Non-theists, is the PSR false?

[Phil Leotardo]

PSR = the principle of sufficient reason, most famously associated with Leibniz, but at least implicitly affirmed (in one version or another) by most famous philosophers prior to Hume.

Roughly, the PSR says that every fact is explicable. Sometimes this is limited to contingent facts: if X is a contingent fact (viz. X obtains but does not necessarily obtain), then there must be some explanation why X obtains rather than not.

 

[Otterly]

There’s a thread in here asking if science can explain everything. Same question
Thread 'Can science explain everything?'
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/can-science-explain-everything.184196/

 

[Phil Leotardo]

There’s a thread in here asking if science can explain everything. Same question
Thread 'Can science explain everything?'
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/can-science-explain-everything.184196/

Definitely not the same question.

 

[The Evil Midnight Bomber]

Definitely not the same question.

Maybe try to actually express yourself in an understandable manner then because that's the meaning I got from your question, too.

 

[Otterly]

Definitely not the same question.

Is everything explicable certainly overlaps a lot with the previous thread. That was aimed at science being the medium to explain everything. I thought it might be of interest.
If you’re asking ‘can religion explain stuff science can’t’ then that was covered in there too.
What’s your definition of ‘explainable’? If it’s requiring empirical evidence and data then you’re in the realms of science which was the question posed in that thread. If you mean explicable through belief, etc then that’s a much harder thing to define, because you’re getting into belief vs evidence.

Can you explain what you’d require as an explanation for a specific thing, and maybe give some examples?

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

I was having a hard time grasping what you mean, OP, so I just googled "principle of sufficient reason"

The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause.

It's a working first principle up until you get to the point where you're asking "why is there something rather than nothing?" At which point you must either concede that the principle isn't entirely universal or bank on an assumption akin to "it could not be any other way for some as-of-yet unknown reason."

I don't see why theist vs. non-theist matters here. A belief in God(s) only pushes the question back a step.

 

[Calandrino]

I think there's no rational basis for me to ever truly be certain of what the fuck you people are talking about

 

[Idiotron]

Well, sure, there's an explanation for everything.
We just don't know most of them.
Were apes who were lucky enough to have big brains that helped us learn what we currently know and we're learning more all the time.
Non-theists can say "I don't know" and that's fine because how probable even is it that we can figure everything out?
Not very.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

It's a working first principle up until you get to the point where you're asking "why is there something rather than nothing?" At which point you must either concede that the principle isn't entirely universal or bank on an assumption akin to "it could not be any other way for some as-of-yet unknown reason."

I don't see why theist vs. non-theist matters here. A belief in God(s) only pushes the question back a step.

Disagree. I think it's coherent (though it could be wrong) to think that the reason there's something rather than nothing is that there might be something that exists necessarily. That is, it exists because it couldn't be otherwise. God is a good candidate for that, although there might be other possibilities like the Dao or something like that. But the physical universe doesn't seem like it would meet that criteria.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

we - as consciousnesses of indeterminate nature and origin, bound to limited flesh - have a working understanding of the general context we find ourselves in, i.e., the signals received by our physical senses and interpretations thereof provided by our various supplementary faculties. that does not mean that this understanding can be meaningfully extended to any other part of reality. debating the nature of things beyond the purview of human sense perception is like debating the size of God's dick. the assumption that you have any real basis for making these judgments is purely vanity. but I guess it's fun to do when you're stoned.

For every entity X, if X exists, then there is a sufficient explanation for why X exists.
For every event E, if E occurs, then there is a sufficient explanation for why E occurs.
For every proposition P, if P is true, then there is a sufficient explanation for why P is true.

what the fuck is this gay shit? it seems like the primary innovation of this field is ways of making mundane logic sound vastly more profound and erudite than it actually is. this is why I don't read philosophy.

 

[The Bovinian Derivative]

what the fuck is this gay shit? it seems like the primary innovation of this field is ways of making mundane logic sound vastly more profound and erudite than it actually is. this is why I don't read philosophy.

Philosophy has a way of going about in an autistic matter to describe something that people are well aware of normally. Analytical philosophy doubly so.

 

[Phil Leotardo]

Maybe try to actually express yourself in an understandable manner then because that's the meaning I got from your question, too.

What's the difficulty?

"Can science explain X?" and "Is there an explanation of X, full stop?" are manifestly asking different things.

For example, think of any mathematical theorem proven by appealing to more basic mathematical propositions. The former has an explanation, but it's not explained by science in any interesting sense; it's not as if mathematicians are using microscopes to assist themselves in scientifically testing whether theorems are true.

 

[The Evil Midnight Bomber]

What's the difficulty?

"Can science explain X?" and "Is there an explanation of X, full stop?" are manifestly asking different things.

For example, think of any mathematical theorem proven by appealing to more basic mathematical propositions. The former has an explanation, but it's not explained by science in any interesting sense; it's not as if mathematicians are using microscopes to assist themselves in scientifically testing whether theorems are true.

Well then the answer is no for human beings because we're limited by our very inadequate senses and yes for a hypothetical omnipotent godlike being.

 

[Phil Leotardo]

I was having a hard time grasping what you mean, OP, so I just googled "principle of sufficient reason"

It's a working first principle up until you get to the point where you're asking "why is there something rather than nothing?" At which point you must either concede that the principle isn't entirely universal or bank on an assumption akin to "it could not be any other way for some as-of-yet unknown reason."

I don't see why theist vs. non-theist matters here. A belief in God(s) only pushes the question back a step.

I think it's more than a mere presumptive first principle. For one thing, if it was false, we'd expect to observe or experience at least some things that are inexplicable in principle, yet this isn't the case. For another, assuming it to be false seemingly entails radical skepticism: if things can really "just happen" without explanations, then we can have no reason to think our own perceptual experiences aren't inexplicably snapping into being, rather than being caused by the objects we ordinarily take to cause them. This would seem to pose a problem for empirical science, given that science takes for granted the reliability of our perceptual faculties.

Regarding theism: if you've arrived at the point of a necessarily existing cause or explanation of all of contingent reality, you're already pretty close to theism. You can add in supporting considerations, e.g. propositions are not plausibly reducible to the contingent material world nor contingent human minds, so unless you're willing to go for Platonism, "locating" them in a necessarily existing mind starts to seem pretty plausible. For reasons like these, most non-theistic philosophers have tended to hold that contingent reality is inexplicable, a "brute fact" that couldn't be explained in principle.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

Disagree. I think it's coherent (though it could be wrong) to think that the reason there's something rather than nothing is that there might be something that exists necessarily. That is, it exists because it couldn't be otherwise. God is a good candidate for that, although there might be other possibilities like the Dao or something like that. But the physical universe doesn't seem like it would meet that criteria.

One could just as coherently argue that the fundamental laws which give rise to the physical universe could be that thing which exists necessarily. There are already models which suggest that the existence of matter/energy is a natural result of these fundamental mechanisms (see Hartle–Hawking state).

if it was false, we'd expect to observe or experience at least some things that are inexplicable in principle, yet this isn't the case.

If it's false, we'd have to then ask the question: "to what degree?"
A slightly unrelated example would be F=MA. It's false. But you could apply the equation to 99 out of 100 situations you observe and not even notice the discrepancy. One could argue that PSR violations are generally rare, fleeting, and minor so we would naturally have no experience with them. This isn't my position. But it would be a coherent one to take.

Regarding theism: if you've arrived at the point of a necessarily existing cause or explanation of all of contingent reality, you're already pretty close to theism. You can add in supporting considerations, e.g. propositions are not plausibly reducible to the contingent material world nor contingent human minds, so unless you're willing to go for Platonism, "locating" them in a necessarily existing mind starts to seem pretty plausible.

The issue here is that you're presuming some sort of "mind" to whatever necessarily existing "thing" gave rise to the rest of the universe. Even if we were to outright presume that there's some sort of preeminent force from which everything else is derived, you're still firmly in the realm of naturalism unless you can show this force has some form of sentience and intent.

 

[Phil Leotardo]

One could argue that PSR violations are generally rare, fleeting, and minor so we would naturally have no experience with them. This isn't my position. But it would be a coherent one to take.

I think there are at least three potential problems with making this sort of move. Apologies for the incoming autism:

1. Let H1 refer to the unrestricted PSR (i.e., all contingent facts are explicable) and let H2 refer to a restricted PSR (e.g., m/n contingent facts are explicable, where m/n < 1). In the "odds" form of Bayes' theorem, we have: P(H1|E) / P(H2|E) = [P(H1)P(E|H1)] / [P(H2)P(E|H2)]. Assuming that P(H1) = P(H2)—which is being generous, see below—the relevant comparison is between P(E|H1) and P(E|H2). It seems rather obvious that the former is greater than the latter, even if only to some small degree, and so the total body of evidence supports the unrestricted PSR over the restricted PSR.

2. How is the restricted PSR epistemically justified? It’s clearly not justified a priori given its form (compare: "90% of trucks are red" isn’t the sort of proposition that could be justified a priori). So is it empirically justified? The problem with this option is that any experiences or purported observations we appeal to are the sorts of things that are, for all we know (assuming the falsity of the PSR), snapping into existence without explanation. Thus, it doesn’t seem we could claim it’s empirically justified either.

3. Most fundamentally, it’s not clear how we can assign an objective probability to some inexplicable contingent state of affairs. Objective probabilities depend on the objective tendencies of things, but if the PSR is false, events can occur in a manner that has nothing to do with objective tendencies. In other words, regarding contingent facts, it seems objective probabilities are downstream of explicability. You might argue that we can, in principle if not in practice, simply count all the inexplicable facts and compare them to the explicable facts to determine a probability. However, that would presuppose the classical theory of probability, which is rejected by virtually every probability theorist today.

I wanted to keep these initial remarks relatively brief, but I can expand on any or all of them if you're interested.

The issue here is that you're presuming some sort of "mind" to whatever necessarily existing "thing" gave rise to the rest of the universe.

It's not a presumption; it's an argument: If realism concerning abstract objects (universals, propositions, possible worlds, etc.) is true, then either Platonism is true or theism is true. Realism is true. Platonism is false. Therefore, theism is true.

To be clear, I'm not defending this argument here; I was only offering it as an answer to the "What does this have to do with theism?" question.

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

I think there are at least three potential problems with making this sort of move. Apologies for the incoming autism:

1 and 3 are primarily probabilistic arguments, with 1 in particular being applied rather poorly. No matter how unlikely H2 is, H1 may come to be far less likely as it must presuppose a self-causing cause.
Your error here is akin to trusting a test with a 1% false positive rate for a disease that affects 1/1000th of the population. Even if you test positive, you're still much less likely to have the disease than not.

As for 2: it's justified by the apparent contradiction I presented above. You must either accept that at least one cause did not have a cause or that such a cause effectively caused itself. The question is which of these highly unlikely scenarios is less unlikely than the other?

If realism concerning abstract objects (universals, propositions, possible worlds, etc.) is true, then either Platonism is true or theism is true.

This is a common error a lot of layman theists make when discussion of physical laws comes forth. The laws, as written, are a product of thinking language used to describe certain behaviors. Sure. But the behavior is a physical thing.
Math is an abstract concept, for example. But if two pairs of two apples come together, there's 4 apples regardless of whether someone's there to count them or not. Concepts like addition and subtraction are abstract in nature. But they were invented by humans to describe physical phenomena that occur independently of our own thinking on the matter.

So, some fundamental force which acts as the "first cause" need not have any mind attached to it. It's just the natural universe naturally doing its thing unobserved by any thinking entity.

 

[Cubism Encircled]

1 and 3 are primarily probabilistic arguments, with 1 in particular being applied rather poorly. No matter how unlikely H2 is, H1 may come to be far less likely as it must presuppose a self-causing cause.
Your error here is akin to trusting a test with a 1% false positive rate for a disease that affects 1/1000th of the population. Even if you test positive, you're still much less likely to have the disease than not.

As for 2: it's justified by the apparent contradiction I presented above. You must either accept that at least one cause did not have a cause or that such a cause effectively caused itself. The question is which of these highly unlikely scenarios is less unlikely than the other?


This is a common error a lot of layman theists make when discussion of physical laws comes forth. The laws, as written, are a product of thinking language used to describe certain behaviors. Sure. But the behavior is a physical thing.
Math is an abstract concept, for example. But if two pairs of two apples come together, there's 4 apples regardless of whether someone's there to count them or not. Concepts like addition and subtraction are abstract in nature. But they were invented by humans to describe physical phenomena that occur independently of our own thinking on the matter.

So, some fundamental force which acts as the "first cause" need not have any mind attached to it. It's just the natural universe naturally doing its thing unobserved by any thinking entity.

You still haven't explained why that fundamental force is there or how it got there, or really explained anything at all. You are simply smearing across your argument the words "natural" and "naturally," like Vaseline being smeared across a tranny's ruined amhole. What a shoddy excuse for reasoning. How many digits is your IQ, 1 or 2?

 

[Penis Drager 2.0]

You still haven't explained why that fundamental force is there or how it got there, or really explained anything at all. You are simply smearing across your argument the words "natural" and "naturally," like Vaseline being smeared across a tranny's ruined amhole. What a shoddy excuse for reasoning. How many digits is your IQ, 1 or 2?

You clearly missed my entire point, my melanated friend.
Either A: that force doesn't need a reason for being (therefore PSR is false)
Or B: that force couldn't not exist for some unknown reason.
Those are your options. Whatever that force may be, be it natural or supernatural, you are stuck firmly in that dilemma if you want to answer "why is there something rather than nothing?"

 

[Dyn]

The PSR is proven false because there's no reason anyone should have replied to your shitty gay thread, yet people still did.