Rigjt, so the particular difference is sufficient reason for the general condition of being different? — Janus
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. — SophistiCat
Ah, but here you are making a much stronger statement. This is no longer just about our knowledge-seeking, isn't it? — SophistiCat
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. — SophistiCat
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. — SophistiCat
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. — SophistiCat
The PSR holds, because there will always be a reason why whomever made the generalization, made it. — Metaphysician Undercover
So, we must think that our seeing of particular differences is sufficient reason for our generalizing of identities? — Janus
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.
Sure, but there have been significant other non-theistic treatments of the PSR. — Janus
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. — Janus
there isn't even a unique, rational choice to be made about what those brute facts should be. — SophistiCat
This seems to contradict your previous statement about "starting with the one idea that you cannot possibly deny". — Janus
Of course we cannot explain absolutely everything, there will always be the questions about absolute origins and fundamentals. — Janus
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. — 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. — SophistiCat
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. — 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'. — Janus
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. — Janus
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. — Janus
That will depend on how one construes sufficient reason. — SophistiCat
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