A Recipe for Non-wellfounded but Complete Chains of Explanations (and Other Determination Relations)

Consider a chain of explanation u_{1},u_{2},u_{3},\ldots where each item is fully explained by its successor. Suppose that the chain is non-wellfounded in the sense that it is either infinite or circular. Explanations here can be either causal explanations or grounding, metaphysical explanations. It is widely believed that such chains of explanation will always be incomplete, i.e. leave things to be explained, and many philosophers have considered this as a vice of non-wellfounded explanations, a vice they invoked to rule out such explanations. In this article, I argue that in some cases non-wellfounded are in fact complete. I also put forward both necessary and non-trivial sufficient conditions for the completeness of non-wellfounded explanations

Causal chain · Chain (unit) · Completeness (order theory) · Metaphysics · Recipe · Versa · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge