Constitutionalism, Cheap Indeterminism and the Grounding Problem

Marta Campdelacreu

doi:10.1515/mp-2018-0001

Article

Constitutionalism, Cheap Indeterminism and the Grounding Problem

Marta Campdelacreu

Published/Copyright: December 15, 2017

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From the journal Metaphysica Volume 19 Issue 1

Abstract

Thomas Sattig has argued recently that constitutionalism renders determinism about the actual world false, just in virtue of ordinary facts about ordinary middle-sized material objects. However, it seems that, if determinism about the actual world is false, this should be so for reasons of physics rather than in virtue of ordinary facts about ordinary objects. This is the problem of cheap indeterminism. Sattig also claims, however, that constitutionalists can solve this problem if they abandon an attractive and promising solution to the classical grounding problem affecting their view. In this paper I argue that, against his claims, constitutionalists can solve the problem of cheap indeterminism and the grounding problem simultaneously.

Keywords: Thomas Sattig; ordinary material objects; constitutionalism; determinism; the problem of cheap indeterminism; the grounding problem

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to members of LOGOS, the participants at the Fifth Italian Conference in Analytic Ontology and an anonymous referee of this journal for their very helpful comments on a previous version of this paper. Financial support for my work was provided by the Spanish Government, research projects FFI2016-80588-R and FFI2013-47948-P. Thanks also to Michael Maudsley for his linguistic revisions.

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Published Online: 2017-12-15

Published in Print: 2018-3-26

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Keywords for this article

Thomas Sattig; ordinary material objects; constitutionalism; determinism; the problem of cheap indeterminism; the grounding problem