The Principle of Sufficient Reason.
I would like to ask about the historical development of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and if it is still in use in contemporary philosophy. For me to try and summarize the historical development of the Principle of Sufficient Reason would be a thesis worthy goal, and hence futile given my present abilities.
Here are some thoughts on the matter from actual philosophers in regards to Hume:
From.
Furthermore from a Kantian perspective:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.466.6677&rep=rep1&type=pdf
And finally the SEP entry on the PoSR.
Feel free not to be constrained by the above papers and text and give your insights about the issue in contemporary philosophy or your analysis of the PoSR if you encountered it in your philosophical inquiries.
Thanks.
*Fixed link to the Kantian paper.
Here are some thoughts on the matter from actual philosophers in regards to Hume:
This work is an investigation into the ground of the principle of sufficient reason. My original contribution is the claim that in David Hume's writing on causality we find an implicit treatment of the principle of sufficient reason. While Hume does not explicitly accept or deny the principle of sufficient reason, my claim is that in analyzing causality, Hume also provides us with an account of the principle of sufficient reason, since causality may be understood as the empirical manifestation of the more general principle of sufficient reason. I support my claim about Hume by presenting two opposed views of the principle of sufficient reason, that of Leibniz and Schopenhauer. In my exegesis of Leibniz and Schopenhauer, I show how Leibniz's presentation treats the principle of sufficient reason as legitimately metaphysical, and Schopenhauer in his dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason , treats the principle as a merely transcendental principle. These two polar views may be bridged, it is my claim, by looking to Hume's treatment of causality situated between them.
From.
Furthermore from a Kantian perspective:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.466.6677&rep=rep1&type=pdf
And finally the SEP entry on the PoSR.
Feel free not to be constrained by the above papers and text and give your insights about the issue in contemporary philosophy or your analysis of the PoSR if you encountered it in your philosophical inquiries.
Thanks.
*Fixed link to the Kantian paper.
Comments (164)
That sentiment that I've heard so many times is one of the primary reasons for my aversion of reading him. Besides, I have piss poor concentration, so I doubt I'll ever get past the first page of his The Principle of Reason.
This, in turn, is important because it means that the PoSR is indissociably linked with the question of individuation; on the fact that reasons bear on this individuated thing, and not something else.
Michael Della Rocca (a contemporary Spinoza expert) seems to think that the principle should be a central issue in philosophy, since for him - if it is true under some interpretation or other - then Spinoza's metaphysics follows (after some lengthy argument of course). The problem (and Della Rocca acknowledges this) is that we need an argument to show that the principle of reason is in fact true, and that is what appears to be lacking in most of the literature (he has a stab at it himself, but I'm not sure it is that convincing).
Here it is.
Please build on this or reference other papers if possible. It's been a great interest of mine to understand the PoSR, which seems so central to philosophical analysis.
I think using the term "cognition" here may be misleading, since it implies the very sort of Cartesianism which Heidegger so strongly rejected. In Heidegger's analysis, the cognition of a being is grounded in, and derivative of, a pre-theoretical disclosure of the world (of beings in Being) and not the other way around. To break out of the deeply entrenched subject-object dichotomy, in favor of a radically new and non-dualistic conception of human existence, was the sine qua non of Heidegger's thinking from beginning to end.
Apologies if I misunderstood your position, tim. You're far more knowledgeable about these philosophical matters than I. It also seems like it's been about 20 since I read that particular work of Heidegger's, but the one thing I do recall of it, however vaguely, is something that @Posty McPostface may find congenial to his own Wittgensteinian background and influence: rational explanations eventually come to an end and we have to learn to appreciate the simple but extraordinary fact (in Heidegger's estimation) that beings are, and that we are in their midst. I think both Witty and Heiddy share that sense of finding the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary, and by focusing on mundane everyday objects and practices in ways that challenge dominant guiding pressuppostions, they invite us to share in that experience.
I believe he concludes the work by quoting Novalis or some other poet - "the rose is without why, it blooms because it blooms," or something like that. So the principle of sufficient reason has its obvious uses and justification, but, if taken to an extreme, it ultimately cuts us off from the source of wonder and the ground of our own existence that is Being - which, once again, is without "why?".
There is a hidden paradox here, which I'm reading about in the previous link I posted, if you're interested. Let me quote (I hope at leisure) from what I have read there, that I have in mind.
Let me know if you find it of any use:
Quoting Unnamed
Thanks Posty, I'll take a look...
In order to get a real paradox of the kind Schopenhauer hinted at, I think you'd first have to argue that all proofs are reasons and vice-versa. That might be the case in mathematics (i.e. that all proofs are reasons, and all reasons are proofs) but outside of mathematics there are distinctions to be made that might scupper the charge of paradox.
I think we might be using "proof" and "true" interchangeably here.
Hence,
How do we know it's true if no proof is required? If it is an axiom, then seemingly the issue resolves itself. However, even assuming that introduces metaphysical baggage, I think.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason has been falsified by the Free Will and Strong Free Will Theorems of Kochen and Conway.
I await refutation from anyone who has read the paper more closely than I have - as I say, I have only skim read it - but as it stands my feeling is just to lump the authors into the category of competentent physicists but bumbling philosophers, and since the status of the PSR is a philosophical issue, they don't really have a great deal to contribute.
I think you can go a little bit further: While the PSR is falsified if we have free will by the Free Will Theorem, if we do not have free will, then I'm not sure anything meaningful can be recovered.
If the universe is deterministic, then the FWT informs us that we inhabit a super-deterministic hell. There can be no "reason" that the distant entangled particle behaves the way it does, beyond "it was thus determined".
If all they need to assume is "that the experimenter can freely choose to make any one of a small number of observations", what would be the point of complicating matters by adding unnecessary assumptions?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
As if ad-hominem was relevant, neither Kochen nor Conway is a physicist. One is a pre-eminent mathematical logician with several important theorems in his name, the other, one of the most famous mathematicians alive.
And, If I remember correctly, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is not mentioned in either of the FWT papers
That is true, but I thought your position was that the FWT refutes the PSR. It doesn't, and precisely because of the fact that the theorem is a conditional whose antecedent bears on the PSR, and they don't establish that the antecedent of their theorem is true.
The reason no proof is required is that you employ the principle in trying to refute it. It is thus axiomatic.
There's also this:
Quoting Unknown
Would the PoSR not be itself a brute fact? One of many I assume.
Sly move - turning the PSR against itself. Indeed if it is to be treated as an axiom, it's truth might have to be taken to be a brute fact, and that would seem to indicate that the PSR is false. I suppose it is here that the exact formulation of the PSR becomes important. Loosely speaking its the claim that everything has an explanation. We could try restricting the domain of quantification to just events, say, in which case the PSR is not something that needs to be explained, since it is not an event. That seems like cheating, though. So let's assume we have to give an explanation even for the PSR, which would mean that there were principles upon which even the PSR would be based, but then those principles themselves would, by the PSR, have to have their explanations....and here we get to Schopenhauer's point. There might be an infinite regress here, on the other hand, perhaps we can construct a virutous explanatory circle where the PSR gets justified by some principles which in turn get their justification from the PSR.
One reason would be that the principle is a priori.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
If you can establish that something has occurred for no reason at all, then be my guest. I don't think such a thing is possible, for ex nihilo nihil fit.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Sort of. The idea is that to give an explanation of anything just is to supply a reason why something is or is not the case. Thus, in explaining how the PSR is false, you presuppose it, because you are supplying a reason for why there are no reasons for anything.
Well, and I'm not saying I agree with this, but I've heard some people claim that the virtual particles of QM are precisely things for which ex nihilo nihil fit (and with it the PSR) is false.
The PSR is refuted because the laws of physics disagree with it. The assumption being that an experimenter possesses sufficient freedom to press one of a number of buttons.
If the assumption of the ability to choose a button is false, then the laws of physics tell us that we inhabit a superdeterministic conspiracy. I'm not convinced that PSR has any meaning in that scenario.
You cannot refute a principle on the basis of an assumption which the principle (arguably) entails is false: that's called question begging.
That's a different argument entirely, and quite an interesting one - along the lines of the PSR being self-stultifying.
In all cases, the FWT paper is irrelevant anyway.
That's curious because my instinct here was to say that the PSR, whatever its status, is not just a fact. Maybe as a first approximation you could say it's a sort of second-order fact, a fact about facts. It's natural to see an infinite regress looming here, but to do that we'd have to recast the PSR as inherently recursive and thus implicitly leave it outside the hierarchy we're constructing. Which is odd. However that works out, I'd at least start by not assuming that the sort of explanation appropriate to garden-variety first-order facts is appropriate to higher-order facts.
I agree to some extent, the PSR, whatever it is, is not a fact of the garden variety scientific or non-scientific kind. However, if the following two statements are true
1) Any true proposition could constitute an explanandum.
2) All explananda have explanans
and if 2) is an acceptable formulation of the PSR, we either invite an infinite explanatory regress, invite a regress that can be terminated only by fiat and thus in violation of the PSR, or we need to come up with some explanatory circle that leads us satisfactorily back to the PSR. Since (2) is pretty much a matter of definition, it means we need to reject (1) to escape the regress/circularity and insist that somehow or other the PSR is not the kind of true proposition that could constitute an explanandum. This is presumably the approach of those who would look on it as an axiom.
Quick thoughts (since I should really be working):
This sort of "linguistic accent" flattens any hierarchy we might opt for, and blocks outright the kind of distinctions I was contemplating. I get the impulse, but it feels like a rush job, and I'd like to hold off a bit to explore.
I'm tempted to say that the PSR isn't exactly a proposition anyway, and thus isn't exactly true or false. It's almost like an inference rule. (And now I'm reminded that Ramsey wanted to treat conditionals this way in general.) Maybe rather than being a conditional itself ("If x is
So I guess I'm in the neighborhood of, as you suggest, treating it as axiomatic -- or, rather, it looks to me like this is how you could coherently use it. (I've actually never given the PSR any thought at all.)
I take the PSR to be an epistemological, not an ontological, principle. So @Thorongil is right to say that it cannot be refuted, epistemologically and logically speaking at least, because to do so would be to find reason that the principle does not obtain: a performative contradiction.
If there are natural events which are absolutely random, those events could never be anything for us, and so could have no bearing on the indispensability of the PSR for human experience and understanding.
I think this is probably how those who wish to treat it axiomaticallly in some sense need to take it - something like a rule for thought, which is what @Srap Tasmaner seems to be getting at. But, certainly one way of looking at it is that the PSR pushes at that very supposed boundary between the epistemological and metaphysical. After all, your second paragraph seems to be making some Kantian-style metaphysical point about what couldbe for us on the basis that this is restricted by the PSR. Also, considering the use to which it has been put to in the past by Leibniz, Spinoza and Schopenhauer amongst others, it is pretty clear that some significant thinkers have regarded it as having metaphysical import (which does not, of course mean that it does just that there is some reason for thinking that it might). As @tim wood says, it's a bear of a topic.
1. Every proposition must have a reason
2. Every event has a cause
3. Every entity has a reason/cause for its existence
1 has to do with logic and leads to the Munchhausen trilemma.
2 and 3 seem to be saying the same thing. They too lead, inevitably, to a causal formulation of the Munchhausen trilemma.
As for asking a question on the PSR is to run around in circles. We need/want a reason to believe/disbelieve the PSR. That amounts to assuming it is true from the get go.
The PSR is the first step in every inquiry. Even if it were to be proved false we still have to use it because to find an instance that violates the PSR we need to begin by assuming the PSR.
So, disproving or denying the PSR becomes a mere academic exercise having little effect on how we actually deal with knowledge seeking.
How so?
First, as has been discussed here, the scope of the PSR may be limited to events or entities and not include "things" such as rules, principles, laws, etc.
But even if it did, the denial of the PSR would state that there is at least one thing that does not have a sufficient reason. That in no way contradicts the statement that there is one thing (the denial of the PSR) that does have a sufficient reason.
Quoting Janus
What do you mean?
It seems odd that someone would give up the ability to chose which button to press, rather than question a cherished principle.
The FWT would still hold if the choice was made by a pseudo-random number generator.
This is proved false by quantum mechanics.
Quoting TheMadFool
I thought we had given up trying to prove theories true since at least the advent of the scientific method. Instead, we try to find problems with theories and find solutions.
Quoting TheMadFool
We have a deep theory of reality that says PSR is false. But yes, PSR has nothing to do with knowledge seeking.
Odd, perhaps, but if that's where a true principle or an apriori principle of thought or whatever it is taken to be leads, so be it: a principle that drives human discovery in one way or another is not to be discarded simply because it leads to apparently unpalatable results. Anyway, the whole freedom to choose/freedom of will/compatibilism/determinism debate has its own thread (several of them in fact), so that part of our discussion is better taken into one of those unless you think that there is an real argument that the PSR is undermined because it leads to determinism which in turn leads to the meaninglessness of the PSR (which is what I thought you were hinting at earlier, and which as I say is an interesting line of thought, but one which is entirely independent of the FWT).
And no, FWT has a very specific but undeclared notion of freedom of will in its antecedent, and it is that notion of freedom of will that is (arguably) undermined by the PSR. Pseudo-random number generators are not truly random - their outputs are in principle predictable and explicable and at base a matter of cause and effect, and that feeds through into any measurements finally made on their basis that the measurements to take are "chosen" by such a machine.
The FWT really is irrelevant to deciding whether the PSR is true or false or something else entirely.
Not really - there are probabilistic conceptions of causality that are perfectly compatible with QM.
What some people claim is that QM refutes the "ex nihilo nihil fit" principle (that some people see embedded in the PSR) because of the fluctuation of virtual particles. But as @Thorongil points out, when QMers are pushed on the point of what these virtual particles are, it actually turns out that you are not really getting something from nothing at all.
Which pseudo-random number generator do you propose to use? How will you map the output of the number generator to the buttons?
The FWT also holds if the decision is made by a random number generator, which exist BTW.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
The PSR has never driven human discovery. It can't do that.
Well, quantum random number generators exist if that's what you mean, but if you are going to use that as a definition of free will used in the FWT then the FWT becomes an empty tautology saying that quantum systems have the freedom that quantum systems have.
Well perhaps I chose an inappropriate metaphor - but the idea that everything is explicable is a motivation for pursuing explanations, and science is - amongst many other things - the pursuit of explanations.
Why are you asking me for specifics like that - I'm not proposing that they should be used at all. All I'm saying is that the very notion of a pseudo-random number generator is that there is a causal determination of the numbers that they churn out.
Really?
The proof given in the FWT for uncaused events, has absolutely nothing to do with virtual particles.
Yes: take a look here for instance probabilistic causation
Your claim that probabilistic causality is compatible with quantum mechanics, how?
That seems to be the gist of it, as I say, I am not a proponent so cannot really provide you any more details - there are plenty of references in the link I provided if you are interested. A probabilistic account of causation may be right, it may be wrong, it may in the end not even make sense, and may not in the end be compatible with all interpretations of QM. One thing is for certain, though, the FWT is irrelevant to deciding on those issues, just as it is irrelevant to the status of the PSR.
This is refuted by FWT, and therefore by quantum mechanics, which is a theory that adheres to the axioms of FWT. Probabilistic causality is ruled out, as are hidden variables.
Even if you insist that your decision of pseudo-random number generator, and its output, and your mapping, is determined by the big-bang, probabilistic causality is refuted.
The FWT is a conditional theorem to the effect thatif there are uncaused events of one specific kind, then there are other uncaused events. In the original paper the uncaused events of the antecedent are initially taken to be free will choices of experimenters about what measurements to take, and the uncaused events of the consequent are the outcomes of the measurements.
That is my understanding of the content of the FWT as expounded by the authors of the original paper, if you disagree with that understanding, please be precise as to what it is about my interpretation of the FWT you object to, and propose an alternative. Note that I am not addressing the authors' method of proving that the FWT is true - given the axioms they work with, and the rules of inference they rely on, their reasoning seems faultless to me. You tell me that they are mathematicians by training, so I'd expect nothing less in any case. What follows from this point on is based on my understanding of the content of the FWT being the correct understanding.
If there is no such thing as free will in the sense of it entailing the existence of uncaused human actions, then the antecedent of the FWT (framed in terms of free will) is false. Of course, the FWT itself remains true in such conditions, but trivially true by the classical laws of logical implication (which are the laws of inference being used by the authors to prove the FWT). Specifically, if the antecedent of a conditional is false, the conditional itself is true, but we cannot infer anything at all concerning the truth or falsity of its consequent. Now, the PSR - under many interpretations at least - entails precisely that there is no such thing as free will in the sense of allowing for uncaused human actions. So, under those interpretations of PSR, the antecedent of the FWT conditional is false. So, even if the PSR is true, FWT remains nevertheless true. If the PSR is false and there are uncaused human actions, FWT is also true, and we have the bonus of being able to use modus ponens to conclude that its consequent is true as well. Therefore, even if FWT is true, PSR could be either true or false. This is as much to say that the truth of the FWT is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of PSR.
Choices are not uncaused. All that is required is that choices exist and that in this particular case, choosing which button to press is possible.
As I have already pointed out, the choice could be relegated to a computer program, or any number of computer programs in series.
Another way of expressing the ability to choose, would be something like the assertion, "Science is possible." For surely, if an experimenter is not free to choose which experiments to perform, then science is impossible.
This is misleading. It's not that the free will theorem falsifies the principle of sufficient reason, but that one of its premises denies the principle of sufficient reason.
Taken from The Strong Free Will Theorem:
Notice the antecedent. The rest of the argument is irrelevant (on this issue) as the principle of sufficient reason has already been rejected from the start.
So I don't know why you brought up the theorem at all (you do seem to have a strong love for it in general; you're always bringing it up). You can just say that free will falsifies the principle.
A true random number generator, yes, but not a pseudo-random number generator. Pseudo-random number generators are deterministic.
But if the principle of sufficient reason is true then true random number generators are impossible, so again this seems to beg the question.
As I mentioned earlier, I find it strange that people are willing to abandon science to protect a treasured principle.
I also mentioned earlier, that if it is not possible to choose which button to press, then the type of determinism that exists must be acausal.
I also mentioned that the PSR does not seem to survive either way.
This doesn't address my issue with your claim, which is that it is misleading to say that the free will theorem falsifies the principle of sufficient reason.
Just say that humans having free will falsifies the principle.
But please don't just leave it at that. It would take a very specific understanding of what free will amounts to for its existence to refute the PSR. Once that specific conception is explicitly stated, the issue then is what happens if we deny that free will in that sense exists?
If he's going by the free will theorem then "the choice ... is not a function of the information accessible to the experimenters".
And claiming that humans cannot choose what button to press also falsifies the principle.
Again, this has nothing to do with my issue with you, which is that there's no point in bringing up the free will theorem. This just seems like a weird excuse to plug a favourite theory of yours.
If choice is not possible, then there can be no sense in which there is information on which a choice can be made.
As I mentioned earlier, because of quantum mechanics, if we can't make choices, Reality must be super-determined i.e. it is an acausal conspiracy.
It's not a theory, the clue is in the title.
Nobody is saying that choice is not possible. What the PSR entails is that there is no such thing as freedom of will in the sense used by the authors of your pet theorem. Denying freedom of will in that sense is simply to insist that all choices that do exist are the outcomes of functions of information accessible to the choosers. That's all. Nothing you have said so far provides an argument that science becomes impossible if free will in that sense is denied.
Can you tell me how? Thanks.
Quoting tom
Ok.
Quoting tom
Can you help me with understanding that? Thanks
1) If PSR is true, then only a very strict understanding of determinism is true.
2) If QM is true, then a very strict understanding of determinism is false.
3) QM is true.
Therefore a very strict understanding of determinism is false.
Therefore the PSR is false.
All 3 premises are open to debate, of course, but that seems to be the gist of the QMers v the PSRers debate.
I don't know a lot of physics but let me point out a relevant difference.
QM applies to the atomic realm. We, however, live at a different scale of time and space. This world, the one we can see, touch, hear and taste, is governed by deterministic laws of physics and chemistry.
So, while I agree that QM defies the PSR we must remind ourselves that we live at a different spatio-temporal scale than atoms. In fact the PSR seems to be abstracted at this level and not the atomic universe.
Extending the thought a little bit it could be that the universe itself, which is definitely at a vastly different scale than our lives, could be violating the PSR. I'm thinking of God here.
Do his distinction between reason and cause mean the PSR is not an empirical principal?
Good question, and to be honest, I'm not sure. My opinion is that there is something wrong with this principle.
From the SEP:
"A simple formulation of the principle is as follows:
(1) For every fact F, there must be a sufficient reason why F is the case.
The term “fact” in the above formulation is not intended to express any commitment to an ontology of facts. Still, if one wishes to avoid such connotations, the principle can be formulated more schematically:
(2) For every x, there is a y such that y is the sufficient reason for x
(formally: ?x?yRyx [where “Rxy” denotes the binary relation of providing a sufficient reason])."
I have a problem with (1), how does it follow that "For every fact F, there must be some reason why F is the case." Some facts have no reasons, they obtain as a result of causes. Why can't there simply be mechanistic causes for many facts? Even factual propositions needn't have reasons to support them, some do some don't. Moreover, again, why can't there be facts that have no cause or reason?
The PSR is applicable to both, I would say, but in different ways. The PSR, as I understand it, covers both causes and reasons. So, causes are understood to constitute the sufficient reasons that explain why things are as they are, when it comes to events and entities. Rules, principles and laws are the generalized formulations that describe the nature of the conditions that are believed to govern causation in the realm of events and entities. It is on account of our observations of invariance and our systematic understanding of causation that we have sufficient reason to believe in the principles (if we in fact do). In this connection the PSR is the formulation of the Principle that is implicit in all principles, and we have sufficient reason to believe in it because of its universality. We also have reason to believe in it on account of its indispensability; anything at all is only intelligible to us in terms of sufficient reasons for its being the way it is.
Of course, in a merely logical sense, it is possible to say that its denial "would state that there is at least one thing that does not have a sufficient reason", but so what? Firstly, we could never know that there really is no sufficient reason for any given thing, only that we don't presently know what the sufficient reason might be. We also cannot know, as Kant pointed out, that "things in themselves" must have a sufficient reason, we just know that things for us, that is anything we could experience, (in order to be intelligible) must have a sufficient reason.
We can posit that there are quantum events that simply happen, and are not caused by anything. But those events are posited as universally present, not isolated exceptions. So the decay of uranium atoms is perhaps utterly random and uncaused, but it is statistically invariant.
So even if the decay of a uranium atom is never caused by anything else, the decay of uranium atoms in general has proven to be a statistically invariant phenomenon which indicates that it is a manifestation of the unique nature of uranium, and that, for us, is its sufficient reason for happening. In fact we have no way of knowing for sure that the decay of uranium atoms is truly not determined by something else of which we do not presently have knowledge.
Personally, I believe there are uncaused events at the smallest scales in nature; but that does nothing to refute the PSR, because those events cannot be anything for us, other than insofar as they are understood to be statistically predictable, and this understanding is their sufficient reason in an epistemological sense.
So, in summary your objection, which seems to be in terms of mere logical possibility, says nothing about the phenomenology of human experience and judgement, and so has no actual bearing on the issue, as far as I can tell. Or if it was intended to raise an issue in an ontological context, then it has no bearing either, since the PSR is a purely epistemological principle, as I understand it.
From one of the footnotes in that paper: "Wittgenstein hereby denies the Principle of Sufficient Reason for propositions and facts while he preserves the Principle for material objects and events."
I couldn't see where that conclusion is supported in the text, though.
Not sure I understand what you are driving at here. What question is begged by framing the PSR in terms of explanations? Even when couched in terms of the requirement for explanation, it retains the appearance, at least, of something that is capable of being true or false, it just renders the whole reason/cause distinction that the author of the article homes in on as somewhat irrelevant to deciding whether it is true or false.
You might be right that there are things that happen that have no explanation. The PSR couched in terms of explanations rules them out, so if you could cite an indisputable example of such an event, the PSR would indeed be false.
Yes. Looked at another way, if our knowledge is founded on axioms for which demonstrable reasons cannot be given, does that falsify the PSR? I'd say 'No': it is "sufficient reason", not "indisputable reason"; all our knowledge is ultimately fallible.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
There could be things that happen that have no explanation, and there could even be things that can have no explanation. We could know if the former is the case, but not the latter. For any unexplained event, it is always possible that there might be an explanation that we are not currently aware of. So it would seem there could never be "an indisputable example of such an event".
First, we shouldn't be talking about "the" PSR without further qualifications. The SEP entry that Posty linked has a good intro chapter that classifies the various ways in which a PSR can be formulated and analyzed.
One important question that can be asked of a PSR is what constitutes a sufficient reason. You seem to make your requirements so loose that your PSR becomes nothing more than a requirement for having a sound epistemology, good reasons for belief (where what constitutes good reasons is left unspecified).
The PSR is these days often expressed, for example by Della Rocca, as the claim that everything has an explanation, and so the notion of sufficiency "disappears" in that formulation. So, let's say that someone proffers that A is explained by B. If your point about sufficiency (based on reading your first post on Heidegger) is that another person could come along and say "that's not enough of an explanation, because it has not been explained why Arather than C" , then (provided that A and C are somehow exclusive of each other, e.g. logically or physically) at least two responses seem available:
1) In explaining A by B, at the same time why A and not C is explained since C is excluded by A.
2) An explanation ofsomething different is being required; an explanation of C's exclusion by A.
If, however, C is entirely unconnected to A, then the question "why A and not C" would make little sense and so pushing the "that's not enough of an explanation" would be meaningless in the context.
All that, of course, is to take something like a "linguistic" turn in thinking about the PSR, but taking that linguistic turn seems to obviate any need to think about critieria for sufficiency - if only to replace it by the need to think about what counts as an explanation (or if you prefer the Wittgensteinian approach, what counts as giving an explanation).
Well, I think that's as it should be. What constitutes "good reasons" is always relative to some overall context, or "paradigm" in Kuhnian terms. It therefore cannot be precisely formulated. If you think of prime-itive human cultures where the sufficient reasons for natural events might have been things like the moods of the gods, you can see the PSR operating in human understanding just as much as you can see it in modern or postmodern culture. For humans there is never an event which is utterly inexplicable; we would not even be able to experience such an event.
I think the point is that the PSR is transcendent of paradigms, not dependent upon them.
* and contemporaneously, although it seems that the PSR, at least its less restricted versions, has rather fallen out of favor outside the circle of Christian theologians.
What usually distinguishes a PSR from any old belief system are more stringent requirements for sufficient reasons. You cannot just give a half-arsed excuse or say "Screw it, that's good enough reason for me!" You are supposed to doggedly pursue the chain of reasoning until some satisfactory resolution - a necessary state of affairs in the strongest formulations of the PSR.
And it still does for those who uphold it - such as Della Rocca. Framed in terms of "everything has an explanation" it turns out that for him the acceptable explanations are either citing causes or citing logical entailments, so it turns out to be more precisely "everything is caused or logically entailed by something else". This places some objective, or at least non-subjective, restriction on what will satisfy the PSR at any given time in the evolution of thought - not just any old excuse will do. Nevertheless, the notions of logical entailment and causation are not fixed (the former is probably more resistant to change than the latter, granted). This would also mean that although it is a restrictive principle, the meaning of the PSR evolves - citing tree spirits as the cause of noise in a forest no longer cuts the mustard, even if there are some people who might want still to believe in tree spirits.
If we just say "reason" and leave it at that, then either we are making PSR an epistemological principle, or we are making some rather extravagant claims about the world somehow being imbued with "reason" (well, perhaps not so extravagant if you are a deist or a pan-psychist of some sort).
The trouble with a purely epistemological, regulative PSR is that it can easily dissolve into a banality. "We should always be looking for reasons, always try to make sense of the world" - well, who is going to argue with that?
PSR only really gets its teeth when it acquires some metaphysical commitments, as when "reasons" are cached out in terms of causes or entailments (@MetaphysicsNow).
It's a basic principle that pertains to the way we think. Whether the world conforms to our modelling is a separate issue.
I have pretty much been a subscriber to logical atomist and Leibniz monadology. To assume the PoSR, it seems that the world must be assumed to be at the core, logical, and orderly. I also wanted to outline that just because something might be unintelligible, does not mean that it cannot happen, to say so would be a gross anthropocentric POV to hold.
Anyway, those issues aside. I have been reading much from this highly edifying and interesting exchange between various scholars on the topic, and am intrigued by the underlying physics that might presuppose the PoSR. One thing that isn't mentioned is the relationship between time and the PoSR. I was wondering if anyone would care to explain the PoSR and 'time'.
Another way to ask this question is to wonder if Quantum Mechanics obeys causality.
Another line of thought - in truth, the only one that makes sense of the PoSR to me - is the Leibnizian one of grounding sufficiency in the 'nature' of 'the thing itself': "All predication has some foundation in the nature of things" (Leibniz, Discourse). Ignoring, for now, the fact that Leibniz construes nature in terms of 'predication', the import of this is that it turns the PoSR into a search for what Leibniz refers to as an ratio existendi: a reason for existence, which differs from the ratio essendi of the principle of identity (which bears only on entities insofar as they have logical consistency). In other words, the PoSR takes us 'out of' logic and 'into' existence: it forces one to think about the question of individuation: of the facts that bear upon this particular thing and no other ('inexchangable' with any other logical substitute).
It's hard to really flesh this out without developing an entire philosophy, as it were, but yeah: to think in terms of things that exist in space and time (and not abstract logical space), and to think in terms of individuation: those are the two imperatives forced upon anyone who wants to take the PoSR seriously, as I understand it.
...in the light of the intellect's insistence on universal inter-relatedness. The individual, as a concept, stands out against a background of wholeness (as the black dot is dependent on the white background, or pink.)
I don't think it takes any special ability. We naturally think in terms of chance and contingency.
In our ordinary thinking we hold some things as given (at least until we decide to hold them up for scrutiny) - those are brute facts. Other things are unknown, though they may be subject to some constraints (at least until we learn something new or recall something we had left out of the consideration) - those are chances. So we live and think as if there were brute facts and chances - whether this is in fact the case (and whether the question even makes sense) is another matter, but this reasoning scheme is natural to us.
The same has always been the case in science*. In any given scientific framework or theory some things (the assumptions and posits of the theory) are taken as brute facts, and depending on the theory, there may be chancy things as well.
It takes a philosopher of a certain bent to say: Wait a minute, these are not real chances, they only seem chancy to us due to our ignorance. And these facts that we take as brute must have some explanation.
* The special focus on quantum mechanics when it comes to chanciness is a result of reductionist thinking, where it is assumed that quantum mechanics reveals the true workings of the world, while all those other "special" theories, such as classical statistical mechanics or the theory of evolution in biology are only half-truths, convenient approximations.
The causeless is still inconceivable, well because of the PSR.
I think your definition of chance is peculiar, but the same angle would apply to any sort of causelessness.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Quoting frank
I haven't been denying "stringent requirements for sufficient reasons". But as I pointed out, and as @MetaphysicsNow alluded to with the 'tree spirits' example, the stringency of reasons is always relative to an overall context or paradigm within which they cohere. Of course there is always necessarily a terminus of explanation.
The terminus is simply where our actual explanations stop at some belief. If the belief is unsupported it could be on account of the fact that the belief relies on the existence of states of affairs which do not obtain and is thus incorrect. But if a belief is correct, In terms of Aggrippa's Trilemma, it could be supported by either a brute fact, a state of affairs that it is self-causing, or an infinite chain or nexus of causation that we can never get to the bottom of.
So in terms of @Frank's 'Big Bang' example, it could be, as he says a brute fact, and will remain so for us, even though it could alternatively be a self-caused, and thus in principle, self-explanatory, event. But confirmation of the latter possibility would seem to be closed to us; we cannot tell whether it is simply a brute fact, is self-caused or even caused by some other set of unknowable conditions.
I have been arguing along the lines of what @MetaphysicsNow describes as Della Rocca's definition of acceptable explanations: "either citing causes or citing logical entailments', so, "everything is caused or logically entailed by something else". But I would put a caveat there, that the overall context, the Universe, reality, being, or whatever you want to call it. at the limits of both its micro and macro dimensions, obviously cannot be caused by "something else", at least not by something else within the system.
So whether the Big Bang is uncaused, self-causing, or caused by something unknowable, we are not precluded from conceiving it as an event in terms of its observed consequences. But it can only be understood in terms of its consequences, a fact which itself supports the PSR, it cannot be understood 'in itself'. So, in other words, events like the Big Bang or the decay of uranium atoms are conceivable in terms of their consequences, but not conceivable in themselves.
This goes back to what I said earlier, and that also alludes to if I am not mistaken; that sufficient reason for such events is found in their own natures. I would add that the sufficient reason for believing in such events is found in their observed consequences, and the consistent and coherent ways in which those are modelled to produce the ideas of those events. It must also be allowed that what are, within one paradigm, sufficient reasons, can indeed become insufficient reasons within another.
Quoting Janus
Traditional proponents of the PSR, such as Spinoza and Leibnitz, as well as modern proponents like Della Rocca(1), Pruss(2) and Feser(3), do not accept brute facts. As Spinoza put it,
[quote=Spinoza]For each thing there must be assigned a cause, or reason, both for its existence and for its nonexistence.[/quote]
Or,
[quote=Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy]There is a sufficient reason or adequate necessary objective explanation for the being of whatever is and for all attributes of any being.[/quote]
Even in his proposed weakened form of the PSR Pruss requires an account for at least the possibility of every contingent truth.
So whatever you two are arguing for, it does not look like familiar forms of the PSR, although there seems to be a strain of rationalism that is recognizable.
Moreover, when you say that some fact or state of affairs that lacks an explanation is "inconceivable" or "unintelligible" you don't seem to mean anything other than it does indeed lack an explanation, so you are not really saying anything at all - you are just restating the premise.
Or do really mean to say that something that lacks an ultimate explanation is inconceivable?
But that is nonsense. If we can describe and discuss something, then surely it is at least conceivable. As I argued earlier, we can and do conceive of things, without at the same time being aware of their causes or explanations. We do so all the time: in our everyday reasoning we always take some things for granted. When the need arises, we can put to question what was previously an assumption, but at the moment when we make use of the assumption, it does not matter whether it is necessary or contingent, and whether if it is contingent it has an explanation. Likewise, when we flip a coin, or when something happens "by chance," it does not matter to us whether the event was really, ontologically random or not - for all practical purposes, there was no explanation for why that event happened instead of one of its possible alternatives. We wouldn't think of it as random otherwise.
So psychologically, unexplained and chancy things are very much conceivable, and commonplace. Appealing to our psychological intuitions and using words like "inconceivable" and "unintelligible" rhetorically does not work in favor of the PSR.
The same goes for explanations. Proponents of the PSR, such as Feser, argue that an explanation that only goes so far as reducing one contingent thing to another contingent thing is not really an explanation. But that appeals to some contrived and question-begging notion of explanation, which is at odds with the way we actually employ the concept of explanation in our everyday life and in science.
(1) Michael Della Rocca: PSR (Philosopher’s Imprint, 2010)
(2) Alexander Pruss: A restricted Principle of Suf?cient Reason and the cosmological argument (Religious Studies, 2004)
(3) Edward Feser: Can we make sense of the world? (2011)
If you're thinking that defiance of the PSR can be found in cases of just not knowing the cause of X while accepting that there is some cause: no, that's not how it works.
No, I agree, most typically the PSR implies the existence of a cause, whether known or not. My point when talking about our common-sense reasoning is that we do not, in fact, always assume the existence of a cause. Things that we (however fleetingly) take for granted are causeless in effect: the existence or absence of a cause makes no difference to our reasoning.
The same is true for scientific explanations: once we adopt some theory as our explanatory framework, it does not matter for us whether the theory and it posits can be further reduced to a causeless ground of all being or some such; giving account of phenomena in terms of the theory counts as providing an explanation regardless.
But if there are uncaused events, like the big bang and nuclear decay, the PSR is refuted, surely?
What if the only theory we have is non-explanatory, such as the Shut-up-and-Calculat version of quantum mechanics, or the Copenhagen Theory?
True. And that highlights how thoroughly intellectual the PSR is. It's upon reflection that the demand for explanations appears along with the assumption that they must be out there even if unavailable.
People who make use of the PSR are going to have to explain how basic principles of thought relate to the way the world is in actuality.
But what if you can prove there is no cause, that there cannot be a cause, and back that up with real world experiments?
But Spinoza does allow for self-causing substance. In fact according to Spinoza all causation finds its ultimate terminus is "God or Nature" (deus sive natura).
Quoting SophistiCat
The weakness of this argument lies in the assumption that when people think of events as "unexplained or chancy", they are believing that the events are utterly random in the sense of having no cause at all. No one, if they thought about it, would deny that when the die is tossed, it interacts with the air and the surface it lands upon in ways which determine what face will show up. Events are only chancy for us insofar as we cannot predict outcomes, because we have no way of predicting the future, given that we only have a minimal grasp of all the determining factors.
The only events that I can think of which are considered by many to be truly causeless are microphysical events and the Big Bang. These are both global events in different senses; the global status of the Big Bang is obvious, and the global status of microphysical events consists in their purported ubiquity. There are no local events that are thought to be truly random and 'one-off', no events that contravene what is judged to be the invariance of nature.
Quoting SophistiCat
I don't think anyone genuinely believes that any event lacks an ultimate explanation. It is the very idea that any event could have no ultimate explanation that is inconceivable.
No, because those events, as I explained in my previous post, are either global (the Big Bang) or statistically invariant. In the case of the Big Bang the conditions for its advent are completely unknown, and we cannot say it is statistically invariant because it is the one and only truly causeless event (in the sense that it could have no cause from within the system for obvious reasons).
In the case of microphysical events, they are statistically invariant, which points to the them being the result of the nature of the system itself. The problem is that the general tendency is to think only in terms of efficient causation. Microphysical events might have no causes more fundamental than themselves but may be the result of global 'formal' or 'final' constraints that come about only at a certain stage in the evolution of the system itself.
No doubt @apo would have more to say on this.
You only need one uncaused event to refute PSR.
I happen to disagree with you about the status of knowledge about the big bang, and your apparent assertion that "statistical invariance" can have any meaning or significance. However, if you assert the existence of an uncaused event, then it's curtains for a principle that claims no such thing can happen.
Quoting Janus
Uncaused microphysical events are incompatible with PSR, it's that simple. And, as we know, there are certain famous experiments that demonstrate, without loopholes, the existence of uncaused events.
Yes, the "ultimate terminus" is the Achilles hill of the unrestricted PSR, and philosophers have tied themselves into knots wrangling with concepts like causa sui. Although I think that being more critical and broadminded about the concepts of cause and explanation would be helpful here (and this goes for the Agrippa's Trilemma as well).
Quoting Janus
What conclusions people reach when they specifically question things that they previously treated as "unexplained or chancy" will vary depending on the situation, available information and background beliefs. But this is not what I wanted to address in this argument. What I wanted to address was the notion that a PSR of some sort is indispensable to our everyday thinking (basic principles of thought @frank) and to science. I argue the opposite. Both everyday thought and science are oblivious to the PSR, unless they specifically focus on the question.
Quoting Janus
Well, this is not so much a philosophical question as a sociological one, and I believe you are very much mistaken in thinking that everyone is a causal determinist and believes in an unrestricted PSR. I know I don't. Della Rocca (PSR) bemoans the current low standing of the PSR among philosophers and scientists alike:
Quoting Michael Della Rocca
ETA: The cosmologist Sean Carroll is one of those philosophically-minded scientists who rejects the PSR, for example in his recent article Why Is There Something, Rather Than Nothing?:
Quoting Sean M. Carroll
ETA2: For fairness's sake, Paul Davies is another cosmologist who takes the opposite view, e.g. in this OpEd.
Hmm, my impression is that transcendental philosophy - Kant and his successors - has a more complex relation with the PSR than is generally acknowledged. After all, the transcendental was invoked precisely to secure the necessity of thought with respect to the world; that is, the transcendental was invoked in order to stave off the spectre of arbitrariness with respect to thought, so that truth would find itself on a more secure footing than Hume could give it. And for the post-Kantians - Hegel and Maimon in particular - the problem with Kant was that the very categories of thought were themselves considered to be too arbitrary, and in need of further grounding - hence the various 'philosophies of the Absolute' that followed in Kant's wake (Schelling, Fitche, Hegel).
All of which is to say that there is a more subterranean hewing to the PSR - rejigged and reworked - than I think is commonly acknowledged.
But, all this is nonsensical in the Many Worlds Theory. Nothing in particular is special because absolutely everything is.
Lewisian modal realism dissolves the PSR, in the same way that the guillotine cures a headache. You can no longer demand an explanation for why A rather than B, since you've already assumed A and B (and C and D...)
Sorry, you'll have to direct this question to someone who knows more about Hume.
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, §4
Where he expounds on the tenuous nature of Induction whose knowledge depends on experience..."the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree." 4.24
"What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience?"
We look at the past and we assume the future will repeat its past. "From causes which appear similar we expect similar effects. This is the sum of all our experimental conclusions." 4.31
His argument brings into question the uniformity of nature, why should we suspect that nature is ceteris paribus uniform.
This the point that Quentin Meillassoux discusses in 'After Finitude' in his chapter "Hume's Problem page 91.
I don't think it matters to the argument whether the PSR is present, as a formulated principle, in the minds of everyday people and scientists; the important point is whether they operate on the implicit understanding that everyday events and the objects of scientific study are capable of explanation. And I think the answer to that question is very obviously 'yes'.
For me, Della Rocca's understanding of Hume's and Kant's projects is wrong-headed, if that passage you quoted is anything to go on.
Hume denied that we can observe causation, and he claimed that the idea results merely from habit due to observing invariances; the constant conjunctions of certain events. Hume's avowed aim was to do for human nature what Newton had done for nature; and he could hardly do that unless he was convinced that human nature is susceptible of explanation!
Kant, on the other hand, responded to Hume by claiming that the objects of experience must conform to the human experience and understanding, and that since causation is one of the central pillars of human understanding, without which, for Kant experience would be unintelligible; it hardly seems right to claim that Kant wanted to claim the PSR is false.
What Kant did do is argue that the ambit of PSR is limited to the empirical, that it is, in other words, an epistemological principle. Kant rejected only that it can be extended to the metaphysical or ontological; and this is just what I have also been contending in this thread, that the PSR has provenance only insofar as it is an epistemological principle.
The quote from Carroll that you gave seems to be an attempt to speak to the ontological, which is what both Kant and I say cannot be coherently done.
When he says:
Quoting Sean M. Carroll
He is either making an illegitimate claim or else more modestly stating the self-evident: that we cannot come up with a cause or explanation for the existence of everything, in the way that we can for the existence of particular things. In any case, I already covered this point several times:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
Quoting SophistiCat
Not within this world.
Yes, Hume in effect asserts that the PSR is the formulation of human assumptions and may not be true to nature itself; I.e. that it is an epistemological not an ontological principle.
Quoting frank
Exactly, and it is the very fact that we believe that that shows that we are assuming the PSR, which as you note, Hume himself is also doing in his attempt to explain human nature.
Give me an argument to respond to and I'll consider engaging.
This raises the question whether any one cause could ever be sufficient reason for the existence of anything.
As I said earlier, this modest observation that we do in fact look for explanations (in the broadest sense of the world) for things is not much of an insight. I mean, what else could we do? How else would we employ our reasoning faculties? It's a banality not worth even talking about, let alone calling it a Principle. And that's not what is usually meant by the PSR.
Your response is very disappointing; you haven't even attempted to address any of the arguments I have made; apparently you would rather try to dismiss what I have said by suggesting it is banal. Cite one philosophical insight that could not possibly be characterized as a banality. The whole enterprise is commonly characterized as banal by those who have no interest in it.
If the PSR is not taken as a Kantian type insight into the fact that objects of knowledge must conform to human reason, then how should it be taken? One alternative would be to take it in the Hegelian manner expressed as " The rational is the real".
If you wanted to argue for the ontological provenance of the PSR, how else would you go about it other than in some variation of a Hegelian/ Spinozist or a Phenomenological/ Heideggerian mode of thought? In other words to merge the epistemological with the ontological or both with the phenomenological. Or some kind of theology perhaps?
Outside of those kinds of approaches is there really anything interesting to talk about at all when it comes to the PSR? All that would seem to be left would be to take a 'shut up and calculate' attitude as science does; an attitude which nonetheless inevitably presupposes the PSR.
What claims do you think are integral to the PSR? What do you mean exactly when you say that we look for explanations "in the broadest sense of the word"? Is that meant to mean that we look for explanations that are less than sufficient? If you do want to say that, then how do you think we would know when any explanation is sufficient? What exactly is it that you want to argue?
Quoting Janus
That's not much of an insight. Of course objects of knowledge conform to human reason - they wouldn't be objects of knowledge otherwise.
Quoting Janus
Well, let's see how the slogan "Everything must have a sufficient reason" could be cached out.
1. Is it an observation about human reasoning?
1a. We seek reasons and explanations for everything. True, but obvious.
1b. "Objects of knowledge conform to human reason." Not sure what this is doing here, but again, a truism.
1c. We require reasons and explanations for everything. We are not satisfied with brute facts. Things lacking an explanation are unintelligible to us. This, I think, is closer to what some proponents of the PSR say, but as I argued previously, this is not true. The way we actually reason is not at all like this.
2. Is it a regulative principle?
2a. We should seek reasons and explanations for everything. This is a banality.
2b. Objects of knowledge must conform to human reason. Well, they already do.
2c. We must have reasons and explanations for everything. Brute facts are incoherent and unacceptable as objects of knowledge. This is closely related to 1c. Again, I think this is what some proponents of the PSR would say, but I do not agree with this.
3. Is it an ontological principle?
The only ontological formulation that I can think of is something along these lines:
3*. The world is "rational" (perhaps necessarily so): it is such that everything is amenable to explanation. Or, in a more standard form: Nothing can exist unless it has sufficient reasons for its existence and for the way it is.
This can also be seen as a prerequisite for (2c), because without accepting this principle, holding (2c) would be obviously irrational.
Here we should pay closer attention to what is meant by (sufficient) reason, cause or explanation (and the possible differences between these concepts). This is a huge topic, but it cannot be sidestepped in this discussion, because a lot depends on it.
And of course with the ontological formulation, more than with the other two, the obvious question is: Why believe this? Our experience strongly suggests that the world is a pretty orderly place, at least that part of it with which we are familiar. But that observation alone is far too banal to call it a Principle; on the other hand, stronger commitments seem both unwarranted and unnecessary.
It is a physical principle that any finite physical system may be perfectly emulated on a universal computer operating by finite means.
I can't detect any difference between this principle and the ontological formulation of the PSR. Reality is constituted thus.
This would actually defy the law of identity. If a thing is identifiable as one thing, then there is a reason why it is that thing and not another thing. That's what makes it identifiable as a thing. So you cannot premise that there is one thing which does not have a sufficient reason without saying that this thing is not a thing, and that's contradiction. That it is a thing implies that there is a reason why it is a thing. The PSR cannot be avoided so easily.
Quoting tom
The same criticism applies to this statement. if it is "one event", as stated, then it is necessarily that event rather than some other event. This implies a reason why it is that event rather than some other event, fulfilling the conditions of the PSR. So rather than refute the PSR such an incident just confirms it.
You ought not confuse "reason" with "cause" unless you are prepared to allow for different types of causes, some non-physical like final causes.
Yes, and that is precisely what you don't seem to have provided.
Quoting SophistiCat
Well, we differ here too; for me the ideas of Spinoza, Heidegger, and the rest of the significant thinkers still are as "live" as ever; they form an ineliminable part of philosophy, not merely philology.
Quoting SophistiCat
Yeah, it's easy to say that now...after Kant.
Quoting SophistiCat
It seems obvious to me that "Everything must have a sufficient reason" can be cashed out in all of the three ways you tried to outline; that is, phenomenologically, ethically and ontologically (the last only provided you don't think as a Cartesian (or a Kantian) dualist, and radically separate thought and being, that is).
Quoting SophistiCat
And yet you don't seem to be able to explain how reason is "not at all like this" or give an example of some reasoning which is not like this. So why should I not believe you are indulging in bare assertion?
Quoting SophistiCat
Your allusions to the existence of more exhaustive accounts or counterexamples do not help me; It would be far more helpful if you actually gave some more exhaustive account or counterexample of your own.
Quoting SophistiCat
As I said before, if we radically separate ontology from human experience and thought, from logic, epistemology and phenomenology, then we have no basis upon which to formulate any ontological or metaphysical principles at all; so the problem then becomes a general one, a problem not confined merely to the PSR.
I am sympathetic to your position but not so much to your argument MU. An obvious objection to your argument is that unique sets of qualities are sufficient to differentiate entities from one another, whereas reasons for things possessing those differentiating qualities, need not be known in order to do the differentiating, and it need not even be known that there are such reasons.
Whether or not the reasons are known is irrelevant to the principle of sufficient reason which just states that there is a reason. Whether or not the reason is known is irrelevant. So if there are two entities then they are different from each other, and by the PSR there must be a reason for this. It would make no sense to say that two things are two different things, but there is no reason for this. The very fact that there are (particular) differences is reason for them being (in general) different. So the reason for them being two distinct things is the difference between them.
In this example it makes no difference whether the actual difference (which is the reason for them being different) is known, because the example stipulates that they are different. Therefore by the stipulation of the example, and the PSR, there must be a difference between them (the reason for them being different things), regardless of whether the difference is known, and this difference is the reason why we can say that they are different. If there were no difference between them, they would not be two different things
I'm not really following you. If you didn't know the reasons for two things being different, then how could you know there are such reasons? Would this not be an unjustified assumption?
Or are you proposing a more deflationary approach which might, for example, count the very having of different qualities as sufficient reason for things being different from one another?
It's simple logic. In order that they are different, there must be a difference. The difference is the reason why they are different. That they are not the same (different) requires, logically, that there is a difference.
Quoting Janus
It's not even necessarily a matter of having distinct qualities, it's simply a matter of difference. Remember, we are starting from the other side, assuming that two things are different things. This doesn't necessitate specifically that they have distinct qualities, as the reason for being different, it just necessitates a difference between them.
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting Janus
As I said, I discussed this in my preceding posts. The context in which the "rationality" of the world or the acceptability and intelligibility of brute facts show up is pretty much limited to a line of philosophical questioning in the mode of the PSR - and here, of course, opinions differ. By contrast, in our ordinary and scientific reasoning such questions are largely irrelevant. We deal with a world that is partially intelligible, as far as we are concerned, we deal with it piecemeal, and we seem to do fine that way. Our inquiries seek to illuminate some regularities and connections, which abut on assumptions and probabilities that are not themselves accounted for within the context of the inquiry. Any such inquiry leaves out of its scope the vast majority of the world, which, for all it matters, could be shrouded in darkness. And this limited comprehension is what we usually understand by explaining, finding causes and reasons. We do not require the world to be totally rational and noncontingent before we can say that we understand something about it.
My conclusion is that the PSR cannot claim to be a phenomenological principle that faithfully captures the way we actually reason.
Quoting Janus
I wasn't alluding to counterexamples. My point was that words such as "reason," "cause" or "explanation" are too controversial to be employed in a thesis without unpacking their meaning. I have discussed the way I believe we actually reason, but I am not the one advancing a PSR thesis. It is up to a PSR proponent to explain what they mean, and why.
I have pointed out how our actual reasoning is not nearly as comprehensive as an unrestricted PSR suggests. Another important question to consider is how subjective it is: how much of the perceived "rationality" of the world is in our heads, vs. being a direct impression of the way the world actually is. I think there is some of both. On the PSR-friendly side of the dilemma, our very existence and our rational faculties seem to require an objectively regular environment. But on the other side, the multiplicity of working accounts of the world casts doubt on the idea that there must be a unique, objective and comprehensive Reason for everything.
Just one small but illustrative example: anthropic explanations in fundamental physics and cosmology. Briefly, the trajectory of physical and cosmological theories typically leads scientists towards mathematical models that are themselves taken to be the brute facts of reality - albeit with a hope held out for their reduction to an even more accurate and comprehensive system of mathematical structures and constants as science progresses. However, a radically different explanatory terminus has been suggested in the latter half of the last century (if not earlier): our very existence as "observers," living creatures with the ability to make observations and come up with such theories - a Cartesian turn, if you like. (Fred Hoyle's prediction of a hitherto unknown quantum state in carbon-12 is often cited as an example of anthropic reasoning, although this interpretation is disputed.) You may have also heard about so-called fine-tuning of the fundamental constants: the constants "had to be" within such-and such narrow range in order for the universe to be able to produce and support living creatures like us. Not everyone likes this anthropocentric framing, but it does have some appeal, even if we are trying to be objective about it: after all, our own existence is the one thing that we can believe with more confidence than anything else! Why not this as at least one of the reasons?
I honestly don't know what gave you the idea that my responses have become "hostile". That seems to be an overreaction; maybe there is a tinge of frustration or impatience in them, I guess...I don't know...
Quoting SophistiCat
But all this says is that everyday people and scientists are not necessarily doing philosophy; which is of course, obviously true but, I would still say, irrelevant. The fact that the world is always only partially intelligible is also irrelevant, as I see it, because the PSR expresses the fact that, in all our enquiries and fields, we are not satisfied with partial or insufficient understanding and are constantly seeking ever more sufficient explanations, with the obvious caveat that we can never know when any explanation is finally and absolutely sufficient.
So, my conclusion is that the PSR does capture the phenomenology of human knowledge-seeking, insofar as we are never, generally speaking, satisfied with the current sufficiency of our knowledge and reasoning, and are constantly seeking to increase it. If all you want to claim against the PSR is that there can be no, for us, absolutely sufficient explanation, and that our enquiries don't necessarily need to proceed on the assumption that there is such an absolute explanation, then perhaps we have not been disagreeing so much after all.
Quoting SophistiCat
This is where we diverge, I think. You seem to have a kind of Cartesian view which separates the subject from the world such that rationality could be 'merely in our heads", and that the world could somehow "be some way" that is radically different from the way we experience it. Also, the PSR does not require that there be a "unique, objective and comprehensive Reason for everything", but merely that nothing happens in our world without sufficient reason or cause.
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting SophistiCat
I wouldn't call this a Cartesian turn, but quite the opposite, a somewhat Kantian or phenomenological turn that heralds the closing of the Cartesian gap between mind and world. And I totally agree; "why not this as at least one of the reasons"? That's what I alluded to earlier; there is no radical separation between us and the world, between our rationality and the 'way things are'. Of course anthropomorphizing can get out of hand, but we need not be ashamed that our views are, as they inevitably must be, anthropocentric; the world must be 'human-shaped' for us, and this is exactly the same as to say that our objects of knowledge must conform to human reason, as we discussed earlier. Then you said that observation is trivially and obviously true and yet those who do not like "this anthropocentric framing" apparently would beg to differ; it would seem that they, at least, cannot see what is so trivially and obviously true.
So their difference is sufficient reason for their being different? Alrighty then...
Do you notice that the particular, the specific difference, is distinct from the general, being different?
The turn is quite Cartesian in that it is about securing the world we know. One of Descartes major moves is to arrive at a conclusion our understandings amount to knowledge.
In thus respect, Descartes shares a similarly with Kant. Both are positioned against those who would argue our experiences are somehow deficient in reporting what is happening. Descartes doesn't have the strict seperation between mind and body that a lot of people attribute to him. For him, experiences are not somehow incompatible or a non-relation to bodies. In many senses, they are mixed up in relation-- hence he's able to talk about what we can understand in relation to bodies that are present.
Rigjt, so the particular difference is sufficient reason for the general condition of being different?
When I say "Cartesian" I am referring to how that is usually understood and characterized. Whether Descartes was himself really Cartesian is a question I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about or interested in to offer an opinion.
No disagreement here, but, as I keep saying, this is too weak to even be called a Principle, and doesn't really sound like the PSR in Leibnitz's or Scholastic tradition, which, as I understand it, requires the world to be objectively "rational" through and through.
Quoting Janus
Ah, but here you are making a much stronger statement. This is no longer just about our knowledge-seeking, isn't it?
Quoting Janus
Well, what would be the alternative? Remember, the very framing of this conversation presupposes, for good or ill, subjects and objects: things in the world and our explanations, reasons, causes, which are about those things.
Quoting Janus
I meant "Cartesian" in its method: start with the one idea that you cannot possibly deny, put it at the center of your explanatory scheme.
Quoting Janus
I don't think you understood the point of my example, which was to show how, even in the most rationalistic projects of fundamental science, once we start pushing against the limits of our modeling, not only do we have to concede that there are brute facts, explanatory termini that admit no further explanation, but that there isn't even a unique, rational choice to be made about what those brute facts should be. Some may prefer to put just physical laws and constants at the foundation of the reductive scheme, while others may argue, not without reason, that those laws and constants can be further reduced/constrained if we take the existence of observers as one of the givens. (And if Apo was here, he would, of course, be pushing for other high-level constraints as yet another alternative set of brute facts.)
Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Now consider this. Anytime that we describe what is, it is always based in abstraction, and the abstraction is produced by the person making the description. So no matter how hard we try to describe a particular situation, the description is always going to come out in general terms. So "what is" is always a generalization, and this cannot be avoided, it is a human judgement, which relies on generalization. The PSR holds, because there will always be a reason why whomever made the generalization, made it. A generalization as the act of a living creature, is not a random act. Whatever is expressed as "what is", is always the product of abstraction, generalization, and there is always a reason for the way that "what is" is expressed. What "is", is always how we as human beings see the world, and there is always a reason why we see it in that way, because living creatures like human beings, produce things for a reason. .
Sure, but there have been significant other non-theistic treatments of the PSR.The following excerpts are taken from the SEP article on the PSR, and they support what I have been arguing; that the PSR can be understood to be an important principle in its relation to human experience and understanding, and cannot simply be dismissed as "weak" (or "banal") unless it is interpreted as claiming that the world is "rational through and through":
[i]In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), Kant claims to provide a proof for the PSR by showing that
[T]he PSR is the ground of possible experience, namely the objective cognition of appearances with regards to their relation in the successive series of time. (B/246/A201)
Relying on his transcendental method Kant argues in the “Second Analogy of Experience” that a certain version of the PSR is a condition for the possibility of experience, and as a result also a condition for the possibility of objects of experience. Yet, this argument also restricts the validity of the PSR to human experience, i.e., to things which appear in space and time. Any use of the PSR that transgresses the boundaries of human experience is bound to generate antinomies.[/i]
And this:
The PSR is the subject of Schopenahuer’s 1813 doctoral dissertation: The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. In this work, Schopenhauer provides a brief history of the PSR, and then raises the questions of the justification for the PSR and the proper scope of the principle. Schopenhauer follows Wolff in distinguishing among four kinds of reasons, corresponding to four kinds of objects, and charges that much philosophical confusion arises from attempts to explain objects of one kind by reasoning that belongs to the other kind. These four kinds of explanation, or four variants of the PSR, share the very same ground. Along Kantian lines Schopenhauer suggests that it is the subject’s activity in regularly connecting representations that is the ground of the PSR (The Fourfold Root, §16).
Whether some principle in philosophy is "weak" or "banal" is really nothing more than a matter of taste, i.e. how it relates to your own philosophical interests; there is no objective matter of fact about it. Obviously I disagree with you that the PSR is weak or banal, but I don't object to your finding it weak or banal for you; my objection is to the way you seem to be attempting to paint it as being an objective fact.
Quoting SophistiCat
No, I think it is your own presuppositions that lead you to interpret it that way. When I speak about "the world" I mean the world as it is experienced, understood and known; which effectively is all the world for us.
Quoting SophistiCat
Well, we could be mindful of the naive realisms and general reification that our dualistic language can lead us into and try to find more creative ways to talk around the conceptual difficulties inherent in language.
Quoting SophistiCat
OK, I see what you mean. If the "one thing" is taken as the cogito on its own, though, as Descartes did not, then this is Kantian through and through. Kant accepted the cogito, the "I think" but rejected the reificatory ergo sum.
Quoting SophistiCat
This seems to contradict your previous statement about "starting with the one idea that you cannot possibly deny". And again, a brute fact is only such because, and as long as, we cannot explain it. Of course we cannot explain absolutely everything, there will always be the questions about absolute origins and fundamentals. If we are theists we can claim the PSR applies to those as well; the rationality of reality is guaranteed by God. But if we are not theists then the real, considered in absolute terms, cannot be either rational or irrational; to say it is either would be a category error. The 'actualities' of origins and fundamentals, are, in principle, outside of human experience and understanding, except insofar as we can say that they provide the unknowable conditions for the possibility of anything at all; and in that sense we can say that they are sufficient reasons, for if they were not sufficient conditions there would not be anything at all.
So, we must think that our seeing of particular differences is sufficient reason for our generalizing of identities?
No, not "generalizing of identities" the contrary of this. We must refer to the law of identity itself. The law of identity recognizes the identity of a thing within the thing itself, such that the thing is what it is and nothing else. This actually disallows any generalizing of identities, because the identity is specific to the particular. However, when we as human beings assign identity to a thing, we cannot avoid some degree of generalizing. This makes the human assigned identity other than the identity of the thing itself. When the humans assign identity, they seek to differentiate the thing from other things, such that they can hand it an identity. The differences assigned (those "seen" by us) are assumed to be derived from the identity of the particular thing itself, not from a generalizing of identities..
By 'generalizing of identities" I meant 'classing things in terms of kinds', I wasn't referring to recognizing particular entities in their singularity.
Then I think I would agree. But I go even further to say that when we identify a thing as a particular, it is not strictly the "the seeing of particular differences" which is the reason for this, because there could be some other reason. This might be that we see the thing as the same thing, as time passes.
So everything is explainable but then I wonder why this is so. Does that mean the Being must be explainable. Why something rather than nothing. Or perhaps there are some fundamentals, invariants, in nature, which can't be explained away (Constants maybe)?
Quoting Janus
Well, if you completely eschew any non-mental aspects of the PSR and treat it idealistically-epistemologically, then you end up with tautologies of the sort that (paraphrasing) "the condition for being an object of experience is to be capable of being an object of experience," and the like.
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting Janus
I was not endorsing anthropic explanations as the most rational - I was playing an advocate in order to show that they are not obviously irrational (as some objectors reflexively react to them). If we were discussing the merits of anthropic explanations, I might criticize them as well (on the grounds of parsimony perhaps). So I still say that there cannot be a completely rational decision about the way we choose to structure our explanations. It will depend on the sort of question we are trying to answer and our epistemological preferences. The world does not dictate that decision to us - it constrains it at best; the world is not "rational" as such.
Quoting Janus
Indeed. And we don't even have to be foundationalist in our explanations, but go for something more like a web of beliefs.
Quoting Janus
Yes, for a theist the PSR makes a lot more sense, since there is an obvious locus of reason, as well as a direct connection between reason and the world (In the beginning there was the Word...) Although, depending on the variety of belief, a theist might still reject the principle.
I'm not really clear on what you are driving at here, but, in any case, "the condition for being an object of experience is to be intelligible" is not a tautology: it may not even be true, or it may depend on what you mean by 'experience' or 'intelligible'. So, there are possible investigations here that are certainly rational and not by any means vacuous.
Quoting SophistiCat
You seem to be making a psychological point here, that we are not "completely rational", and I have no argument with that; granted that we are not perfectly rational enquirers, in the most narrow sense of 'rational'. Also granted that all of our knowledge rests upon grounds (premises, axioms, presuppositions) that are themselves groundless in the sense that they cannot be demonstrated, logically or empirically.
But it is our condition, assuming that we come from and inhabit the world, that dictates, not the precise, but the range of, presuppositions which are possible to us, and this constraint can only be understood by us in rational terms. It is in this sense that the world must be, for us, rational. Understanding the limits of rationality is itself inevitably a rational exercise, in other words. The world can also be understood poetically, metaphorically; but I would still want to argue that this is a kind of rationality, a kind of less precise, more colourful plumbing of the depths or an emotive or associative measuring of things against other things. Poetry and metaphor have their own sufficient reasons.
The one point where I remain unsatisfied with your argument is that you seem to want to claim that humans do not always reason in terms that presuppose, explicitly or even just implicitly, that there are sufficient reasons to be discovered for whatever they are reasoning about, and yet you have not provided an example of a reasoning which could be shown to be such as to support that claim.
A related question is whether something being a sufficient reason for the existence of something else rules out that there could be other, or even more fundamental reasons, for that existence. To assert that would be to assert that nothing but the ultimate origin and ground of all things (whatever that could be) could qualify as being the sufficient reason for anything. If you wanted to argue for an alternative that could still affirm that, I would be happy to see what you come up with.
To pre-empt you, perhaps you could accept an affirmative position on that question (which would, I think also be an interpretive matter) where the principle would be reduced to a mere PR; a principle stating that for the existence of anything there must be reasons. On the other hand, I could sustain a negative position on the question by 'manifolding' or 'pluralizing' the PSR, and stating that for the existence of anything there must be sufficient reasons.
No, my point is not that we are unable to find the completely rational understanding due to our own limitations, but that there may not be this completely rational understanding to be found - it's not out there, waiting to be discovered. Not only is there no necessity about the world, its existence and its shape, but even for this contingent reality there isn't a single right way to understand it. Even if we had all the facts that we cared to know, we still could find different ways to make them intelligible for ourselves.
And yes, I arrive at this conclusion through reasoning, so if you want to say that the PSR is at work here in the sense that whatever I find to be reasonable to believe must have sufficient reasons in my mind, then sure.
Quoting Janus
Well, this may sound immodest, but you have me for an example - see above. The reason I don't presuppose that there are sufficient reasons to be discovered is simply that I don't see any reasons to make such an a priori commitment. I try to make sense of what I see, because that is in my nature, but I admit that the world doesn't owe me an explanation. The world has appeared fairly "reasonable" to my eyes up to now, but I realize that no reason - only my inductive instincts - justifies the assumption that it will continue to do so. And that there may be more to the world than is evident to my eyes. And that that which I see and understand can be reasonably understood differently.
Quoting Janus
That will depend on how one construes sufficient reason. Spinoza apparently took it in a strong sense, which requires a commitment to necessitarianism. More generally, beyond the scope of the classical PSR, reasons, causes, explanations have been treated in more fluid and varied ways, which do not necessarily imply necessitarianism or even foundationalism. But that is a topic too broad to be covered here.
I think we mostly agree now, and I think the whole issue with the PSR really boils down to this question. I can't see how we can avoid thinking that the reasons, or the conditions, that allow for the existence of things must be sufficient, just on account of the fact that the things in question do exist. Of course, there will always be, beyond our current knowledge, further conditions for the existence of any thing, ad infinitum, that we will never have the resources or the time, to be aware of, nor the complexity of intellect to incorporate into an understanding of the total range of conditions, since everything would seem to be interrelated with everything else, and the complexity is simply beyond us.
I guess my whole argument could be encapsulated in saying that the idea that something could be without the (unique?) conditions that allow for its being seems incoherent. It would amount to saying that the thing is totally independent of everything else. So, in that sense, I would say, where you perhaps would not, that we are committed to an a priori assumption that everything is interconnected and that any particular thing finds its sufficient conditions for being in that matrix of interconnectedness, because a denial of that seems simply incoherent.
It seems inconceivable that any particular thing could simply come to be from nothing, and it seems inconceivable that there could be, within the cosmos, a separate milieu of nothingness, out of which anything could come. Of course when it comes to the whole cosmos, or the microphysical, it may be a different matter; but I think there we just face ultimate mystery. Neither the 'virtual existence' of the "quantum vacuum" nor the conditions that gave rise to the Big Bang could be absolutely nothing as we conceive, or more accurately fail to conceive, it.
Hope that's not too vague.
Hi :) that's my dissertation about Hume and the PSR! I was excited to see people caring about this. It was a fun and satisfying thing to write. It genuinely reflected my own philosophical interests.