whereas mere disjunctions are far less natural than their disjuncts, and while analo-
gous features are less natural than their analogue instances, the degree to which they
depart from the naturalness of their analogue instances is far less than the degree to
which mere disjunctions depart from the naturalness of their disjuncts. And for me
naturalness just is one kind of ontological superiority—degree of being—as it is
defined on thefield of properties. So for me the distinction between these three
kinds of specification is theoretically important, and I am willing to appeal to them in
absence of fully satisfactory accounts of them, but with the background belief that
their pattern of instantiation isfixed by patterns of entailment and naturalness.
The question then is whether the proponent of ground can make sense of the
phenomenon of analogy in terms of ground alone. I don’t want to say that it can’tbe
done, but merely indicate that there is an explanatory challenge here.^72 The prima
facie problem is that with respect to each kind of specification, the grounding
structure looks exactly the same: the instantiation of a determinate grounds the
instantiation of its determinable, the instantiation of an analogue instance grounds
the instantiation of the analogous feature, and the instantiation of the disjunct
grounds the instantiation of the mere disjunction. How do we get the morefine-
grained distinctions? One might try to appeal to higher-order features, but which
ones? The higher-order relations that structure determinates of quantitative deter-
minables might not even have analogues in the domain of qualitative determinables,
for example. And with respect to some analogue instances of a common analogous
feature, it is hard to produce a robust list of common higher-order features. Consider,
for example, the various forms of composition, and compare also the various modes
of being. Is there any commonality to the higher-order features of analogue instances
of parthood andbeingthat make these generic features analogous rather than
determinables or mere disjunctions?
I don’t see the problem of accounting for analogous properties or relations as
uniquely a problem for grounding pluralism. It isacutelya problem for them,
especially if they take the generic relation of grounding to be analogous. But the
grounding monist who is a pluralist about some other feature, such as composition,
faces the same issue. Since I believe in a variety of pluralisms, regardless of whether
grounding monism or pluralism is true, I am very uneasy about operating solely with
grounding as my sole primitive notion for inducing structure on what there is.
8.5 Grounding Monism and Degrees of Being
In the previous section, we assessed whether the grounding pluralist had a reason to
believe in something like naturalness or degrees of being. Here we will assess whether
the monist does as well.
(^72) Compare with Cameron (2014: 49–53).