https://neonomos.substack.com/p/why-the-principle-of-sufficient-reason
created by contractualist on 01/02/2025 at 22:13 UTC
29 upvotes, 16 top-level comments (showing 16)
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1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
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Comment by fuseboy at 01/02/2025 at 22:44 UTC
47 upvotes, 3 direct replies
This feels much too loose to be convincing. In particular, the idea that just by using reason at all (e.g. to critique the PSR) you accept the PSR. That needs a lot more unpacking, I don't see how that follows. Using a tool where it is applicable doesn't mean the tool is universally applicable.
Commonplace assumption in daily life that events have explanations doesn't imply a belief that *every* event has a cause, and even if it did imply that belief, it doesn't make the belief true. This is the same sort of generalization error as above.
Careful work has been done to establish limits on the possibility of "hidden variables" in quantum mechanics. Hidden variables would have measurable consequences which we can see don't occur in experiments. It seems that the universe is filled with brute facts (at least up close).
It's an interesting idea to think about a universe with only necessary facts and their inevitable consequences. Would that imply determinism?
Comment by Rickbleves at 02/02/2025 at 02:36 UTC
9 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My personal heuristic is that anytime I see the words “self-defeating” I assume that the speaker is a combative midwit and that nothing productive will come from engaging with them
Comment by [deleted] at 01/02/2025 at 22:16 UTC
17 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by rejectednocomments at 01/02/2025 at 23:00 UTC
13 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Argument equivocates on “reason” (in the sense of explanation or cause and in the sense of justification).
Comment by yyzjertl at 02/02/2025 at 04:27 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
There are serious technical problems with this article and the PSR as presented.
The most immediate problem is that the article throughout confuses *truths* (true statements) with *facts* (the states in the world to which truths correspond). While truths can be contingent, it is dubious that facts can. (What does it even mean for a fact to be contingent? The usual possible-worlds account via modal logic gives no obvious answer.)
With this vagueness, it is entirely unclear what the author has in mind for the domains of X and Y in the PSR. Are X and Y statements? Are X and Y facts? Is X a fact and Y a statement?
If either X or Y are statements, the PSR must be restricted to the domain of second-order logic only, because it involves quantification over statements. The usual "trick" to reduce to first-order logic via an axiom schema does not work here, because the PSR as stated says something like "there exists a statement..." and you can't make that into an axiom schema. This makes PSR very dubious as a general law of logic or reasoning, because it can't even work in first-order logic: if we accept that we must always use this version of the PSR, it means we must abandon first-order logic, which would be extremely silly.
On the other hand, if both X and Y are meant to be facts, then it is totally unclear what it means for Y to be a sufficient condition for X. For *statements* this relation is unambiguous: Y is a sufficient condition for X if Y entails X. But for facts, who knows? And even if we ignore this, if X and Y are both facts then the whole line of argument in the article falls apart, as that argument requires Y to be an *explanation* and specifically *not* a brute fact.
Comment by Shield_Lyger at 02/02/2025 at 16:45 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Whenever we ask a question, we don't accept answers like "That is just how it is," or "It's just a brute fact." We demand explanations. In fact, the whole reason we ask questions is to discover these underlying explanations, which we already *presume* to exist.
Citation, please. And just who is this "we," anyway?
This is where this article breaks; the presumption that I demand explanations for *everything* and an somehow incapable of shrugging my shoulders, saying: "That is just how it is," and going on with my life.
True, the author is also attempting to make this point for humanity as a whole, but I'm going to use myself as the example here, because this allows me to make the following challenge:
Because what breaks this argument for me is smuggling in of psychology. When the author says:
People may *say* that the universe is fundamentally random and physical events lack true explanation, but they will still navigate through life by asking "why?" questions and would never accept "just cuz its brute," as an answer.
Then there is a "why" to this. In other words, the fact that "people" (and perhaps the author leaves themselves an out by never saying just *who* "people" are...) "would never accept 'just cuz its brute,' as an answer," has a reason. So present it. Present to me the evidence that when someone tells me "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all," that I am fundamentally prevented from taking that at face value.
Sure, the author can simply *assert* that I am, and then attempt to move the burden of proof back to me, but I refuse to take it, in the same way that I refuse to take the burden of proof when some random person walks up to me and asserts "You stole something from me, and now owe me $1,000.00."
If the author is going to make a truth claim about me, they should explain why it is true. The fact that they can't understand why it must be true of themselves, and even other people that they know, has no bearing on me.
You might try to argue that even though reasons against the PSR are self-defeating, there still *can be* contingent truths that lack an explanation, independent of whether or not we accept the PSR. We cannot be forced to accept the PSR just from clever equivocation.
This is where I basically walked away. A contingent truth cannot lack an explanation... *because having an explanation is definition of a contingent truth*. The author redefines "truth" to equal "contingent truth," and then (I presume) merrily proceeds from there. *Tautology* and *axiom* are not synonyms.
Comment by locklear24 at 02/02/2025 at 20:18 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I guess it's acceptable now to just declare things under dispute as self-evident and have the narcissism to make up new laws of logic.
Comment by SwagDrQueefChief at 02/02/2025 at 05:07 UTC
9 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You state that no brute facts can exist, you state that necessary truths exist in all world, and, you state that contingent truths are ones that only exist in our world. Therefore there should be no 'contingent truth' as everything is derived from the same necessary truths.
This can only be reasoned as there being only '1 world', as no world can exist with different necessary truths. But that does away with the concept of necessary truth. All necessary truths become indistinguishable from brute as we have no means to justify their necessity i.e. we are forced to accept them because "that's just how it is." Ultimately this makes PSR 'self-defeating' by it's own means of existence.
Comment by rafikievergreen at 02/02/2025 at 18:09 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Wow. That statement is the most intense and blatant begging the question I may have every seen.
Comment by superninja109 at 02/02/2025 at 06:38 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Your claim that any criticism of the PSR is self-defeating does not work. You claim that "to give a reason is to accept the PSR."
For one, the skeptic can quite plausibly claim that "One should give reasons when arguing/challenging a claim" is just a dialectical norm, not anything deeply true about the world.
For another, this just does not follow. Your PSR states "*all* contingent facts have reasons for their existence." One does not need to accept this to say that "*some* contingent facts have reasons for their existence." One's acceptance of this weaker claim is enough to license giving reasons.
This is also relevant to the other argument you like to make against PSR skeptics: you present some absurd event and then claim that the skeptic is committed to denying that any explanation can be given for why that absurdity does not happen. The skeptic can respond by simply saying that *some* contingent facts have explanations. The absurd examples that you present don't happen because they contradict some law of nature, and that's the explanation. But this doesn't commit them to claiming that every fact has an explanation. Bearing a default assumption that most things will have explanations is good for inquiry, but this doesn't mean that one must accept the PSR.
Also, about the van Inwagen counterargument that the PSR entails necessitarianism, the problem here seems to be, not that this makes things bad for free will, but rather that the PSR is only vacuously true. It purports to tell us all contingent truths have a certain property. But there are no contingent truths (by necessitarianism), so the PSR is about as meaningful as "all square circles have 4 sides."
Comment by Iammaybeasliceofpie at 02/02/2025 at 12:24 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I am not very well literate in philosophy but am interested in the topic. I do not really understand the point. As I interpret the post: the core argument to saying the psr should be a fundamental law is that refuting it requires an argument thereby adhering to the psr itself. But is that not the inherent result of the defenition of it? As to say: a fact that requires context to become a fact requires said context to become a fact, thereby facts cannot exist without their context. But a self sustaining law like that could never be a fundamental law, for then we could also add the rule “all red cars are always red”.
Again, i am not well versed in the subject and english is hard in this kind of matter for me, but what is the point?
Comment by TroutDoors at 02/02/2025 at 15:37 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Are you claiming the unexplained and the unexplainable are equivalent?
Comment by TimeGhost_22 at 01/02/2025 at 22:18 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
For every circle C there must be a sufficient roundness to constitute the circularity of C.
Oh wow, I found a principle.
Comment by contractualist at 01/02/2025 at 22:18 UTC
2 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Summary: The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), which posits that all contingent facts must have sufficient reasons for their existence, is self-evident and fundamental to our understanding of reality (whether or not we admit we accept it). Those who reject the PSR could only do so by accepting the PSR, as any reason-based argument against it would implicitly rely on the need for sufficient reasons. The PSR serves as a basic assumption in science's search for fundamental explanations, and unexplained events should be attributed to the incompleteness of our model, rather than the incompleteness of reality. The text also addresses criticisms of the PSR, particularly concerning quantum indeterminacy, its necessitarian implications, and its demand for infinite causes. The author is happy to answer any questions.
Comment by aries777622 at 02/02/2025 at 02:30 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Psr is sound, its not defficient, for everything that is there is a rational explanation or else there would be no rational explanation.
Truth says that there is always truth, if there were no rational explanation there would be no truth.