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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 6/4/2018, SPi
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,
United Kingdom
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© the several contributors 2018
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First Edition published in 2018
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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
The Hierarchy Thesis
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be, until the last shot, in doubt. There were terrible scareheads, brutal
cartoons, and extra editions. As the real problem was whether one
organization of needy men should remain in control, or whether another
should replace it, there were few matters of policy to be discussed; and so
the speechmaking and the printing resolved themselves into personal
investigations, and attacks upon character. Private defectives were hired,
records searched, neighbors questioned, old enemies sought out, and family
feuds revived. Desks were broken open, letters bought, anonymous
communications mailed, boyhood indiscretions unearthed, and women and
men hired to wheedle, to commit perjury, to entrap. Whatever was
discovered, forged, stolen, manufactured—whatever truth or falsehood
could be seized by whatever means—was blazoned in the papers, shrieked
by the newsboys, bawled from the cart-tails at the corners under the
campaign banners, in the light of the torches and before the cheering
crowds. It would all be over in a very short while; in a very short while
there would pass one another, with pleasant smiles, in court, at church, and
along Broadway, the distinguished gentlemen that were now, before big
audiences, calling one another adulterers and thieves; but it is customary for
distinguished gentlemen so to call one another during a manly campaign in
this successful democracy of ours, and it seems to be an engrossing
occupation while the chance endures.
Though he often trembled, Wesley Dyker, perhaps because his records

of any sort were as yet but brief, escaped with a fairly clean skin this Yahoo
discharge, but the downpour continued all about him with tremendous vigor
and at tremendous cost. The Republican leaders, fully expecting defeat,
assessed their supporters just as heavily as if they were certain to triumph,
spent much time and more money and no end of breath. The Reformers,
under varying factional names, bewildered, sometimes advisedly, the
independent voter by here joining one leading party, there endorsing
another, and in a third place clamoring for a ballot so split and so
subdivided that the average man could in no wise comprehend it when
marked. The Socialists, to be sure, went along calmly enough, confessing
their numerical weakness and securely seeing in the small increase of the
present day the promise of the large majority of the distant morrow. But all
the while the Democratic organization thundered an inch forward in the
light and ran a mile forward in the darkness by precisely the same powers
as were invoked, with so much smaller results, by the Republicans and the
Reformers.
Not that there was any reason to doubt the organization's victory. There
was none. But every organization always insists that, no matter how easy
the skirmish, its leaders must so manage that it comes out of the fray to all
appearances stronger than it came out of the fray preceding. Each majority
must be larger than the last, and so the lists are padded, and the repeaters
imported, and the lodging-houses colonized, and the organization, like the
frog in La Fontaine's fable, though with less reason, swells and swells
against the hour when it shall finally burst. The saloons were crowded; it
was freely predicted that, the season being prosperous, votes would go at no
lower than two dollars, and, in some quarters and some instances, as high as
five dollars apiece.
There were some points, however, to which the tide of prosperity had
not risen, and one of these was the high tenement of Katie Flanagan. The
Irish girl returned there every night a little more discouraged than when she
had left its precarious shelter in the morning, as doubtful as ever of
Hermann's ability to support a wife, but more doubtful than ever of her own
ability to help, should they marry, in the support of the home. At the shop,
the work and the hours weighed more and more heavily upon her; they
dragged at the heels of her mind when she endeavored to evade the
insulting compliments of the callow youths and gray men that strolled by
her counter, and they were impedimenta that made it daily more difficult to
escape without offense the oily approaches of the dignified Mr. Porter.
"Sometimes," she said one evening, as she and Carrie sat over their
meager supper, "I begin wonderin' again whether it's worth while runnin'
away."
The striking shirtwaist-maker, who had spent a long day on picket-duty

before a Waverley Place factory, looked up with round eyes calmly serious.
"That is what I am wondering all the time," she replied.
Katie made an impatient movement of her hand.

"Och, now," she generously protested, "it's all right for me to growl,
because I've got a job. I don't count, an' it's just me habit. But you mustn't
do it, me dear."
"I am not complaining; I am just honestly wondering, that's all."
"But if the worst came, you could go back to work, you know."
Carrie's face was all surprise.
"And turn traitor to my friends striking in my own and all the other
factories?" she asked. "Oh, no; you would be the last to do it yourself,
Katie. I would rather go on the street."
"You don't mean that, darlin'."
"I do mean it. If I went on the street, I would hurt myself, but if I did the
other thing I would hurt all the other girls in the union."
She spoke quietly, but with infinite conviction, and Katie knew the
forces that had brought about this state of mind. The widespread strike,
though it still continued, was a failure. Public sentiment had never been
aroused; the employers had succeeded in securing non-union labor, whose
wages they were, even now, securely reducing, and whose privileges—
granted to entice them to work—they were curbing; their political powers
earned them the armed assistance of the law; and the strikers' ranks, though
but little thinned by desertion, were steadily decreased by poverty, by the
necessity of the girls to find other sorts of work, by illness, and, now that
the cold autumn had set in, by death. Carrie was underfed, scantily clothed,
penniless, and Katie, remembering these things, found herself without reply.
Had she needed further example of the pressure of conditions upon her
kind, she could have found it in an incident in the shop on the day
following. A bull-necked young man, with ruddy cheeks and a certainty of
manner that spoke as loudly in his eyes and his scarf-pin as in his voice,
sauntered up to the silk-stocking counter, where she happened then to be
stationed, and began turning over the wares displayed.
"Have you been waited on?" inquired Katie.
"No," said the young man, looking at her steadily; "but I'd like you to
wait on me. Are you busy?"
Katie said nothing, but stood there. The young man said nothing. Katie
began to finger the boxes before her, but she felt that the young man was
looking only at her.
"What quality would you like me to show you?" she asked.
"Well," parried the customer, "what quality do you like?"
She shot one glance at him: he was still looking at her.
"We have only the best at this counter," she answered, with a slight
flush. "You'll be findin' the cheaper the sixth aisle to your right."
But the young man only laughed with unconcern, and continued to keep
his gaze on her lowered Irish blue eyes.
"I can afford the best of everything," he said.
There was a pause. Katie raised her eyes and met his own without
flinching. He smiled, but he was quite too satisfied with his own charms to
notice that the salesgirl was not smiling.
"What time do you quit work?" he inquired.
"I never quit."
She said this as if she were closing a door, but the young man proceeded
imperturbably to rattle at the knob.
"I thought," he said, "that you might like to eat a little dinner over at the
'York' with me this evening."
"Thanks," the girl answered, "but I do all me eatin' with me husband.—

Will you, please, be tellin' me what sort of stockin's you want?"
The young man grinned. He seemed to enjoy what he took to be her
playful repartee.
"Look here," he replied, "my wife is away back home, and I'm all alone
over at that hotel."
He was leaning airily toward her, both hands on the counter. Katie,
standing opposite, leaned toward him. She answered his smile, but he could
not see that her smile was not of his own sort.
"Do you want to buy anything?" she demanded.
"Yes," said the customer, meeting her gaze again. "Will you sell?"
It was no unusual incident, no more unusual than the coming incident of

Mirka's attack upon Hermann, but the girl had reached the end of her
endurance, and what followed across that counter was not unlike what was
to occur across Ludwig Schleger's bar. Katie opened her firm, pink palm
and smacked the young bargain-seeker smartly across the mouth.
There was no immediate consequence. The aisle was too crowded to

allow any but the nearest employees to witness the blow, and the crowd was
too intent upon its own thousand errands to heed what happened before its
eyes. One or two salesgirls stood still at their work, petrified by alarm. One
or two customers hesitated and chuckled. And then, as the young man with
a face of crimson shouldered his way into a hurried oblivion from which he
never reappeared, the rush of business sent the clerks whirling about their
own tasks and sent the crowd hurrying about its own purposes.
But Katie knew that more would follow, and that what would follow
would be an interview with Mr. Porter. The shop's system of surveillance
missed nothing, and within a half-hour the girl was standing in the dark
office where she had first been hired.
In his likeness to a Sunday-school superintendent Mr. Porter was

shocked and grieved to hear that any young lady in the Lennox store would
strike a purchaser. In his likeness to a surgeon he promptly declared that
there ought to be no issue short of expulsion. And in his own hidden
character—deep in his own abominable character—he was wondering
whether he could not turn this incident to the advantage that he had so long
sought.
"The viper was insultin' me," said Katie.
"Are you quite sure of that, Miss Flanagan?"
"Sure I'm sure. Do you have to wait for a snake to bite you before you
know what he's up to?"
"You could have called the floor-walker."
"And been fined for me pains, Mr. Porter."
Mr. Porter tapped his desk and kept his eyes on his fingers.
"I find," he said slowly, "that most men do not make approaches without
some encouragement, in either word or manner, on the part of the girl. I also
find that such occurrences as this are very rare in the experience of most of
the girls in our employ."
He stopped, but Katie stood silent by the arm of the desk, her lips
compressed, a frown between her arched black brows. He sent a crooked
glance up at her, and then resumed:
"I scarcely ever have a case of this sort to deal with. I wonder why, if
such things are done by customers, the other girls do not report them."
He stopped again, and this time Katie answered:
"I suppose they boss their own lives in their own way, Mr. Porter."
A faint spark of color shone in Mr. Porter's white cheek.
"I suppose they do," he answered, gently pulling at his side-whiskers,

and peeping at his victim over the caressing hand. "In fact, between you and
me, Miss Flanagan, I am told that some of them do that so well that they are
practically independent of their wages in this store."
Again Katie failed to respond.
"Do you understand me, Miss Flanagan?"
Katie thought of her desperate days before she had found her present
employment. She thought of Hermann and what seemed to be the sole
chance of rising to a salary where marriage could be a practical possibility.
She thought of Carrie's plight and of Carrie's dependence upon her.
"I do that, Mr. Porter," she answered.
He looked up squarely then, and she even managed to torture her face
into an expression of roguery.
"Ah," said Mr. Porter, smiling a paternal smile. He reached out and
patted her hand, and, though her soul revolted, she managed to keep her
hand passive. "Now, my dear young lady, you are at last coming to your
senses. You mustn't take life so seriously."
"I'll try not to, Mr. Porter."
"That's right; that's right. I ought to discharge you, I know. It may be

difficult not to discharge you. But I will do this much: I will suspend
judgment for a few days."
He looked at her fixedly. Her cold lips formed another phrase of thanks.
"And in the meantime," he continued, "you let me know of some

evening when you can come out to a quiet corner where we can have supper
together, and where we won't be wasting the firm's time. Then we'll talk this
whole thing over, and I'll see what I can do."
The eyes of neither wavered.
"Thank you, Mr. Porter," said Katie again.
With that she left him, but she went away with the knowledge that her
game of hide-and-seek was almost ended. Just when it would end was
beyond all guessing, but that it would end soon and that it would end in her
defiance of her superiors and her prompt expulsion seemed altogether
certain. She reflected that the small delay which she had gained would
profit but lightly those in whose interests she had attempted to truckle and
palliate, and, when, that night, she told her experience to Carrie, her words
fell upon ears that read into them a portentous meaning.
The homely, brown-haired Lithuanian, whose cheeks were less round

now than they had been, and whose hair that needed no covering in the
summer, was still uncovered, went to her weary picket-duty in Waverley
Place the next morning—the morning, as it happened, that preceded
Hermann's little brush with Mirka—with a slow step and a heavy heart. She
knew the futility of the work she was performing; she saw it even in the
relaxed vigilance of the policemen on the corners and in the mocking grins
of the girls and toughs at the gloomy factory-door. All day as, sometimes
companioned and sometimes alone, she plodded her eventless round, the
irony of the task bit into her soul. Something she must do, and soon.
Already she was deep in Katie's debt, and Katie was near dismissal.
The early autumn twilight dropped among the grimy buildings. The
evening tide of Broadway rose and roared into Waverley Place. A cold wind
lashed the dust into little whirlpools, wound the girl's cheap lawn skirt
tightly about her aching knees, and ate through that thin material to the
tingling skin. There was no one with her now, and she felt more than ever
alone.
From the shadow of a doorway a man crossed the street and approached
her.
He was a man of uncertain age, of almost any age below the early
thirties. As he bowed to her, the girl saw that his hair was dark and curly;
that the back of his hand, which was not the hand of a worker, was covered
with a black down, and that through the pale olive of his sorely clean-
shaven cheeks there shone the blue-black banners of a wiry beard fighting
for freedom. His lips were thick until they smiled, above white teeth, in
greeting, and his gray glance had the character of an appraisement of
whatever it looked upon. Carrie noticed, protruding from his breast-
coatpocket, a purple bordered handkerchief.
"Hello," he said.
She looked at him gravely. She had never seen him before, but with his
kind she had lately grown enough familiar. Wherever there are women on
strike, men of his sort gather, as the vultures gather about dying animals in a
jungle. Yet Carrie said nothing. She was, as she had expressed it to Katie,
still wondering.
"I've been vatchin' you," said the man. "I've been vatchin' you all tay."
"Have you?" Carrie was totally incurious.
"Yes, I'd think you'd be pretty tired of sooch foolishness."
"I am tired."
"You can't vin. If you go back it will be choost the same hell-mill it vas
before."
"I suppose it would."
"Vell then"—his hands spread themselves in protest—"vhy don't you

qvit? A pretty, strong girl like you could make loads of money fer herself."
Carrie was leaning against the factory wall. She did not move.
"How?" she asked.
"Vell, you hafn't got no odder trade, eh?"
"No."
"Und you vouldn't vant to be a servant?"
"Why not?"
"Because that's vorse nor a shirtvaist-factory."
"Then I wouldn't want to be a servant."

Again the man extended his hands.
"Vell?" he said.
"But I knew one girl that went into a house," affirmed Carrie, "and I
wouldn't do that for a fortune."
Her practical manner might have disconcerted most men, but this man's
business had accustomed him to all forms of rejoinder. He immediately
began an endeavor to persuade her by economic arguments.
But Carrie interrupted him.
"No," she said, "if I do it, it will be only because I have to, and then I'll
not do it that way. Thank you, just the same. Here comes my relief: I don't
have to wait till the girls come out to-day. Good-by."
He essayed to protest, but she walked quietly by him, made her brief
report to the oncoming women, and started on her journey homeward. The
man, whose trade imposed patience, said no more. He did not again
approach her, and, though she knew that he was following her, through the
growing crowd that rolled eastward, to mark her hiding-place, she did not
attempt to elude him. She was very tired.
This was the evening that preceded the early morning call of Angel the
Italian and Mirka the Austrian to Ludwig Schleger's saloon, and it was
about eight hours later that Hermann, having seen his assailants leave,
turned his back to the bar-room door and, alone in the place, set about
washing the discarded glasses. Except that he was sleepy, he was in his
usual spirits and he was whistling "Die Wacht Am Rhein." He was
whistling so loudly that he did not hear the door reopen.
There was a flash as of a thousand blinding lights, a roar as if a train had

fallen from the elevated road overhead, and Hermann, in the smoke-filled
saloon, himself fell crashing behind the bar, and lay there, huddled and still.
Mirka quietly reclosed the door and darted around the corner.
XXII
THE SERPENTS' DEN
Poverty, which produces the slave, breeds, just as surely, the slaver.
Take where you will the trail of the trafficker in women, this rule is proven.
It is proven in puritan Boston and protected New Orleans, in Chicago and
Washington, in Philadelphia and San Francisco, and on the heroic scale it is
nowhere more plainly proven than in the heroic city of New York.
On Manhattan Island is, indeed, the Mother-Church, however

unconsciously organized, of the black faith, and though, of necessity, there
spontaneously arise elsewhere congregations that reach back to her, here is
founded and established the Congregation of the Propaganda that reaches
out to them. Its missionaries—its women, men, and methods—have
stretched to Nome and the Canal Zone; they are preaching their own brand
of dogma against the native versions of Buenos Ayres and Sydney, of
Shanghai and Cape Town; and within its home city the hierarchy is
entrenched by financial strength, political power, and legal negligence. As
an industry, it has its wholesalers and retailers; or, as a church, its bishops
sit in their national house of peers, while its younger orders, its proselyting
priests and evangelizing deacons, perform their especial tasks, the young
appealing to the young, the poor preying upon poverty.
The entrance to these lower orders lies, as in most orders and most
businesses, through a period of probation: the lad of sixteen plays the rôle
of watchdog and spy for his superiors, for which he earns an occasional
fifty-cent piece, or a casual kettle of beer, vastly increasing his income if he
now and then diverts, as he generally does, his energies to the occupation of
amateur theft. From this stage he is admitted, by his own efforts, to the
possession of one girl, whom he bullies into working for him along the
streets. He may occasionally deign to appear as a waiter in a café, and offer
his woman to its drunken habitués; but most frequently he scorns all menial
labor, for which, in fact, conditions have utterly unfitted him. Sometimes he
increases his slave-holdings to a trio of women, and even farms out his
victims to friends in his own or other neighborhoods or towns: more often
he delivers his human wares to the proprietors of houses intended for their
reception, being paid in a lump sum, or on a royalty basis; but in either case
his ambition is, naturally, to rise to the position of the large property-holder
or the political receiver of tribute. If he is an Italian, common consent limits
his operations to the southern end of the Bowery; if he is a Jew, his field lies
about the Houston and Essex Streets districts; whatever his European
parentage, he seeks his fellow-countrywomen, and if he is American born
he has the freedom of Broadway.
His means are multitude. Wherever there is squalor seeking ease, he is

there. Wherever there is distress crying for succor, discontent complaining
for relief, weariness sighing for rest, there is this missionary, this "cadet,"
offering the quack salvation of his temporal church. He knows and takes
subtle advantage of the Jewish sisters sent to work for the education of
Jewish brothers; the Irish, the Germans, the Russians, and the Syrians
ground in one or another economic mill; the restless neurotic native-
daughters untrained for work and spoiled for play. He is at the door of the
factory when it releases its white-faced women for a breath of night air; he
is at the cheap lunch-room where the stenographers bolt unwholesome
noonday food handed about by underpaid waitresses; he lurks around the
corner for the servant and the shop-clerk. He remembers that these are girls
too tired to do household work in their evenings, too untaught to find
continued solace in books; that they must go out, that they must move
about; and so he passes his own nights at the restaurants and theaters, the
moving-picture shows, the dancing academies, the dance-halls. He may go
into those stifling rooms where immigrants, long before they learn to make
a half-complete sentence of what they call the American language, learn
what they are told are American dances: the whirling "spiel" with blowing
skirts, the "half-time waltz" with jerking hips. He may frequent the more
sophisticated forms of these places, may even be seen in the more
expensive cafés, or may journey into the provinces. But he scents poverty
from afar.
Where training is as yet too strong or distress too weak to make serve
the offer of partnership, the promise of marriage usually suffices. The thing
is done, and once done, blows and starvation perpetuate it with the ignorant,
and threats of exposure and public shame rivet the shackles on the more
knowing. The former suffer for their darkness; the latter are held the faster
in proportion to their previous respectability.
One has said that this church is established; in every city it maintains its
incestuous marriage to the state. It controls real votes by the thousands and
provides false ones by the tens of thousands. It is a church that may be
considered to exercise the old ecclesiastical right of trying its own offenders
in its own courts. When the magistrates have not begun as slavers, when
they own no poor, but highly rented, houses, leased for prostitution, when
they do not even accept tithes from the traffic, it is still largely the traffic
that elects and can defeat them. What the Black Church owes to the
political powers for their protection, the political powers owe to the church
for its ballots.
It was this condition that made possible the impunity of such a deed as
the Austrian Mirka had done upon Hermann Hoffmann, the bar-keeper; that
made certain the assailant's escape, and that made of the entire matter
merely a question as to which of several handy means should be employed
to free the slaver in the eyes of the law. About those means there had,
however, been some debate, and so it befell that, early on the Sunday
evening following the shooting, Rafael Angelelli sat in a recognized New
York meeting-place of the church's proselyting order, engaged in pleasant
converse with Wesley Dyker, candidate for a magistracy. This place was the
back-room of a saloon. It was filled with cigarette-smoking young
missionaries, who talked shop, and quoted prices, and discussed the
prospects of a good season in precisely the businesslike way that men in a
livestock-dealers' club talk shop, and quote prices, and discuss the prospects
of a good season. Dyker had not at all wanted to come there, but O'Malley
had ordered, and so, making peace with the tolerant Angelelli, he had been
forced to obey. A special counsel for the sheriff of New York had once been
a member of the legal corps of the missionaries and so had two State
Senators: O'Malley, remembering Dyker's previous career, could see no
reason for present pride.
The room was clouded with smoke. Waiters hurried about serving beer
from brass platters and swabbing the small tables with damp rags. There
was a buzz of conversation broken by that peculiar form of laughter which
responds only to obscenities, and now and then, out of the general clamor,
there arose oaths almost technical, descriptions of women that sounded like
auctioneers' announcements in a horse-market, and fragments of stories in
which the teller bragged of a sharp deal he had effected in capturing a slave
or in bargaining with a proprietress.
"I understand," said Dyker, with his eyelids characteristically lowered,

"that you want to see me in regard to something about this shooting-affair
of your friend Mirka."
Angel's oily head bobbed a ready assent.
"Where's the fellow that was hurt?"
"In Bellevue."
"Is he going to die?"
"Naw; eet was only a leetle one in hees shoulder."
"Anybody else in the bar when it happened?"
"Naw."
That was better. Wesley took a sip of beer.
"Mirka was alone, too?"
"Yas."
"Did the bar-keeper see him?"
"Naw; hees back was rounda to da door."
"There'd been a quarrel beforehand, though?"

"Ah, some small word only."
"And nobody saw Mirka come back or leave the place the second
time?"
Nobody had seen him.
Then how was it that the injured man, in the hospital, had said that
Mirka had done the shooting?
Angel explained that Hermann based his accusation partly on an

uncertain and partial glimpse of Mirka caught in the bar-mirror at the
instant that the shot was fired, but largely on the preceding quarrel.
"This Hoffmann couldn't swear to Mirka's identity from that mere

glimpse?"
The Italian thought not.
"Well, then," said Wesley, "it all ought to be easy enough. Every bar-
keeper knows a lot of drunks that might want to hurt him."
Rafael shrugged.
"You can feex eet," he said. "Meest' O'Malley say you feex eet easy."
"But," replied Dyker, "I don't see how I can act as Mirka's lawyer,
unless it is all done quickly. You know, I'm about to be elected magistrate."
"Poof!" said Angel, blowing a thin spiral of blue cigarette-smoke. "We

gotta da lawyer."
"Oh!" Dyker looked up quickly, and quickly down again. "Then you
want me—I see."
"Good."
The prospective magistrate began making rings on the table with his wet
glass.
"But I should think there were other ways. The man hasn't been arrested
yet?"
"Naw."
"Then why need the police find him?"
"Thees O'Malley say eet looka better."
"He might jump his bail."
"Naw."
"It's often done that way."
"O'Malley say 'naw'."
"Or he might go up for trial. There's no real evidence against him:

nobody saw the shot fired. And besides, even if we couldn't fix things in
court, which is always easy enough, we could get him a pardon as we did
for Pud Morley or Frank Da Silva."
But Angel would have none of these propositions. Michael O'Malley

was, it seemed, inexorable. There had been enough bail-jumping, queer
verdicts, and pardons for a few months. The case must come before the new
magistrate, and the new magistrate must declare that the testimony was not
sufficient to warrant holding the prisoner for court.
"Where is Mirka now?" asked Dyker.
"Een Philadelph'," said Angel.
"Loafing?"
"Naw. He tooka one of heesa girls along. I am takin' care of dees other
one."
"Can't we get hold of the Dutchman and make him see who's back of all
this?"
"Naw; dees Dutch' ees a fool."
"Won't even be bought?"
"Naw."
"And can't be scared?"
"Naw; I tell you dees Dutch' ees a damn fool."
Wesley did not like the plan; he did not like it at all; but he was already
harnessed fast, and he had learned that it was best to follow without protest
the directing rein. He achieved a smile.
"All right," he agreed.
The Italian's face lighted with gratification.
"You do eet?" he asked.
"I'll arrange it; don't worry."
"Good! Good! That's good!"
Angel's pleasure was so pronounced that Dyker for a moment feared—

though it would have made small difference—lest the cadet make to the
entire company a public announcement of his promise. He need not,
however, have worried. Rafael was wholly used to these legal fictions and
to the etiquette that imposed their formal observance; his delight took the
shape of an order for another pair of drinks, and, those dispatched, he
leisurely got upon his little feet.
"Now," said he, "I go. I hava da businesses."
He smiled wisely at the concluding word.
Wesley also rose.
"I'll have to be getting along myself," he remarked.

"Ah, but you can stay eef you feel like," said Angel. "I maka you know
deesa mens."
"Thanks. I do know most of them," replied Dyker, nodding to two or

three of the nearby cadets as he spoke. "But I have some business, too.
These are busy times with me."
They both made their way to the saloon's side door.
"Goin' so soon?" chorused some of the habitués as Angel moved among

them.
He nodded, smiling cheerfully.
"Goin' to kop out a new skirt?" inquired one.
"Yas," responded Rafael, now with a frank, satisfied chuckle.
"Then here's luck!" cried another.
As the health was being drunk, Dyker passed through the door and
turned, alone, into the cool night air of the street.
Notwithstanding his natural bias, his severe schooling, and his honestly
cynical and cynically limited view of this portion of his little world, he was
ashamed of what he had just seen and heard and done, and he was
disgusted. He walked down the avenue in the deepened shadows, for the
first time in a long while more than half inclined to ask himself whether
what he was to get was worth the price that he had already begun to pay for
it; and for the first time, by way of answer, frankly facing the fact that the
position of a corrupt magistrate was not much worse than that of a corrupt
lawyer, and that neither position was much worse, and both certainly better
paid, than the position in which his task had been to render anonymous
assistance to the no less dubious course of more esteemed corporation
attorneys.
He was too occupied with these reflections, disquieting and consolatory,

to observe well the persons that passed him. He continued his way along the
curb rather because he had started upon it than because he at all cared about
whither it led him, much as he was continuing his progress in the political
maze in which his lot was cast. He kept his head bent, and so he did not see
a pale-faced, large-eyed woman that, turning a hasty corner, almost collided
with him and then suddenly drew back and crossed the street.
There were changes in the woman's face, which might have precluded
recognition. He had last seen her on the eve of a surgical operation and she
had looked ill, but now, the cumulative effect of that and many other crises
sat upon her, and it was only in her habitual gait, the swaying languid pace
of an unstudied young animal, that he might have found enough to recall
her to his memory. But Dyker's eyes were directed inward and so, when she
turned aside to avoid the man that she fancied she had wronged, he did not
realize that he had almost touched elbows with the woman he had once
rescued, fresh from her dismissal from the sacred precincts of Mrs.
Ferdinand Chamberlin's home.
She had started away from Washington Square in the same dull pain in
which she had previously left the Ninth Street boarding-house presided over
by the stony-breasted Mrs. Alberta Turner; she had been only a wounded
dog, whose sole desire was to find a dark corner in which she could suffer
unobserved; but slowly there reasserted itself in her torpid brain that new
impulse toward a questioning of life which had so appalled Philip
Beekman. The whole she could not see; her own case bulked so far in the
foreground that little else of the picture was visible to her. But she knew
that an ill-constructed world was against her; she concluded that all
legitimate doors were closed upon her, and she felt gradually kindling a
wrath that would end in general reprisal.
How she chanced into Rivington Street she did not know. She had no
clear idea as to where she was to go, except that she must not return to
burden Katie Flanagan. Yet, almost before she was clearly conscious of her
whereabouts, she found herself accosted by a voice that proved to come
from the lips of Marian Lennox.
"Mary Morton! How do you do? Where are you going? Where on earth
have you been? Come in here; I'm just getting back from a walk. I am so
anxious to hear how you are getting on, and I have been so disappointed
because you never let me hear from you."
The rivulet of cheerful words poured from the calm-faced woman with
unheeding force. Each one of them fell upon her auditor with an unintended
shock. Mary, who had almost forgotten the pseudonym under which she had
been presented at the Settlement, could say nothing. She was carried up the
steps and into the house, up the stairs and into the deserted sitting-room on
the second floor; and there she sank limply into a wicker chair beside a
magazine-littered table, tête-à-tête with her former benefactress.
Marian, all good intentions, rested her delicate chin upon her white
hands.
"Now," she said, "I am anxious to hear all about you."
Mary, with a perplexed frown, looked hard at the floor.
"Why, there isn't much to tell, Miss Lennox," she replied.
"Nonsense. Of course there is, my dear. You must understand that I am

interested in everything about you—in everything."
Mary's eyes sought, for a moment, the pure, cameo-like face. They
could see no evil there, and they could see much kindliness.
"Well, then," she hesitated, "I don't know exactly where to begin."
"At the beginning, of course. How do you like your place?"
"Which place, Miss Lennox?"
"The place we sent you to."
"I'm not there no more."
"Not there?" Marian raised her perfectly arched brows. "But, my dear
Mary, why not? Didn't you like it?"

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Reality And Its Structure: Essays In

Fundamentality Ricki Bliss

Physics, Structure, and Reality Jill North

Commedia dell'Arte, its Structure and Tradition:

Knowledge and Conditionals: Essays on the Structure of

Representation and reality in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Milton's complex words: essays on the conceptual

Forms and Structure in Plato's Metaphysics Anna

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde Tia Williams

Structure and Tectonics of the Indian Continental Crust

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