Here is another one for you:

The “Robbers Cave experiment” is considered seminal by social psychologists, still one of the best-known examples of “realistic conflict theory”. It is often cited in modern research. But was it scientifically rigorous? And why were the results of the Middle Grove experiment – where the researchers couldn’t get the boys to fight – suppressed? “Sherif was clearly driven by a kind of a passion,” Perry says. “That shaped his view and it also shaped the methods he used. He really did come from that tradition in the 30s of using experiments as demonstrations – as a confirmation, not to try to find something new.” In other words, think of the theory first and then find a way to get the results that match it. If the results say something else? Bury them. — A real-life Lord of the Flies: the troubling legacy of the Robbers Cave experiment

As for why study this - as if we didn't already know that people can treat each other horribly - the job of a social psychologist, like that of any scientist, is to try to understand the hows and the whys, to find patterns and regularities, to expose hidden connections, to cut nature at its joints - that sort of thing. More practically, as you can read in these stories, such studies are often motivated by lofty goals (but just as often nowadays by commercial interests ). Nowadays when lay people talk about the Stanford Prison Experiment, their interest is usually in human psychology in general, or in trying to find an explanation for some (seemingly) extraordinary atrocity. But Zimbardo and others who promoted his "experiment" were interested in very ordinary and practical things, such as criminal justice and the penal system. They believed that they could and should make a difference. And what makes this story even more ambivalent is that their beliefs and prescriptions weren't all wrong either - just not necessarily for the reasons stated.

The problem is that human psychology and social dynamics are so very complex, and we want to see a simple pattern, a story that will neatly explain it all. You can see it in Zimbardo's case, and in Sherif's, how they were seduced by the simplicity of their favored explanations to the point that they could not and would not see the confounding complexities of the real life.

As far as that goes, reading Timothy Snyder's Black Earth can be a pretty strange experience. — Srap Tasmaner

Sounds like this is someone who is brave enough to face the imponderable complexities and honestly concede ignorance when simple explanations are found to be lacking. But saying that "people did what they chose to, period" is not even an attempt at an explanation, this is just giving up. We don't have to give up trying to find explanations, we just have to be honest and patient and never trust stereotypes and preconceptions.

I was told by my Psychology 101 professor that the Stanford Prison Experiment became so out of control that it had to be shut down early. I held that false belief for years. It is so irritating how you cannot believe what anybody says without investigating it for yourself. — GodlessGirl

Well, the story told by Zimbardo is that it was a fellow psychologist (and later his wife) who was horrified by what she saw and persuaded Zimbardo to stop the experiment early, so what you were told is not far from the truth - assuming that is the truth (AFAIK we don't know any different).

And the larger story of experimental psychology is always one of deceit and manipulation in the name of truth and progress. — unenlightened

Yes, as if the subject of psychology wasn't hellishly complex enough, psychologists' work is further complicated by the difficulty of conducting experiments on human subjects. As science goes, in terms of pure logistics psychologists aren't the worst off (just ask geologists or cosmologists), but the ethical difficulties are pretty much unique to social sciences. On the other hand, we already are social creatures, and we engage in manipulative games all our lives. Is it so much worse to engage in "deceit and manipulation in the name of truth and progress" than to do the same for your selfish purposes, or just for fun?

Setting aside extreme cases like the ones discussed here and looking at "the larger story of experimental psychology," I think you are rather exaggerating the harm of such games. We are, on the whole, psychologically pretty robust, otherwise how could we survive our daily interactions with other people? For one who has an absolute distaste for manipulation and deception the only choice is to be a hermit, I suppose.

Here is an op-ed by a psychologist who did not include the Stanford study in his textbook - and he made that decision while taking Zimbardo's report at face value, based on a careful and critical analysis of the study's (declared) methodology. Some of the follow-up comments and the author's responses are interesting as well.

The author and some of the commenters also note that, given that the "guards" were most likely doing what they thought was expected of them, the setup was closer to that of the Milgram studies, except that Milgram was explicit about what he was studying, and he attempted to tease out the circumstances in which his subjects did and did not end up following orders.

And here is a critical article about the Milgram experiment: Rethinking One of Psychology's Most Infamous Experiments. From what I have read though, it seems that the Milgram experiment was more sound, although there is a lot of doubt about its interpretation.

For a broad overview you can't go wrong with the SEP:

Free Will

And you can drill down from there. You may also want to read some of the articles listed in the Related Entries section at the bottom.

I think Einstein is an excellent example of overlap. Though he was educated as a physicist, he was a philosopher. His theories did not derive from empirical evidence obtained from a laboratory. He worked in a patent office. Instead, his theories were derived in large part from his obsessive nature, his interest in physics, and his almost child-like imagination. And when he published those theories, they were met with very strong opinions of agreement or disagreement. But they were not met with demands for "proof." Instead, most of the ensuing empirical "proof" regarding his theories was provided by scientists who developed clever experiments for that very purpose. — Arne

While I agree with the gist of this - there is a conspicuous philosophical backbone in Einstein's theories - Einstein was not a metaphysician working in some rarefied abstract sphere. He was very well aware of contemporary developments in science, and his first major works were motivated by specific problems in physics, both experimental (the Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect) and theoretical (Maxwell's electrodynamics and its apparent inconsistency with the relativity of speed, the ultraviolet catastrophe). Arguably, his General Relativity was motivated more by philosophical considerations than any specific problems known at that time.

Is the argument against the easing of hostilities based on the fact that Kim is a brutal dictator? Is it more about protecting the interests of the USA in the region? Perhaps some combination of these along with additional things? For me the initial goal should be the modest one of lessening hostilities by opening up dialogue. It's a positive first step; nothing more and nothing less. — Erik

The thing is, this whole cycle of escalation/deescalation is pretty much entirely driven by NK. They ramp up the tensions, then when things almost seem to come to a head, they relent and say "let's talk." Ceremonial talks, handshakes, smiles, speeches with vague promises follow. Everybody sighs in relief: hostilities avoided! NK goes home with some tangible rewards without giving anything in return (other than deescalation of tensions, which it manufactured in the first place.) It's basically behaving like an enfant terrible that nobody knows what to do with. And there's the problem: is there anything better that can be done?

Sure it works. It works for bodylenght, so why not for intelligence. If we want to determine whether someone is short or tall, we compare them to the average height. Next to this we can express their height in cm or inches, the latter doesn't tell whether someone is tall or short without a known average.

In case of children we even correct the measured lenght for age, same as with iq tests. Why assume it won't work if the same appraoch clearly works for other things we measure? — Tomseltje

So how about if we measure weight with a thermometer? (We'll just call it a "weight-measuring device"... for good measure.) We are measuring something, we can do comparisons, calculate average, etc. We should be good, right?

Where am I going wrong with this? Your entire argument is that intelligence is adequately measured by intelligence tests because "intelligence tests" measure "intelligence" - what else could they be doing? Boom, done!

Don't you see how empty and useless such talk is? Look, you can't contribute meaningfully to a conversation about IQ tests if you don't want to get into the substance of the matter. What is intelligence? Is it something that can be measured on a scale? How can it be measured? Are existing tests adequate for the purpose? And what are such tests good for, anyway? These questions cannot be answered with wordplay alone.

The block universe is just one way of conceptualizing the universe; the fact that we can think of the universe this way by itself does not testify in favor of a particular metaphysical theory of time.

But your question is valid and interesting, and it really comes down to the question of why we remember the past and not the future. That is the reason why all moments of your existence are not jumbled together in your mind: memory. From the B-theory's perspective you can think of yourself as your entire trajectory through the spacetime "block", but what gives you your perception of location at each point on that trajectory is this asymmetry of memory.

We do have a standard for both volume measurement and iq measurement to compare it too. — Tomseltje

You keep saying this, but when you are asked what that standard is, you demur or insist that the measurement is the standard.

Simple, we have different kind of iq tests. Had all been 100% accurate, there would be no difference. However, when we use different tests, the results differ, hence either one of the tests used is inaccurate, or both are. — Tomseltje

No, that won't work either. If intelligence is just what the tests measure, and you insist that this is the case for all tests of intelligence, then different results can only mean that intelligence is different in each case.

Tomseltje, you should understand by now that you cannot cheat your way out with this simple maneuver of equating intelligence with test results. Even setting aside the issue of accuracy, suppose we accept your idiosyncratic definition of intelligence - what then? So you have a device that measures something, and all we know about that something is that it is just what the device measures.



If you want to have a substantive discussion, you have to address the question of what intelligence is, and how intelligence tests can measure it, how accurate and how useful such tests are, etc. But for that you actually have to care and know something about the subject, and I don't think that you do.

Besides, an IQ test does not merely give a binary answer: is or is not intelligent - it is supposed to measure the amount of intelligence on a unidimensional scale, which makes a much stronger claim about what intelligence is than there simply being necessary and sufficient criteria for its presence.

Does a measuring cylinder measure the amount of a liquid one puts in it? — Tomseltje

Yes. But here you have liquid, or liquid volume, and a measurement of that volume, and the two are not necessarily the same. We could say that the reading from the measuring cylinder is accurate or not if we compare it with a more accurate measurement. Or, if we are realists, we could say that the measurement corresponds or not to the actual volume. But all this makes sense only if the liquid volume can be given independently of what the measuring cylinder is gauging. Otherwise they are one and the same and to say that a measurement is or is not accurate makes no sense.

Well I suppose at that point Kantian vs. Utilitarian vs. Virtue ethics will be settled. I guess I'd just pray that Kant was right -- that any hyper-intelligent "rational" being is confined to deontological morality by virtue of practical reason -- though I'm not a Kantian, so I suspect it's more likely we'd be tortured to death, enslaved, or just plain obliterated. — John Doe

Heh, you don't have to go far for examples - no need for intergalactic travel - just look at us. Kantian or not, that's what we've been doing with each other, not to mention other animals.

The Cray-1 in 1975 was put at +9. It is not unlikely that something that can traverse the gulfs of the void would be several points higher than us. It is no exaggeration to say that they very well may look at us the way we look at ants. — Akanthinos

Or they may have been around a little bit longer, or their scientific and technological achievement curve was a little steeper for whatever reason. We've only been around as a species for a few hundred thousand years - a wink on the universal scale - and our achievement curve has a hockey stick shape, with the upward slope occurring over the last few hundred years. Perhaps all it takes is for a species very similar to ours to be slightly offset in time or to have a slightly different history.

This is a quote from a Scientific American article. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mind-of-an-octopus/

Octopuses and their relatives (cuttlefish and squid) represent an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Since my first encounters with these creatures about a decade ago, I have been intrigued by the powerful sense of engagement that is possible when interacting with them. Our most recent common ancestor is so distant—more than twice as ancient as the first dinosaurs—that they represent an entirely independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can connect with them as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. They are probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.

The intelligence and (possibly) consciousness of octopuses seems to me to provide evidence that the evolution of sentience is not an unlikely event. I've heard it speculated that human intelligence evolved in order to support complex social and linguistic behavior, but it is my understanding octopuses are not social. Maybe if we figure out what we share with these mollusks we'll have a better idea what we might share with extraterrestrial visitors. — T Clark

These are interesting thoughts and observations. One thing I would like to note though is that brain size and even the sheer amount of cognitive activity should not be equated to what we usually think of as "intelligence." A lion's share (so to speak) of brain processing power - both in humans and in other animals like octopuses - is devoted to visual and other sense processing, involving little or no conscious reflection.

I have no problem with questioning the validity of IQ tests, wich in my opinion are still not 100% accurate, especially when applied interculturally. Everything measured in applied science that get's represented by numbers has an error margin. Obviously that error margin is greater when one applies iq tests interculturally compared to intraculturally. — Tomseltje

If IQ tests measure intelligence and intelligence is nothing other than what IQ tests measure, then I cannot see how an IQ test can be inaccurate, even in principle. In order to say that a measurement is inaccurate, you would need some more reliable criterion to use as a comparison. Even if no other measurement is possible, one might still say that the measurement diverges from what the property that is being measured actually is (assuming one is a realist about that property). But by your definition the property being measured is nothing other than the result of the measurement, and the result of the measurement cannot fail to be what it is.

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

No, my point is not that we are unable to find the completely rational understanding due to our own limitations, but that there may not be this completely rational understanding to be found - it's not out there, waiting to be discovered. Not only is there no necessity about the world, its existence and its shape, but even for this contingent reality there isn't a single right way to understand it. Even if we had all the facts that we cared to know, we still could find different ways to make them intelligible for ourselves.

And yes, I arrive at this conclusion through reasoning, so if you want to say that the PSR is at work here in the sense that whatever I find to be reasonable to believe must have sufficient reasons in my mind, then sure.

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

Well, this may sound immodest, but you have me for an example - see above. The reason I don't presuppose that there are sufficient reasons to be discovered is simply that I don't see any reasons to make such an a priori commitment. I try to make sense of what I see, because that is in my nature, but I admit that the world doesn't owe me an explanation. The world has appeared fairly "reasonable" to my eyes up to now, but I realize that no reason - only my inductive instincts - justifies the assumption that it will continue to do so. And that there may be more to the world than is evident to my eyes. And that that which I see and understand can be reasonably understood differently.

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. Spinoza apparently took it in a strong sense, which requires a commitment to necessitarianism. More generally, beyond the scope of the classical PSR, reasons, causes, explanations have been treated in more fluid and varied ways, which do not necessarily imply necessitarianism or even foundationalism. But that is a topic too broad to be covered here.

First I must say that, for all the good will that I have towards Ukraine, I have very little trust in their SBU (secret police) and authorities in general.

That said, if we take what we are being told at face value, then, as others here have noted, this sting operation was not unusual. According to some law enforcement experts, such operations are routinely conducted in countries all over the world. The difference here was all the publicity surrounding the fake assassination, due to Babchenko being a pretty well-known public figure in those parts, and of course due to the politics of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. But (again, taking a view charitable to the SBU) the publicity was not the point. They did not need it to catch the organizer of the hit; according to the information that has been released, the SBU knew who he was for up to two months before the event. But for an investigator to "know" something is not the same as having a solid proof that a prosecutor can take to court. This is why (supposedly) they needed to drag the ruse all the way through the fake assassination. Presumably, the would-be hit man then got in touch with the organizer in order to finalize the deal and get his payment, giving his handlers the opportunity to obtain actionable evidence.

As for the notion that journalists take some equivalent of a Hippocratic oath that for the rest of their lives forbids them to participate in any deception for any reason whatsoever, that is simply ridiculous.

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

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.

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

I was not endorsing anthropic explanations as the most rational - I was playing an advocate in order to show that they are not obviously irrational (as some objectors reflexively react to them). If we were discussing the merits of anthropic explanations, I might criticize them as well (on the grounds of parsimony perhaps). 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.

Of course we cannot explain absolutely everything, there will always be the questions about absolute origins and fundamentals. — Janus

Indeed. And we don't even have to be foundationalist in our explanations, but go for something more like a web of beliefs.

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

Yes, for a theist the PSR makes a lot more sense, since there is an obvious locus of reason, as well as a direct connection between reason and the world (In the beginning there was the Word...) Although, depending on the variety of belief, a theist might still reject the principle.

"S knows that P" -> "S knows that S knows that P."
"S knows that S knows that P" -> "S knows that S knows that S knows that P"

This seems like such a basic point that I'm sure proponents of the KK principle have thought of it, but what's the reply? How does this not imply that, in order to know something, I have to know that I know that I know that I know... ad infinitum? And what would that mean? If it's supposed to be intelligible that I can know that I know something, then the whole regress should be intelligible, right? — Pneumenon

My feeling is that the problem is either solved through semantic collapse, i.e. "S knows that P" means exactly the same as "S knows that S knows that P" (similarly to how, say, "It is true that P" means exactly the same (?) as "It is true that it is true that P") - or else it cannot be solved and the KK principle is false. Which one it is will turn on the concept of knowledge used.

So, my conclusion is that the PSR does capture the phenomenology of human knowledge-seeking, insofar as we are never, generally speaking, satisfied with the current sufficiency of our knowledge and reasoning, and are constantly seeking to increase it. If all you want to claim against the PSR is that there can be no, for us, absolutely sufficient explanation, and that our enquiries don't necessarily need to proceed on the assumption that there is such an absolute explanation, then perhaps we have not been disagreeing so much after all. — 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.

Also, the PSR does not require that there be a "unique, objective and comprehensive Reason for everything", but merely that nothing happens in our world without sufficient reason or cause. — Janus

Ah, but here you are making a much stronger statement. This is no longer just about our knowledge-seeking, isn't it?

This is where we diverge, I think. You seem to have a kind of Cartesian view which separates the subject from the world such that rationality could be 'merely in our heads", and that the world could somehow "be some way" that is radically different from the way we experience it. — Janus

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.

I wouldn't call this a Cartesian turn, but quite the opposite, a somewhat Kantian or phenomenological turn that heralds the closing of the Cartesian gap between mind and world. — Janus

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.

And I totally agree; "why not this as at least one of the reasons"? That's what I alluded to earlier; there is no radical separation between us and the world, between our rationality and the 'way things are'. — Janus

I don't think you understood the point of my example, which was to show how, even in the most rationalistic projects of fundamental science, once we start pushing against the limits of our modeling, 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. Some may prefer to put just physical laws and constants at the foundation of the reductive scheme, while others may argue, not without reason, that those laws and constants can be further reduced/constrained if we take the existence of observers as one of the givens. (And if Apo was here, he would, of course, be pushing for other high-level constraints as yet another alternative set of brute facts.)

Seeing as your responses have degenerated into hostile retorts, I don't know if it is worth continuing this conversation. But I'll give it another try.

We require reasons and explanations for everything. We are not satisfied with brute facts. Things lacking an explanation are unintelligible to us. — SophistiCat

And yet you don't seem to be able to explain how reason is "not at all like this" or give an example of some reasoning which is not like this. So why should I not believe you are indulging in bare assertion? — Janus

As I said, I discussed this in my preceding posts. The context in which the "rationality" of the world or the acceptability and intelligibility of brute facts show up is pretty much limited to a line of philosophical questioning in the mode of the PSR - and here, of course, opinions differ. By contrast, in our ordinary and scientific reasoning such questions are largely irrelevant. We deal with a world that is partially intelligible, as far as we are concerned, we deal with it piecemeal, and we seem to do fine that way. Our inquiries seek to illuminate some regularities and connections, which abut on assumptions and probabilities that are not themselves accounted for within the context of the inquiry. Any such inquiry leaves out of its scope the vast majority of the world, which, for all it matters, could be shrouded in darkness. And this limited comprehension is what we usually understand by explaining, finding causes and reasons. We do not require the world to be totally rational and noncontingent before we can say that we understand something about it.

My conclusion is that the PSR cannot claim to be a phenomenological principle that faithfully captures the way we actually reason.

Your allusions to the existence of more exhaustive accounts or counterexamples do not help me; It would be far more helpful if you actually gave some more exhaustive account or counterexample of your own. — Janus

I wasn't alluding to counterexamples. My point was that words such as "reason," "cause" or "explanation" are too controversial to be employed in a thesis without unpacking their meaning. I have discussed the way I believe we actually reason, but I am not the one advancing a PSR thesis. It is up to a PSR proponent to explain what they mean, and why.

I have pointed out how our actual reasoning is not nearly as comprehensive as an unrestricted PSR suggests. Another important question to consider is how subjective it is: how much of the perceived "rationality" of the world is in our heads, vs. being a direct impression of the way the world actually is. I think there is some of both. On the PSR-friendly side of the dilemma, our very existence and our rational faculties seem to require an objectively regular environment. But on the other side, the multiplicity of working accounts of the world casts doubt on the idea that there must be a unique, objective and comprehensive Reason for everything.

Just one small but illustrative example: anthropic explanations in fundamental physics and cosmology. Briefly, the trajectory of physical and cosmological theories typically leads scientists towards mathematical models that are themselves taken to be the brute facts of reality - albeit with a hope held out for their reduction to an even more accurate and comprehensive system of mathematical structures and constants as science progresses. However, a radically different explanatory terminus has been suggested in the latter half of the last century (if not earlier): our very existence as "observers," living creatures with the ability to make observations and come up with such theories - a Cartesian turn, if you like. (Fred Hoyle's prediction of a hitherto unknown quantum state in carbon-12 is often cited as an example of anthropic reasoning, although this interpretation is disputed.) You may have also heard about so-called fine-tuning of the fundamental constants: the constants "had to be" within such-and such narrow range in order for the universe to be able to produce and support living creatures like us. Not everyone likes this anthropocentric framing, but it does have some appeal, even if we are trying to be objective about it: after all, our own existence is the one thing that we can believe with more confidence than anything else! Why not this as at least one of the reasons?

an omnipresent being, is naturally indivisible — ShowOfForce

Why? Your only stated reason is that it just can't be. Something that is present in some, but not all places can be divisible, presumably. Why not something that is present everywhere?

Now, since this entity is everywhere, undivided, where could another entity, possibly be located. That there, would be a division of being, within an indivisible consciousness. — ShowOfForce

Non sequitur. What does divisibility have to do with sharing space with something else?

No, the fallacy is the argument itself; in this case of the form: Trump made an assertion therefore the assertion is false. — Baden

That would not be a fallacy of reasoning, assuming my assessment of Trump's character as a liar and bullshitter is correct.

That's what I said, no? I don't really know what sort of an entity an omnipresent consciousness would be - but that's all the more reason for doubting pronouncements about it being possible or impossible for such an entity to be collocated with other entities.

For example, to dismiss something Trump says as false simply on the basis that he's a pathological liar is fallacious even if it's understandable. — Baden

To dismiss Trump's argument on the basis of his character would be a fallacy. But since Trump doesn't present arguments, that is rather a moot point. On the other hand, when Trump simply asserts something as true or false, you can reasonably and confidently dismiss that.

Good questions, and relevant to the OP, because they address communication in the context of an internet forum. — Galuchat

These are all good points, and of course, I agree, there are important differences between in-person communication and other forms. But such differences do not warrant totally discounting and disparaging communication on the internet as being of no value or importance. Also, it should be noted that internet communication is no different in this respect from old-fashioned letters or print publications. Talking on the phone features more non-verbal signaling than writing, but less than talking face-to-face.

Yes, the format provides a cloak of anonymity. Two things: the "cloaking feature" fades over time, over many interactions. "Real people" emerge from anonymity after a time. Some people here have been interacting for 10 years. The anonymity feature protects forum users from the ill-intentioned visitor, or the snoop. True, we don't list our actual names, addresses, telephone numbers, places of employment, and so forth. But if Tiff or T. Clark wanted to visit me, I'd hand over the information to them. — Bitter Crank

The anonymity of Internet forums is much exaggerated. So, you don't know my legal name. It's not like you know legal names of everyone you interact with face-to-face. And why is it important anyway? Does it matter to you whether you discuss free will or Aristotelian metaphysics with a John Doe or a Joe Q. Public?

And other than their legal names and appearances, forum members are not all that anonymous, as BC notes - in some ways they are less anonymous than people you know in "real life." Just as you recognize people by their appearance or voice every time you meet them, here you can always recognize them by their handles. And in all cases your impression of other people is formed by successive interactions with them. But whereas in other contexts you have to rely on your often faulty memory, here the complete record of everything anyone ever said is permanently on display! How is that for anonymity?

The main thing that makes Internet and other written communication more anonymous and impersonal is the absence of audio-visual impressions, which are important in themselves, and which I think make it easier to form and retain the impression of a person than just a name.

One of the problems with answering this question, using science, is the connected to the philosophy of science. As an example, say I had a dream. I relate my dream details to a group of scientists. My account would never be accepted as fact, even if I am honest and accurate, since my dream violates the philosophy of science. There is no way to verify my claims, nor is there any way for others to reproduce my dream, for verification. Yet, paradoxically, we have all had dreams and can understand that my claims are not out of the realm of possibility. However, it violates the philosophy. — wellwisher

That is factually incorrect. Dreams are a subject for science - and I don't just mean "objective" measures like REM observations, brain imaging, etc. - dream reports are in fact used in psychology and cognitive science. Similarly, religious scriptures and other historical documents of dubious factual value are used by historians. You just need to know how to work with your source material.

Fact is: nobody is truly (or genuinely) here. Hello! It's an internet forum; where usually the only thing you learn from other members is:
1) Who they want you to think they are, and
2) What kind of games they like to play under a cloak of anonymity. — Galuchat

And this is different from "real life" (or whatever you want to call it)... how?

This is such a last-century attitude towards communication on the Internet! For some reason it is taken as something less than real, something that cannot be taken seriously on pain of being mercilessly ridiculed by some dick. I could never really understand this. If you cannot see my face, or if you don't know my legal name, or if the interaction is mediated via digital rather than analog channels, then it is all so different? Why?

Or is your position that unless an interaction can result in physical violence, it cannot be taken seriously?

An omnipresent entity leaves no room for individuals, or fragmentation of any kind, because multiple beings can’t occupy the same space and remain separate. — ShowOfForce

Why? This is not true even about ordinary things - why should this be true about a hypothetical supernatural thing?

Well, in my opinion the PSR is wrong-headed, but specific criticisms need specific examples to which to address them. I don't want to dive into Spinoza, Heidegger or other historical works though, which is why I don't comment on them. I am more interested in live ideas than in philology.

If the PSR is not taken as a Kantian type insight into the fact that objects of knowledge must conform to human reason, then how should it be taken? — Janus

That's not much of an insight. Of course objects of knowledge conform to human reason - they wouldn't be objects of knowledge otherwise.

If you wanted to argue for the ontological provenance of the PSR, how else would you go about it other than in some variation of a Hegelian/ Spinozist or a Phenomenological/ Heideggerian mode of thought? In other words to merge the epistemological with the ontological or both with the phenomenological. Or some kind of theology perhaps? — Janus

Well, let's see how the slogan "Everything must have a sufficient reason" could be cached out.

1. Is it an observation about human reasoning?

1a. We seek reasons and explanations for everything. True, but obvious.

1b. "Objects of knowledge conform to human reason." Not sure what this is doing here, but again, a truism.

1c. We require reasons and explanations for everything. We are not satisfied with brute facts. Things lacking an explanation are unintelligible to us. This, I think, is closer to what some proponents of the PSR say, but as I argued previously, this is not true. The way we actually reason is not at all like this.

2. Is it a regulative principle?

2a. We should seek reasons and explanations for everything. This is a banality.

2b. Objects of knowledge must conform to human reason. Well, they already do.

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.

3. Is it an ontological principle?

The only ontological formulation that I can think of is something along these lines:

3*. The world is "rational" (perhaps necessarily so): it is such that everything is amenable to explanation. Or, in a more standard form: Nothing can exist unless it has sufficient reasons for its existence and for the way it is.

This can also be seen as a prerequisite for (2c), because without accepting this principle, holding (2c) would be obviously irrational.

Here we should pay closer attention to what is meant by (sufficient) reason, cause or explanation (and the possible differences between these concepts). This is a huge topic, but it cannot be sidestepped in this discussion, because a lot depends on it.

And of course with the ontological formulation, more than with the other two, the obvious question is: Why believe this? Our experience strongly suggests that the world is a pretty orderly place, at least that part of it with which we are familiar. But that observation alone is far too banal to call it a Principle; on the other hand, stronger commitments seem both unwarranted and unnecessary.

I don't think it matters to the argument whether the PSR is present, as a formulated principle, in the minds of everyday people and scientists; the important point is whether they operate on the implicit understanding that everyday events and the objects of scientific study are capable of explanation. And I think the answer to that question is very obviously 'yes'. — Janus

As I said earlier, this modest observation that we do in fact look for explanations (in the broadest sense of the world) for things is not much of an insight. I mean, what else could we do? How else would we employ our reasoning faculties? It's a banality not worth even talking about, let alone calling it a Principle. And that's not what is usually meant by the PSR.

Posty operates under the misapprehension of the "Many Worlds" interpretation of QM as some some sort of anything-goes modal realism.

Lewisian modal realism dissolves the PSR, in the same way that the guillotine cures a headache. You can no longer demand an explanation for why A rather than B, since you've already assumed A and B (and C and D...)

Sorry, you'll have to direct this question to someone who knows more about Hume.

But Spinoza does allow for self-causing substance. In fact according to Spinoza all causation finds its ultimate terminus is "God or Nature" (deus sive natura). — Janus

Yes, the "ultimate terminus" is the Achilles hill of the unrestricted PSR, and philosophers have tied themselves into knots wrangling with concepts like causa sui. Although I think that being more critical and broadminded about the concepts of cause and explanation would be helpful here (and this goes for the Agrippa's Trilemma as well).

The weakness of this argument lies in the assumption that when people think of events as "unexplained or chancy", they are believing that the events are utterly random in the sense of having no cause at all. No one, if they thought about it, would deny that when the die is tossed, it interacts with the air and the surface it lands upon in ways which determine what face will show up. Events are only chancy for us insofar as we cannot predict outcomes, because we have no way of predicting the future, given that we only have a minimal grasp of all the determining factors. — Janus

What conclusions people reach when they specifically question things that they previously treated as "unexplained or chancy" will vary depending on the situation, available information and background beliefs. But this is not what I wanted to address in this argument. What I wanted to address was the notion that a PSR of some sort is indispensable to our everyday thinking (basic principles of thought @frank) and to science. I argue the opposite. Both everyday thought and science are oblivious to the PSR, unless they specifically focus on the question.

I don't think anyone genuinely believes that any event lacks an ultimate explanation. It is the very idea that any event could have no ultimate explanation that is inconceivable. — Janus

Well, this is not so much a philosophical question as a sociological one, and I believe you are very much mistaken in thinking that everyone is a causal determinist and believes in an unrestricted PSR. I know I don't. Della Rocca (PSR) bemoans the current low standing of the PSR among philosophers and scientists alike:

It sometimes seems as though, over the last, say, 271 years, a great deal of the best efforts of the best philosophers have been devoted to a direct frontal assault on the PSR. Despite their obvious and profound differences, Hume and Kant, for example, made it their mission to articulate and argue for a world-view structured around the claim that the PSR is simply false. Such attacks have been enormously influential to the point that they are simply taken for granted and philosophers now tend to presuppose — un-self-consciously operate under the assumption — that the PSR is false[...] And, perhaps even worser, there has been the testimony of contemporary physics which, in the eyes of many, tells directly and empirically against the PSR: for isn’t it a hallmark of contemporary physics that there can be certain facts without explanation? — Michael Della Rocca

ETA: The cosmologist Sean Carroll is one of those philosophically-minded scientists who rejects the PSR, for example in his recent article Why Is There Something, Rather Than Nothing?:

It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all. Modern physics suggests that the universe can exist all by itself as a self-contained system, without anything external to create or sustain it. But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation. — Sean M. Carroll

ETA2: For fairness's sake, Paul Davies is another cosmologist who takes the opposite view, e.g. in this OpEd.

If you're thinking that defiance of the PSR can be found in cases of just not knowing the cause of X while accepting that there is some cause: no, that's not how it works. — frank

No, I agree, most typically the PSR implies the existence of a cause, whether known or not. My point when talking about our common-sense reasoning is that we do not, in fact, always assume the existence of a cause. Things that we (however fleetingly) take for granted are causeless in effect: the existence or absence of a cause makes no difference to our reasoning.

The same is true for scientific explanations: once we adopt some theory as our explanatory framework, it does not matter for us whether the theory and it posits can be further reduced to a causeless ground of all being or some such; giving account of phenomena in terms of the theory counts as providing an explanation regardless.

Suppose we find it reasonable to conclude that the Big Bang was causeless. The PSR doesn't say that we're unable to conceive the bang in some way. We can be fully confident that we're onto a brute fact. The PSR notes that the causeless part is inconceivable. Inconceivable doesn't mean nonexistent. It means beyond our ability to model in thought. — frank

So in terms of Frank's 'Big Bang' example, it could be, as he says a brute fact, and will remain so for us, even though it could alternatively be a self-caused, and thus in principle, self-explanatory, event. But confirmation of the latter possibility would seem to be closed to us; we cannot tell whether it is simply a brute fact, is self-caused or even caused by some other set of unknowable conditions. — Janus

Traditional proponents of the PSR, such as Spinoza and Leibnitz, as well as modern proponents like Della Rocca(1), Pruss(2) and Feser(3), do not accept brute facts. As Spinoza put it,

For each thing there must be assigned a cause, or reason, both for its existence and for its nonexistence. — Spinoza

Or,

There is a sufficient reason or adequate necessary objective explanation for the being of whatever is and for all attributes of any being. — Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy

Even in his proposed weakened form of the PSR Pruss requires an account for at least the possibility of every contingent truth.

So whatever you two are arguing for, it does not look like familiar forms of the PSR, although there seems to be a strain of rationalism that is recognizable.

Moreover, when you say that some fact or state of affairs that lacks an explanation is "inconceivable" or "unintelligible" you don't seem to mean anything other than it does indeed lack an explanation, so you are not really saying anything at all - you are just restating the premise.

Or do really mean to say that something that lacks an ultimate explanation is inconceivable?



But that is nonsense. If we can describe and discuss something, then surely it is at least conceivable. As I argued earlier, we can and do conceive of things, without at the same time being aware of their causes or explanations. We do so all the time: in our everyday reasoning we always take some things for granted. When the need arises, we can put to question what was previously an assumption, but at the moment when we make use of the assumption, it does not matter whether it is necessary or contingent, and whether if it is contingent it has an explanation. Likewise, when we flip a coin, or when something happens "by chance," it does not matter to us whether the event was really, ontologically random or not - for all practical purposes, there was no explanation for why that event happened instead of one of its possible alternatives. We wouldn't think of it as random otherwise.

So psychologically, unexplained and chancy things are very much conceivable, and commonplace. Appealing to our psychological intuitions and using words like "inconceivable" and "unintelligible" rhetorically does not work in favor of the PSR.

The same goes for explanations. Proponents of the PSR, such as Feser, argue that an explanation that only goes so far as reducing one contingent thing to another contingent thing is not really an explanation. But that appeals to some contrived and question-begging notion of explanation, which is at odds with the way we actually employ the concept of explanation in our everyday life and in science.

(1) Michael Della Rocca: PSR (Philosopher’s Imprint, 2010)

(2) Alexander Pruss: A restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the cosmological argument (Religious Studies, 2004)

(3) Edward Feser: Can we make sense of the world? (2011)

I obviously wasn't talking about this "causeless ground of being." Whatever that is, I don't think it is required to conceive of brute facts and chances, as I explained above.

You might have a special ability to conceive the causeless. Just put that to the side if you dip into Leibniz or Schopenhauer. They had more trouble with it than you have. — frank

I don't think it takes any special ability. We naturally think in terms of chance and contingency.

In our ordinary thinking we hold some things as given (at least until we decide to hold them up for scrutiny) - those are brute facts. Other things are unknown, though they may be subject to some constraints (at least until we learn something new or recall something we had left out of the consideration) - those are chances. So we live and think as if there were brute facts and chances - whether this is in fact the case (and whether the question even makes sense) is another matter, but this reasoning scheme is natural to us.

The same has always been the case in science*. In any given scientific framework or theory some things (the assumptions and posits of the theory) are taken as brute facts, and depending on the theory, there may be chancy things as well.

It takes a philosopher of a certain bent to say: Wait a minute, these are not real chances, they only seem chancy to us due to our ignorance. And these facts that we take as brute must have some explanation.

* The special focus on quantum mechanics when it comes to chanciness is a result of reductionist thinking, where it is assumed that quantum mechanics reveals the true workings of the world, while all those other "special" theories, such as classical statistical mechanics or the theory of evolution in biology are only half-truths, convenient approximations.

No, when I say "chance" I mean absence of reason or cause. You can use a different word if you like.