Jonathan Schaffer is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is an acclaimed metaphysician with a unique mind and approach to philosophy (and who has exquisite taste in epigraphs). Jonathan is best known for his work on monism, in which he contends that the cosmos is the lone fundamental object in reality, and on the grounding relation. He and Robinson begin by exploring monism, including its relationship to contemporary developments in physics, and then move on to the grounding relation, explicating just what this is and how it marks a departure from the dominant Quinean view of metaphysics.

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Outline:

00:00 In This Episode

1:07 Introduction

4:54 Jonathan’s Epigraphs

10:02 What Is a Monist?

14:11 How Jonathan Became a Monist

17:06 Breeds of Monism

24:09 Mereological Nihilism

39:14 Have Jonathan’s Views Shifted Over The Years?

41:25 The Ontological Priority of the Whole

48:16 Monism and Quantum Entanglement

54:42 Occam’s Laser

59:40 Modal Considerations for Monism

1:03:17 Jonathan’s Interest in Grounding

1:06:33 Quinean Metaphysics and Grounding

1:15:22 The Aristotelian View of Metaphysics

1:18:21 Carnap and Grounding

1:21:33 What Grounds What?

1:26:32 Debunking Metaphysical Intuitions With Cognitive Science

1:39:38 Ground Functionalism

1:48:58 Grounding in Feminist Metaphysics

1:55:30 Jonathan’s Philosophical Program

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.