Åke Gafvelin: Grounding and the Rule of Law

Abstract

It is commonly held that some facts are derivative, whereas others are fundamental, and that the derivative facts derive from the fundamental facts in accordance with certain grounding laws (see Rosen 2010: 131; Schaffer 2017).

Non-Humeans often hold that these laws play a sui generis role in deriving derivative facts, and that they also have a sui generis status: that is, they stand outside the grounding-hierarchy and are not apt for grounding (see Bader 2020; Moran 2025: Dasgupta 2014). Call the conjunction of these claims the thesis that grounding laws are sui generis.

In this talk, I argue that if grounding laws are sui generis, then laws are best understood as rules of inference (see Litland 2017; Poggiolesi 2020). The rule-based analysis of metaphysical laws is typically taken to be metaphysically deflationary (Litland 2020: 139-40; Haderlie 2026: 2fn1) and wedded to a Humean conception of laws.

However, if the aforementioned is right, then such an analysis also follows from a non-Humean conception of laws. In the face of this deflationary collapse, I show how the non-Humean can retain the thesis that laws are metaphysically substantive.