Two Kinds of Grounding? Suárez on Natural Resultance and Foundation

Abstract

In contemporary metaphysics the notion of grounding plays a crucial role, and though its precise meaning is debated, there seems to be a widespread consensus that grounding is the same in all its typical instances. In this chapter I show that the late scholastic philosopher Francisco Suárez (1549–1617) can be seen as challenging this consensus since he gives an altogether different account of the way vital capacities are “grounded” in their underlying soul and the way the truth of a thought is “grounded” in its object: while a vital capacity is something over and above the soul, from which it “naturally results,” the truth of a thought is no additional entity apart from the thought and its object, in which it is “founded.” So, in addition to contributing two intriguing accounts of vital capacities and truth, Suárez’s theories of natural resultance and foundation make an interesting case for the possibility that grounding might not be a single and unified form of metaphysical dependence as contemporary metaphysicians seem to presuppose.

The notion of grounding is central in contemporary metaphysics. In fact, it has become a core notion of an increasingly influential way of understanding metaphysics itself. As Jonathan Schaffer famously put it, according to the traditional, and now revived way of understanding metaphysics, a metaphysician is not primarily concerned with the Quinean question “What is there?” but with the question “What grounds what, or what is fundamental?”¹ But although there is by now ample agreement that the notion of grounding is central to metaphysics, there is little consensus about what grounding actually is. The consensus does not go much beyond the acceptance of certain core cases, by means of which the notion of “grounding” is usually introduced.² Among these, two common examples of grounding are the following:

• (1) Dispositions or powers are grounded in their categorical basis.

• (2) The truth of the proposition or sentence ‘Snow is white’ is grounded in snow’s being white.

In the contemporary debate, such examples are widely taken to determine or fix what grounding is. They suggest that grounding is an explanatory form of metaphysical dependence, in the sense that what is grounded is explained by and through its grounds. However, this gives us only a minimal characterization of grounding, which leaves many questions about its exact nature unanswered. It is no surprise therefore that apart from this minimal consensus about grounding, pretty much everything else about it is contested.³ Indeed, even characterizations of grounding that have been widely accepted as non-negotiable are questioned. A telling case is the relation between grounding and causation. While many took it for granted that grounding is a distinctively non-causal form of dependence, Alastair Wilson has challenged this assumption recently by pointing out that the expected explanatory function of grounding is best accounted for if we conceive of grounding as a special form of causation.⁴

In this chapter, I want to focus on another disagreement among proponents of grounding, one which is surprisingly rarely articulated. It concerns the question of the ontological status of that which is grounded. With respect to this question, most contemporary defenders of grounding seem to fall into one of two camps. According to one group, whom I will call the substantialists, if y is grounded in x then y is a genuinely existing entity that is distinct from x. According to the opposite camp, whose members I will call deflationists, if y is grounded in x, y does not really exist (though there can be true sentences about y, which can be fully explained and vindicated in terms of x). I will explain the difference between substantialists and deflationists more clearly in the first section of this paper. For now, let me just add a striking observation about the contemporary debate on the metaphysics of grounding: virtually all defenders of grounding—be they substantialists or deflationists—assume that grounding is a univocal concept, in the sense that there is a single and unique form of metaphysical dependence exhibited by all (core) cases of metaphysical grounding, in particular the paradigmatic examples (1) and (2).⁵

I take this observation to be striking because the two core examples of grounding just mentioned are concerned with quite different phenomena, and it seems far from trivial that grounding is the same or works in the same way in both cases. Example (1) is concerned with a form of metaphysical priority between properties of different types, whereas (2) is about the dependence of a truth on a certain portion of reality. Against this backdrop, it will be particularly revealing to turn to the late scholastic philosopher Francisco Suárez (1549–1617), who accepts cases that seem to be quite similar to the examples mentioned above. In particular, Suárez holds that:

• (1′) The powers of the soul naturally result from their soul (or the form of the living body).

• (2′) “On account of a res being or not, an opinion is true or false.”⁶

Claim (1′) seems to be a close cousin of the contemporary example (1), inasmuch as scholastic philosophers conceived of the soul, or the form of the living body, as an actual property that accounts for the living body’s distinctive vital powers, much as a categorical property is supposed to account for a disposition. Claim (2′) on the other hand seems to be just a generalization of example (2), couched in scholastic terminology (which I will introduce and explain below).

Unlike most contemporary defenders of grounding, however, Suárez does not give these examples a uniform metaphysical analysis, or so I will argue. While he construes example (1) as a case of “natural resultance,” which he classifies as a species of efficient causation, he accounts for case (2) in terms of “founding” (fundare), which, unlike natural resultance, does not involve the production of an additional entity. Moreover, Suárez’s two ways of analysing cases (1′) and (2′) correspond to the two stances mentioned above concerning the ontological status of that which is grounded. Suárez holds that vital powers are genuine entities that are distinct from the soul, in which they are grounded, and thus seems to adopt a substantialist stance concerning example (1′). With respect to claim (2′), by contrast, Suárez seems to adopt a deflationist stance, arguing that the truth of a cognition is not an additional entity but merely a cognition’s existing together with the object that it is about.

This raises the question about what precisely natural resultance and foundation are for Suárez and why he thinks that we have to distinguish two kinds of grounding in cases (1′) and (2′). It is this question that I want to take up in this chapter. The chapter is divided into five sections. In the first section, I will clarify the distinction between substantialist and deflationist conceptions of grounding in order to provide the resources to fruitfully connect the views of Suárez that lie behind claims (1′) and (2′) with the contemporary debate about grounding. The next two sections will be devoted to reconstructing Suárez’s theories of the powers of the soul (Sect. 13.2) and of the nature of propositional truth (Sect. 13.3). In particular, I will clarify his notions of natural resultance and foundation, which will turn out to be crucial for his theory of the soul and its powers, and his account of truth. In the fourth section, I will take up my initial question and explain why Suárez had strong reasons to distinguish between natural resultance and foundation, and the extent to which he can be seen as taking a substantialist stance regarding the grounding of the vital powers in their underlying soul, and a deflationist stance regarding the dependence of truth on reality. At the end of this section, I will return to the contemporary debate, arguing that in light of Suárez’s distinction between natural resultance and foundation it might well be worth considering whether the class of phenomena that contemporary metaphysicians tend to capture with the single notion of grounding might be too diverse for such a uniform treatment. In fact, Suárez reminds us that we should carefully distinguish between metaphysical structures that hold between different entities and those which do not. I will end by briefly summarizing my results (Sect. 13.5).

13.1 Substantialism and Deflationism about Grounding

Substantialists and deflationists (as they are envisaged in this chapter) disagree on the question whether there really are grounded or derivative entities. Note that this question is slightly different from another question that is often pursued in the contemporary literature about grounding, namely, whether grounded or derivative entities are something over and above their grounds, or rather something like an “ontological free lunch.”⁷ Substantialists and deflationists wonder about the very existence of derivative “entities” in the first place. Returning to the metaphor of an ontological free lunch, we can say that substantialists and deflationists about grounding do not disagree about whether for any y grounded in x, y is an ontologically free (as opposed to an ontologically charged) lunch, but rather about whether y is any lunch at all (free or not). While substantialists answer that it would be, deflationists deny that what is grounded has any metaphysically serious title to count as a really existing entity at all.

On this question, Jonathan Schaffer is clearly a substantialist. In his seminal paper “On What Grounds What,” he explicitly declares that “what exists are the grounds, grounding relations, and the grounded entities,”⁸ a view that is part and parcel of his “broad permissivism about existence,” according to which “there is no longer any harm in positing an abundant roster of existents, provided it is grounded on a sparse basis.”⁹ Similarly, the assumption of grounded or derivative entities enjoying full existence also figures centrally in Schaffer’s defence of his methodological principle—“The Laser,” as he calls it—according to which we should not multiply fundamental entities without necessity. As he explains:

By the lights of The Laser, derivative entities are an “ontological free lunch,” in the sense that they are genuinely new and distinct entities but they cost nothing by the measure of economy. The Laser thus incorporates an implicit distinction between the commitments of a theory, and the cost of such commitments. By the lights of The Laser, derivative entities are additional commitments, but they cost nothing. More precisely: derivative entities cost nothing further, beyond the cost incurred for positing their fundamental grounds.¹⁰

As is clear from this passage, Schaffer is in no doubt that grounded or derivative entities are “genuinely new and distinct entities,” the positing of which involves a genuine ontological commitment; their being derivative means simply that their number should not be a criterion for what counts as the best metaphysical theory. In this sense, Schaffer is a substantialist about grounding: grounded entities are as real or genuine as the entities that ground them.

A deflationist conception of grounding, by contrast, is famously defended by Kit Fine. This is most evident from Fine’s suggestion that we should rely on the notion of grounding when it comes to getting clear on the basic disagreement between realists and anti-realists concerning a certain phenomenon P. A typical example of such a phenomenon of which the reality is contested is moral value. In Fine’s view, a dispute between realists and anti-realists about P is best construed as turning on a disagreement on what grounds what: the realist about P insists that if facts about P are grounded at all, they are grounded in other facts about P, while the anti-realist holds that facts about P are derivative facts that are grounded in facts that are not simply other facts about P.¹¹ Fine argues further that we should understand fundamentality in terms of reality—that is, in terms of how the world is in and by itself, such that what is more fundamental is closer to how the world really is.¹² Hence, there is a big difference between saying (a) that there are numbers or there are moral values—something, to which, on Fine’s account, every sound anti-realist who does not want to repudiate our whole moral practice or the work of mathematicians should agree—and saying (b) that numbers or moral values exist in reality. It is only the latter claim that a (sound) anti-realist about numbers or moral values should deny, and which the realist should set out to defend.

According to Fine, then, what matters in metaphysical contexts are not questions of quantification, but rather questions about what really exists or what is part of reality as it is in itself. Or as Fine puts it in more formal terms, if we introduce R[…] as a sentential operator meaning “is constitutive of reality,” “an ontological commitment to F’s will be expressed, not by ∃xFx, but by R[∃xFx].”¹³ Given then that (for Fine) what is real is also fundamental, it follows that only fundamental facts and their constituents can legitimately be considered real, such that all derivative facts and the derivative “entities” they involve do not really obtain or exist, nor are they part of reality. In this sense, Kit Fine qualifies as a deflationist about grounding, who denies the reality or real existence of grounded entities.

In light of these two conceptions of the ontological status of derivative or grounded “entities,” I can put the driving philosophical question of this chapter more clearly: Is it plausible to adopt a substantialist or deflationist position across the board? More precisely, should we assume that the truth of a sentence is as much an entity distinct from a (true) sentence as a power or disposition is an entity that is distinct from its categorical basis? Instead of answering this question directly, I want to turn to the history of philosophy—specifically, to the outstanding, yet now poorly understood, late scholastic metaphysician Francisco Suárez, who would have answered this question in the negative. On Suárez’s view, the grounding of a truth in its object and the grounding of the vital or cognitive powers in the soul require an entirely different metaphysical analysis. Let us see why Suárez thought so.

13.2 Suárez’s Theory of the Powers of the Soul

The contemporary debate about the relation between a dispositional property or a power and its categorical basis has an interesting historical cousin: the scholastic debate about the relation between the soul, which was considered to be (a part of) the essence of a living being, and its distinctive vital powers. Before we can appreciate Suárez’s distinctive stance in this debate, some preliminary remarks about the theoretical background of this debate are in order.

The first important point to note is that the scholastic debate about the relation between the soul and its powers was driven by the Aristotelian assumption that the soul is a substantial form of living beings. Now, there were fierce debates about exactly what substantial forms are.¹⁴ But scholastic authors generally agreed on this much: the substantial form of a thing is that which is responsible for making it a thing of a certain natural kind. Accordingly, they conceived of the soul as the principle of life—that which accounts for living beings being living beings. It was also widely accepted that living beings are distinguished from non-living beings in virtue of having certain capacities or powers that the latter lack. As opposed to their non-living counterparts, living beings can sustain their own metabolism and procreate; depending on their level of sophistication, they can also move around and have perceptions, or even engage in rational thinking and know necessary truths. There was no doubt for scholastic philosophers that there is a close relation between the soul or principle of life and the distinctive capacities of living beings. The question was: What kind of relation?

Given the close relation between the soul and its capacities, a simple answer suggests itself: the soul is simply identical to its powers. Let us call this the identity view. In fact, this view seems like a pretty elegant solution. Identifying the soul with its powers is not only ontologically parsimonious, but also provides a neat and straightforward explanation of why living beings are always equipped with a set of distinctive vital and/or cognitive capacities. These capacities, the identity theorist can argue, are simply a feature of the soul or principle of life. It should thus come as no surprise that the identity view had a number of scholastic proponents.¹⁵

However, the identity view also had many critics, who argued that the powers of the soul are really distinct from the soul itself. Let us call this view the real-distinction view of the soul and its powers. Thomas Aquinas was (or at least was considered to have been) an early but influential defender of this view.¹⁶ What is more important for our concerns is that Suárez endorsed the real-distinction view as well. What were his reasons to prefer the apparently more contentious real-distinction view over the simple and neat identity view about the relation between the soul and its powers?

In order to understand Suárez’s argument for the real-distinction view, we need first to be clear about its conclusion. What does it mean to say that the powers of the soul are “really distinct” from the soul itself? Unlike for Descartes, whose conception of the originally scholastic real distinction is quite well known today, a real distinction between x and y for Suárez does not imply the mutual separability of x and y, such that x and y could exist independently of one another. According to Suárez, mutual separability is only a “sign” (i.e. a sufficient condition) of being really distinct. In fact, Suárez gives three examples of real distinctions that hold between res (literally, things) that cannot exist independently of one another: (i) the real distinction of creatures from God, which involves only one-way separability; and (ii) the real distinction of a real relation from its relata and (iii) the real distinction of the three Persons of the Trinity, which both involve mutual inseparability.¹⁷ Rather than being characterized by mutual separability, a real distinction is for Suárez a distinction that holds between two res, where res are entities that “have in reality distinct essences either numerically, if they are only numerically distinct, or specifically or generically, if they are said to be essentially distinct.”¹⁸ This view is remarkable in that it relies on the assumption of individual essences (which are merely numerically distinct from one another). However, it allows us to articulate Suárez’s conception of a real distinction as follows:

(RD) x is really distinct from y if and only if the essence of x completely differs from the essence of y.

On the basis of (RD), we can put Suárez’s real distinction view more perspicuously. His claim that the powers of the soul are really distinct from the soul amounts to saying simply that the essence of the powers of the soul are entirely different from the essence of the soul itself. In this formulation Suárez’s real distinction view sounds far less contentious, and it can be defended with a simple argument:

These powers, insofar as they are powers, have a different nature and definition than the soul, insofar as it is a soul. Therefore, they are really distinct. The antecedent holds because the soul, insofar as it is a soul, is essentially directed towards the body, while the power, insofar as it is a power, is essentially directed towards its operation.¹⁹

The soul, according to Suárez (and any serious Aristotelian), is defined as the form of the human body. Its powers, by contrast, are defined as causes or principles of certain cognitive or vital operations. Insofar as the definition of a thing expresses its essence, and insofar as the definition of the soul does not refer to the definition of its powers, nor vice versa, we must conclude that the soul and its powers have entirely distinct essences. Given (RD), this is equivalent to saying that the powers of the soul are really distinct from the soul itself.

Suárez thus has good reasons to assume that the soul and its powers are distinct res (things) with different essences. But Suárez goes further, arguing that they are res belonging to different Aristotelian categories. Since it is the form of a living body, the soul is an essential constituent of a living substance, and so Suárez takes the soul to belong to the category of substance.²⁰ The powers of the soul, by contrast, are accidents that naturally exist in or inhere in the soul; more precisely, Suárez argues, they are qualities or accidents belonging to the category of quality. His reason for thinking so consists in his view that the powers of the soul manifest in cognitive and vital operations, which are themselves qualities, and his acceptance of the Aristotelian slogan that “act and potency belong to the same category,” which he takes to imply that a power must belong to the same category as its manifestations.²¹ All this provides him with a neat argument to the effect that, unlike the soul itself, the powers of the soul are accidents in the category of quality.

Being accidents or qualities of the soul, the powers of the soul inhere in the soul. However, the powers of the soul are not just any old accidents which the soul could happen to exhibit or not. After all, they are precisely the capacities by which living beings are distinguished from non-living beings. Accordingly, the powers of the soul are proper accidents, or propria, of the soul, which follow from the soul’s essence and which the soul cannot naturally lack. Now, such proper accidents bear an especially close relation to their underlying substance or substantial form. Suárez explains:

Accidental properties, especially those that follow upon or are owed [to a substance] by reason of its form, are caused by the substance not only as a material cause or final cause, but also as an efficient cause through a natural resulting.²²

Unlike other accidents then, proper accidents in general and the powers of the soul in particular stand in multiple causal relations to their underlying substance or form. With respect to its proper accidents or powers, the soul figures not only as their material cause (insofar as they inhere in the soul) and final cause (insofar as the powers serve the soul to attain its natural end and thus exist for the sake of the soul’s perfection), but also as their “efficient cause through a natural resulting.”

This raises at least two questions: (a) What does this natural resulting (resultantia naturalis) or natural resultance (resultatio naturalis) consist in? And (b) why should we assume that the powers of the soul (or propria in general) “naturally result” from their underlying substantial form? Now, the passage just quoted already suggests an answer in response to question (a): natural resultance is a species of efficient causation. But what is efficient causation for Suárez, and how does natural resultance differ from other species of efficient causation?

Suárez defines an efficient cause as “an extrinsic cause, that is, a cause that does not communicate its proper and individual being to the effect (as it were), but another being that really flows forth and emanates from such a cause by means of an action.”²³ Thus, unlike internal causes or constituents, an efficient cause does not give rise to an entity by being a component of it, thereby contributing its own or “proper and individual being” to the resulting entity; rather, an efficient cause gives rise to a being distinct from itself “by means of an action.” In other words, efficient causes are principles of production for Suárez—that is, they are principles that bring about entities distinct from themselves.²⁴ Generally speaking, therefore, efficient causation amounts to production. On this basis, it can be distinguished into different species by reference to the different types of entities involved in this production: in standard cases of efficient causation, efficient causes bring about entities of the same ontological type. Thus, accidental forms are efficient causes of other accidental forms, as when the (accidental quality of) heat of one body causes another body to be hot (i.e. to have the accidental quality of heat), and substantial forms are efficient causes of other substantial forms, as when rabbits generate other rabbits. There is, however, another species of efficient causality, which manifests when a substantial form gives rise to an accidental form.²⁵ This is precisely the case of natural resultance, which holds in the case of the soul giving rise to its proper accidents or powers. Natural resultance thus is a species of efficient causation that is characterized by proceeding from a substantial form (such as the soul) and resulting in an accident (such as the powers of the soul).

We can now take up the second question (b) mentioned above: Why should we assume that the powers of the soul (or propria in general) are efficiently caused by their underlying substantial form? Suárez’s answer to this question is straightforward: “Such accidental forms or propria are res distinct from the substance; therefore […] it is necessary that they be produced through a distinct action.”²⁶ Since propria are genuine res that are distinct from their underlying substance and substantial form, their coming into existence amounts to an increase of being: if the world contained only bare souls or barely ensouled bodies, as it were, it would contain fewer things or res and accordingly have less ontological weight than it actually has, given that actual souls are equipped with powers. And insofar as these propria amount to a genuine addition of being (souls equipped with powers put more on the ontological scales than bare souls would), their existence requires an explanation in terms of efficient causation: for (finite) res can exist only if they are produced, according to Suárez.²⁷ Given that propria are accidents that naturally belong to their substances and “follow upon or are owed to them by reason of their form,” it seems only reasonable to assume that they are brought about by their underlying forms.

The important point to note for our general discussion of Suárez’s treatment of typical cases of grounding is that he takes the powers of the soul to be “grounded” in their underlying soul in the sense of being “owed to” the soul’s essence as a principle of life that accounts for beings being living beings. However, since Suárez takes these powers to be genuine res that are distinct from their underlying souls, he also maintains that they have genuine ontological weight in their own right which requires an explanation in terms of efficient causation. This he spells out in terms of his theory of natural resultance.

13.3 Suárez’s Theory of Propositional Truth

Let us turn to Suárez’s treatment of the second core example of grounding, namely, the dependence of a truth on the things or facts it is about. The idea that truths are posterior to or dependent on the things or facts they are about is an old and venerable one, and was already famously articulated by Aristotle who wrote that “it is not because we think truly that you are pale, that you are pale; but because you are pale, we who say this have the truth.”²⁸ It is therefore no surprise that, appealing to this famous passage, Suárez endorses this idea as well, though he couches it in more technical vocabulary, holding that “there is a res that founds the truth according to the principle of Aristotle [who holds that] ‘On account of a res being or not, an opinion is true or false.’”²⁹

There is thus a Suárezian analogue to the contemporary claim that the truth that p is grounded in p. It reads: “A truth about a res is founded in this res.” But how exactly are we to understand this claim? Or more precisely, what does a truth’s foundedness in a res consist in? The answer to these questions can be given only on the basis of Suárez’s theory of truth. In the remainder of this section I will therefore provide a brief reconstruction of this theory. This will help us to determine the precise meaning of Suárez’s view that truths are founded in res (a task that I will take up below).

What does truth for Suárez consist in? If the question were posed in this way, Suárez would reject it as ambiguous, since he takes care to distinguish between different types of truth. In particular, he distinguishes between the type of truth that is to be found “in the things themselves by which they are called true”³⁰ (which we express by utterances like ‘This is not true gold’ or ‘She is a true friend’), and the type of truth that is found “in the intellect that cognizes things or in the cognition or conception of these things”³¹ (which we express by utterances like ‘The belief that gold is a noble metal is true’).³² Now, these two types of truth—let us call them ontological truth and propositional truth respectively—are obviously distinct, and so require different accounts. The type of truth relevant for understanding Suárez’s view that truths are founded in res is propositional truth, or “truth in cognition” as he calls it. In what follows, I will therefore focus only on this type of truth. What then does propositional truth for Suárez consist in?

We already know that, for Suárez, propositional truth is something to be found “in the intellect that cognizes things or in the cognition or conception of these things” and thus is something that is to be attributed to occurrent cognitions or cognitive acts. We do not yet know what this truth assigned to cognitions really consists in, or what we attribute to cognitive acts when we call them true. Suárez poses this question about the metaphysics of truth by asking: “What does truth add to an act that is called true?”³³ Or in other words: What is it that a true cognitive act has that a false act lacks?

Given that ‘being true’ is a monadic predicate that applies to cognitions, it is natural to assume that it designates a non-relational or “absolute” property of these cognitions. According to Suárez, however, this assumption runs into irresolvable problems. This is best seen in the following line of argument.³⁴ If the truth of a cognition really adds an absolute or non-relational property to the cognitive act that is said to be true, then this property must be a res that is distinct from the act itself. For this res there are two possibilities: either it is separable from the cognitive act or it is not. If it is not separable, then the additional res of truth is postulated for no reason. In order to avoid this awkward conclusion, then, we would be well advised to adopt the view that the truth of a cognition is separable from the cognition. At first sight, this seems promising, since many cognitions can change their truth value without undergoing an intrinsic change: just think of tensed thoughts (e.g. ‘Suárez is writing a book’) that are true at some points in time and false at others.³⁵ However, this choice turns out to be problematic because the truth of a cognition, even if it is conceived of as really distinct from the cognition itself, varies in correspondence with the world and the way things are. It thus seems awkward to construe truth as an absolute or non-relational property.

This consideration naturally suggests that truth is a real relation—that is, a relation between the cognition and the world—one which seems to be most naturally conceived in terms of correspondence. Is truth a real relation, then? Suárez opposed this view too. His reason for his opposition can be rendered in the form of the following argument:³⁶

• (1) For all true cognitive acts, the nature of their (propositional) truth is the same.

• (2) For a real relation R(x, y) to obtain its relata x and y (its “subject” and “terminus”) must exist.

• (3) There are truths about non-existent or even impossible objects.

• (C) Therefore, the truth of a cognitive act does not consist in a real relation.

Suárez’s reasoning is valid. Given (2) that a real relation requires the existence of its relata and (3) the existence of truths that are about non-existent or even impossible entities (e.g. ‘Chimeras are fictional entities’), truth cannot consist generally in real relations. And if we assume (1) that the nature of (propositional) truth is the same in all of its instances, we are bound to say (C) that the truth of a cognitive act does not consist in a real relation.

Let me address the question of the soundness of Suárez’s argument by briefly commenting on its premises. Suárez’s expresses his first premise (1) by writing that “truth has to be of the same nature in all cases.”³⁷ This strikes me as quite plausible. First of all, it is a legitimate default assumption with respect to any predication of the form ‘x is F’ that it has the same meaning in all its instances, and thus always designates the same thing. In the case of truth, logic imposes further pressure on us to accept that ‘x is true’ means the same thing in all cases, for otherwise it would not be clear, for instance, what kind of truth we would have to assign to a conjunctive thought or proposition of the form ‘p and q’ if its constitutive thoughts p and q were true in different senses.³⁸

Suárez’s second premise (2) is simply a restatement of the widely shared late scholastic conception of a real relation. On this conception, a real relation is a binary relation R that holds between two really distinct relata x and y, which are referred to as the subject and terminus of this relation respectively.³⁹ Now, it is also part of the definition of a real relation—as opposed to a merely conceptual relation—that the relata of a real relation really exist (and are not merely thought of).⁴⁰

Suárez’s third premise (3), finally, is no more than an obvious observation. There are innumerable truths about non-existent or even impossible objects, though Suárez provides only the example of the judgement ‘A chimera is a fictional being.’⁴¹ But of course one example is sufficient to make the point that there are truths about non-existent or even impossible objects.⁴²

Insofar as these three premises entail that truth is not a real relation, we are thrown back to our initial question as to what truth adds to a cognitive act that is called true. Given that there seem to be no ontological candidates for truth as something added to a cognitive act other than an absolute property or accident on the one hand and a real relation on the other, another answer naturally suggests itself: truth does not add anything real to a cognitive act that is called true. But what then is truth if it is not something real? Is it nothing at all? Suárez’s response to this problem is short and concise:

The truth of a cognition does not add anything real and intrinsic beyond the act itself, but simply connotes an object being such as it is represented by the act.⁴³

Short and concise, indeed—but not particularly lucid, at least at first glance. In light of this, it is no surprise that Suárez’s cryptic remark on the matter sparked a big debate after him about the nature of truth.⁴⁴ But the case is not that hopeless: fortunately, Suárez says more about his view which helps us to present his position more perspicuously. An important hint comes from his defence of this view, which follows immediately after he states it:

The assertion ‘An act is true’ says more than [the assertion] ‘An act is’; but it does not refer to anything absolute or relative beyond the act […]; therefore, it cannot add anything apart from the mentioned connotation or denomination that arises from the connection or conjunction of such an act and object.⁴⁵

In this passage, Suárez not only explains that his view follows from the elimination of viable alternatives, but also clarifies the view itself. Since, as we have seen above, the predicate ‘is true’ as applied to a cognitive act cannot be taken to refer to an absolute property of the act, nor to a relative property of the act, we should not construe the predicate ‘is true’ as referring to a single entity at all. Rather, it should be conceived as a “denomination that arises from the conjunction of the cognitive act and its object.” Now, this might appear to be not much clearer than Suárez’s first statement of his view, but it can be unpacked by explaining the scholastic technical vocabulary it is couched in.

Suárez says that truth is (or ‘is true’ adds) a denomination. In scholastic parlance, a denomination is a characterization of something x by reference to a form F. A denomination is classified as an intrinsic denomination if the form F by which x is characterized is in x or inheres in x; a denomination is called extrinsic if the characterizing form F does not inhere in x. An example of an intrinsic denomination is ‘Socrates is pale’, since it characterizes Socrates by reference to a form (his pallor) that inheres in him. An example of an extrinsic denomination is ‘Socrates is seen by Kallias’, since it characterizes Socrates by reference to a form (a cognitive act of seeing) that does not inhere in him (rather, it inheres in Kallias).

Despite what modern commentators sometimes suggest, a denomination is—like a characterization—not necessarily a linguistic affair (i.e. something that requires a speaker or thinker to actually make a judgement about something). In fact, there were late scholastic debates about whether denominations are mind-dependent phenomena or not, and both positions were defended.⁴⁶ Suárez clearly sides with the realist position, maintaining that “if a denomination is taken from a real form, by this very fact it exists in reality, and consequently it does not pertain to beings of reason.”⁴⁷ In reply to the anticipated objection that “denominations” are beings of reasons, or mind-dependent entities, because a denomination is a description or “imposition of a name,” which is carried out by a mind, Suárez explains that this is precisely the wrong way of conceiving of denominations:

You will say that, in virtue of being a mere denomination, it cannot be more than a being of reason, for denomination is the work of reason. I respond: if by ‘denomination’ someone were to understand the imposition of a denominative name, that indeed is a work of reason. But now we are not concerned with the imposition of names, for in this way even an intrinsic denomination is a work of reason, considered as the imposition of a denominative name. But we are concerned with the unions and relations (habitudines) of things themselves, in which such denominative names are founded. These are not works of reason.⁴⁸

As is clear from this passage, denominations, for Suárez, are not mere descriptions or mind-dependent entities, but objective characterizations of things with respect to their mutual unions and relations, as Suárez puts it. They are something like objective states of affairs, or facts, which are not themselves descriptions but can be traced by such descriptions and set the objective standard of their adequacy or truth.⁴⁹

According to Suárez, the denomination or objective characterization referred to in calling a true cognition true does not arise from a single form. Rather, he explains, it arises from “the conjunction of the cognitive act and its object.” In scholastic parlance, the “object” of a cognitive act is its intentional object—the object that a cognitive act or thought is about. This object has either real existence, if it exists outside the mind, or only “intentional or objective existence,” if it exists only as the object of a cognitive act or power.⁵⁰ The truth of a cognitive act therefore depends on two things:

For truth, a representation alone is not sufficient if the object is not as represented; nor is the concomitance of the object sufficient for the denomination of truth, unless one presupposes the mentioned representation, or rather a representation including that denomination; for truth is not only that extrinsic denomination, but includes an intrinsic relation (habitudo) of the act terminating at the object that is in this way.⁵¹

This passage starts from an obvious observation that is best explained by an example. Take the (true) thought that the book on my table is red. The truth of this thought or cognitive act obviously depends on two things: a thought with a distinctive representational content on the one hand and (represented) things being in a certain way on the other. If we have just the thought that the book on my table is red, but if the book is not in fact red, the thought will fail to be true. Conversely, if the book on my table is red but no one ever comes to entertain the thought that it is red, then there is no true thought about the book on my table being red. However, the conclusion that Suárez draws from this observation is more contentious. Since the truth of a cognition depends on these two things, it is not only an extrinsic denomination but includes an intrinsic element as well—namely, the act’s internal relatedness to an object that is as it is represented. I take this to imply that truth for Suárez is neither a purely extrinsic denomination nor a purely intrinsic one, but a kind of a mixed denomination which includes both extrinsic and intrinsic elements.⁵²

To illustrate this point, consider again the true cognitive act that the book on my table is red. In calling this act true, I characterize this act both intrinsically and extrinsically. I characterize it intrinsically insofar as I describe it as an act being about the book on my table being red, which is an intrinsic characteristic of this act. At the same time, by calling this act true, I characterize it extrinsically insofar as I refer to something that is external to this act—namely, the extra-mental fact that the book on my table is red. In this sense, truth consists in a mixed denomination for Suárez: it involves the intrinsic denomination of an act as being about a certain object and an extrinsic denomination of this object really existing in the way it is represented by the act. Or as Suárez puts it at another point:

The denomination ‘formally and actually true’ obtains in reality, indeed, without any fiction of the intellect. […] Nonetheless, it is not an entirely intrinsic denomination, but partially from an intrinsic form and partially connoting the coexistence with or concomitance of the object being such as it is judged by the cognition.⁵³

In line with his realist conception of denominations, Suárez takes truth to be an objective characterization of a cognitive act, consisting of the specific (and intrinsic) intentional object of this act and the real existence of this object outside the act. Truth is then simply the coexistence or conjunction of a cognitive act with the content that p with p. This is precisely what a true cognitive act has and what a false one lacks: coexistence with its object actually being as the cognition judges it to be.

So much for Suárez’s theory of truth. It will be key for determining the precise sense in which the truth about a res is “founded” in this res according to Suárez. Before taking up this task, let me end this section by addressing a pressing worry raised by Suárez’s theory of truth. Does his view that the truth of a cognitive act is nothing but the coexistence of this act with its object not fall prey to the very objection he launched against the real relation view about truth? Recall that according to this objection, truth cannot generally be a real relation because there are many truths about non-existent or even impossible objects, such as the (alleged) truth that a chimera is a fictional entity. And since a real relation R(x, y) cannot exist unless its relata x and y exist, truths about a chimera cannot consist in a real relation, due to the fact that chimeras do not and even cannot exist. But if chimeras cannot exist, they cannot coexist with cognitive acts about them either. Thus, given that there are truths about non-existent or even impossible things, it seems that the truth of a cognition cannot consist in the coexistence of this act and its object, for in the cases just mentioned the object does not really exist. It seems therefore that Suárez’s theory of truth as a mixed denomination is as untenable as the view he rejects, according to which truth is a real relation.

Though comprehensible, this worry is ultimately unfounded. For unlike the real-relation view of truth, Suárez’s mixed-denomination view does not require the object of a cognitive act to really exist or—which amounts to the same thing for Suárez—to exist as a real being. Instead, Suárez is careful to note that the predicate ‘is true’ only “connotes the coexistence with or concomitance of the object being such as it is judged by the cognition.”⁵⁴ Accordingly, the truth of the thought ‘Chimeras are fictional entities’ does not presuppose the real existence of chimeras or the existence of real chimeras. It requires only that chimeras be fictional entities or beings of reason; and insofar as they are in fact beings of reasons or fictional entities, the thought ‘Chimeras are fictional entities’ is true. Hence, Suárez’s mixed-denomination view of truth is not vulnerable to the objection against the real-relation view, nor is it reducible to it.

13.4 Natural Resultance and Foundation: Two Kinds of Grounding?

Suárez agrees with Aristotle and present-day defenders of grounding that the truth of a cognition is dependent on or “founded in” its object. He writes: “There is a res that founds the truth according to the principle of Aristotle, [who holds that] ‘On account of a res being or not, an opinion is true or false.’”⁵⁵ The question we face now is: What does this “foundation” that Suárez is talking about consist in? In what precise sense is a truth about an object founded in this object?

Suárez’s theory of truth as the coexistence of a cognitive act with its object as represented by the act suggests a neat answer to this question. The truth of a cognitive act is founded in the existence of its object as represented by the act insofar as the truth of the act is partially composed of or co-constituted by the existence of this object. The existence of the object as represented by the cognitive act founds this act’s truth by being a proper part or constituent of it. This is because, on Suárez’s mixed-denomination view, the truth of a cognition is simply the conjunction or coexistence of a cognitive act and its object, so that these two things together constitute or compose the truth of a cognitive act.

This suggestive answer might face a difficulty: foundation is, for Suárez—as grounding is for contemporary metaphysicians—an asymmetric affair. After all, by declaring that a truth is founded in its object, Suárez wants to do justice to the Aristotelian principle that “on account of a res being or not, an opinion is true or false,” and not vice versa. However, coexistence is symmetric: if x coexists with y, y coexists with x. It is thus not at all clear how the asymmetric dependence of a truth on the existence of its object—the fact that a truth is founded in its object—could be explained by the fact that the truth of cognition consists in the coexistence of this cognition with its object. In fact, it seems that a symmetric affair like coexistence cannot account for an asymmetric dependence. The truth of a cognition is partially constituted not only by its object, but also by this very cognition. Why then aren’t we equally entitled to say that the existence of a true cognition “founds” the existence of its object? Given that truth is nothing more than the conjunction of a cognition with its object, the existence of a true cognition entails or necessitates the existence of its object. So why not say that the existence of this object is founded in the truth of a cognition?

On reflection, this problem dissolves, and what might at first seem like a rhetorical question turns out to have a clear answer: Even if truth is simply the coexistence of a cognition with its object (as Suárez’s mixed-denomination view has it), this is not sufficient to establish an explanatory connection between the truth of a cognition and the existence of its object. This is because the truth of a cognition consists in the coexistence of this cognition with its object. And in general, a class of coexisting objects does not explain the existence of its members (but rather presupposes it): if it is asked why A exists, it is not a satisfactory answer to say that this is because A and B exist. For this reason, Suárez’s mixed-denomination view of truth does not force us to concede that the existence of the object of a cognition is founded on its truth.

Quite to the contrary. The general explanatory connections between classes of coexisting objects and their members help explaining why Suárez’s mixed-denomination view is sufficient to establish an asymmetric explanatory connection between the truth of a cognition and the existence of its object. While members of mere-coexistence classes are not explained by the classes to which they belong, the converse does hold: these classes are explained by the coexistence of their members (A and B coexist because A exists and B exists). Since the truth of a cognition just is, according to Suárez, the coexistence of this cognition with its object, it is explained by its two members: the existence of the cognitive act on the one hand, and the existence of its object on the other. In this vein, Suárez’s mixed-denomination view of truth neatly accounts for the asymmetric explanatory connection between the truth of a cognition and its object. In asking “Why is this cognition true?” we presuppose that the cognition in question already exists; otherwise it would make no sense to ask for one of its properties, such as its being true. Given that the truth of a cognition is nothing but the coexistence of this cognition with its object, our question about the truth of a cognition is conclusively answered by appeal to the existence of the object of this cognition. For this is all it takes for a cognition to be true: the existence of this cognition and its object.

At least in the case of truth, then, foundation for Suárez is a non-causal explanatory connection between a cognition and the existence of its object as represented by its cognition, which is established by the very nature of truth as explicated by his mixed-denomination view. The truth of a cognition is founded in its object simply because this is what truth is according to this view: the coexistence of this cognition with its object. Correspondingly, the truth of a cognition is not an additional entity over and above this cognition and the existence of its object: it is simply the coexistence of these two things.

Returning to the contemporary distinction between mereological nihilism, restrictivism, and universalism helps to make Suárez’s stance about the ontological status of truth even more perspicuous. In terms of these distinctions, I take Suárez to be a mereological nihilist with respect to coexistence classes. That is, for Suárez, if a and b coexist there are only two entities—namely, a and b—and no additional third entity called the “coexistence class of a and b.” I opt for this nihilist interpretation because Suárez makes clear in DM 7 that the only real beings he has ontological room for are res and modes, and clearly the coexistence class of a and b is neither really nor modally distinct from a and b.⁵⁶ To this extent, then, the truth of a cognition is not an entity over and above this cognition and the existence of its object.⁵⁷

This is different in the case of natural resultance, by which vital or cognitive faculties are related to their underlying soul. Unlike the kind of foundation that Suárez postulates in the case of truth, he construes natural resultance as a species of efficient causation. As we saw above, his reason for doing so consists in his conviction that vital or cognitive capacities or powers are res that are distinct from their underlying soul. As distinct entities, their coming into existence amounts to a genuine increase in being, and such an increase in being requires an explanation in terms of efficient causation.

We can thus note two closely linked differences between Suárez’s account of natural resultance and his account of the foundation in the case of truth. First, while truth, for Suárez, is nothing over and above a cognition’s coexistence with its object as represented by this cognition, vital or cognitive powers are res that are really distinct from their underlying soul, and are thereby entities whose existence marks a genuine increase in being. Accordingly, Suárez construes their dependence on their soul as a causal dependence that he spells out in terms of natural resultance. A truth’s dependence on its object, by contrast, is construed as a non-causal dependence that he spells out in terms of foundation.

Secondly, these two forms of metaphysical dependence display another important difference: a difference with respect to their respective sources. A truth’s foundation in the existence of its object is due to the very nature of truth: a truth is founded in the existence of its object, since truth is nothing but the coexistence of a cognition with its object, and so the truth of a cognitive act obtains when and because its object obtains. The powers of the soul, by contrast, are grounded in the soul in virtue of the nature of the soul, by which it tends to emanate or give rise to its powers by means of natural resultance. We can thus say that while foundation is a “backward-looking” dependence relation (rooted in the nature of the truth grounded by it), natural resultance is a “forward-looking” dependence relation (rooted in the soul that grounds its capacities by it).

Equipped with this deeper understanding of Suárez’s account of vital powers and truth, we can finally return to my initial question about the plausibility of adopting a general substantialist or deflationist conception of grounding and the striking observation that motivated my journey through Suárez’s theory of natural resultance and foundation in the first place. This observation, recall, consists in a striking mixture of agreement and disagreement among twenty-first-century defenders of grounding on the one hand and Francisco Suárez on the other. With certain important qualifications, their agreement concerns the acceptance of certain core claims of metaphysical dependence or grounding such as:

• (1) Dispositions or powers are grounded in their categorical basis.

• (2) The truth of the proposition or sentence that snow is white is grounded snow’s being white.

Qualifications are required, since Suárez would not subscribe to exactly these claims, but to close cousins of them. For contrary to claim (1), Suárez does not hold that all powers are grounded in other properties. In fact, he holds that every res has by its nature a distinctive causal profile and is thereby equipped with irreducible dispositional features, which are thus not really distinct from their bases. However, he thinks that there is an important subclass of powers, most notably the vital or cognitive powers of the soul, which are really distinct from their bearers and are grounded in them. Accordingly, Suárez holds only that:

(1′) The powers of the soul are grounded in their soul (or form of the living body).

While (1′) clearly differs from (1), it still seems legitimate to construe claim (1′) as a restricted version of (1), such that it seems fair to say that Suárez and contemporary metaphysicians agree in at least this much:

(1″) Our vital and cognitive capacities are grounded in certain other occurrent features of our being.

When it comes to propositional truth, Suárez construes specific mental occurrences—namely, acts of cognition—as the primary truth-bearers. Accordingly, he would prefer to talk about claim (2′) instead of claim (2):

(2′) The truth of the cognition that snow is white is grounded in snow being white.

However, given that everyone would concede that cognitions too can be true (though perhaps not fundamentally so, since they are true only in virtue of expressing a true proposition), it is safe to say that Suárez and contemporary advocates of grounding agree on (2′).

Despite this striking agreement about claims (1″) and (2′), there is a striking disagreement when it comes to spelling out these grounding claims. Regardless of the many views debated in the contemporary literature on the metaphysics of grounding, participants in this debate seem to agree that claims (1) and (2) are examples of one and the same metaphysical phenomenon, which can therefore be univocally described in terms of “grounding.” To be sure, there is disagreement about the nature of grounding: substantialists, for instance, believe that if y is grounded in x, it is an entity distinct from x, while deflationists hold that x is not an additional genuine entity, but only that there is true talk of y which can be fully vindicated in terms of x. Moreover, there is disagreement about the source of grounding: while “backward-lookers” claim that y’s being grounded in x is due to the nature of y, “forward-lookers” contend that y’s being grounded in x is due rather to x.⁵⁸ For all that, they take grounding to be a uniform phenomenon, and accordingly defend their respective positions for all cases of grounding.

Here Suárez strongly disagrees. In his view, (1′) and (2′) are cases of metaphysically distinct phenomena: That vital or cognitive powers are grounded in their underlying soul (1′) is due to a form of natural resultance, which Suárez analyses in terms of efficient causation. As seen above, Suárez’s reason for doing so consists in the fact that he conceives of these powers as entities that are really distinct from their soul such that their coming to be is a genuine increase in being, which he takes to require an efficient causal explanation. Moreover, Suárez construes this natural resultance as a “forward-looking” relation: it is due to the nature of the soul that it tends to emanate its cognitive and vital powers. By contrast, a truth’s being grounded in things being a certain way (2′), is to be understood as a case of foundation, according to Suárez, which in turn is construed as a form of composition or constitution. On Suárez’s mixed-denomination view of truth, the truth of a cognition is nothing more than the coexistence of this cognition with its object as represented by the cognition. Accordingly, truth is not a distinct entity apart from the cognition and its object, nor, for that reason, is it to be construed as a causal relation. Quite to the contrary: unlike causal relations, which arise from the nature of causes, the foundation of truth is “backward-looking”: it is due to the nature of truth that the truth of a cognition is founded in the (co)existence of the cognition’s object.

What are we to make of this striking disagreement between Suárez and contemporary advocates of grounding? Does the case of Suárez prove that there are different kinds of grounding? Given that there is no consensus about what grounding amounts to, there is no clear and easy answer to this question, for there are no shared criteria for what something should be like in order to count as a kind or species of grounding. As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, participants in the debate were for a long time adamant that grounding is a non-causal form of dependence, and on this view it would be wrong to classify Suárez’s natural resultance as a kind of grounding, since it is spelled out in terms of efficient causation. However, in light of the fact that it has become a viable theoretical option to conceive of grounding as a species of causation after all,⁵⁹ there seems to be no principled reason not to conceive of Suárez’s natural resultance as a kind of grounding.

Be this as it may, there are at least two lessons about today’s core instances of grounding to be drawn from Suárez’s considerations that we can state without getting entangled in terminological difficulties. First, Suárez’s theory of natural resultance and of the foundation of truth makes a powerful case for it being a live possibility that explanatory metaphysical dependences that are naturally expressed by grounding (or “in virtue of”) claims should not be construed as a metaphysically uniform phenomenon. Perhaps such grounding claims express a range of different forms of metaphysical dependence, which differ in both their nature and their source.

Second, Suárez’s theory of natural resultance provides an interesting challenge to substantialists. Virtually all substantialists hold that grounding is a non-causal form of dependence. But how then can they claim that what is grounded is an additional entity that is distinct from its ground? To be sure, many of them hasten to add that grounded entities are “ontologically free lunch.” Nevertheless, they are entities, and though their serving might be free, they are still servings. At least with respect to concrete entities, I find Suárez’s considerations quite convincing: either x is ontologically distinct from y or not, but if it is, it seems to make an ontological difference such that a world containing x but not y (or vice versa) contains less than a world containing x and y does. Accordingly, the existence of y amounts to an increase in being vis-à-vis the existence of x; and at least with respect to concrete entities, an increase of being seems to call for production or efficient causation. I take this to be a formidable challenge.

13.5 Conclusion

In this chapter I have shown that a look at the great late scholastic metaphysician Francisco Suárez may help in challenging an almost universally acknowledged presupposition of the contemporary grounding debate, namely, that grounding is a uniform kind of metaphysical dependence. In Suárez’s view, two core examples of grounding—(1) that capacities are grounded in categorical features of their bearers, and (2) that the truth of a proposition or cognition is grounded in its object—require a rather different metaphysical analysis. While certain cases of (1)—specifically, the case of vital capacities being grounded in their underlying soul—hold, according to Suárez, because of a “forward-looking” natural resultance, which in turn is to be construed in terms of efficient causation, cases of (2) hold due to a “backward-looking” form of foundation, which, based on his mixed-denomination view of truth, Suárez construes as a kind of constitution or composition. It goes without saying that few, if any, contemporary defenders of grounding would be willing to accept Suárez’s late Aristotelian model of the soul and its powers or his account of truth. But this is not to the point. At least as I see it, the interesting challenge to be gleaned from Suárez’s considerations explored in this chapter consists in the fact that they make a formidable case that it is at least epistemically possible that there are instances of (1) and (2) that require different metaphysical treatments; and as long as such possibilities are not ruled out as being genuine metaphysical possibilities, they should inform our metaphysical theorizing.

As is the case with many historical authors, examining Suárez’s philosophy is not only rewarding in itself, inasmuch as his philosophy provides a fascinating and sophisticated system of thought. Engaging with Suárez is also rewarding for anyone interested in purely metaphysical questions, for his sophisticated considerations remind us of important theoretical options and alternatives which are missing in the contemporary debate. Even if we might ultimately reject these alternatives as untenable, not adopting these alternatives should not be due merely to our ignorance of them.⁶⁰