This project explores a new approach to the mind-body problem in terms of the notion of “metaphysical grounding”. The notion of “grounding” is that of metaphysical dependence: for one thing to be grounded in another is for one thing to depend on another for its existence and its nature. The core idea, therefore, is that the mental should be viewed as grounded in the physical. The mind is thus conceived as both autonomous from the physical, in line with traditional forms of dualism, as well as metaphysically dependent on the physical, in line with traditional forms of physicalism. Moreover, by developing the novel idea that grounding relations can be metaphysically contingent, , the project makes room for a form of physicalism that also captures the central dualist insight that the mental and the physical are only contingently connected. On the resulting view, reality is conceived as having a ‘layered’ or ‘hierarchical’ structure. The mental realm is then conceived as contingently grounded in the fundamental physical realm. The central question in the mind-body debate can then be captured, not by asking whether the connection between the mental and the physical is contingent, but rather by inquiring into the nature of the physical itself, and asking whether the mental can plausibly be regarded as grounded in the physical, and what the priority relations between the mental and the physical actually are.
      There has been much interest in the notion of grounding in the recent metaphysics literature. Moreover, several philosophers have suggested that an important form of non-reductive physicalism can be captured in terms of it. However, the details of this position are yet to be fully explored and adequately theorised. Accordingly, the project develops a fully worked-out version of this view, by considering how to properly formulate it, what its central motivations are, and what distinctive challenges it faces. The project demonstrates that ‘grounding physicalism’ constitutes an attractive intermediate position between the more traditional forms of physicalism and the more plausible forms of dualism. In addition, it establishes a general metaphysical framework in terms of metaphysical grounding that enables us to make significant progress in a whole range of related areas in philosophy, including the analogous debate in meta-ethics about the relation between ethical and descriptive properties, as well as the more general debate about reductionism vs. anti-reductionism. The project will have a significant impact on, and important implications for, a wide range of areas in analytic philosophy (beyond just the mind-body debate), including key areas within the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and metaethics.