often mean is
that any chain of entities ordered by that relation has a lower bound. Importantly,
where a relation is bounded from below, there need not be a finite number of steps
between any member of that set and the fundamentalium that grounds it. To better
understand this, consider the relationship between God and the contents of reality;
although there may be an infinite number of steps between, say, the number 7 and
God, the number 7, along with everything else, depends on him nonetheless. In
order to remain neutral on an understanding of fundamentality as well-foundedness
and fundamentality as lower boundedness, we choose to capture this aspect of
foundationalism formally in terms of the notion of extendability (E) and its negation;
more of which anon.
10 Facts about numbers, for example, may be independent, without that entailing that they are therewith
fundamental.
11 Fine 2001 and Sider 2011. See Raven 2016 for another alternate account of fundamentality.
12 See Dixon 2016, and Rabin and Rabern 2016, for formal treatments and discussions of different
possible ways of understanding fundamentality.

ricki bliss and graham priest 
2 Taxonomy
The hierarchy thesis says that the dependence relation is anti-symmetric, transitive,
and anti-reflexive. The fundamentality thesis says that there must be something
fundamental. Although it is common to assume that the relevant dependence rela-
tions have some combination of the aforementioned properties, a variety of different
combinations are at least logically possible. To see this, let us first introduce some
notation.13

We write ‘x depends on y’ as x → y.14 (We may write x → x as x .) Next, four
structural properties:
Anti-reflexivity, AR.
• ∀x¬ x → x [Nothing depends on itself.]
• So ¬AR: ∃x x → x [Something depends on itself.]
Anti-symmetry, AS.
• ∀x∀y(x → y ⊃ ¬ y → x) [No things depend on each other.]
• So ¬AS: ∃x∃y(x → y ∧ y → x) [Some things depend on each other.]
Transitivity, T.
• ∀x∀y∀z((x → y ∧ y → z) ⊃ x → z) [Everything depends on anything a
dependent depends on.]
• So ¬T: ∃x∃y∃z(x → y ∧ y → z ∧ ¬x → z) [Something does not depend on
what some dependent depends on.]
Extendability, E.
• ∀x∃y(y = x ∧ x → y) [Everything depends on something else.]
• So ¬E: ∃x∀y(x → y ⊃ y = x) [Something does not depend on anything else.]
We can now give a taxonomy, which is as follows. After the enumeration column,
the next four columns list the 16 possibilities of our four conditions.
AR AS T E Comments Special Cases

1 Y Y Y Y Infinite partial order I
2 Y Y Y N Partial order A, F, G
3 Y Y N Y Loops I
4 Y Y N N Loops F, G
13 The contents of this section are reproduced from Bliss and Priest 2017.
14 One may distinguish between full dependence and partial dependence. (See e.g. Dixon 2016, sec. 1.)
Just to be clear: the notion of dependence we are concerned with here is partial dependence.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
5 Y N Y Y ×
6 Y N Y N ×
7 Y N N Y Loops of length >0 I
8 Y N N N Loops of length >0 F, G
9 N Y Y Y ×
10 N Y Y N ×
11 N Y N Y ×
12 N Y N N ×
13 N N Y Y Preorder C, I
14 N N Y N Preorder C, F, F , G
15 N N N Y Loops of any length I
16 N N N N Loops of any length F, F , G
Consider, next, the Comments column. Here’s what it means.

• There is nothing in categories 5, 6, since if there are x, y, such that x y, then

by T, x y , contradicting AR. (¬AS and T imply ¬AR.)
• There is nothing in categories 9–12, since if for some x, x → x, then for some
x and y, x y, contradicting AS. (¬AR implies ¬AS.)
• All the other categories are possible, as simple examples (left to the reader) will
demonstrate.
• In cases 13–16, since ¬AR implies ¬AS, the second column (AS) is redundant.
• In categories 1 and 2, → is a (strict) partial order; and in category 1, the objects
involved must be infinite because of E.
• In categories 13 and 14 → is a (strict) preorder, so loops are possible. (A loop
is a collection of elements, x1 , x2 , . . . , xn−1 , xn , for some n 1, such that
x1 → x2 → . . . → xn−1 → xn → x1 .)
• In cases 3, 4, 7, 8, 15, 16, transitivity fails, and there can also be loops. In cases 7, 8,

there are no loops of length zero, x , since AR holds.
Turning to the final column, this records some important special cases.
• The discrete case is when nothing relates to anything. Call this atomism, A. In this
case, we have AR, AS, T, ¬E. So we are in case 2 (though this is not the only thing
in case 2).
• If → is an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetric, transitive), we have ¬AR,
¬AS, T, so we are in cases 13 or 14 (though this is not the only thing in these
two cases). In case 13, there must be more than one thing in each equivalence
class, because of E. A limit case of this is when all things relate to each other:
∀x∀y x → y. Call this coherentism, C.
• Call x a foundational element (FEx) if there is no y on which x depends, except
perhaps itself: ∀y(x → y ⊃ x = y). Foundationalism, F, is the view that everything
grounds out in foundational elements. One way to cash out the idea is as
ricki bliss and graham priest 
follows.15 Let X0 = {x : FEx}, and for any natural number, n ∈ ω: x ∈ Xn+1

iff x ∈ Xn or ∀y(x → y ⊃ y ∈ Xn ). X = Xn . F is the view that everything
n∈ω
is in X, ∀x x ∈ X.16 Intuitively, this means that everything is a foundational
element, or depends on just the foundational elements, or depends on just those
and the foundational elements, and so on. E entails that there are no foundational
elements. Hence, this is incompatible with F. So, given F, we must be in an even
numbered case—except those that are already ruled out by other considerations.
(All are possible. Merely consider x → y → z. z is foundational; add in arrows
as required to deliver the other conditions.)
• A special case of foundationalism is when the foundational objects, and only
those, depend on themselves: ∀x(FEx ≡ x → x). Call this view F . Since AR
must fail in this case, we must be in cases 14 or 16 of the taxonomy.
• Another special case of foundationalism is when there is a unique foundational
object on which everything else depends: ∃x(FEx ∧ ∀y(y = x ⊃ y → x) [Some-
thing is a foundational element, and everything else depends on it.] The x in
question does not depend on anything, except perhaps itself, and it must be
unique, or it would depend on something else. Call this case G (since the x could
be a God which depends on nothing, or only itself). This is a special case of F,
and could be in any of the cases in which F holds.
∗
• Write x → y to mean that y is in the transitive closure of → from x. That is, one
can get from x to y by going down a finite sequence of arrows. An element, x,
is ultimately ungrounded, UGx, if, going down a sequence of arrows, one never
∗
comes to a foundational element: ∀y(x → y ⊃ ¬FEy). Infinitism, I, is the view
that every element is ultimately ungrounded: ∀x UGx.17 We note that Infinitism
allows for the possibility of loops, that is, repetitions in the regress. Thus, we have
the following possibility: x → y → z → x → y → z →. . . . However, if →
is transitive and anti-symmetric (T and AS), such loops are ruled out. Infinitism
entails Extendability, E. So if I holds we must be in an odd numbered category
of our taxonomy (which is not ruled out by other considerations). All such are
possible, as simple examples demonstrate. (Merely consider x0 → x1 → x2 →
x3 →..., where these are all distinct. Add in other arrows as required.) Note that
if there are at least two elements, then C is a special case of I.
15 We note that, how, exactly, to cash out the idea of foundationalism is contentious. For some discussion
of the matter, see Dixon 2016. We suspect that the notion may be vague, to a certain extent, and so
susceptible to different precisifications. The definition we give here is strong, simple, and very natural.
16 One may, if one wishes, iterate the construction into the transfinite, collecting up at limit ordinals in
the obvious way.

17 We note that Infinitism, also, is certainly susceptible to various precisifications. For example, one
might require that only some element is ungrounded. Again, the definition we give here is strong, simple,
and natural.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
• A final special case. Let x y iff x → y ∨ y → x. Then x and y are connected

along the dependence relation, xCy, iff for some n 1:
x y ∨ ∃z1 z2 . . . zn (x z1 ∧ z1 z2 ∧ . . . ∧ zn y)
[Everything relates to everything else along some sequence of dependence rela-
tions.] → itself is connected iff ∀x∀y xCy. In all of the ten possible cases, →
may be connected or not connected. G is a special case of connectedness; C is
an extreme case of connectedness; and A is an extreme case of disconnectedness.
Let us finish this section with an informal summary. The taxonomy is built on four
conditions. (i) Anti-reflexivity, AR: nothing depends on itself. (ii) Anti-symmetry, AS:
no things depend on each other. (iii) Transitivity, T: everything depends on whatever
a dependent depends on. (iv) Extendability, E: everything depends on something else.
This gives us 16 (= 24 ) possibilities. Six of these are ruled out by logical considerations,
leaving ten live possibilities. Within these, some special cases may be noted. Atomism,
A: nothing depends on anything. Foundationalism, F: everything is a fundamental
element or depends, ultimately, on such. F : Foundationalism, where the fundamental
elements and only those depend on themselves. G: Foundationalism where the
fundamental element is unique. Infinitism, I: there are no fundamental elements.
Coherentism, C: everything depends on everything else.
3 On the Metaphysical Possibility of the Alternatives

So far, we have seen that alternatives to metaphysical foundationalism in general, and
the standard view in particular, are logically possible: lines 1–4, 7, 8, and 13–16. One
might wonder, however, if they are metaphysically possible. In this section, we will
argue that they are. But before turning to a discussion of the viability of the alternatives
to the standard view, let us first address one particular issue that we will face time
and again.
It is quite common to hear friends of the standard view defend their commitments
to various aspects of the view by appeal to their intuitions. These philosophers will
claim to have intuitions that there is something fundamental, that nothing can ground
itself, and so on. Moreover, these philosophers appear to take their intuitions to serve
as something like arguments in defence of the view: these philosophers will not only
claim to have said intuitions, but also that nothing more needs to be said on the
matter. We simply do not share these intuitions. In fact, neither of us has any intuitions
whatsoever regarding a subject matter as abstract and recherché as the fundamental
structure of reality. But, more importantly, we also firmly believe that intuitions are
no replacement for actual arguments. That intuitions have been allowed to play the
role they have in the dependence/fundamentality debates thus far is, in our view, why
alternative views have been so poorly explored, and why actual arguments in defence
of the view have been allowed to be so bad.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
In what follows, although appeal to intuition is often made in defence of one

commitment or another, we will not respond to them further. Our response in
each case is as stated here. Let us continue our investigation, then, by turning to a
consideration of actual arguments, beginning with the hierarchy thesis.
3.1 The Hierarchy Thesis
According to the proponent of the standard view, reality is hierarchically arranged.
That reality is like this, we are told, is intuitive and somehow obvious.18 It has been
suggested that to challenge the idea that reality has such a shape, by questioning
whether dependence relations are transitive, irreflexive, and anti-symmetric, is pre-
posterous for the reason that metaphysical dependence relations are introduced into
the philosophical vernacular exactly to capture this aspect of reality. A reason often
cited in favour of abandoning talk of supervenience—a symmetric and reflexive
relation—in favour of, say, grounding talk, is that we need a relation that can capture
reality’s hierarchical structure. We agree that if metaphysical dependence relations
are introduced exactly to allow us to capture the idea that reality has a hierarchical
structure, then it makes little sense to call into question the properties that are securing
that structure. But the important question, we think, is why we ought to believe reality
has such a structure in the first place. And it is when we focus on this question that
reasons so often offered to commit to the hierarchy thesis look less compelling. Let us
now consider them.
.. anti-reflexivity
In defence of the claim that dependence relations are necessarily anti-reflexive,
philosophers have tended to argue that it would be absurd to assume that something
can ground itself, or that, given the tight connection between grounding and expla-
nation, as it is a principle of explanation that nothing explains itself, it ought to also
be a feature of dependence relations.19
Let us first consider why one might think it absurd to assume that metaphysical
dependence relations can be reflexive. As dependence talk is about reality, it is
reasonable to wonder if self-dependence is absurd because there is some way that
the world would have to be, such that things can depend on themselves, which is
unacceptable. But what might this be?
A first worry about self-dependence is that anything that depends upon itself would
have to bootstrap itself into being. But why think this is a problem? In the case
of causation, the problem is apparent: something that is self-caused would have to
exist prior to itself in time in order to bring itself into existence. But metaphysical
dependence relations are typically thought of as being synchronic, so what goes
18 See Raven 2013 for a well-articulated defence of the hierarchy thesis.

19
See Jenkins 2011for a somewhat different discussion of dependence and irreflexivity.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
for causation here does not (necessarily) go for metaphysical dependence.20 As

metaphysical dependence relations are thought of as inducing a priority ordering,
perhaps the problem, then, is that where the relations are reflexive, the very idea of a
priority ordering goes out the window. This may well be the case, but of course this is
no reason to think that dependence relations cannot be reflexive, for it is just to assert
that the relation must be anti-reflexive in the first place. Exactly what is required in
order to have a priority ordering is that the ordering relation is anti-symmetric and
anti-reflexive.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the historical literature would be aware
that there is, in fact, precedent for a view according to which there is at least one thing
that is self-dependent, namely, Leibniz’s account of God. According to Leibniz, God
exists, indeed, exists necessarily. He does so because existence is part of his essence;
but to say this means, inter alia, that God necessarily exists. So God necessarily exists
because he necessarily exits. One might wonder, then, if a good reason to reject
the possibility of reflexive instances of ground is that anything that is self-grounded
would be a necessary being. Now, of course this is only going to be a problem if the
wrong things, or kinds of things, turn out to be self-grounded; take, for example,
the fundamentalia. A potential serious worry, then, is that if the fundamentalia are
necessary beings, and they ground the being of everything else, then there is only one
way the world can be, which is exactly how the world actually is.21
Are we compelled, though, to accept this story—the story according to which
self-grounded entities are necessary beings? Bliss (this volume) suggests that we are
not. But if this is the case, we seem no closer to understanding (i) what reflexive
dependence amounts to and (ii) why it is unacceptable. Failing all else, one might
simply worry that the idea that anything can depend upon itself is absurd just because
it is plain weird. Maybe it is weird (the judgement of which would seem to require
knowing what self-dependence actually amounts in), but we struggle to see how self-
dependence is any weirder than the commonly held belief that there are some entities
that pop into being from nowhere and for no reason at all—which is exactly what the
fundamentalia are like by most people’s lights. Metaphysically speaking, it is not so
clear what is so bad about something’s being self-dependent.
More compelling, we think, are explanatory reasons for thinking that reflexive
instances of dependence are unacceptable. It is a plank in much of the literature on
explanation that reflexive explanations are trivial, uninformative, and explanatorily
useless. A reflexive explanation, so the thought goes, is as good as no explanation
at all. We are inclined to think, though, that whilst there may be something to this,
matters here are thornier and more subtle than they appear.22 For a start, not all
20 There are reasons to believe that there are cases of non-synchronic grounding, just as there are cases
of synchronic causation. Obviously the intricacies of these issues cannot be covered here.
21 See Dasgupta 2016 for a discussion of this view according to which it would not be a problem.
22 See Keefe 2002 for a most illuminating discussion of issues relevant to this debate.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
circular explanations are trivial—we have already seen this in the case of God and
his explanatory relationship to himself—nor are they necessarily uninformative or
useless. After all, coming to understand that something has no further explanation is
coming to understand something more about that thing. In the worst case, what we
may be dealing with is a problem with explanatory superfluity: something’s explaining
itself is as good as it having no explanation whatsoever, so why bother permitting self-
dependence in the first place.
As things stand, the reasons to disavow self-dependence appear to be fairly thin on
the ground. Metaphysically speaking, it’s not clear how a world would have to be such
that things depend on themselves, leaving us with explanatory considerations. But
if this is the conclusion it is hardly welcome. Suddenly the problems with reflexivity
appear to be epistemic rather than metaphysical which would seem to fly in the face of
how the friends of foundationalism understand the overarching structure of reality.
.. anti-symmetry
Let us now turn our attention to anti-symmetry. Advocates of the standard view rely
on (some combination of) arguments from intuition, arguments from the data, and
arguments from structural similarities with explanation. Appeal is also made to what
we might call arguments from relative fundamentality. The argument from relative
fundamentality is just a variation on the kind of argument in terms of structure that
we mentioned in the introduction to this section. We consider these first.
According to the argument from relative fundamentality ‘dependence is intimately
connected to (and perhaps even explains or is one and the same things as) relevant
notions of fundamentality, priority, grounding, etc. Dependence is the kind of rela-
tion that explains the connection between the fundamental and the derivative (the
dependent) to the fundamental (the independent). Any relation that plays this role
must be asymmetric’ (Barnes, this volume). The idea that reality is ordered into a
hierarchical structure is a very old one that can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks.
Indeed, right the way through the history of the Western tradition, many philosophers
have been engaged in some way or other with filling in the details of this picture.23
That some folks claim to have intuitions regarding the structure of reality is hardly
surprising given the pervasiveness of this view (and imagery) in the history of Western
thought.24
As Barnes points out, if moving us from the fundamental to the derivative is the role
that dependence is supposed to play, then it seems right to suppose that dependence
must be anti-symmetric. Indeed, as already mentioned, it just follows from the idea
23 See Lovejoy 1934 for an informative and charming discussion of the notion of the Great Chain of
Being and its centrality to the development of Western metaphysics.

24 The idea that reality is hierarchically structured has not only been the purview of the metaphysician,
but was also commonplace in the sciences, art, and theology up until the end of the nineteenth century.
This view went out of vogue with the momentous changes to our understanding of the world precipitated
by scientific developments.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
that reality is hierarchically structured that the structuring relation is anti-symmetric.

But exactly what the argument from relative fundamentality does not provide us with
is a reason to suppose that the relation is anti-symmetric—it simply assumes it. One
way to respond to the relative fundamentality argument, then, is to challenge the idea
that we have reasons to suppose that reality is hierarchically structured in the first
place. To put the point more finely, we can challenge the idea that reality exhibits a
robust hierarchical structure by arguing that metaphysical dependence relations are
either symmetric (which might generate a species of metaphysical coherentism) or
that they are non-symmetric (a weaker claim that may yet allow for a hierarchy to
emerge nonetheless).
Whilst we agree that the world appears to present us with cases of anti-symmetric
dependence, that dependence relations are necessarily anti-symmetric is not obvious
to us at all. As Barnes and Thompson (this volume) argue, some of our most beloved
metaphysical theories appear to posit symmetric instances of dependence; or at least
make more sense if they do. Consider, for example, Armstrong’s account of states
of affairs. Armstrong’s picture is one according to which atomic states of affairs are
ontological rock-bottom with their constituents as abstractions from those states of
affairs. The problem with this picture is that the states of affairs really seem to depend
on their constituents, with those constituents explaining the nature and existence of
those states of affairs. Barnes suggests that if Armstrong were to allow symmetric
instances of dependence, then he could have his cake, as it were, and eat it too: atomic
states of affairs depending on their constituents, but the constituents depending on
their state of affairs.
Theoretical cases aside, consider also the relationship between the north and south
poles of a magnet: without the north pole, the south pole would not exist and without
the south pole, the north pole would not exist. The list, it would seem, goes on. We
appear to have compelling reasons to temper our commitment to anti-symmetry and
endorse the more modest suggestion that the relation(s) is non-symmetric.
What about the much stronger claim that dependence is, in fact, symmetric?
Can the case be made for such a strong view? Well, it can because it has been. As
Priest (this volume) discusses, the Chinese Huayan Buddhist tradition endorses a
species of full-blown coherentism with everything depending symmetrically upon
everything else.25
It has been suggested that as metaphysical dependence is intimately involved
with explanation, we can infer from the structural properties attributed to (good)
explanations on some models that metaphysical dependence relations also share such
properties. As explanations are anti-symmetric, so the objection goes, so too are
dependence relations. But as both Barnes and Thompson (this volume) point out,
there are alternative (very good) explanatory models on which explanations are not
25 See also Priest 2014, esp. chapters 11–13, for a contemporary presentation of a coherentist picture
inspired, in part, by Huayan.

ricki bliss and graham priest 
necessarily anti-symmetric. Indeed, according to Barnes and Thompson, explanation

as understood wholistically, may well do a better job of capturing certain aspects of
our everyday and theoretical explanatory praxis.
That metaphysical dependence relations are introduced to capture reality as hierar-
chically structured does not provide us with a reason to think reality has that structure
in the first place. Although ‘the data’ suggests that some instances of dependence
relations are anti-symmetric, this is also no reason to suppose that the relation is in
general. Indeed, the cherry-picking of instances of dependence relations that appear
to be anti-symmetric to use as our paradigmatic cases of dependence ought not blind
us to the presence of other instantiations of the relation that are plausibly thought to
be symmetric. All told, there seems to be good reasons to suppose that metaphysical
dependence relations are at least non-symmetric.
.. transitivity
There is something natural-seeming about the idea that metaphysical dependence
relations are transitive. Where a person depends on their vital organs, it also seems
true that they depend upon the cells that compose those vital organs. However,
a number of authors, including Nolan (this volume), have pointed out that at the
very least, we could well allow that some instances of dependence relations fail to
be transitive, and hold a view according to which metaphysical dependence is non-
transitive.
Why question the transitivity assumption? Well, one good reason is that reality
appears to present with actual cases of failures of transitivity. Schaffer asks us to
consider the following propositions: (1) the fact that o has a dent, d, grounds the fact
that o has shape S, (2) the fact that o has shape S grounds the fact that o is more or less
spherical, and (3) therefore, the fact that o has a dent grounds the fact that o is more or
less spherical. If grounding were transitive, then we would expect this argument to go
through but, Schaffer argues, it does not because o ‘is more-or-less spherical despite
the dent, not because of it’.26 As far as Schaffer is concerned, the fact that o has a dent
does not ground the fact that o is more or less spherical, in which case grounding is
not necessarily transitive.27 Or consider other problematic cases: singleton Obama is
dependent upon its member Obama, and Obama is dependent upon his parts, and yet
we might well not want to say that the existence of Obama’s heart (partially) explains
the existence of singleton Obama.
One way to respond to these sorts of cases is to point out that dependence is not
univocal. What one might think is going on in these cases is the chaining together of
instances of dependence relations that don’t, in fact, properly belong together. One
might try and argue, for example, that the way in which a singleton depends upon
26 Schaffer 2012, p. 127.

27 This is not the only purported failure of transitivity that Schaffer presents us with. See also Raven 2013
for a defence of the thought that grounding is transitive.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
its member is different to the way in which the member depends upon its parts.28
Were one to pursue such an approach, however, one must remain mindful of the costs
such an approach might incur: do we really want or need a proliferation of species of
dependence relations, for example?29
Another approach might be to distinguish between relations of mediate and imme-
diate dependence, where the former is transitive and the latter is not. Indeed, in the
literature, philosophers have suggested that we should take seriously a distinction
between immediate and mediate dependence.30 Purported failures of transitivity can
then be understood as involving the transitive closure of an intransitive relation. So
what appears to be a failure of transitivity, in fact, involves a case of mistaken identity.
There are advantages to admitting a distinction between a transitive and a non-
transitive species of the relation. On the one hand, it allows us to avoid a proliferation
of relation-types in response to the purported problem: where part/whole relations are
a species of dependence relation, truthmaking another and so on. And, on the other
hand, it allows for certain possibilities. Nolan (this volume) suggests, for example,
that some species of dependence, or instances of the relation, may fail to be transitive
allowing the possibility of giant cosmological loops. And more generally, where there
is a species of the relation that is intransitive, loops of various sizes could be admitted
without being forced to sacrifice anti-symmetry and anti-reflexivity. All told, there
are reasons to doubt that metaphysical dependence relations are necessarily transitive.
Not only do we appear to be in possession of counterexamples to the transitivity thesis,
but we have reasons to suppose that admitting an intransitive species of the relation
to our repertoire would be to our advantage.
Of course there is so much more to be considered regarding the widespread
commitment to the hierarchy thesis, and the possible alternatives to it. Rabin (this
volume) believes that unorthodox accounts of grounding allow us to better capture the
layered conception of reality. Looking to other traditions, as Priest (this volume) does,
we can see that a number of accounts from the Asian Buddhist traditions, for example,
reject the idea that reality is hierarchically structured. Anyone seriously interested in
non-standard conceptions of the structure of reality would do well to look beyond the
Western canon. And Litland (this volume) argues that, what he calls a bi-collective
account of ground, may have interesting applications for certain types of coherentist
structures.
28 Consider what happens when we say that Harry banks on Sally and Sally banks on Tuesday. No one
would claim that, therefore, Harry banks on Tuesday. Nor would anyone claim that the relation banking on,
as demonstrated by this example, is not, therefore, transitive. What we would be inclined to say is that the
expression ‘banks on’ picks out different relations in the two cases.
29 See Wilson 2014 for a defence of the claim that all we need are the many different kinds of small-
g grounding relations with which we are familiar—supervenience, parthood, etc.—rather than one big-G
grounding relation.
30 See, for example, Fine 1994, 1995, and 2013 for discussions of such possibilities as regards both
ontological dependence and grounding.

ricki bliss and graham priest 
3.2 The Fundamentality Thesis

One might well have the impression that nary a paper is produced in analytic meta-
physics these days that does not make reference to the notion of fundamentality.31
Somewhat surprising, then, is the dearth of good arguments available in the literature
in defence of the fundamentality thesis. Broadly construed, there appears to be at
least three types of argument on offer. The first of these, as might be expected, are
arguments from intuition; the second of these are arguments from vicious infinite
regress; and the third, arguments from theoretical virtue. In keeping with our promise
above, we desist from discussing arguments from intuition and turn immediately to
regress arguments.
.. regress arguments

What explains the fact that we exist? A good place to start will surely involve appeal to
facts about the existence of our parents and the genetic material they have bequeathed
to us, our vitals organs, and so on. Of course, we are causally dependent upon on our
parents, but we are also metaphysically dependent upon them: it’s not simply that our
parents cause us to exist, but they also ground our existence as well. Although the
story of the existence of any one of us is metaphysically complex, most of us would
feel confident in assuming that we have some rough idea of how to tell it. Suppose,
now, that we also wish to explain the existence of our parents and our vital organs.
Again, a complex matter, but surely one that will involve appeal to their parents—our
grandparents—and the cellular structure of the organs and so on. At each stage, it
would appear as though we have explained something about the entities for which
we are seeking an explanation, and that this process could go on successfully without
termination. But exactly what the fundamentality thesis tells us is that it doesn’t (or
can’t) go on forever, and a justification for this position is going to have to tell us why
this is the case.32
One obvious seeming thought is that where we have limitless descending depend-
ence chains, although we have explained something (probably even a lot), we haven’t
yet explained everything that we need an explanation for.33 Or another thought might
be that where we have limitless descending dependence chains, although we have
explained something, we haven’t yet arrived at an explanation that is complete, or
at least completely satisfactory. And, of course, there is a way of understanding these
two explanatory concerns that is intimately related, for an explanation will surely be
31 One needs not only be reading from the dependence/fundamentality literature to notice this. Appeal
to fundamentality is made in the literature ranging from topics as diverse as the philosophy of mind to
aesthetics and ethics, to offer but a few examples.
32 See Bliss (forthcoming), from which much of the following discussion in this section is borrowed, for
a more sustained elaboration of these thoughts.

33 See Bliss 2013.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
unsatisfactory exactly when we have failed to explain everything that we need an

explanation for.
Both of these kinds of concerns are echoed by various authors in the literature.
Schaffer, for example, claims that where there is nothing fundamental ‘being is
infinitely deferred and never achieved’.34 Dasgupta suggests that it is at least plausible
to think that we might justify our commitment to fundamentality as ‘the desire for
this special kind of explanation . . . in which one looks at the surrounding mountains
and oceans and thinks “good grief, how come it all turned out like this?”’35 Where the
‘special kind of explanation’ he refers to is exactly the kind of explanation we don’t
have when we point out that mountains depend upon arrangements of matter in
space, and so on. Although concluding that the best reason we have for supposing
that there is something fundamental is that it would be better to have a unified
explanation of everything that needs explaining, Cameron also states that ‘for if there
is an infinitely descending chain of ontological dependence, then while everything
that needs a metaphysical explanation (a grounding for its existence) has one, there
is no explanation for everything that needs explaining. That is, it is true for every
dependent x that the existence of x is explained by the existence of some prior object
(or set of prior objects), but there is no collection of objects that explains the existence
of every dependent x.’36 And finally, concerned with satisfaction, Fine suggests that
‘ . . . given a truth that stands in need of explanation, one naturally supposes that it
should have a “completely satisfactory” explanation, one that does not involve cycles
and terminates in truths that do not stand in need of explanation’.37
An unfortunate consequence of the alleged obviousness of the fundamentality
thesis is that remarks such as these are seldom presented in the form of arguments
in the literature. It is not uncommon, nor unreasonable, to suppose that comments
such as these can be reconstructed in the form of arguments from vicious infinite
regress. One might suppose, for example, that where there is nothing fundamental, a
regress is generated, and it is vicious because it leaves us without an explanation for
something that we think needs explaining, or that we are left without an explanation
that is completely satisfactory.
We think, however, that there is a simpler way of reconstructing arguments in
defence of fundamentality of this stripe that does not make direct appeal to arguments
from vicious infinite regress.38 Reconstructing the arguments after such a fashion has
the added advantage of allowing us to bring to the fore an assumption crucial to the
foundationalist view that appears to have gone largely unnoticed in the literature.
One way of reconstructing the kinds of claims mentioned above as arguments
requires two assumptions. The first of these is an assumption that stipulates an
34 35 36
Schaffer 2010, p. 62. Dasgupta 2016, p. 4. Cameron 2008, p. 12.
37 Fine 2010, p. 105.
38 This approach also fits with our view—which we have argued for independently—that the infinite
regress is, in most cases, never the disease but, rather, a symptom. See Bliss 2013 and Priest 2014, 1.4.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
explanatory target. Such a stipulation might make appeal to something that needs to be
explained; or it might make appeal to a type of explanation. In light of the discussion
above, our explanatory targets might include (i) why anything has being whatsoever,
(ii) why things turned out this way rather than any other, or (iii) that we need
completely satisfactory explanations of everything that we think needs explaining.
But note that having stipulated what our explanatory target is, or could be, we do
not yet have an argument in defence of fundamentality. For it is not enough that
we know that there is something that needs explaining, or some particular kind of
explanation that we are after, but we also need an assumption that tells us that no
dependent entity is up to the task to hand. Arguments in defence of fundamentality
rely, crucially, on a second assumption which tells us that no dependent entity can do
the kind of explanatory work that we are after.
For the sake of economy let us reconstruct two possible arguments in defence
of fundamentality; arguments that are congruous with suggestions made in the
literature.39 Assuming that the world divides exclusively and exhaustively into the
fundamental and the derivative:
Argument I
1. There is an explanation for why anything has being whatsoever.
2. No dependent entity can explain why anything has being whatsoever.
3. Therefore, there must be something fundamental.
Argument II
1. There is a complete metaphysical explanation for things that have metaphysical
explanations.
2. No dependent entity can generate a complete explanation for things that have
metaphysical explanations.
3. Therefore, there must be something fundamental.
What are we to make of these arguments? In particular, are these good argu-
ments in defence of the fundamentality thesis? Let us begin by considering the first
assumption of our first argument. It seems obvious that what is at issue on this
kind of reconstruction is a variation on an old theme: the cosmological argument.
Understood in this way, the foundationalist is concerned to answer some version or
other of a cosmological question. Indeed, many historically important figures have
been engaged with such explanatory projects, including, as Casati (this volume) points
out, Heidegger. Foundationalism, so understood, is of course not motivated by a
concern to establish an ultimate cause of reality, but, rather, by a concern to establish
an ultimate ontological ground.
39 We are of the view that many of the philosophers who worry about the grounds of being, or
explaining the existence of everything, and so on, are, in fact, circulating roughly in the same waters. These
philosophers are concerned with age-old questions such as why are there any beings whatsoever.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
Before assessing the merits of these arguments, it is interesting to note that their
very appearance would appear to be in tension with what is a common view amongst
contemporary analytic thinkers. Inspired by Hume, it is not uncommon for philoso-
phers to suppose that having explained the existence of this thing here, and the
existence of that thing there, everything that needs a (causal) explanation has one. This
is just to say that, following Hume, many folks are of the view that there is nothing left
over that needs to be explained and therewith, no blazing cosmological questions that
demand an answer. Indeed, some philosophers have even gone so far as to claim that
cosmological questions are ill-formed and non-sensicle.40 It is an item of curiosity
why it is, then, that in the causal case, cosmological arguments (and the kinds of
questions they are offered in response to) are passé and, yet, in the metaphysical case
they are not. This is not to say that there is not a principled reason for the difference,
but that it would be nice to know what it is.
Sociological observations aside, there is what we believe to be a considerable
concern with the use of cosmological questions to motivate metaphysical founda-
tionalism: they appear to rely on an application of the principle of sufficient reason
(PSR). Although there may be a suitably constrained version of the principle in the
vicinity, the employment of the full-blown principle—according to which every thing
has an explanation for its existence—to motivate foundationalism would be a disaster
for the view: exactly what the foundationalist believes is that not everything has an
explanation. Metaphysical foundationalism, so motivated, runs the risk of pulling the
rug out from beneath itself.
Let us now turn to the second argument and consider the thought that there is a
complete metaphysical explanation for things that have metaphysical explanations.
We do not wish to be distracted by how we have formulated the assumption here.
Whether we formulate the target as all or only some things that have metaphysical
explanations have complete explanations, what we are concerned with is why we
should think anything that has a metaphysical explanation has a complete one in the
first place. So what can we say about this assumption? One might suppose, as Fine
does, that it is a plausible demand on explanations that they be completely satisfactory.
Alternatively, one might be of the view that, independently of any general explanatory
considerations, it is a plausible demand on metaphysical explanations in particular
that they be completely satisfactory.
But there appears to be a lot to be concerned about with the first assumption in
our second argument as well. First and foremost, there is a way of understanding
the assumption that looks as though it simply begs the question. We assume that
no argument in defence of fundamentality can contain an assumption from which
it follows that there is something fundamental. But the demand that some (or all) of
our metaphysical explanations be complete just seems to be the demand that those
40
See Maitzen 2012 and 2013.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
explanatory chains terminate, which, of course, is just to say that there must be
something fundamental.
A good reason to think that our metaphysical explanations ought to be complete
is that there is something wrong with explanations (in general) that are incomplete.
But explanations are not typically rendered defective by dint of being incomplete.
If someone wants to know why their window is broken, a story that makes appeal
to the storm the previous night would be adequate. It is simply not the case that an
explanation for a broken window is rendered defective in virtue of its failing to make
appeal to the origins of the universe. Of course, what goes for causal explanations
needs not go for metaphysical explanations, and the foundationalist may well be better
off making recourse to the idea that there is something special about metaphysical
explanations in particular which means they must be complete.
We think it is worth pointing out at this juncture that there is something of
an odd tension between the demand, on the one hand, for completely satisfactory
explanations that can only be achieved by terminating our dependence chains and, on
the other hand, the notion of a full ground. Let us suppose that singleton Socrates—
{Socrates}—is fully grounded in Socrates. The way we are often encouraged to
understand what full grounding amounts to is that, in this case, the existence of
{Socrates} is fully explained by the existence of Socrates. If, however, where the non-
terminating dependence chain of which these two are members leaves us with an
incomplete or a not completely satisfactory explanation of {Socrates}, this would
indicate that Socrates doesn’t completely explain {Socrates} in the first place. If, on the
other hand, Socrates does completely explain the existence of {Socrates}, then there
must, in fact, be something else at issue such that our explanations are not satisfactory
unless there is something fundamental.
Returning to broader explanatory considerations, one thought might be that whilst
causal explanations may be incomplete, metaphysical explanations cannot be, for it
is the purview of metaphysical explanations to afford us a complete explanation of
reality. We can’t help but think that something a bit slippery has gone on here, though.
First, where there is something fundamental, exactly what we don’t have is a complete
explanation of reality, for we have the fundamentalia that are unexplained. Second,
this proposal looks a lot like a cloaked version of the question-begging insistence that
there is something fundamental mentioned above.
Let us turn now to a consideration of the second assumptions in our arguments. As
pointed out above, to note that there is something that has not yet been explained, is
not yet to have an argument in defence of fundamentality. What is further required
is an assumption that stipulates that no dependent entity is up to the task to hand.
Without such an assumption, we have no need to move beyond the collection of
dependent entities and, thus, no need to posit the existence of something fundamen-
tal. If our foundationalism, however, is to be well motivated, we need to know why
this is the case. We need an answer to the question, why can’t any dependent entity
explain where, say, being comes from?
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
We think there are at least five prima facie plausible reasons to suppose that no
dependent entity is able to be invoked to explain that for which it is being invoked.
We list these as follows: (a) the reflexivity objection; (b) the never-ending questions
objection; (c) the same questions objection; (d) the predicate-satisfaction objection;
(e) the same kind objection. We discuss each in their turn.
Some versions of cosmological arguments to the existence of God arrive at their
conclusion by pointing out that no contingent thing can explain why there are any
contingent things at all on pain of violating an anti-reflexivity assumption. They
claim that as any contingent thing would be amongst the collection of things to be
explained, were something contingent to explain why there are any contingent things
at all, then the collection would be self-explanatory. Or put slightly more formally,
let [A] be the state of affairs described by A. Suppose that there only two states of
affairs, [A] and [B], and that [A] causally explains [[A] and [B]], then [A] causally
explains [A] (and [B]). One might think that an analogous worry is what motivates the
metaphysical foundationalist. The worry in this case would be that where [A] grounds
[[A] and [B]], [A] grounds [A] (and [B]).
We think there are at least two reasons to reject this concern as a reason for
accepting the second assumption of the proposed foundationalist argument. The
first of these pertains to understanding the explanatory target as a conjunctive fact.
Cashing out the foundationalist concern over the ground of being in terms of a
giant conjunctive fact doesn’t seem to really respect the concern that is driving the
view in the first place. Moreover, the logic of ground, as it is commonly understood,
is such that conjunctions are grounded in their conjuncts—exactly what explains
the super conjunction are its conjuncts. Our second reason for rejecting this way
of understanding the foundationalist concern also relates to the logic of ground.
Although [[A] and [B]] necessitates [A] and [B] it does not metaphysically explain
them. Quite on the contrary, as we have seen. The reflexivity objection, we would like
to suggest, provides us with no good reason to suppose that no dependent entity can
explain why anything has being whatsoever.
Perhaps the reason we ought to endorse the second assumption, then, is that were
our chains not to terminate we would be forced to ask a never-ending series of
questions: dependent entities, by their very nature, have explanations, and for every
new dependent entity that we invoke, we can ask of it ‘why does this thing exist?’ (or
something of the like) ad infinitum. It’s not hard to see how some of the concerns
extant in the literature can be understood in these terms. Exactly what a never-
ending series of questions would seem to leave us without is a completely satisfactory
explanation, for example.
Once again, we find this line of reasoning—the never-ending questions’ objection—
wanting. Why? In short because it appears to us to beg the question. When do we cease
to ask questions? When we arrive at the existence of something that does not demand
that we ask of it certain (relevant) questions. And when do we arrive at the existence
of such a thing? When we arrive at something fundamental, of course. To insist that
ricki bliss and graham priest 
our explanatory chains terminate is just to insist that there is something fundamental.
Or put another way, to insist that our explanations be completely satisfactory is just
to insist that there is something fundamental.
What would not be a question-begging motivation for endorsing the never-ending
questions’ objection would be if we had an independent reason for endorsing it: a
reason over and above the mere stipulation that explanatory chains need to terminate.
An independent reason to endorse the never-ending questions objection might just be
that where we are forced to keep asking questions this must be because we haven’t
answered the question we are seeking an answer to in the first place. This is one way
we might interpret Schaffer’s concerns over the grounds of being, for example. Where
of each new thing we are compelled to ask ‘and what explains the being of this thing?’
one might suppose we have not really answered the question that we were seeking an
answer to in the first place.
Be that as it may, this reason to endorse the second assumption of the argument is
peculiar. Our reason for thinking so is that it seems to trade on a confusion. Where
we are forced to ask a never-ending series of questions, the problem may not be that
the chain does not terminate, but that one may be going about answering the question
in the wrong way. Put differently, the never-ending questions are not themselves the
disease, but, instead, a symptom of a deeper problem.
Interesting as this may be, this is not a good reason to suppose that no dependent
entity can explain where being comes from. Why? Let us grant that the series of never-
ending questions and answers is generated because we are going about answering the
questions in the wrong way. But if this is the case, what good will terminating the
chain do? How does terminating the chain at some, likely arbitrary, point solve our
problem if the problem is generated by a mismatch between question and answer in
the first place? It is hard to see how it could. Moreover, what reason could we have
for supposing that our answers are incorrect? If this reason for endorsing the second
crucial assumption is to play the justificatory role that we need it to, it cannot be
because we are lumbered with a never-ending series of questions and answers because
no dependent entity can explain why anything has being whatsoever. Exactly what we
appear to be left without is a motivation for the assumption.
Let us turn, then, to the same questions objection. Suppose one of us were to ask
you why there are any flamingos whatsoever. Suppose that you responded that there
are flamingos because there are an enormous number of them living in the Rann of
Kutch. Dissatisfied with your response, we might press you and say, ‘Ok, fine. So why
are there those flamingos?’ Were you to respond by pointing out that those particular
flamingos exist because their parents existed, we would be forced to suggest that you
seem to be missing the point. Whilst it is surely true that the particular flamingos
presently inhabiting the Rann of Kutch exist because their parents existed, no number
of flamingos can help us explain why there are any flamingos whatsoever. By parity
of reasoning, no dependent entity—entity with being—can help us explain why there
are any beings whatsoever. What is going wrong in both of these cases is that we are
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
invoking the very thing for which we are seeking an explanation in our explanans.41
The problem is not that we have an infinitude of explanations, but rather that things
go badly out of the gate. We are forced to keep asking the same question because we
simply never receive an answer to it.
Whilst we find this line of reasoning compelling, what it seems to supply us
with—as with one interpretation of the never ending questions’ objection—is more
a restatement of the principle for which we are seeking a justification and less a
justification itself. The same questions objection seems to presuppose the idea that
no dependent entity can explain where being comes from rather than justify it.
But perhaps there is some principle lurking in the background here according
to which where F is any predicate that applies to dependent entities only, you can’t
explain why there are any F things at all by invoking only those things that are F, even
if your explanations go on forever.42 Let us call this principle the predicate satisfaction
principle. According to the predicate satisfaction objection, no dependent entity can
be invoked to explain why anything has being whatsoever because this would violate
the predicate satisfaction principle.
Although plausible seeming, we don’t think this is the right reason to endorse our
second assumption. The reason for this is that we do seem to allow explanations where
the G things explain the F things, but all the Gs happen to be Fs as well: all that is
required to explain why there are any F things at all is the G things that happen to
be the F things as well.43 Consider explanations of pain in terms of C-fibre firings.
Anything that satisfies the predicate ‘being in pain’ will also satisfy the predicate ‘has
C-fibre firings’, according to an appropriate version of physicalism, for example. As
much as we can explain why there are any pains at all, some theories do so in terms
of C-fibre firings, even though what satisfies the former predicate will also satisfy the
latter. Or how about the predicate ‘is the auditory threshold for the normal human
ear’? Let this predicate be denoted by F. The instantiation of this predicate is explained
by the G things—‘sounds falling within a range of 16 to 32 hertz’—where everything
that is a G is also an F. Other, non-scientific, examples also come to mind. Let F
be ‘is money’ and G be ‘is used as money’, for example. At first blush, the predicate
satisfaction principle appears intuitive and plausible, but it seems to be a principle
stronger than one that we ought to accept. We frequently explain why there are any
F things by making appeal to things that are, in fact, F things. So let us set this
principle aside.
Finally we come to what we call the same kind objection. According to this
objection, no member of a kind can explain why that kind exists at all. A reason to
endorse our second assumption would be that no dependent thing can explain, say,
41 See Bliss 2013 and Passmore 1970.

42 See Maitzen 2013, p. 263 for the formulation of the principle from which the one here was borrowed.
43 See Keefe 2002 for a discussion of ways in which explanations that fit this structure can be unprob-
lematic, and Maitzen 2013, p. 264 for an elaboration of the same point.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
why anything has being whatsoever because dependent things form a kind and no
member of a kind can explain why that kind exists at all. Again, at least one of us finds
this argument compelling (which is not to say it is well motivated!). And allusion to
the idea that no member of a kind can explain why that kind exists at all can be found
at various places in the literature.44
The argument also appears to be in keeping with at least one of the aforementioned
motivations for foundationalism. Let us return to the idea that metaphysical expla-
nations must be complete because it is the job of a metaphysical theory to give us
a complete story of reality. In previous remarks, we suggested that there is at least
one problem with this understanding of foundationalism cum metaphysical theory of
everything: it leaves something out, namely, the fundamentalia. What appears to be
implicit in this line of reasoning, however, is the idea that what we need an explanation
for is all the dependent entities. It at least accords with foundationalism understood in
this way that the world carves into two fundamental kinds—the derivative and the
fundamental—and that whatever is of the same kind as the derivative cannot explain
why there are any derivative things in the first place.
Understanding what motivates foundationalism in these terms, and as ultimately
being motivated by the same kind of objection, whilst plausible, brings with it its
own problems. There are going to be difficult issues associated with the thought that
‘dependent entity’ and ‘fundamental entity’ are kind-terms. Where ‘dog’ seems like
a good example of a kind term, it is less clear that ‘dependent entity’ is. Secondly,
foundationalism, so motivated, seems to land us in the awkward position whereby
the fundamentalia are invoked to explain the being of the dependent entities, but the
being of the dependent entities also explains the fundamentalia!
.. arguments from theoretical virtue

To the best of our knowledge, only one philosopher, Cameron, has explicitly endorsed
an argument from theoretical virtue in defence of the fundamentality thesis.45
Cameron argues that a theory of reality on which we have a unified explanation
of everything that needs an explanation is more virtuous than one on which we have
no such unity. And metaphysical foundationalism, unlike its rivals, is just such a
theory, according to Cameron.
In addition to the argument from theoretical virtue that is available in the literature,
one can imagine other possible arguments in the same spirit in defence of the funda-
mentality thesis. One might argue, for example, that metaphysical foundationalism
has the virtue of being parsimonious where its rival, metaphysical infinitism, does
not. Just as one might argue that foundationalism is simpler or more elegant than
coherentism.
44 45
See Lowe 2003, p. 91. Cameron 2008.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
Arguments from theoretical virtue are not designed to determine whether a theory
is impossible. Rather, their role is to help us adjudicate between theories that we
already believe to be possible. No argument from theoretical virtue, then, can lead
us to conclude that any one from amongst our theories is to be stricken from our list
of possibilities. But of course, what these arguments can do is help us make choices as
to which of our theories are better than the others.
That said, arguments from theoretical virtue are tricky, it seems, at least twice over.
On the one hand, how we are to understand the virtues is a matter of contention.
And, on the other hand, how the virtues interact with one another can make it hard
to determine, in some cases, when a theory is, in fact, better than another.
Consider the thought that foundationalism is more parsimonious than infinitism.
Are we to understand this as a claim regarding quantitative or qualitative parsimony?
If it’s the former, it is not entirely clear why we should believe this to be the case.
Moreover, it is not clear why we should believe that any foundationalist could, in fact,
run such an argument. Even though the infinitist denies that there is a fundamental
level, and is, therewith, committed to infinitely descending chains, foundationalism
says nothing about the number of entities that reside at the fundamental level; or any
other for that matter. It is not at all obvious, then, that infinitism is more ontologically
splashy than foundationalism after all, if what we are concerned with is the number
of things. Things may look differently, however, if what we are counting are the levels
themselves. Foundationalism does seem to do better as it does not commit us to
ever deeper layers or levels. But again, things here aren’t as straightforward as they
might appear. Were the world to be open at the top—with infinitely ascending layers,
then whether or not there is something fundamental makes little difference to the
parsimony of either view.46 Of course, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the world
is closed at the top, but how both infinitism and foundationalism fare in terms of
quantitative parsimony will be both complex and intimately involved with additional
commitments.
More often that not, what philosophers claim to be concerned with is qualitative
rather than quantitative parsimony. But here, again, matters do not appear to be
straightforward. Which view is more parsimonious than the other will depend upon
which kinds we think are there to be counted. On one way of carving up the space,
metaphysical infinitism is, in fact, more parsimonious than foundationalism; where
foundationalism has two fundamental kinds (the derivative and the fundamental)
infinitism only has one (the derivative). Suppose one were to argue, instead, that
qualitative parsimony pertains to kinds and not categories, and that terms such as ‘fun-
damental thing’ are category terms. What we ought to count, so this argument goes,
is all the cats, protons, and wave functions (rather than derivative and fundamental
things), and that where there is nothing fundamental there is surely an obnoxious
46
See Bohn 2009 and Schaffer 2010 for contrasting discussions of this possibility.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
number of kinds instantiated in the world. But even here, if we want to push such
an argument through, we require some additional assumptions. We would need to
assume, for example, that for the foundationalist there is only a finite number of kinds
of things that reside at the fundamental level. Alternatively, it might be the case, as has
been suggested by Tahko (this volume) that below a certain level for the infinitist there
are repetitions. It is possible, then, that in spite of not committing to a fundamental
level, the infinitist is still not committed to there being an infinite number of kinds in
the world.
Matters are more complex still when we consider virtues such as simplicity or
explanatory power. One might suppose that a reality with a hierarchical structure
and a fundamental level is simpler than one on which, say, everything depends on
everything else. But why this is the case is not altogether clear. It certainly seems
simpler, but that could just be because it is the picture in terms of which most of us
are accustomed to thinking. Arguably, a picture of reality on which everything is at
the same level is simpler than one that contains multiple levels.
Just as it is not clear which one of our theories wins the prize regarding explanatory
power. On the one hand, foundationalism looks to do well as the presence of a
fundamental level allows us to explain the existence of everything else. On the other
hand, anti-foundationalisms look to do better as there is nothing that is posited that
does not have an explanation. The balance could tip here, however, if it turns out
that where there is nothing fundamental there is something that is unexplained. As
we have seen in the discussion above, what anti-foundationalisms might leave us
without an explanation for is, say, why anything has being at all. But of course, this
is its whole own additional commitment that, as we have seen, brings with it its own
potential strife.
Much work remains to be done on the virtues of metaphysical foundationalism and
its alternatives. What we think the outcome of such work will be is that it is far from
clear that metaphysical foundationalism is obviously the most virtuous of the theories
available to us.
Of course there is much more to be said regarding the fundamentality thesis and
the kinds of arguments offered in defence of it. Bohn (this volume) argues that
we do not have good reasons to support the fundamentality thesis. Moreover, he
argues in addition to this that we even have good reasons to think that it is false
once we consider arguments involving gunk, junk, and hunk, and what he calls
the metaphysical principle of sufficient reason. Trogdon (this volume) suggests that
we can better understand Schaffer’s concern over the grounds of being in terms of
the notion of reality inheritance and that the argument so understood doesn’t work.
This is not to say, thinks Trogdon, that we, therewith, have no argument(s) in defence
of the fundamentality thesis, but that we need to understand fundamentality (as
motivated by the inheritance principle) as a kind of causal foundationalism or concrete
foundationalism. Jago (this volume), on the other hand, proposes an account of a
thing’s nature or essence that can allow us to provide grounding conditions for that
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
thing. Essences, so understood, vindicate the hierarchy thesis as endorsed by the

proponent of the standard view, but allow that the relation may be non-well-founded.
It is somewhat surprising that the literature on metaphysical dependence and
different kinds of structuralisms are not brought more often into dialogue with one
another. Wigglesworth (this volume) argues that there are species of mathematical
structuralism that can plausibly be understood (i) to involve metaphysical depend-
ence relations and (ii) to challenge almost all of the structural features typically
attributed to those relations. In particular, he argues, there are species of structuralism
that involve both infinitely descending grounding chains and something fundamental.
Tahko (this volume) argues that standard accounts of fundamentality are generally
framed in terms of a kind of atomism. He argues that the fundamentality thesis, so
understood, has problems accounting for the picture of reality that emerges from
certain kinds of structuralisms. In place of this he proposes an account in terms
of ontological minimality which, interestingly, can accommodate both species of
fundamentality and infinitism. Morganti (this volume) undertakes a more general
investigation of alternative conceptions of physical reality. In particular, he defends the
idea that physics may well be able to be interpreted as supporting both infinitist and
coherentist structures, supporting a kind of pluralism about metaphysical structure.
3.3 The Contingency and Consistency Theses
We come now to a consideration of the contingency and consistency theses. We
discuss each in their turn. As Wildman (this volume) correctly points out, how
fundamentality intersects with modality is a spectacularly underexplored topic in
the current grounding literature. It is safe to assume, however, that the standard
view is one on which the fundamentalia are contingently existent. Of course, it is
not necessary for a foundationalist to believe that the fundamentalia are merely
contingently existent. Indeed, paradigmatic accounts of fundamentality have it that
the fundamentalia are necessary beings: consider God or Plato’s forms, for example.
The problem for such views, however, is how we are to preserve contingency in the
world, for where the fundamentalia are necessary beings, and beings that necessitate
the existence of everything else, there is only one way that the world can be, namely
exactly how it actually is.47 Not everyone agrees that this problem is as serious as it
sounds. Dasgupta, for example, has argued that a sufficiently constrained picture of
reality on which the fundamentalia are necessary existents (facts about essences in his
case) is plausible and appealing in certain ways.48
In his contribution to this volume, Wildman argues that there is a further issue
related to the contingency thesis that has, thus far, not been treated in the literature.
Whatever the modal status of the fundamentalia, is being fundamental itself a
47 See Skiles 2014 for a defence of the thought that grounding does not involve necessitation and
Trogdon 2013 for a defence of the thought that it does.

48 Dasgupta 2016.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
necessary or merely contingent property of the fundamentalia? Whilst a number

of combinations of views are possible—where the fundamentalia are, say, neces-
sary beings and necessarily fundamental—Wildman argues that several prominent
accounts appear to assume that the property of being fundamental is a merely contin-
gent property of the fundamentalia. Wildman aims to explore how one might go about
thinking about the intersection between modality and fundamentality, and argues that
the contingency of fundamentality is not as problematic as one might suppose.
Let us turn to the consistency thesis. Although one of us has developed and
defended vigorously both logics and metaphysical accounts according to which
contradictions are tolerable or even actual,49 there is no denying that the idea that
contradictions are insufferable is a stalwart in the Western tradition. As noted above,
some philosophers have been willing to question the first three of the foundationalists’
core commitments, but to the best of our knowledge, no one, to date, has challenged
the thought that whatever properties grounding structures have, they have them
consistently.
As we have seen, in the case of the first three of the foundationalist’s commitments,
philosophers have either offered, or it is at least possible to see, what the reasons might
be for defending or rejecting any of these commitments. In the case of the consistency
thesis, were a philosopher to defend their commitment, they would likely make appeal
to the host of arguments commonly levelled against inconsistencies already available
in the literature. We have no desire to rehearse or discuss the relevant arguments
here.50 In the final paper in this collection, Casati develops an account of the ‘second
Heidegger’ according to which we can understand him as espousing a kind of para-
foundationalism; where the grounding structure both is and is not anti-symmetric,
anti-reflexive, and extendable. One way of making sense of the later Heidegger, argues
Casati, is to bite the bullet, accept that he endorses contradictions, and with it, a view
according to which the grounding structure has inconsistent properties.
Let us return momentarily to the taxonomy presented in §2. Recall that there
were a number of lines—combinations of formal properties—that we dismissed as
impossible. We said, for example, that the dependence structure cannot be symmetric,
transitive, and anti-reflexive. Our taxonomy, along with every paper with one excep-
tion in this volume, has assumed the consistency thesis. In our taxonomy, we rule
out multiple views as impossible on the assumptions that for each of our four formal
properties a grounding structure either does or does not have (but not both) that
property. Our taxonomy assumes consistent axioms and rules out as impossible any
combination of views that, in spite of this, yields an inconsistency. But the kind of
view presented by Casati does not appear in our taxonomy for the reason that, unlike
us, the axiomatic system he proposes is itself inconsistent—a view so radical that it
does not appear on our taxonomy in order to be ruled out in the first place. Rather
49 50
See e.g. Priest 1987, 2006. Discussion can be found in Priest 2006.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
than return to the same old arguments in defence of consistency, and the arguments
against them, we prefer to say a few words about why one might go to the trouble of
challenging the consistency thesis to begin with.
The history of philosophy (East and West) is a history littered with accounts that
are plausibly construed as harbouring contradictions. This is not to suggest that the
history of philosophy is a history of dialethism, for, indeed, many of The Greats found
themselves deeply troubled by the appearance of contradictions in their systems.
What it is to suggest is that many interesting and important philosophical accounts
have invariably involved contradictions, and that one way of dealing with these
contradictions is just to accept them. Of course, contradictions can crop up all over
the place, but what we are particularly interested in are accounts of the structure of
reality—accounts that are plausibly construed as being couched in the language of
metaphysical dependence relations—that involve contradictions.
Consider the picture of reality espoused by twentieth-century Japanese thinker
Nishida.51 What emerges from his writings in influential texts such as his Basho is
the idea that to be an object just is to be enplaced—what it is for an object to be a
cat is to lie in the place ‘being a cat’. In the same way, a cat lies in the place ‘being a
mammal’, and a mammal lies in the place of ‘being an animal’, and so on and so forth.
This cannot go on forever, thinks Nishida, and there is the ultimate place—the place of
all places—which for Nishida is absolute nothingness (which also happens to be pure
consciousness). Importantly, if the place of all places is to do the work required of it, it
must not, itself, lie in a place; which is just to say it cannot be an object. However, this
is where the trouble begins. Indeed, as we have stated above, we know that, according
to Nishida, absolute nothingness does not lie in any place. But it turns out that what
this means is that absolute nothingness lies in at least one place, which is the place of
not lying in a place! So it turns out that for Nishida, the ultimate ground both is and
isn’t an object, which means it both is and isn’t fundamental.
Faced with this seeming contradiction at the bottom of his world, one might
suppose that Nishida was confused and that his system ultimately failed. There is
textual evidence to support the thought, though, that pure consciousness as a dialethia
was, in fact, exactly how Nishida intended it to be. Supposing that the enplacement
relation is a metaphysical dependence relation, we appear to have an historical
example of an inconsistent grounding theory.52
It is not simply that inconsistent grounding theories might be a useful tool for
engaging with certain historical figures. They may well have other interesting appli-
cations. Let us suppose that the membership and parthood relations are kinds of
metaphysical dependence relations. If this is the case, then it would seem that
inconsistent set theory, inconsistent mathematics, and inconsistent mereologies all
51 See Maraldo 2015.

52
Nishida’s view is closely related to the view of nothingness discussed in Priest 2014, ch. 13.
ricki bliss and graham priest 
entail, or at least have need of, inconsistent grounding theories. Of course, this will
not convince anyone who is not on board with these particular research programmes
in the first place, but the connections between the two, given a small number of very
plausible assumptions, are wide-ranging and interesting.
4 Taking the Alternatives Seriously

The taxonomy we presented in §2 makes certain matters clearer. We can now see, for
example, that there are, in fact, many more logically possible views about the structure
of reality than commonly supposed. But the taxonomy, and our classifications of
certain views, have their limitations. As is clear, our taxonomy rules out as impossible
very many combinations of properties of the dependence relations. Were we to employ
certain types of non-classical logics, however, these views might become worthy
of further consideration. We have also seen that our taxonomy fails to include the
type of para-grounding account Casati (this volume) believes to be attributable to
Heidegger.
Moreover, the way in which we have distinguished between foundationalism,
infinitism, and coherentism is overly simplistic. Had we tried to accommodate all
the possible ways in which species of these views could be, the taxonomy would
have become unwieldy and enormous. Much will turn on matters of definition, but
it certainly seems that mixed worlds might be possible. One can imagine a world in
which some dependence chains terminate in fundamentalia, where others do not;
what we call such a view will depend upon how foundationalism and infinitism
are defined. Understanding coherentism as a view according to which everything
depends upon everything else is particularly strong. It is possible to understand
coherentism as a kind of view, where various species of it may be possible. One might
think that views that allow ontological loops of any kind ought to be considered
weaker species of coherentism. If this is the case, it is worth pointing out that the
mere presence of loops does not entail a denial of the fundamentality thesis, as
defined. One can imagine a world in which there is something fundamental—even
a world in which every grounding chain terminates in the fundamental—but some
grounding chains contain loops. What we call such a view will depend upon how
foundationalism and coherentism are defined. Indeed, we can even imagine a world
in which some grounding chains are infinitely descending, some chains terminate
in something fundamental, and some chains contain loops of various sizes. Our
taxonomy, unfortunately, does not cater for such nuances.
The metaphor of the Great Chain of Being has wielded very significant influence—
both overt and covert—on the history of Western philosophy. It is about time to think
outside that particular box. We believe that the contents of this volume provide ample
evidence for this claim. Reality may well not have the metaphysical structure of a well-
founded chain, but a much more complex and fascinating one.
 the geography of fundamentality: an overview
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PA R T I
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usually there is a long slender beak; the legs are elongate, frequently
hairy; the tarsi bear long pulvilli and a small empodium. The
Empidae are an extensive family of flies, with predaceous habits, the
rostrum being used by the female as an instrument for impaling and
sucking other flies. They are occasionally very numerous in
individuals, especially in wooded districts. There is great variety;
there are nearly 200 species in Britain. The forms placed in the sub-
family Hybotinae are curious slender little Insects, with very convex
thorax and large hind legs. In Hemerodromia the front legs are
raptorial, the femora being armed with spines on which the tibiae
close so as to form a sort of trap. Many Empidae execute aërial
dances, and some of the species of the genus Hilara are notorious
for carrying veils or nets in the form of silken webs more or less
densely woven. This subject is comparatively new, the fact having
been discovered by Baron Osten Sacken in 1877,[414] and it is not at
all clear what purpose these peculiar constructions serve; it appears
probable that they are carried by means of the hind legs, and only by
the males. Mik thinks that in H. sartor the veil acts as a sort of
parachute, and is of use in carrying on the aërial performance, or
enhancing its effect; while in the case of other species, H. maura and
H. interstincta, the object appears to be the capture or retention of
prey, after the manner of spiders. The source of the silk is not
known, and in fact all the details are insufficiently ascertained. The
larvae of Empidae are described as cylindrical maggots, with very
small head, and imperfect ventral feet; the stigmata are
amphipneustic, the thoracic pair being, however, excessively small;
beneath the posterior pair there is nearly always a tooth- or spine-
like prominence present.
Fig. 235—A, Larva, B, pupa of Medeterus ambiguus. France. (After
Perris.)
Fam. 27. Dolichopidae.—Graceful flies of metallic colours, of

moderate or small size, and long legs; usually with bristles on the
thorax and legs, the halteres exposed, squamae being quite absent;
antennae of two short stout joints (of which the second is really two,
its division being more or less distinct), with a thread-like or hair-like
appendage. Proboscis short, fleshy. Claws, pulvilli, and empodium
small; wings with a simple system of nervures, those on the posterior
part of the wing are but few, there is no anterior basal cross-vein
between the discal and second basal cells, which therefore form but
one cell. This is also a very extensive family of flies, of which we
have probably about 200 species in Britain. They are conspicuous
on account of their golden, or golden-green colours, only a few being
yellow or black. The males are remarkable for the curious special
characters they possess on the feet, antennae, face, or wings.
These characters are not alike in any two species; they are believed
to be of the nature of ornaments, and according to Professor Aldrich
and others are used as such in courtship.[415] This family of flies
approaches very closely to some of the Acalyptrate Muscidae in its
characters. It is united by Brauer with Empidae to form the tribe
Orthogenya. Although the species are so numerous and abundant in
Europe, little is known as to their metamorphoses. Some of the
larvae frequent trees, living under the bark or in the overflowing sap,
and are believed to be carnivorous; they are amphipneustic; a
cocoon is formed, and the pupa is remarkable on account of the
existence of two long horns, bearing the spiracles, on the back of the
thorax; the seven pairs of abdominal spiracles being excessively
minute.[416]
Fig. 236—Wing of Trineura aterrima, one of the Phoridae. Britain.
Series 3. Cyclorrhapha Aschiza
Fam. 28. Phoridae.—Small flies, with very convex thorax, small

head, very small two-jointed antennae, bearing a long seta; femora
more or less broad; wings with two dark, thick, approximate veins,
meeting on the front margin near its middle, and besides these, three
or four very fine veins, that run to the margins in a sub-parallel
manner without forming any cells or forks. This obscure family of
flies is of small extent, but its members are extremely common in
Europe and North America, where they often occur in numbers
running on the windows of houses. It is one of the most isolated
groups of Diptera, and great difference of opinion prevails as to its
classification. The wing-nervuration is peculiar (but varies somewhat
in the species), the total absence of any cross-veins even on the
basal part of the wing being remarkable. There are bristles on the
head and thorax, but they are not arranged in a regular manner. The
larvae live in a great variety of animal and vegetable decaying
matter, and attack living Insects, and even snails, though probably
only when these are in a sickly or diseased condition. The
metamorphoses of several species have been described.[417] The
larvae are rather slender, but sub-conical in form, with eleven
segments and a very small head, amphipneustic, the body behind
terminated by some pointed processes. The pupa is remarkable; it is
contained in a case formed by the contracted and hardened skin of
the larva; though it differs much in form from the larva the
segmentation is distinct, and from the fourth segment there project
two slender processes. These are breathing organs, attached to the
prothorax of the imprisoned pupa; in what manner they effect a
passage through the hardened larval skin is by no means clear.
Perris supposes that holes for them pre-exist in the larval skin, and
that the newly-formed pupa by restless movements succeeds in
bringing the processes into such a position that they can pass
through the holes. The dehiscence of the puparium seems to occur
in a somewhat irregular manner, as in Microdon; it is never
Cyclorrhaphous, and according to Perris is occasionally
Orthorrhaphous; probably there is no ptilinum.
Fig. 237—Aenigmatias blattoides. × 27. Denmark. (After Meinert.)
The Insect recently described by Meinert as Aenigmatias blattoides,

[418] is so anomalous, and so little is known about it, that it cannot at
present be classified. It is completely apterous; the arrangement of
the body-segments is unlike that of Diptera, but the antennae and
mouth-parts are said to be like those of Phoridae. The Insect was
found near Copenhagen under a stone in the runs of Formica fusca.
Meinert thinks it possible that the discovery of the male may prove
Aenigmatias to be really allied to Phoridae, and Mik suggests that it
may be the same as Platyphora lubbocki, Verrall, known to be
parasitic on ants. Dahl recently described a wingless Dipteron, found
living as a parasite on land-snails in the Bismarck archipelago, under
the name of Puliciphora lucifera, and Wandolleck has recently made
for this and some allies the new family Stethopathidae. It seems
doubtful whether these forms are more than wingless Phoridae.
Fam. 29. Platypezidae.—Small flies, with porrect three-jointed

antennae, first two joints short, third longer, with a terminal seta; no
bristles on the back; hind legs of male, or of both sexes, with
peculiar, broad, flat tarsi; the middle tibiae bear spurs; there is no
empodium. Platypezidae is a small family of flies, the classification of
which has always been a matter of considerable difficulty, and is still
uncertain. The larvae are broad and flat, fringed at the margin with
twenty-six spines; they live between the lamellae of Agaric fungi. At
pupation the form alters but little; the imago emerges by a horizontal
cleft occurring at the margins of segments two and four.[419] We
have four genera (Opetia, Platycnema, Platypeza, Callomyia), and
nearly a score of species of Platypezidae in our British list, but very
little seems to be known about them. There is much difference in the
eyes of the sexes, in some at any rate of the species, they being
large and contiguous in the male, but widely separated in the female.
Fig. 238—Head of Pipunculus sp. A, Seen from in front; B, side view,

showing an antenna magnified. Pyrenees.
Fam. 30. Pipunculidae.[420]—Small flies, with very short antennae

bearing a long seta that is not terminal; head almost globular,
formed, except at the back, almost entirely by the large conjoined
eyes; the head is only slightly smaller in the female, but in the male
the eyes are more approximate at the top. This is another of the
small families of flies, that seems distinct from any other, though
possessing no very important characters. In many of the flies that
have very large eyes, the head is either flattened (i.e. compressed
from before backwards, as in Tabanidae, Asilidae), or forced beneath
the humped thorax (as in Acroceridae), but neither of these
conditions exists in Pipunculus; in them the head extends far
forwards, so that the area of the eye compared with the size of the
body is perhaps greater than in any other Diptera. The general form
is somewhat that of Anthrax, but the venation on the hind part of the
wing is much less complex. There is a remarkable difference
between the facets on the front and the back of these great eyes.
We have three genera and about a dozen species of Pipunculidae in
Britain but apparently they are far from common Insects. What is
known about the life-history is almost confined to an imperfect
observation by Boheman, who found the larva of P. fuscipes living
after the manner of a Hymenopterous parasite in the body of a small
Homopterous Insect.[421] The pupa seems to be of the type of that of
Syrphidae.
Fam. 31. Conopidae.—Elegant flies of moderate size, of varied
colours, with abdomen slender at the base, at the tip strongly
incurved and thicker; antennae inserted close together on a
prominence, three-jointed, first joint sometimes very short. The upper
surface of the body without bristles or with but few. There is a
slender, elongate proboscis, which is retractile and usually invisible.
This rather small family of flies includes some of the most
remarkable forms of Diptera; it includes two divisions, the Conopinae
with long antennae terminated by a very minute pointed process,
and Myopinae with shorter antennae bearing a hair that is not placed
at the end of the third joint. The former are the more wasp-like and
elegant; the Myopinae being much more like ordinary flies, though
they frequently have curious, inflated heads, with a white face. The
mode of life of the larva of Conops is peculiar, it being parasitic in the
interior of Bombus, or other Hymenoptera. They have been found to
attack Bombus, Chalicodoma, Osmia, Vespa, Pompilus, and other
Aculeates. Williston says that Orthoptera are also attacked. Conops
has been seen to follow Bumble-bees and alight on them, and
Williston says this act is accompanied by oviposition, the larva that is
hatched boring its way into the body of the bee. Others have
supposed that the flies enter the bees' nests and place their eggs in
the larvae or pupae; but this is uncertain, for Conops has never been
reared from a bee-larva or pupa, though it has frequently been
procured from the imago: cases indeed having been recorded in
which Conops has emerged from the body of a Bombus several
months after the latter had been killed and placed in an
entomologist's collection. The larva is broad, and when full grown
apparently occupies nearly all the space of the interior of the
abdomen of the bee; it has very peculiar terminal stigmata. The pupa
is formed in the larval skin, which is greatly shortened and indurated
for the purpose; this instar bears, in addition to the posterior
stigmata, a pair of slightly projecting, anterior stigmata. We have
several species of Conopidae in Britain; those belonging to the
division Conopinae are all rare Insects, but the Myopinae are not so
scarce; these latter are believed to be of similar habits with the
Conopinae, though remarkably little is known about them. This is
another of the numerous families, the relations of which are still a
subject for elucidation. Brauer places the Conopidae in his section
Schizophora away from Syrphidae, but we do not comprehend on
what grounds; an inspection of the head shows that there is no
frontal lunule as there is in Eumyiidae; both Myopa and Conops
agreeing fairly well with Syrphus as to this. We therefore place the
family in its old position near Syrphus till the relations with
Acalypterate Muscidae shall be better established.
Fam. 32. Syrphidae (Hover-flies).—Of moderate or rather large

size, frequently spotted or banded with yellow, with a thick fleshy
proboscis capable of being withdrawn into a cleft on the under side
of the head; antennae not placed in definite cavities, three-jointed
(usually very short), and leaving a seta that is not terminal in
position, and may be feathered. Squama variable, never entirely
covering the halteres; the chief (third to fifth) longitudinal veins of the
wings connected near their termination by cross-veins and usually
thus forming a sort of short margin parallel with the hind edge of the
wing; a more or less imperfect false nervure running between the
third and fourth longitudinal nervures; no empodium and generally no
distinct system of bristles on the back of the body. The Syrphidae
(Fig. 212) form one of the largest and best known of all the families
of flies; they abound in our gardens where, in sunny weather, some
species may be nearly always seen hovering over flowers, or
beneath trees in places where the rays of the sun penetrate amidst
the shade. There are two or three thousand species known, so that
of course much variety exists; some are densely covered with hair
(certain Volucella and others), many are of elegant form, and some
bear a considerable resemblance to Hymenoptera of various groups.
The peculiar veining of the wings permits of their easy identification,
the line of two nervules, approximately parallel with the margin of the
distal part of the wing (Fig. 212, D), and followed by a deep bay,
being eminently characteristic, though there are some exceptions;
there are a few forms in which the antennae are exceptional in
having a terminal pointed process. The proboscis, besides the
membranous and fleshy lips, consists of a series of pointed slender
lancets, the use of which it is difficult to comprehend, as the Insects
are not known to pierce either animals or vegetables, their food
being chiefly pollen; honey is also doubtless taken by some species,
but the lancet-like organs appear equally ill-adapted for dealing with
it. The larvae are singularly diversified; first, there are the eaters of
Aphidae, or green-fly; some of these may be generally found on our
rose-bushes or on thistles, when they are much covered with Aphids;
they are soft, maggot-like creatures with a great capacity for
changing their shape and with much power of movement, especially
of the anterior part of the body, which is stretched out and moved
about to obtain and spear their prey: some of them are very
transparent, so that the movements of the internal organs and their
vivid colours can readily be seen: like so many other carnivorous
Insects, their voracity appears to be insatiable. The larvae of many of
the ordinary Hover-flies are of this kind. Eristalis and its allies are
totally different, they live in water saturated with filth, or with
decaying vegetable matter (the writer has found many hundreds of
the larvae of Myiatropa florea in a pool of water standing in a hollow
beech-tree). These rat-tailed maggots are of great interest, but as
they have been described in almost every work on entomology, and
as Professor Miall[422] has recently given an excellent account of
their peculiarities, we need not now discuss them. Some of the flies
of the genus Eristalis are very like honey-bees, and appear in old
times to have been confounded with them; indeed, Osten Sacken
thinks this resemblance gave rise to the "Bugonia myth," a fable of
very ancient origin to the effect that Honey-bees could be procured
from filth, or even putrefying carcases, by the aid of certain
proceedings that savoured slightly of witchcraft, and may therefore
have increased the belief of the operator in the possibility of a
favourable result. It was certainly not bees that were produced from
the carcases, but Osten Sacken suggests that Eristalis-flies may
have been bred therein.
In the genus Volucella we meet with a third kind of Syrphid larva.

These larvae are pallid, broad and fleshy, surrounded by numerous
angular, somewhat spinose, outgrowths of the body; and have
behind a pair of combined stigmata, in the neighbourhood of which
the outgrowths are somewhat larger; these larvae live in the nests of
Bees and Wasps, in which they are abundant. Some of the
Volucella, like many other Syrphidae, bear a considerable
resemblance to Bees or Wasps, and this has given rise to a modern
fable about them that appears to have no more legitimate basis of
fact than the ancient Bees-born-of-carcases myth. It was formerly
assumed that the Volucella-larvae lived on the larvae of the Bees,
and that the parent flies were providentially endowed with a bee-like
appearance that they might obtain entrance into the Bees' nests
without being detected, and then carry out their nefarious intention of
laying eggs that would hatch into larvae and subsequently destroy
the larvae of the Bees. Some hard-hearted critic remarked that it was
easy to understand that providence should display so great a
solicitude for the welfare of the Volucella, but that it was difficult to
comprehend how it could be, at the same time, so totally indifferent
to the welfare of the Bees. More recently the tale has been revived
and cited as an instance of the value of deceptive resemblance
resulting from the action of natural selection, without reference to
providence. There are, however, no facts to support any theory on
the subject. Very little indeed is actually known as to the habits of
Volucella in either the larval or imaginal instars; but the little that is
known tends to the view that the presence of the Volucella in the
nests is advantageous to both Fly and Bee. Nicolas has seen
Volucella zonaria enter the nest of a Wasp; it settled at a little
distance and walked in without any fuss being made. Erné has
watched the Volucella-larvae in the nests, and he thinks that they eat
the waste or dejections of the larvae. The writer kept under
observation Volucella-larvae and portions of the cells of Bombus,
containing some larvae and pupae of the Bees and some honey, but
the fly-larvae did not during some weeks touch any of the Bees or
honey, and ultimately died, presumably of starvation. Subsequently,
he experimented with Volucella-larvae and a portion of the comb of
wasps containing pupae, and again found that the flies did not attack
the Hymenoptera; but on breaking a pupa of the Wasp in two, the fly-
larvae attacked it immediately and eagerly; so that the evidence
goes to show that the Volucella-larvae act as scavengers in the
nests of the Hymenoptera. Künckel d'Herculais has published an
elaborate work on the European Volucella; it is remarkable for the
beauty of the plates illustrating the structure, anatomy and
development, but throws little direct light on the natural history of the
Insects. V. bombylans, one of the most abundant of our British
species, appears in two forms, each of which has a considerable
resemblance to a Bombus, and it has been supposed that each of
the two forms is specially connected with the Bee it resembles, but
there is no evidence to support this idea; indeed, there is some little
evidence to the contrary. The genus Merodon has larvae somewhat
similar to those of Volucella, but they live in bulbs of Narcissus; M.
equestris has been the cause of much loss to the growers of Dutch
bulbs; this Fly is interesting on account of its great variation in colour;
it has been described as a whole series of distinct species.
The most remarkable of the numerous forms of Syrphid larvae are

those of the genus Microdon (Fig. 239), which live in ants' nests.
They have no resemblance to Insect-larvae, and when first
discovered were not only supposed to be little Molluscs, but were
actually described as such under the generic names of Parmula and
Scutelligera. There is no appearance of segmentation of the body;
the upper surface is covered by a sort of network formed by curved
setae, which help to retain a coating of dirt; there is no trace
externally of any head, but on the under surface there is a minute
fold in which such mouth-organs as may be present are probably
concealed; the sides of the body project so as to form a complex
fringing arrangement; the terminal stigmata are very distinct, the
lateral processes connected with them (the "Knospen" of Dr.
Meijere), are, however, very irregular and placed at some distance
from the stigmatic scar. Pupation occurs by the induration of the
external covering and the growth from it, or rather through it, of two
short horns in front. Inside this skin there is formed a soft pupa, of
the kind usual in Cyclorrhaphous flies; the dehiscence of the external
covering is, however, of unusual nature, three little pieces being
separated from the anterior part of the upper surface, while the lower
face remains intact. The account of the pupation given by Elditt[423]
is not complete: the two horns that project are, it would appear, not
portions of the larval skin, but belong to the head of the pupa, and
according to Elditt are used to effect the dehiscence of the case for
the escape of the fly; there does not appear to be any head-vesicle.
Nothing is known as to the details of the life of these anomalous
larvae. M. Poujade has described two species found in France in the
nests of the ant Lasius niger.[424] The larva we figure was found by
Colonel Yerbury in nests of an Atta in Portugal, and an almost
identical larva was recently found by Mr. Budgett in Paraguay. The
flies themselves are scarce, Microdon mutabilis (formerly called M.
apiformis) being one of the rarest of British flies. They have the
antennae longer than is usual in Syrphidae, and the cross-veins at
the outside of the wing are irregularly placed, so that the contour is
very irregular: the resemblance to bees is very marked, and in some
of the South American forms the hind legs are flattened and hairy
like those of bees. The oviposition of Microdon has been observed
by Verhoeff;[425] he noticed that the fly was frequently driven away
by the ants—in this case, Formica sanguinea—but returned
undiscouraged to its task.
Fig. 239—Larva of Microdon sp. Portugal. A, Dorsal view of the larva, ×

4; 1, the stigmatic structure; B, posterior view of stigmatic
structure; C, a portion of the marginal fringe of the body.
A brief résumé of the diverse modes of life of Syrphid larvae has

been given by Perris,[426] and he also gives some information as to
the curious horns of the pupae, but this latter point much wants
elucidation. Whether the Syrphidae, or some of them, possess a
ptilinum that helps them to emerge from the pupa is more than
doubtful, though its existence has been affirmed by several authors
of good repute.[427]
Fig. 240.—Diopsis apicalis. Natal. A, The fly; B, extremity of cephalic
protuberance, more magnified. a, The eye; b, the antenna; C,
middle of head, front view; c, ocelli.
Series 4. Cyclorrhapha Schizophora
Fam. 33. Muscidae acalyptratae.—This group of flies has been the

least studied of all the Diptera; it is generally treated as composed of
twenty or thirty different families distinguished by very slight
characters. It is, however, generally admitted by systematists that
these assemblages have not the value of the families of the other
divisions of Diptera, and some even go so far as to say that they are
altogether only equivalent to a single family. We do not therefore
think it necessary to define each one seriatim; we shall merely
mention their names, and allude to certain points of interest
connected with them. Taken collectively they may be defined as very
small flies, with three-jointed antennae (frequently looking as if only
two-jointed), bearing a bristle that is not terminally placed; frequently
either destitute of squamae or having these imperfectly developed so
as not to cover the halteres; and possessing a comparatively simple
system of nervuration, the chief nervures being nearly straight, so
that consequently few cells are formed. These characters will
distinguish the group from all the other Diptera except from forms of
Aschiza, and from certain Anthomyiidae, with both of which the
Acalyptratae are really intimately connected. Considerable difference
of opinion prevails as to the number of these divisions, but the
families usually recognised are:—
1. Doryceridae.
2. Tetanoceridae.
3. Sciomyzidae.
4. Diopsidae.
5. Celyphidae.
6. Sepsidae incl. Piophilidae.
7. Chloropidae (= Oscinidae).
8. Ulidiidae.
9. Platystomidae.
10. Ephydridae.
11. Helomyzidae.
12. Dryomyzidae.
13. Borboridae.
14. Phycodromidae.
15. Thyreophoridae.
16. Scatophagidae. (= Scatomyzidae).
17. Geomyzidae incl. Opomyzidae.
18. Drosophilidae; incl. Asteidae.
19. Psilidae.
20. Tanypezidae (= Micropezidae).
21. Trypetidae.
22. Sapromyzidae incl. Lonchaeidae.
23. Rhopalomeridae.
24. Ortalidae.
25. Agromyzidae incl. Phytomyzidae.
26. Milichiidae.
27. Octhiphilidae.
28. Heteroneuridae.
29. Cordyluridae.
Brauer associates Conopidae with Acalyptrate Muscids, and calls

the Group Holometopa; applying the term Schizometopa to the
Calyptrate Muscidae.
No generalisation can yet be made as to the larvae of these

divisions, neither can any characters be pointed out by which they
can be distinguished from the larvae of the following families. In their
habits they have nothing specially distinctive, and may be said to
resemble the Anthomyiidae, vegetable matter being more used as
food than animal; many of them mine in the leaves or stems of
plants; in the genus Dorycera the larva is aquatic, mining in the
leaves of water-plants, and in Ephydridae several kinds of aquatic
larvae are found, some of which are said to resemble the rat-tailed
larvae of Syrphidae; certain of these larvae occur in prodigious
quantities in lakes, and the Insects in some of their early stages
serve the Mexicans as food, the eggs being called Ahuatle, the
larvae Pusci, the pupae Koo-chah-bee. Some of the larvae of the
Sciomyzidae are also aquatic: that of Tetanocera ferruginea is said
by Dufour to consist only of eight segments, and to be metapneustic;
Brauer considers the Acalyptrate larvae to be, however, in general,
amphipneustic, like those of Calyptratae. The Chloropidae are a very
important family owing to their occasional excessive multiplication,
and to their living on cereals and other grasses, various parts of
which they attack, sometimes causing great losses to the
agriculturist. The species of the genus Chlorops are famous for the
curious habit of entering human habitations in great swarms:
frequently many millions being found in a single apartment.
Instances of this habit have been recorded both in France and
England, Cambridge being perhaps the place where the
phenomenon is most persistently exhibited. In the year 1831 an
enormous swarm of C. lineata was found in the Provost's Lodge at
King's College and was recorded by Leonard Jenyns; in 1870
another swarm occurred in the same house if not in the same room.
[428] Of late years such swarms have occurred in certain apartments
in the Museums (which are not far from King's College), and always
in the same apartments. No clue whatever can be obtained as to
their origin; and the manner in which these flies are guided to a small
area in numbers that must be seen to be believed, is most
mysterious. These swarms always occur in the autumn, and it has
been suggested that the individuals are seeking winter quarters.
Fig. 241—Celyphus (Paracelyphus) sp. West Africa. A, The fly seen
from above; a, scutellum; b, base of wing: B, profile, with tip of
abdomen bent downwards; a, scutellum; b, b, wing; c, part of
abdomen.
Several members of the Acalyptratae have small wings or are

wingless, as in some of our species of Borborus. The Diopsidae—
none of which are European—have the sides of the head produced
into long horns, at the extremity of which are placed the eyes and
antennae; these curiosities (Fig. 240) are apparently common in both
Hindostan and Africa. In the horned flies of the genus Elaphomyia,
parts of the head are prolonged into horns of very diverse forms
according to the species, but bearing on the whole a great
resemblance to miniature stag-horns. A genus (Giraffomyia) with a
long neck, and with partially segmented appendages, instead of
horns on the head, has been recently discovered by Dr. Arthur Willey
in New Britain. Equally remarkable are the species of Celyphus; they
do not look like flies at all, owing to the scutellum being inflated and
enlarged so as to cover all the posterior parts of the body as in the
Scutellerid Hemiptera: the wings are entirely concealed, and the
abdomen is reduced to a plate, with its orifice beneath, not terminal;
the surface of the body is highly polished and destitute of bristles.
Whether this is a mimetic form, occurring in association with similar-
looking Bugs is not known. The North American genus Toxotrypana
is furnished with a long ovipositor; and in this and in the shape of the
body resembles the parasitic Hymenoptera. This genus was placed
by Gerstaecker in Ortalidae, but is considered by later writers to be a
member of the Trypetidae. This latter family is of considerable
extent, and is remarkable amongst the Diptera for the way in which
the wings of many of its members are ornamented by an elaborate
system of spots or marks, varying according to the species.
Fam. 34. Anthomyiidae.—Flies similar in appearance to the House-

fly; the main vein posterior to the middle of the wing (4th longitudinal)
continued straight to the margin, not turned upwards. Eyes of the
male frequently large and contiguous, bristle of antenna either
feathery or bare. This very large family of flies is one of the most
difficult and unattractive of the Order. Many of its members come
close to the Acalyptrate Muscidae from which they are distinguished
by the fact that a well-developed squama covers the halteres; others
come quite as close to the Tachinidae, Muscidae and
Sarcophagidae, but may readily be separated by the simple, not
angulate, main vein of the wing. The larval habits are varied. Many
attack vegetables, produce disintegration in them, thus facilitating
decomposition. Anthomyia brassicae is renowned amongst market
gardeners on account of its destructive habits. A. cana, on the
contrary, is beneficial by destroying the migratory Locust
Schistocerca peregrina; and in North America, A. angustifrons
performs a similar office with Caloptenus spretus. One or two
species have been found living in birds; in one case on the head of a
species of Spermophila, in another case on a tumour of the wing of a
Woodpecker. Hylemyia strigosa, a dung-frequenting species, has the
peculiar habit of producing living larvae, one at a time; these larvae
are so large that it would be supposed they are full grown, but this is
not the case, they are really only in the first stage, an unusual
amount of growth being accomplished in this stadium. Spilogaster
angelicae, on the other hand, according to Portschinsky, lays a small
number of very large eggs, and the resulting larvae pass from the
first to the third stage of development, omitting the second stage that
is usual in Eumyiid Muscidae.[429]
Fig. 242—Ugimyia sericariae. A, The perfect fly, × 3⁄2; B, tracheal
chamber of a silkworm, with body of a larva of Ugimyia projecting;
a, front part of the maggot; b, stigmatic orifice of the maggot; c,
stigma of the silkworm. (After Sasaki.)
Fam. 35. Tachinidae.—First posterior cell of wing nearly or quite

closed. Squamae large, covering the halteres: antennal arista bare:
upper surface of body usually bristly. This is an enormous family of
flies, the larvae of which live parasitically in other living Insects,
Lepidopterous larvae being especially haunted. Many have been
reared from the Insects in which they live, but beyond this little is
known of the life-histories, and still less of the structure of the larvae
of the Tachinidae, although these Insects are of the very first
importance in the economy of Nature. The eggs are usually
deposited by the parent-flies near or on the head of the victim; Riley
supposed that the fly buzzes about the victim and deposits an egg
with rapidity, but a circumstantial account given by Weeks[430]
discloses a very different process: the fly he watched sat on a leaf
quietly facing a caterpillar of Datana engaged in feeding at a
distance of rather less than a quarter of an inch. "Seizing a moment
when the head of the larva was likely to remain stationary, the fly
stealthily and rapidly bent her abdomen downward and extended
from the last segment what proved to be an ovipositor. This passed
forward beneath her body and between the legs until it projected
beyond and nearly on a level with the head of the fly and came in
contact with the eye of the larva upon which an egg was deposited,"
making an addition to five already there. Ugimyia sericariae does
great harm in Japan by attacking the silkworm, and in the case of
this fly the eggs are believed to be introduced into the victim by
being laid on mulberry leaves and swallowed with the food; several
observers agree as to the eggs being laid on the leaves, but the fact
that they are swallowed by the silkworm is not so certain. Sasaki has
given an extremely interesting account of the development of this
larva.[431] According to him, the young larva, after hatching in the
alimentary canal, bores through it, and enters a nerve-ganglion,
feeding there for about a week, after which the necessity for air
becoming greater, as usual with larvae, the maggot leaves the
nervous system and enters the tracheal system, boring into a tube
near a stigmatic orifice of the silkworm, where it forms a chamber for
itself by biting portions of the tissues and fastening them together
with saliva. In this it completes its growth, feeding on the interior of
the silkworm with its anterior part, and breathing through the
stigmatic orifice of its host; after this it makes its exit and buries itself
deeply in the ground, where it pupates. The work of rupturing the
puparium by the use of the ptilinum is fully described by Sasaki, and
also the fact that the fly mounts to the surface of the earth by the aid
of this same peculiar air-bladder, which is alternately contracted and
distended. Five, or more, of the Ugimyia-maggots may be found in
one caterpillar, but only one of them reaches maturity, and emerges
from the body. The Tachinid flies appear to waste a large proportion
of their eggs by injudicious oviposition; but they make up for this by
the wide circle of their victims, for a single species has been known
to infest Insects of two or three different Orders.
Fig. 243—Diagrammatic section of silkworm to show the habits of

Ugimyia. a, Young larva; b, egg of Ugimyia in stomach of the
silkworm; c, larva in a nerve-ganglion; d, larva entering a
ganglion; e, larva embedded in tracheal chamber, as shown in
Fig. 242, B. (After Sasaki.)
The species of Miltogramma—of which there are many in Europe

and two in England—live at the expense of Fossorial Hymenoptera
by a curious sort of indirect parasitism. They are obscure little flies,
somewhat resembling the common House-fly, but they are adepts on
the wing and have the art of ovipositing with extreme rapidity; they
follow a Hymenopteron as it is carrying the prey to the nest for its
young. When the wasp alights on the ground at the entrance to the
nest, the Miltogramma swoops down and rapidly deposits one or
more eggs on the prey the wasp designs as food for its own young.
Afterwards the larvae of the fly eat up the food, and in consequence
of the greater rapidity of their growth, the young of the
Hymenopteron perishes. Some of them are said to deposit living
larvae, not eggs. Fabre has drawn a very interesting picture of the
relations that exist between a species of Miltogramma and a
Fossorial Wasp of the genus Bembex[432]. We may remind the
reader that this Hymenopteron has not the art of stinging its victims
so as to keep them alive, and that it accordingly feeds its young by
returning to the nest at proper intervals with a fresh supply of food,
instead of provisioning the nest once and for all and then closing it.
This Hymenopteron has a habit of catching the largest and most
active flies—especially Tabanidae—for the benefit of its young, and it
would therefore be supposed that it would be safe from the
parasitism of a small and feeble fly. On the contrary, the
Miltogramma adapts its tactics to the special case, and is in fact
aided in doing so by the wasp itself. As if knowing that the wasp will
return to the carefully-closed nest, the Miltogramma waits near it,
and quietly selects the favourable moment, when the wasp is turning
round to enter the nest backwards, and deposits eggs on the prey. It
appears from Fabre's account that the Bembex is well aware of the
presence of the fly, and would seem to entertain a great dread of it,
as if conscious that it is a formidable enemy; nevertheless the wasp
never attacks the little fly, but allows it sooner or later to accomplish
its purpose, and will, it appears, even continue to feed the fly-larvae,
though they are the certain destroyers of its own young, thus
repeating the relations between cuckoo and sparrow. Most of us
think the wasp stupid, and find its relations to the fly incredible or
contemptible. Fabre takes a contrary view, and looks on it as a
superior Uncle Toby. We sympathise with the charming French
naturalist, without forming an opinion.
Doubtless there are many other interesting features to be found in

the life-histories of Tachinidae, for in numbers they are legion. It is
probable that we may have 200 species in Britain, and in other parts
of the world they are even more abundant, about 1000 species being
known in North America.[433] The family Actiidae is at present
somewhat doubtful. According to Karsch,[434] it is a sub-family of
Tachinidae; but the fourth longitudinal vein, it appears, is straight.
Fam. 36. Dexiidae.—These Insects are distinguished from
Tachinidae by the bristle of the antennae being pubescent, and the
legs usually longer. The larvae, so far as known, are found in various
Insects, especially in Coleoptera, and have also been found in
snails. There are eleven British genera, and about a score of
species.
Fam. 37. Sarcophagidae.—Distinguished from Muscidae and

Tachinidae by little more than that the bristle of the antennae is
feathery at the base but hair-like and very fine at the tip.—
Sarcophaga carnaria is one of the commonest British Insects; it is
like the Blow-fly, though rather longer, conspicuously grey and black,
with the thorax distinctly striped, and the pulvilli very conspicuous in
the live fly. Cynomyia mortuorum is a bright blue fly rather larger than
the Blow-fly, of which it is a competitor; but in this country an
unsuccessful one. The larvae of the two Insects are found together,
and are said to be quite indistinguishable. Cynomyia is said to lay
only about half the number of eggs that the Blow-fly does, but it
appears earlier in the year, and to this is attributed the fact that it is
not altogether crowded out of existence by the more prolific
Calliphora. The species of Sarcophagidae are usually viviparous,
and one of them, Sarcophila magnifica (wohlfahrti), has the habit of
occasionally depositing its progeny in the nostrils of mammals, and
even of human beings, causing horrible sufferings and occasionally
death: it is said to be not uncommon in Europe but does not occur in
Britain. The genus Sarcophaga is numerous in species, and many of
them are beneficial. Sir Sidney Saunders found in the Troad that
Locusts were destroyed by the larvae of a Sarcophaga living in their
bodies; and Künckel has recently observed that in Algeria several
species of this genus attack Locusts and destroy large quantities by
depositing living larvae in the Orthoptera. In North America the
Army-worm is decimated by species of Sarcophaga.
Many of these Insects, when food is scarce, eat their own species
with eagerness, and it seems probable that this habit is beneficial to
the species. The parent-fly in such cases usually deposits more eggs

Reality and Its Structure Essays in Fundamentality Ricki Bliss All Chapter

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Reality And Its Structure: Essays In

Fundamentality Ricki Bliss

Reality and its Structure

Reality and its

List of Contributors vii

0. The Geography of Fundamentality: An Overview 1

Part I. The Hierarchy Thesis

Part II. The Fundamentality Thesis

13. The Structure of Physical Reality: Beyond Foundationalism 254

Part III. The Contingency and Consistency Theses

Index of Names 313

Elizabeth Barnes University of Virginia

Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest

Reality is a rather large place. It contains protons, flamingos, economies, headaches,

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

ricki bliss and graham priest 

sufficient for a view to count as a kind of foundationalism. For proponents of what we

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

In what remains of this introduction, we take up the mantle of introducing and

1 The Lie of the Land

according to which grounding is a kind of causing.

of any and all categories and cross-categorically.

ricki bliss and graham priest 

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

possible ways of understanding fundamentality.

ricki bliss and graham priest 

AR AS T E Comments Special Cases

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

Consider, next, the Comments column. Here’s what it means.

ricki bliss and graham priest 

follows.15 Let X0 = {x : FEx}, and for any natural number, n ∈ ω: x ∈ Xn+1

the obvious way.

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

• A final special case. Let x y iff x → y ∨ y → x. Then x and y are connected

3 On the Metaphysical Possibility of the Alternatives

ricki bliss and graham priest 

In what follows, although appeal to intuition is often made in defence of one

18 See Raven 2013 for a well-articulated defence of the hierarchy thesis.

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

for causation here does not (necessarily) go for metaphysical dependence.20 As

ricki bliss and graham priest 

Being and its centrality to the development of Western metaphysics.

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

that reality is hierarchically structured that the structuring relation is anti-symmetric.

inspired, in part, by Huayan.

ricki bliss and graham priest 

necessarily anti-symmetric. Indeed, according to Barnes and Thompson, explanation

26 Schaffer 2012, p. 127.

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

ontological dependence and grounding.

ricki bliss and graham priest 

3.2 The Fundamentality Thesis

.. regress arguments

a more sustained elaboration of these thoughts.

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

unsatisfactory exactly when we have failed to explain everything that we need an

ricki bliss and graham priest 

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

ricki bliss and graham priest 

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

ricki bliss and graham priest 

 the geography of fundamentality: an overview

41 See Bliss 2013 and Passmore 1970.