Fine - guide to ground.pdf - Ted Sider

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the particle’s being acted upon by a positive force made it true that the particle was accelerating; and
similarly for (1) and (3).
In each of the above cases, there would appear to be some sort of modal connection between
explandum and explanans. Thus from (1) - (3), it would appear to follow that:
(1) Necessarily, if the ball is red and it is round then it is red and round;
(2) Necessarily, if the particle is acted upon by some positive force then it is accelerating;
(3) Necessarily, if the action was done with the intention of causing harm then it is wrong.
However, it is arguable that the ‘force’ or ‘strength’ of the modal operator is different in each case. The
first conditional (‘if the ball is red ...’) holds of metaphysical necessity, the second of natural necessity,
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and the third of normative necessity.
Whether or not this is so, there would appear to be something more than a modal connection in
each case. For the modal connection can hold without the connection signified by ‘in virtue of’ or
‘because’. It is necessary, for example, that if it is snowing then 2 + 2 = 4 (simply because it is
necessary that 2 + 2 = 4), but the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 does not obtain in virtue of the fact that it is
snowing; and it is necessary that if the ball is red and round then it is red but the fact that the ball is red
does not obtain in virtue of its being red and round. In addition to the modal connection, there would
also appear to be an explanatory or determinative connection - a movement, so to speak, from
antecedent to consequent; and what is most distinctive about the in-virtue-of claims is this element of
movement or determination.
We may call an in-virtue claim a statement of ontological or metaphysical ground when the
conditional holds of metaphysical necessity and I shall talk, in such cases, of the antecedent fact or facts
grounding or being a ground for the consequent fact. Thus we may say, in the first of the cases above,
I have attempted to argue in Fine ([2005], chapter 7) that these are the basic forms of necessity, with no one of them
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being reducible to the others.