5 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)
Explanations obviously do exist for many things. But it doesn't follow from this alone that they exist for all things.
Humans do naturally ask why. And, demonstrably, we can often figure out explanations that tell us why. So at least very often this natural impulse of ours is not mistaken. But why think the impulse is *always* appropriate? Our other instincts sometimes misfire, especially when dealing with situations differing in some manner from a typical case.
Comment by shewel_item at 01/02/2025 at 23:54 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
more to this point explanations aren't experiments
more to the out yonder thinking experiments don't need to be reasonable to be true
but experiments are expected to be well modelled (reasoned) in order to work; that is however a theory
Comment by contractualist at 01/02/2025 at 23:16 UTC*
-1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I've discussed this argument, which is refered to in the article portion copied below. Overall, the PSR is axiomatic, not empircal. Its part of our model of the world and that model doesn't allow for brute facts until there is reason to doubt the PSR (which is to accept the PSR).
Yet, the PSR is not empirical, it is axiomatic. Whether or not we accept the PSR will determine how we will *examine* the world, not the world itself, and we cannot see the world outside our axioms of examination (the “laws of thought[1]”). And to establish the *possibility* of ungrounded contingent truths (i.e., "brute facts") would first require rejecting the PSR. If we can't first reject the PSR, then*, in principle,* all contingent truths must have sufficient reasons.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_thought
But if, *in principle*, contingent facts require sufficient reasons, then *no fact* can be classified as truly brute. So although we don't know the specific sufficient reasons for a certain contingent truth, those sufficient reasons would still have to exist—we just wouldn't know them yet. The PSR lets us be intellectually humble by putting the burden of a missing structure on our own model rather than reality itself.