Self-explanatory facts
Hi all,
Della Rocca (2014) evokes an argument from the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) to the existence of a self-explainer. Here's the argument (my reconstruction):
Assume PSR : every fact has a metaphysical explanation. If to possess a metaphysical explanation is to be grounded by one or several fact(s), then the PSR seems to commit us to the view that there only exists grounded facts. But now, consider the entire series of grounded facts. PSR implies that the fact that this series exists must have an explanation. But then, what is the reason for this series' existence ? Is it grounded in something else or not ? In other words : is the series explained by something other than itself, or is it self-explanatory ?
Supposing that the series is grounded/explained by something other than itself leads to contradiction. Indeed, this series is the entire series of grounded facts. If the existence of the series were a fact grounded by something else, this very fact should be part of the series. But this would imply that the series is grounded in itself, contra the initial assumption. Therefore, the series cannot be explained by something other than itself. It is thus self-explaining.
This argument, as I see it, could be represented as :
(P1) Every fact has an explanation (PSR)
(P2) There exists a series S of all grounded facts
(C1) The fact that S exists must have an explanation (P1, P2)
(P3) Either S is explained by something else than itself, either it is self-explanatory
(P4) S cannot be explained by something else than itself
(C2) Therefore, S is self-explanatory (C1, P3, P4)
This argument, clearly, mirrors the structure of cosmological arguments based on the PSR. Now, my question is the following : how would you attack this argument, in a way other than denying (P2), i.e. that there exists a series of all grounded facts ? I am generally in agreement with (P2) but am very reluctant to admit the existence of self-explanatory facts. How would you work your way around this ?
Thanks in advance for your help
Philarete
Della Rocca (2014) evokes an argument from the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) to the existence of a self-explainer. Here's the argument (my reconstruction):
Assume PSR : every fact has a metaphysical explanation. If to possess a metaphysical explanation is to be grounded by one or several fact(s), then the PSR seems to commit us to the view that there only exists grounded facts. But now, consider the entire series of grounded facts. PSR implies that the fact that this series exists must have an explanation. But then, what is the reason for this series' existence ? Is it grounded in something else or not ? In other words : is the series explained by something other than itself, or is it self-explanatory ?
Supposing that the series is grounded/explained by something other than itself leads to contradiction. Indeed, this series is the entire series of grounded facts. If the existence of the series were a fact grounded by something else, this very fact should be part of the series. But this would imply that the series is grounded in itself, contra the initial assumption. Therefore, the series cannot be explained by something other than itself. It is thus self-explaining.
This argument, as I see it, could be represented as :
(P1) Every fact has an explanation (PSR)
(P2) There exists a series S of all grounded facts
(C1) The fact that S exists must have an explanation (P1, P2)
(P3) Either S is explained by something else than itself, either it is self-explanatory
(P4) S cannot be explained by something else than itself
(C2) Therefore, S is self-explanatory (C1, P3, P4)
This argument, clearly, mirrors the structure of cosmological arguments based on the PSR. Now, my question is the following : how would you attack this argument, in a way other than denying (P2), i.e. that there exists a series of all grounded facts ? I am generally in agreement with (P2) but am very reluctant to admit the existence of self-explanatory facts. How would you work your way around this ?
Thanks in advance for your help
Philarete
Comments (36)
What this allows you to do is question the hard and fast distinction in (P3) between S and something other than S, insofar S cannot be understood to be a self-contained totality in the first place: with S alone, one can generate something other than S. This line of attack doesn't so much deny that S can or cannot be self-explanatory, so much as put into question what it might even mean for something to be self-explanatory (or, alternatively, be 'explained by something else'). It frames the whole exercise as a kind of paralogism in Kant's sense, an attempt to deal with a whole that cannot in fact be made whole to begin with.
I think what this opens up is the question of what even constitutes a fact, and necessitates a look into the means by which facts are individuated, but that's probably a bit much to deal with here.
Then epistemic/ontological closure, then is a fictitious concept?
Epistemic closure consists in entailment. If entailment cannot be achieved by negation of totality in your previous awesome post, then epistemic closure fails?
I'm still not sure what this means.
Sorry, I'll think about it and get back later. Don't want to deviate from the topic question.
Thanks!
P.S. I like Meillassoux's work. I'm not very fond of the PSR as a metaphysical principle.
Yes.
What can this mean? Following Plato's hint in the Sophist, we can say that anything that can act in any way exists. This makes existence convertible with the unspecified ability to act. Correlatively, what a thing is (its essence) can be explicated as the specification of its possible acts.
So, for what something is (its essence), to explain that it is (its existence) requires that the specification of its possible acts entails the unspecified ability to act. In other words, what it is can place no limitations on its capacity to act. Thus, it must be able to do any logically possible act (be omnipotent).
Would you consider just dropping the PSR? It's difficult for me to see what the attraction of an unrestricted PSR is, Della Rocca's arguments notwithstanding.
Logical consistency. How can something essentially inadequate to a task perform the task?
But if completeness is what was meant, we hit a block there too, since Godel showed that any system worth bothering with is incomplete.
Explain, please.
Of course. The PSR is an observation about the nature of contingent reality -- not an arbitrary posit.
We see that changes happen. We ask how can this be? Parmenides argued:
Every change requires the emergence of something new. Either this new reality comes from something or it comes from nothing. It cannot come from nothing because from nothing, nothing comes. But, nether can it come from something, for if it did it would already exist and so not be new. Since the new aspect can neither come from nothing nor from something, change is impossible.
Aristotle explained Parmenides error by observing that just because a new aspect comes from something does not mean that it actually preexists the change. It can be potential, rather than actual, in what it comes from. So, our experience of change implies the reality of potential existence -- not as a mere logical possibility, but as the foundation in reality for what is actualized in change.
What has this to do with the PSR? While what is potential is real, it is not yet actual (not yet operational). As the actualization of a potential is an operation, no potential can actualize itself because it is not yet operational. So, it must be actualized by something already operational/actual, its concurrent cause. (Concurrent because it has to operate at the time and place the potential is made actual.) So, every potency that is actualized is actualized by a concurrent ("essential") cause.
(Note that essential causes, which act concurrently, are not the kind of causes soundly criticized by Hume and inadequately discussed by Kant. That kind of cause is known as an "accidental cause" and is time-sequence by rule. Essential causality differs by occurring in a single event (the actualization of a potential), while accidental causality links two successive events.)
We have now established the necessity for an operative agent (essential cause) in the actualization of any potency. All the PSR says is that this agent must be sufficient or adequate to the task of actualization. This adds nothing to the analysis. It merely makes explicit what was implicit, for the claim that an agent inadequate to actualizing a potential actualizes that potential is an oxymoron.
Quoting tim wood
I don't think this is an argument so much as a definition. If we define a "fact" as an intelligible state of affairs, that does not imply that we have access to the fact. When we do have access, we come to know the state of affairs because it acts on us, typically via our senses.
I do not see these questions as doing more than rephrasing what I said in interrogatory form. I suggested definitions and do not intend to engage in anargumentum in circulo. It is reasonable to object to definitions by giving counter-examples or by saying why you find this or that defining term to be problematic. These questions do neither.
Quoting tim wood
"Intelligible" means capable of informing an intellect. An intellect is informed when what is logically possible to it is reduced.
Quoting tim wood
I see no such appearance. If you would care to argue you claim, I will consider your objection.
Quoting tim wood
To my mind, "texts," broadly speaking, are conventional instrumental signs. The do not include concepts, unexpressed judgement and other instruments of thought which are neither conventional nor instrumental signs, but formal signs. If you wish to include unexpressed judgements, how would you distinguish them from known states of affairs?
Quoting tim wood
You may use terms as you wish. Most people would not call perceptions "texts," so this choice of terms is bound to lead to confusion -- as you can see from my post.
Quoting tim wood
I would say that perceptions are not re-presentations, but presentations. The make the object dynamically present to us -- not the whole object, but the object as acting on us. My sensory "representation" of an object is identically the object's modification of my sensory system. It belongs jointly to the object (as its radiance of action) and to me as my sensory representation. It is the object dynamically penetrating my being. So, in a sensory presentation I have the object itself -- not in its entirety, but in an informative projection of itself. The object informing me is identically me being informed by the object.
Quoting tim wood
This leaves out one of the most common uses of "facts" -- that in which we seek to find the (currently unknown) "facts." If facts do not exist without an actual description, no unknown "facts" are possible and seeking them is an exercise in futility. On the other hand, by my definition, intelligible states of affairs count as facts that can be discovered.
Quoting tim wood
One could write a whole book on this, but the outline is simple enough. The environment acts on me via my senses -- informing them in specific ways. Various objects have specific acts that they are capable of and others that they are incapable of. When I turn my attention to my sensory contents, I can focus on specific aspects -- becoming aware of them. If some subset of sensory contents (an object presentation) evokes the concept
Going the other way, after making out the letters and reading the text, the sentence evokes certain concepts and relations between them, so that I can, if I wish, imagine a red book on a table.
Quoting tim wood
The fact as text never becomes the state of affairs the text describes unless I am an artisan. All it can do is evoke evoke an intellectual or imagined representation of the state of affairs described. If I am an artisan, I might be able to make an object with the specified features. Still, even if I am an artisan and make a specified object, the object I make was not a fact when I received the specification.
Quoting tim wood
Of course. That is why I started my post by saying "It seems to me that 'fact' has two senses."
It is not inconsistent in se or with principles of logic. It is inconsistent with the metaphysically certain proposition "Nothing can act that is not operational" taken together with the meaning of terms like "potential" and "sufficient."
It means every actuality entails the correlative potentiality. So, unless something is operational (proximately able to act), it cannot act/operate.
Quoting andrewk
I have already explained this. Since no merely potential reality is operational (or it would not still be potential), no potential can operate to make itself actual. So, the actualization of every potential requires the operation of a being which is already actual (its cause). Further, it is an oxymoron to say that something insufficient to being about an effect brings about that effect. So, the cause must be sufficient.
Well, when it comes to philosophy, at the end of the day it does come down to "taste;" there's no getting around it, unless you believe that you can derive an entire philosophy completely a priori, without any extrarational commitments (which would be an exceptionally crankish thing to believe).
But that's not really why I don't accept your argumentation in this instance. When making an argument one must start from some common ground, and Aristotelian or Scholastic metaphysics isn't such a common ground between us. If you absolutely have to use that framework, then you would have to start by justifying that entire framework to me, or at least its relevant parts. And that is just too unwieldy a task for a forum discussion on an unrelated topic.
No, I think you can derive any sound philosophical conclusion a posteriori by reflecting on judgements adequately based on human experience. I see no need for any a priori claims, although I think that some conclusions, once they are come to a posteriori, may be applied a priori thereafter. So, while we cannot prove all premises, those admissible to philosophy can either be proven, or derived from experience. "Taste" is a cover term for intellectual prejudice.
Quoting SophistiCat
And that is why I do not appeal to authority, but to the data of experience in making my case. So, while my mode of analysis is, as you say, Aristotelian or Scholastic, the common ground I appealed to was experiential data and the acceptance of salve veritate logical moves. If you thought my argument unsound, you could rationally have pointed out a failure on either point.
Quoting SophistiCat
And that is what I have been doing. I showed how the concept of potency is required to reject Parmenides argument that change is an illusion. I showed how concurrent causality is required by the fact that to operate, something must be operational, etc.
I received no objections to my justifications, only a rejection of the line of argument based on "taste."
I think neither that philosophical theories are unique, nor that they can be derived in a few paragraphs.
I do think that all sound philosophical theories, as reflections of reality, are necessarily mutually consistent. I also think that the insights necessary to support specific conclusions can be provided in a few paragraphs. If they could not, this, and similar, forums would be futile.
You are, of course, free to direct your time and attention where you will.