Dan Giberman: New York for a Theory of Universals

Abstract
This essay argues that the metaphysics of property bearing is beneficial to the metaphysics of level connecting for facts about concreta, such as the (full) grounding connection between a certain complicated quantum mechanical fact and the fact that New York City is a city. 

Key to the discussion is a distinction between theories of property bearing that are equipped to address a Bradleyan instantiation regress, which theories I call ‘robust’, and theories which are not so equipped, or ‘mild’. It is argued here that robust theories are well suited to explain indefinitely iterated grounding in a unified and previously unnoticed way.

The main idea, where F1 and F2 are facts about concreta such that F2 fully grounds F1, is that the ground of the fact that F2 grounds F1 is not F2 per se (as some theorists have claimed), but rather the fact(s) that a given robust theory posits to explain the instance(s) of property bearing that occur within F2.

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