58吃瓜

TITLE: Fundamentality Without Favouritism

ABSTRACT: According to a widely endorsed conception of fundamentality, the fundamental is characterized in terms of a certain privileged relation or set of relations. On this conception, something is fundamental just in case it is unexplained relative to a unique privileged relation or a privileged set of relations. Let us say that such a conception of fundamentality shows favouritism, for it privileges some relations over others in in its characterization. First, I will argue that fundamentality characterized in terms of a single privileged relation or set of relations cannot do all the work we need fundamentality to do. In particular I will show that we also need an ecumenical conception of fundamentality, according to which fundamentality is relativized to some metaphysical dependence relation or other. 聽On this conception, there is no one privileged relation or set of relations that determines what qualifies as fundamental. Instead, something qualifies as fundamental relative to any given metaphysical dependence relation just in case it is unexplained relative to that relation. Second, I will argue that the conception of fundamentality characterized in terms of a privileged relation or set of relations itself relies on the ecumenical conception of fundamentality for its coherence, and that the ecumenical conception is thus conceptually basic