The PSR is these days often expressed, for example by Della Rocca, as the claim that everything has an explanation, and so the notion of sufficiency "disappears" in that formulation. So, let's say that someone proffers that A is explained by B. If your point about sufficiency (based on reading your first post on Heidegger) is that another person could come along and say "that's not enough of an explanation, because it has not been explained why A rather than C" , then (provided that A and C are somehow exclusive of each other, e.g. logically or physically) at least two responses seem available:

1) In explaining A by B, at the same time why A and not C is explained since C is excluded by A.
2) An explanation ofsomething different is being required; an explanation of C's exclusion by A.

If, however, C is entirely unconnected to A, then the question "why A and not C" would make little sense and so pushing the "that's not enough of an explanation" would be meaningless in the context. — MetaphysicsNow

Another line of thought - in truth, the only one that makes sense of the PoSR to me - is the Leibnizian one of grounding sufficiency in the 'nature' of 'the thing itself': "All predication has some foundation in the nature of things" (Leibniz, Discourse). Ignoring, for now, the fact that Leibniz construes nature in terms of 'predication', the import of this is that it turns the PoSR into a search for what Leibniz refers to as an ratio existendi: a reason for existence, which differs from the ratio essendi of the principle of identity (which bears only on entities insofar as they have logical consistency). In other words, the PoSR takes us 'out of' logic and 'into' existence: it forces one to think about the question of individuation: of the facts that bear upon this particular thing and no other ('inexchangable' with any other logical substitute).

It's hard to really flesh this out without developing an entire philosophy, as it were, but yeah: to think in terms of things that exist in space and time (and not abstract logical space), and to think in terms of individuation: those are the two imperatives forced upon anyone who wants to take the PoSR seriously, as I understand it.

Stop. Talking. About. Solving. Problems. Start. Talking. About. Conceptual. Determination.

But again, this "catching-on" in mathematics, eventually moves to consensus. Thus, even debates over axioms about infinities, etc. will eventually get to a point via demonstrable proofs that convince the community that this should be included in standard views of the problem, until someone else brings up an issue. — schopenhauer1

But, to be blunt - this is wrong. I'm not denying the fact of consensus - clearly Cantorian infinity and ZFC axiomatics generally win the day - but they're accepted on the basis of their usefulness... right up until they're not; and the point is that this doesn't differ in kind from philosophy. I mean, take differential calculus. What's the best approach? Geometric? (qua Netwon?) Arithmetic? (Delta-Epsilon?) Non-Standard? (Leibnizian flavoured)? But there is no 'best' approach because 'best' is only ever relative to what you're trying to do with the calculations. Again, I think you're far overstating the kind of consensus that actually exists in math.

Philosophies of the event (as a sociological phenomenon) correspond exactly to the inability to unironically and sincerely hold some kind of value (related to action, not thought) that can be actually acted upon to produce an 'event'. — csalisbury

I think you're just... wrong about this. I mean, yeah, the question of values is something so far underdeveloped in this thread, but the emphasis on pragmatism is conceptually inseparable from acknowledgement of the role that values must play. I mean, I think (maybe??) you're getting the wrong idea from the vocabulary of 'choice' which yeah, rings with all kind of 'voluntarist' associations. But analysing it this way - and it's pretty formalist, I admit - doesn't (yet) say anything about the conditions under which such 'choices' must be made. And nothing I've said precludes the idea that "choices/decisions involve the whole heft of your spiritual being" - which I think is entirely right!

At this point I don't even know if we agree or disagree with things. You're being much too meta for me, I can't keep up, well done, you're winning the prize?

A particular line of reasoning can have internal consistency, but there are so many theories from so many avenues, that can aim at solving a certain question... — schopenhauer1

I'll stop you here; again, you're changing the language: it's not 'solving questions' at stake: it is posing problems, determining the concepts through which problems themselves will be posed. What 'Wittgensteinians' or 'Schopenhauerians' or [etc] tend to agree on is not a 'solution', but the way in which a problem is posed; they differ, on the other hand, in what they draw attention to, in what they consider significant or remarkable. It should also be mentioned that this happens in math more than I think you're willing to let on: the fact that, say, ZFC axiomatics underlies mainstream set-theory is anything but a natural 'given': there are plenty who contest it, on pragmatic grounds. Or else consider the occasional question of whether set-theory or category theory is the most appropriate 'foundation' of math; B&C themselves contrast different notions of infinity, with neither one 'naturally' better than the other.

These are all things that 'catch-on' on the basis of pragmatics; they're all 'machines' that are well-tailored to working with certain inputs, and not others. Tools, liable to be put down in favour of other, different tools if necessary. Philosophy is a tool-kit, just like that.

The choice you've presented the Greeks is between giving up the idea that there are irrational numbers at all (presumably by denying that there can even be squares covering an area of two square units) and retaining criteria (2), or just dropping criteria (2) in favour of something restricted to the use of whole numbers in expressing the rationals only. That makes a little more sense to me, but not much. — MetaphysicsNow

I would fix the bolding part: it'd be a case of giving up the idea that there are irrational numbers by denying that such areas can be measured ('are amenable to measurement at all'). It's actually worth quoting Heller-Roazen in full on this point:

"The Pythagoreans, however, were no strangers to the uncountable. Although they barred numberless relations from the domain of their arithmetic, they also named them in no uncertain terms. They called them “unspeakable" (αρρητoι), “irrational" (αλoγoι), and “incommensurable" (ασνμμετρoι). From such appellations, one might infer close acquaintanceship. Yet the familiarity the classical theorists of number possessed with such relations could not be knowledge, according to any classical standards of science. Infinitely eluding the rule of unity, incommensurable quantities could not be considered to number anything that was and that remained a single thing; for this reason, they could hardly be considered to number anything at all.

Of such unspeakable relations, it could only be deduced that, like the impossible root of the single tone, they could be no collections of one. They were, quite simply, immeasurable, and as long as every definition in arithmetic and music was to be numerical and every number was to be discrete, they were unrepresentable as such. They might well have been somehow manifest to the Pythagoreans, but, being uncountable, they could be no “remainders.” Their sole place was at the limits of their art of quantity".

--

It's also worth noting that our conversation so far is almost like a case study in what it means for how different categorizations commit one to different parsing-out of concepts: "it's not there there can't be squares like that; it's that they can't be measured"; In some sense, this is a 'choice' too: perhaps one can indeed deny that there are squares covering an area of two square units; but one would have to make the corresponding move of then saying something like: 'the things you thought were squares covering two square units are not squares; they are ξquares'. Wittgenstein's 'rule-following paradox' was all about this: that every move in a game can be said to accord to a previously undiscovered rule, without breaking old ones. But these new rules are not just shuffling of goal-posts: they make one see things anew - if done right.

So there's a kaleidoscopic or rubik's cube aspect to philosophizing: twisting a knob - a concept - in one way, ramifies throughout the whole series of 'possible' concepts and implications.

Some good discussion here! Will respond piecemeal to things...

Not really. If we are talking about a pan-semiotic metaphysics now, the goal is to divide reality into its necessities and its accidents. — apokrisis

But this isn't the goal at all. The goal is to respond to problems as they arise, and forge the necessary concepts to deal with them in situ. Taxonomy ('the division of reality'....) always comes after the fact - not too far removed from taxidermy. So I think your whole approach mistakes description for prescription, effect for cause: once you suck the life out of problems-in-duration and make the move into a higher dimension where everything can be seen from the perceptive of placing them into neatly-parsed boxes (accidents or necessities? generalities or particulars?), then and only then does development seem to proceed on that basis; but the leap into that dimension is illegitimate: it's simply retroactive ratiocination, the work of philosophical morticians.

Or put otherwise: there is no 'ultimate symmetry', the breaking of which explains individuation; it only seems that way after-the-fact, once you've illegitimately abstracted the concept from the conditions which gave rise to it; Symmetry is always-already broken in some way: there are generalities and particulars, and even stratified hierarchies of such divisions - all this can be granted - but they develop from the 'bottom-up', even if, once so developed, the higher levels attain a consistency of their own (e.g. category theory as a 'response' to problems in algebraic topology). Explanation occurs in medias res, and not sub specie aeternitatis.

The motivating problem, for the philosophy of choices, is the problem that we don't know what we want to do. — csalisbury

A problem of knowledge? No. A problem of life, a problem of living. You're missing the empiricism. I believe in tomorrow. Do you?

Bourgeious escapism.

The irrationals show that criteria (2) as I developed it (which could be an incorrect development, I grant you) is just false - there is simply no "decision to make about which of the two criteria is more important to us" to quote the authors. — MetaphysicsNow

Not at all. The other option is simply to reject that irrationals are numbers tout court. And for the longest time this is just what happened. For a good history of this, see Daniel Heller-Roazen's The Fifth Hammer.

But the question is whether or not we can keep both at the same time. As they put it, the irrationals force the criteria to 'come apart'. The question is whether you can take them as a set or not. I think I underplayed this in the presentation of the OP, but yeah.

It struck me that badly-formulated philosophy can be compared a little to p-hacking: it doesn't derive its consistency from the need to adress a problem but simply from unmotivated hacking together of correlations between series.

Philosophical problems are more like interesting flourishes of thought. Whether math has necessity or not, the problems are constrained enough to have its own dictates through demonstration. Philosophy does not. They are flights of fancy, if you will, that can be entertained or not entertained with no demonstrable constraints on the flights of fancy one chooses. It is too open-ended for any consensus. — schopenhauer1

I suppose then that we simply disagree on this point. I'm firmly of the belief that every philosophy worth its salt has the kind of internal consistency that characterizes mathematical concepts, and they derive that consistency from the particular problems that animate them. The difference, to the degree there is one, lies only in the fact that philosophy has a far wider range of inspiration than math: its problems are drawn from a more diverse array of sources. To dismiss philosophy as 'flights of fancy' is to not understand it.

Yeah, I didn't mean otherwise when I spoke of definitions. Regardless, I'm not sure it matters for the point at hand.

Giving up 1) would be to give up using the notion of a unit of length, which would entail nothing could be measured. — MetaphysicsNow

I believe the idea is that it is no longer part of the definition of number that it be a measure - which doesn't mean it can't be used for measuring.

And the point I am trying to make contra your comparison is that while both might have an "opening up of different aspects of something..which catches on", the "proves fruitful" part is what is different between the two. — schopenhauer1

I think you're missing the point though - what 'proves fruitful' is the choice made between two possible 'paths'. We're not talking about 'solving problems': we're talking about determining concepts: should number be treated in this way or that? Should infinity be thought of like this or like that? The point is that the normative force of this 'should' is provided by a concrete problem (which may be intra-mathematical or not) which any choice that is made is responsive to. Mutatis mutandis the way in which we form concepts in philosophy are similarly responsive to the problems they address: in neither case is it a matter of solving problems, but determining concepts.

But the route was always Platonically predestined and necessary. If existence takes definite shape due to constraints, due to symmetry-breakings, then the only way to understand that is by following the path backwards that abstracts away those constraints, unbreaks those symmetries, to reveal how the how show works. — apokrisis

I disagree. While I think the whole symmetry-breaking story is a useful framing and pedagogic tool - I turn to it too, occasionally - I think it is a mistake to reify it into a metaphysical picture. It ends up treating the pragmatics as mere accidents on the way to some eternal Platonic story which was there from the beginning - which is nothing more than theology through and through. But, to borrow a bit from Rosen - I don't believe there is any 'largest model' here: there is no 'most general generality' - what I suppose you call 'vagueness'.

Vagueness is for me the ultimate transcendental illusion: it takes a perfectly valid move - the step from particular to general, always motivated by a particular problem (B&C's 'decision points') - and then illegitimately extrapolates that step into what one might call an 'unmotivated generality'. It tries to think an abstract generality shorn of any reference to the particular, cutting off it's roots to any particular problem that would motivate it - other than a nice, just-so story. Abstraction without a (necessary) foot in the real.

So basically I can agree with you up right up until the point where you invoke unmotivated generality as a Platonic bow to tie the whole developmental story together. It's this very last step that shifts a perfectly rigorous and valid methodology into a procrustean metaphysics that tries to retroactively fit concrete developments into a pre-ordained story. It's just a theological-Platonic hangover/residue that needs to be rejected.

Mm, I tried to stress the criteria of sufficiency earlier, but it's all but been ignored for most of this thread, unfortunately.

Yes, then change what I said to the "problems of math", — schopenhauer1

But I'm not talking about the problems of math. At least, not exclusively. So there's no good reason to make any such change.

Further, among the points that B&C stress is that it is not at all 'discovery' that is at stake, but what they call - following Wittgenstein - concept-determination: "what is going on here is best described neither as ‘discovery’ nor as ‘invention’ of something entirely new. There are facts to be revealed, and creativity to be exhibited, but what is crucial is the opening up of different aspects of something ... which prompts a choice that sooner or later ‘catches on’... and proves fruitful."

The math "dictates" that a particular rule must be used — schopenhauer1

The literal point of the thread is that the math dictates nothing about the choices that must be made. The problems dictate the directions into which we take math; and we are motivated by problems (there are of course intra-mathematical problems, but these too are no different (cf. Rosen on Modelling).

@Srap Tasmaner - reflections on 'clickiness'...

Yet another way to think about it is that the OP asks a meta-level question about an object-level question that is missing... rendering the meta-level question unanswerable.

I like puzzles like these.

No, because the 'measuring, is done by an actual person, so again becomes an entirely subjective activity leading to total relativism. — Pseudonym

Yeah, not dealing with this kind of sophistry. Thanks for your interest.

. How easy it would be for anyone using your vague terminology to dismiss as 'bad' as philosophy anything they wanted on the grounds that it had not sufficiently 'found the problem' or 'revealed' anything interesting. — Pseudonym

It's always a question of how successful a philosophy is at measuring up to it's own motivations: a question of immanent critique. German Idealism from Kant to Hegel (Schelling, Fitche and Maimon in between) is exemplary of just such a development. It's not hard. It just requires a bit of literacy and hard work.

Which is not to say that you can't contest a philosophy on grounds other than it's own; only that to do so is to develop other lines of thought, to be concerned with different problems. Any half-decent philosophy can demonstrate it's own relevance.

1. Willy Sutton's answer doesn't just shift the sense of the priest's question from one domain to the other, or from taking one kind of answer rather than another. He does also answer the question as asked, because his answer carries the implicature that he wanted money. Wanting money is clearly a sufficient motive for his behavior, but it's a motive that would usually go without saying. Emphasizing it, by cleverly not saying it, suggests that the he thinks the question is pretty stupid. It's very much as if the priest asked Willy why he crossed the road (maybe he'd been arrested for jaywalking) and Willy answered, to get to the other side. — Srap Tasmaner

But what I'd want to emphasise is the retroactive temporality at work here: a well-forged sense will always retroactively alter the conditions which gave rise to it. At the point/time of it's enunciation, 'why do you rob banks?' is 'open', its sense could go 'either way': the Priest's or Suttons (or maybe yet another way). It's only once an answer is given that the sense of the question is reteroactively bestowed upon it. It may subvert expectations, but the fact that Willie's answer nonetheless made sense attests to the fact that sense is not beholden to expectations (this dimension of unintended significance is nothing other than the realm of the psychoanalytic unconscious, incidentally!: the chief lesson of psychoanalysis can be thought of something like: sense is entirely impersonal).

But it's "clicky", in the way the duck-rabbit is clicky.

I'm going to try and explore this in another thread, the clickiness of concepts - their digitality - follows quite nicely from the fact that sense is always motivated, where different motivations will give rise to different - mutually exclusive - understandings. This again links back to the fact that sense is always defined in terms of kinds; different kinds of categories 'cut-up' the world in different ways, ways which may be mutually exclusive (I might be able to categorise people by eye color or gender, but I can't put these two different categorizations to the same use and expect results that can be sensibly compared).

People will tend to leap to some easy relativism here: every theory shows some stuff. hides some stuff, "therefore" no theory is better than any other. Relativism always has this hidden absolutist expectation -- if your theory doesn't show me absolutely everything it's just as deceptive as every other theory. — Srap Tasmaner

Exactly. The irony is that such relativism doesn't actually go far enough: 'better' only makes sense in relation to what a theory is trying to do; an account of society that has no vocabulary to take into account institutional powers, for example, is a bad account because it fails by its own standards; it misses something about the very object of analysis it wants to hold front and centre. Bryant: "A critique of a philosophy [should be based on] whether or not it conceals or veils things that are unacceptable to veil." - where the lineaments of 'acceptability' can only be drawn from the object analysis itself.

So one thing I want to emphasize is that frames are never just a matter of 'preference' or fancy. In laying out a frame, one can only ever really be driven by necessity: once you begin to articulate a concept in a certain way, one can only be committed to it's implications. Bergson was particularly clear about this: "The truth is that in philosophy and even elsewhere it is a question of finding the problem and consequently of positing it, even more than of solving it. For a speculative problem is solved as soon as it is properly stated... The stating and solving of the problem are here very close to being equivalent: The truly great problems are set forth only when they are solved."

I won't speak for Streetlightx, but I'm talking about metaphysical frames here. Things like:
— T Clark

• Everything has a cause
• There is free will
• Objective reality does not exist
• Scientific principles which apply here and now apply elsewhere in the universe throughout time.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but treating these kinds of propositions as 'frames' is exactly the kind of mistake which I think must be avoided. I mean, it doesn't even make grammatical sense to say that 'everything has a cause' is a frame. Rather, the question is how to frame the idea that 'everything has a cause'. What kind of thing is a cause? What is the scope of 'everything'? This is where philosophy begins, with an investigation into kinds and scopes - contrast spaces and sense.

Propositions like 'there is free will' are the results, the 'fall outs' of a particular way of framing, and not a starting point. Honestly, every debate that begins with 'do we have free will?', or 'does everything have a cause?', etc, are all pseudo-debates. They take for granted that anyone has any idea at all what 'will' or 'cause' is (let alone free!), when every philosophy begins as a construction of the sense of these terms, articulating them with respect to a problem which motivates that construction. Every philosophical construction that is presented without it's corresponding motivation is useless; every critique of a philosophy that does not also take that motivation into account is similarly useless.

Bryant puts its scathingly but appropriately: "A critique of a philosophy shouldn’t be based on whether it’s internally consistent or whether it is veridical, but on whether or not it conceals or veils things that are unacceptable to veil. And here I’m inclined to say that the problems that motivate a philosophy never come from within philosophy. If, for example, you find yourself obsessed with the problem of how to refute the skeptic when developing your philosophy of mind, I’m inclined to think you’re a cretin that lacks a single important thought in your head".

How many letters does the correct answer have?

two
three
four
five — noAxioms

This too is unanswerable.

Will reply to this more fully later (sleeeep now), but one thing I should have specified is that there is one place where truth does matter in all of this: with respect to the questions asked; not all problems are of equal standing. Most are rubbish. Wittgenstein was mostly right that philosophy is up to its neck with badly-posed questions. But the trick is to find true problems. This requires a reconception of truth beyond it's banal sense of yes/no. There are no true solutions, only true problems. Will expand tomorrow.

It's not sad at all. You don't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. If you do, you've misunderstood what a fish is - but that would be your problem, not the fish's. Truth for the most part (but not always) is incredibly banal. Is it true that the cat is on the mat? It is true. Woop.

Once circularity is admitted, the game is up. The question is a verbal Penrose staircase:

... of?

It asks about the odds of guessing correctly. — noAxioms

Guessing what correctly though? Guessing the answer yes, but... to what? The question... which is... about the odds of guessing correctly. It's a weird little circle.

The self-reference of the indexical 'this' hides the fact that there is no actual question to which a chance of answering corresponds.

The two 25%s are a trick, a distraction. The question is unanswerable from the very beginning.

There's no criterion for correctness, so there's no possible answer.

"Nothing is more painful than the spiteful jeremiads about the abstraction of philosophers and the little concern they show for explaining and giving a meaning to “lived experience” ... [The philosopher] puts action in crisis, and conceives action only from out of such a state of crisis. He wants rhythm in action. The philosopher causes a crisis and knows nothing other than this; he has nothing to say about the rest, and testifies in his quasi-silence to a singular modesty, glorious and haughty."

- Francois Zourabichvili, Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event

Not at all! One of the interesting things about the duck/rabbit is that the 'same' thing can give rise to a genuine novelty, depending on the way in which it is taken. And the ways in which we 'fix' sense can have serious repercussions: is that hammer a tool or a weapon? Which fascinates me because sense seems to operate at a different level from causality, or at least causality as it is typically understood: there is no transfer of forces - yet a change is made, a novelty is introduced. I was vaguely contemplating a thread on aspect-change and creativity. I think I will now.

Hegel is a popular enemy. He's easy to turn into the 'bad guy' because he can so easily be shape-shifted into whatever or whoever you'd like. But I think Foucault said it best - it's probably one of my favourite quotes of his - when he noted that even anti-Hegelianism might itself play right into the hands of Hegel...

"[T]ruly, to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us".

Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics discusses it as well, and he rightly emphasises that the second clause of the PoSR is often and mistakenly left out. It's not just 'everything has a reason' but that there must be a reason for this rather than that: hence the full formulation: why is there something rather than nothing? The qualifier is what makes it sufficient; it's not just a matter of 'looking for reasons', but reasons why this and not something else. The 'sufficiency' part is often forgotten when discussing the PoSR, which is understandable because it's actually an incredibly stringent condition on inquiry. Leibniz has to theorize an infinity of different possible worlds just to deal with it.

This, in turn, is important because it means that the PoSR is indissociably linked with the question of individuation; on the fact that reasons bear on this individuated thing, and not something else.

That is not true, — Jeremiah

Of course it's true. Your OP is nothing but a series of moralising distinctions designed to affirm the vague and trivial notion that an understanding of science is important for philosophy. I mean, look at this crap:

"Some philosophers seem to stop along the road and take rest under a shady tree instead of forging ahead into the burning sunlight along a path that pushes closer to truth. "

"Too many modern philosophers too much want to cling to their POV, their subjectivity, their opinions; they want to lay around in the shade of the tree and talk instead of pushing ahead"...

Exactly who is going to disagree with this? Exactly who is going to say 'oh hey, that's me!'. But of course this is just the kind of cultish bullshit where everyone on 'our' side is 'good' and the 'other' side is 'bad', and of course that you find yourself on the side of the good guys is just a happy accident, how convenient. Self-fellating garbage, half-heartedly disguised.

There's not much here to take seriously. You're looking for a circle-jerk, nothing more.