The cement of the universe is not causation: it is explanatory dependence. Reality is a network of facts connected by a single, irreducible, mind-independent “because”. It is widely held that explanation is a sort, interest-sensitive practice that aims to provide information only about other things. To the contrary, one central task for science and philosophy is to provide information about the objective explanatory structure of the world.

Particular explanatory relations, including causation and the many forms of ground, are species of the one and only basic explanatory relation. For many purposes, the differences among these species do not matter, and we would be better off theorising in terms of the generic relation. However, for some purposes, especially in philosophy, the more specific relations are indispensable. This gives us an analytic project: to define these more specific relations in terms of the generic “because”.

The talk will sketch the case for Explanatory Realism and take some preliminary steps in the analytic project by offering an account of metaphysical ground as a species of explanatory dependence.

Gideon Rosen is Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University