The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. — Bertrand Russell
Bruteness seems profound, but then you realize you can arbitrarily make anything lacking agreed upon explanation brute. Why is it that anything exists? Because something (some things) just happen(s) to exist. And why is that something and not something else? Just because? — Marchesk
Aren't you being circular though? Brute facts don't have explanations. But you want there to be an explanation for what makes a brute fact. — mcdoodle
t is dissatisfying, but sometimes some old bugger says 'I refute it thus!' and then you're stuck for an answer, and have to wander off to find questions which seem to have replies :). — mcdoodle
"everything must have a reason" is going to wind up either being or resting on something that one accepts as a brute fact, anyway. — Terrapin Station
Necessary beings aren't brute facts. — Sivad
Another problem is why would some things be brute when most things are not? What makes God, or Quantum Mechanics, or Daisen brute? What distinguishes the brutally existing things from the non-brutal ones? Is it just being brute? Is there a brute property? How does brute existence result in contingent existences? — Marchesk
I agree. Analytic philosophy tends to argue that one can somehow choose one's brute beliefs, or they're random. But they are historically-situated, and if we talk about beliefs in any time but our own, we tend to place them in a socio-historical context. Brute beliefs somehow rub off on you in your formative times without you realising until it's too late and, darn it, here they are, in your very sinews.I fail to see how reason gets off the ground without brute beliefs. — Moliere
I was listening to Colin McGinn discuss the question of why anything exists at all. His analysis is that there has to be some things for which there is no explanation that explain the things that do have explanations. Something must be brute.
if you bring God into the discussion as a brute fact then, I think we are no longer having a rational conversation, and while God may work for many as the brute fact of existence, I am not one of them. — Cavacava
The only brute that I can think of is the contingency of everything, the fact that what is, could possibly be otherwise. — Cavacava
if you bring God into the discussion as a brute fact then, I think we are no longer having a rational conversation, — Cavacava
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