UC Irvine

Philosophical interest in explanation is as old as philosophy itself. The philosophical history of explanation has predominantly investigated scientific explanation, culminating in the twentieth century with a resurgence of interest in the nature of scientific explanation and the related notions of causation and laws of nature. Recently, this resurgent interest in scientific explanation has facilitated an emerging interest in a kind of non-causal explanation—metaphysical explanation and the related notions of metaphysical dependence and laws of metaphysics. Despite the ubiquity of metaphysical explanations in philosophy, however, accounts of metaphysical explanation remain fragmentary and vague, and their relevance to issues that fall outside of traditional metaphysical disputes remains largely unexplored. In this dissertation, I fill this lacuna by developing and defending an essentialist account of metaphysical explanation, which I then apply to an issue in philosophical theology.

In Chapter 1, I introduce the notion of metaphysical explanation and show how the emerging dispute concerning metaphysical explanation parallels the timeworn dispute between Humeans and non-Humeans concerning scientific explanation. In Chapter 2, I construct a Humean account of metaphysical explanation using the metaphysical dependence relation of grounding and a best system account of the laws of metaphysics. Drawing on parallels with scientific explanation, I contend that Humean metaphysical explanation suffers from a familiar circularity objection that compels Humeans either to deny the explanatory role of the laws of metaphysics or to compromise their commitment to the doctrine of Humean Supervenience. In Chapter 3, I develop and defend my essentialist account of metaphysical explanation. Metaphysical explanations, I argue, hold in virtue of essential dependence relations between particulars and are governed by “laws of essence,” essential dependence relations between universals. In a slogan, metaphysical explanation is essential explanation. Finally, in Chapter 4, I apply my essentialist account to part of the classical Christian doctrine of the Trinity known as the doctrine of eternal generation. I propose an essential dependence model of eternal generation and demonstrate how it avoids standard philosophical and theological objections to the doctrine.