But I think this is OK. It might be that disjunctions are always grounded in their
disjuncts, and in fact the full analysis of grounding we will consider will have this
consequence given (1). But insofar as I have intuitions about the constitutive essences
of disjunctive facts, these intuitions are tied closely to what I think of as the
“definition”of disjunction, which in turn is tied to disjunction’s logical/inferential/
semantic roles, such as, for example its implicit“definition”via its truth-table. I grasp
what it is to be a disjunctive fact when I grasp its real definition (if such facts have real
definitions!), which is that it is that fact which is entailed by its disjuncts. Other facts
are also entailed by these disjuncts—any necessary truth is, for example—but it is not
of the constitutive essence of these facts that they are so entailed. Considerations of
this sort lead me to think that, insofar as I’ve glommed onto the idea of constitutive
essences as objective definitions of non-linguistic entities, the essence of a disjunctive
fact is captured by something like (1) rather than (2). (We’ll discuss shortly a second
response to this concern.)
With this restriction in place, we can now explore whether we can defineground-
ingin terms of essence. Correia (2013) suggests one possible analysis: the fact that B is
grounded in the fact that A just in case (i) the proposition that A is true, (ii) the
proposition that A entails the proposition that B, and (iii) it is part of the constitutive
essence of the proposition that B that the proposition that A entails the proposition
that B.^61 Note that, if we want to ensure that grounding is an asymmetric relation, we
can add a fourth clause: (iv) it is neither part of the constitutive essence of the
proposition that A that it entails the proposition that B nor is it part of the
constitutive essence of that proposition that A that the proposition that B entails it.^62
One nice thing about this analysis is that it allows us to capture much of the
intuition that it is part of the strict essence of a disjunctive proposition that it be
grounded in its disjuncts. On my construal of Correia’s (2013) proposal, it is not part
of the constitutive essence of a disjunction that it be grounded in its disjuncts—but it
is part of its analytic consequential essence. Perhaps one is rightly confident that it is
part of the strict essence of a disjunctive fact that it be grounded in its disjuncts—but
I doubt that one is rightly confident that it is part of its constitutive essence rather
than part of one of its consequential essences.
This purported reduction of ground to strict essence seems to presuppose that
all facts have strict essences. But this isn’t obviously correct. We’ll see in section
9.2 challenges to the claim that everything has a strict essence. Less than fully
real facts might not have essences, and in which case the purported reduction also
seems dubious.
Our explorations so far have been pretty speculative. That’s to be expected; at this
level of abstraction, one can do little more than speculate, albeit in a disciplined and
(^61) This is not the only analysis suggested by Correia, but it is the one that I will pursue here.
(^62) See Jenkins (2011) and Wilson (2014) for discussion of whether grounding is asymmetric or merely
non-symmetric.