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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
I am still awaiting that contrastive triangle answer.
Miguel wrote:
Is it incoherent to seek an explanation for why a modally necessary being exists, if we have reasons to take it as a dependent being?
Yes, if this explanation is anything like an explanation in the PSR sense for reasons I have given, apparent contrastive absurdity and the modal dilemma (either unexplained necessity at a higher stage or modal voluntarism). I agree a theory has more explanatory appeal the more transparent the necessity claims it makes are but without further work this is not a PSR claim.
For example, is it incoherent to ask for an explanation for the parts of a necessary being? I not only don't see it as incoherent, but I find it natural and just self-evident that a thing's being modally necessary doesn't stop us from asking about whether it has parts. And this question is immediately relevant to the thread's issue.
Asking 'whether and what parts does it have' is different from 'why it has the parts that it does'.
So, do you think it's incoherent to ask whether a modally necessary being has parts? If you don't find it incoherent (and you shouldn't since it must be the case that either the being has parts or not) what you'll conclude is something relevant to that being's existential dependency which is NOT entirely dealt away with by modal necessity.
See the above
That's the point. If you grant that, then I can only ask you why you think we should *in principle* block all attempts to find explanations for dependent or composite beings merely because we don't have a perfect grasp on explanations for necessary facts.
Because without further qualification your grounds for requiering such explanations commit us to principles with absurd consequences. Once they can be formulated to adequately avoid said consequences without being ad hoc then they can potentially come into play.
Or take another example, that of augustinian arguments involving universals, possibilia etc. If we have reasons for both (1) rejecting platonism and (2) accepting realism and the fact that the eternal truths exist in every possible world, how is it illegitimate to inquire for an explanation as to how these eternal truths exist even though they are necessary (for example, by divine conceptualism)? "That presupposes PSR for necessary truhs" well as I said, these examples to me just provide cases in which it is self-evident that there must be an explanation even for necessary truths, at least these ones. If I have reasons to believe both 1 and 2 there has to be a fact of the matter as to how these eternal truths exist, and it is no good to say this "presupposes a PSR that hasn't been argued for". It *is* an example of necessary facts requiring explanations! It is just an example of when it definitely is reasonable to search for an explanation here. Which is why even Pruss who limita psr to contingent truths is willing to grant that "the fact that not all necessities need an explanation doesn't mean that odd necessities don't require an explanation".
You're claiming you this on the basis of an appeal to how things seem self-evident to you which is an appeal to intuition. Your intuitions might be right here and mine wrong but you're going to need defend them against the problems I raise (for what it's worth I don't have a strong intuition against what you say, the opposition only arises when one considers the consequences).
Let's out this another way: earlier both you and Ouros said that you think some necessary facts are self-explanatory and some are not. If you could give some non-add hoc criterion for ascertaining which facts are which and why (e.g. maybe all cases of necessary property possession require an explanation whilst those of a postiori necessary identity do not, as identity is the most basic primitive) it would remove a lot of problems from the proposed PSR.
Pruss for instance when speaking of mathematical truths proposes some could be explained by their reducibility to more fundamental mathematical stystems.
The arguments from motion, parts, essence/existence etc, cannot be blocked by modal necessity alone. The issue is not modal necessity, the issue is that every mixture of act/potency must be actualized by a being already in act; every composite being must be unified by something else; every mixture of essence/existence must be caused by an external cause; etc. Whether they exist in all possible worlds or not doesn't do anything to stop the arguments. If a limitation on PSR is invoked, the arguments will work as immediate counter-examples.
What do you mean and without question-begging in the composite case? Some of them may fail others may succeed. All I would require is that they do not commit one to your PSR (though they may be compatible with it). The only other which generates something close to it is the existence-essence argument with the additional premise that the terminus being must be one in which existence and essence are identical as opposed to one having its existence merely entailed by its essence. Even to get that one going you need the Real distinction though.
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
Attempts at discussing triangles will have to wait.
First I want to talk about the simple/composite being distinction:
It is true that it is a different thing to ask for (i) "what keeps its parts together" and (ii) asking whether that thing has parts. Before that you had rejected the inference that there would have to be a simple being; I argued and pointed out that even if we don't ask question i we can still know that there is a simple being because of the regress of parts; I mentioned this because it's a relevant fact for cosmological arguments which was originally part of the theme of the thread (since the existence of things must be explained by a simple being, and material beings are composites, this is a way to argue for the immateriality of the necessary being, which is relevant for the gap problem).
The thing is that through ii we can conclude that what we may call "existential dependency" is a deeper feature than modal necessity. If we know a necessary being is composite, it is no longer sufficient to say it is "necessary and that's the end of the story - no explanation for necessary beings!". If a necessary being is composite, its existence MUST be explained at least in terms of the existence of its parts, that's what we gather from the fact that it has parts. We can't even impersonate a mid-20th century average british philosopher and say it is MeANinGLeSS!!!!111 to seek for the explanation for the existence of a necessary being in this case. If a necessary being has parts, its existence is dependent upon its parts being conjoined, period. What I argue is that this gives us a strong reason to prima facie seek explanations for the existence even of necessary beings, because we know that existential dependency is more basic than modal necessity, and it is no good to refrain from seeking explanations to a dependent being simply because it is modally necessary. That would be to ignore its status as a dependent being.
Likewise with the augustinian argument. Or, we might say, if we imagined there were a necessary fact that there would be an inscription on a beach that said "THIS IS A REMINDER THAT EXISTENCE IS A PREDICATE", this would still require an explanation in terms of design, and the fact that it would be modally necessary wouldn't change that. This is why in the context of discussions of the fine-tuning arguments some authors don't even consider necessity as an alternative explanation.
I think these reasons for us to accept and seek explanations wherever we can, even for necessary facts or beings, are stronger than the reasons you have presented for limiting PSR to contingent truths. I think that at most, what you might show is that there are some cases in which we *don't know* how to explain necessary facts or how such explanations could work - and in my view it would be wiser to invoke some kind of "mysterianism" and still accept PSR for necessary truths, for the reasons I've given.
Alternstively, you could say PSR applies to some necessary facts though not all of them. Would it be ad hoc? Sure, but less worse than the idea that the necessary beings or facts I mentioned in my examples *cannot* or can't be expected to have explanations. And until we are able to figure out what exactly is the line that separates those explanatory necessary facts from those to which we can't apply PSR, we nevertheless have good reasons to believe PSR must apply in some cases of necessary beings and facts (like the one with composite beings, eternal truths, design, etc). Another less ad hoc alternative would be to just accept a PSR which doesn't include facts, only existing things, such as Stephen Davis's and Craig's PSR - this could be an attempt to "draw a line" as one could argue that explanatory difficulties generally arise when we deal with necessary facts.
I take the first option; all facts have an explanation, and I don't think your objections show this is incoherent, but at best that we may have difficulties understanding it; anyway, either option would be much better and more acceptable than thinking that a necessary composite being's explanation cannot be seeked and found in its composition, for example.
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
(One thing which may be relevant to such issues is that I think there's at least some plausibility to the idea that no composite being can be modally necessary. Every composite being is contingent. Every mixture of essence/existence is contingent. Every mixture of potency/act is contingent. And so on. This could be a way to solve such conflicts for someone who is bent on refraining to apply PSR to any necessary beings/facts. But it would raise different discussions about alethic modality)
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
Attempts at discussing triangles will have to wait.
I don't think this discussion is going to get much further unless you actually try to answer that.
The thing is that through ii we can conclude that what we may call "existential dependency" is a deeper feature than modal necessity. If we know a necessary being is composite, it is no longer sufficient to say it is "necessary and that's the end of the story - no explanation for necessary beings!". If a necessary being is composite, its existence MUST be explained at least in terms of the existence of its parts, that's what we gather from the fact that it has parts. We can't even impersonate a mid-20th century average british philosopher and say it is MeANinGLeSS!!!!111 to seek for the explanation for the existence of a necessary being in this case. If a necessary being has parts, its existence is dependent upon its parts being conjoined, period. What I argue is that this gives us a strong reason to prima facie seek explanations for the existence even of necessary beings, because we know that existential dependency is more basic than modal necessity, and it is no good to refrain from seeking explanations to a dependent being simply because it is modally necessary. That would be to ignore its status as a dependent being.
Once again no that begs the question! A facts PSR explaination about the existence of a certain entity will make reference to all the relevant facts both contingent and necessary, if it's the case that certain properties are necessarily co-extensive this will be explained in reference to a necessary fact about said property e.g. if instantiated necessarily instantiated alongside X. You're assuming the fact that anything has parts will incline one to seek an external unifer, something which isn't apparent and which (without that developed PSR criterion) leads to problems.
Likewise with the augustinian argument. Or, we might say, if we imagined there were a necessary fact that there would be an inscription on a beach that said "THIS IS A REMINDER THAT EXISTENCE IS A PREDICATE", this would still require an explanation in terms of design, and the fact that it would be modally necessary wouldn't change that. This is why in the context of discussions of the fine-tuning arguments some authors don't even consider necessity as an alternative explanation.
Again, this I am going to deny. There are manifest reasons why it would be absurd for a given physical universe (like the one you describe) to be modally necessary, but if we grant its proponent that for the sake of the argument we can't ask why it isn't otherwise any more than we can ask why squares have four sides instead of six.
I think these reasons for us to accept and seek explanations wherever we can, even for necessary facts or beings, are stronger than the reasons you have presented for limiting PSR to contingent truths. I think that at most, what you might show is that there are some cases in which we *don't know* how to explain necessary facts or how such explanations could work - and in my view it would be wiser to invoke some kind of "mysterianism" and still accept PSR for necessary truths, for the reasons I've given.
Alternstively, you could say PSR applies to some necessary facts though not all of them. Would it be ad hoc? Sure, but less worse than the idea that the necessary beings or facts I mentioned in my examples *cannot* or can't be expected to have explanations.
No it would be worse, as it's akin to accepting the strawman 'Everything has a cause' as a premise for cosmological arguments and just accepting the accusations of special pleading. If a premise entails something like a vicious regress or destroys our modal intuitions then generally that is a strong reason to reject it. You don't seem conscious of all the potential boot-strapping problems, regresses and other issues people will bring up in the context of divine necessity claims.
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
"You're assuming the fact that anything has parts will incline one to seek an external unifer, something which isn't apparent and which "
No, I am not, I didn't even talk about an external unifier. I do accept external unifiers but in that context I didn't even mention them. The point is just that in that case modal necessity can't be the full story if a necessary being has parts, since there will have to be reference to the parts which compose such a necessary being. You have to include a necessary fact about said parts, as you mentioned even if you don't further explain it in terms of an external unifier; that ahows there is a feature deeper than modal necessity which needs to come into play in order to make a necessary being intelligible. Which is what I'm saying.
"Again, this I am going to deny. There are manifest reasons why it would be absurd for a given physical universe (like the one you describe) to be modally necessary, but if we grant its proponent that for the sake of the argument we can't ask why it isn't otherwise any more than we can ask why squares have four sides instead of six."
Then you can just deny it. These are just here to show that modal necessity does not excuse us from not seeking explanations in all cases.
"No it would be worse, as it's akin to accepting the strawman 'Everything has a cause' as a premise for cosmological arguments and just accepting the accusations of special pleading. If a premise entails something like a vicious regress or destroys our modal intuitions then generally that is a strong reason to reject it. You don't seem conscious of all the potential boot-strapping problems, regresses and other issues people will bring up in the context of divine necessity claims. "
I don't think it would be comparable; we have good reasons to hold that certain cases, even if involving modal necessity, require us to find certain explanations (in terms of parts for composite beings; intelligence for design; a mind for eternal truths, whatever) even if we are not able to readily understand explanations for all kinds of necessary facts. Or, again, we might on that basis limit PSR to beings as many authors do. I don't see it as special pleading anymore than they do in this context.
Indeed I am not conscious of such destructive boot-strapping problems and regresses that could affect divine necessity given what I said, which is that 1) we still have reason to seek explanations for necessary facts when we can, or 2) we still have reasons to accept a limited PSR for "odd necessities", if it's bad it's not worse than avoiding an explanation for the cases I mentioned, or accept a PSR only for beings and not facts, in which case God's existence could be explained by an ontological argument which we may not yet know, or may be explained by essence/existence, etc. Whatever the case. PSR would be restricted for a good reason (for things and not facts, for example) and it is my understanding that this would be sufficient to deal away with potential worries, and it would still be rationally justified given the cases.
What will not do is to accept that mixtures of act/potency, composite beings, mixtures of essence/existence, and so on, will require no explanation of the relevant kind if they happen to be modally necessary. That to me is just stronger than any problems you've raised, including worries about special pleading.
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
And again, another solution would be to hold that all composite, act/potency, essence/existence beings, etc., are modally contingent and it is impossible for any of them to be modally necessary; that is to say if a being is composite there is at least one possible world in which its parts are not combined; if a being is act/potency ghis implies here is at least one possible world in which its potency is not actualized; if a being is essence/existence there is at least one possible world in which it does not exist. That would be another way to get around it, if you still think there are necessary facts which surely cannot have explanations and that there cannot be the aforementioned restrictions on PSR and we should rather not seek explanations for all the aforementioned cases.
Otherwise the possibility of modal necessity would be a valid objection to each and every one of Feser's proofs, which he nowhere deals with; "no need to get to a purely actual actualizer/one unifier/one being who just is existence etc, things just are like that by modal necessity", and while it is a silly suggestion, it would be a possible route for the atheist and you should've mentioned it in your review.
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
What will not do is to accept that mixtures of act/potency, composite beings, mixtures of essence/existence, and so on, will require no explanation of the relevant kind if they happen to be modally necessary. That to me is just stronger than any problems you've raised, including worries about special pleading.
Otherwise the possibility of modal necessity would be a valid objection to each and every one of Feser's proofs, which he nowhere deals with; "no need to get to a purely actual actualizer/one unifier/one being who just is existence etc, things just are like that by modal necessity", and while it is a silly suggestion, it would be a possible route for the atheist and you should've mentioned it in your review.
Quick response (it was written in reponse to the first quote but will apply to the second): no it would not be, because most of the concepts appealed to e.g. 'mixtures of act/potency and mixtures of essence/existence' themselves contain modal primitives. For instance to say something has an admixture of potency is just to it is not necessary (because a potency, technically a passive potency, just is a possibility to be otherwise. Ditto for saying a being does not exist of its own nature.
(This is why the statement that something has no potencies is no more of an explanation of its being necessary than than saying that it exists in all possible worlds is, as both just are ways of stating that is necessary)
As for my review: I did say that one route the atheist could take with the PSR is to claim that different explanatory chains terminate in different necessary beings and that, aside from the obvious appeal to Ockham's Razor, the PSR itself provides no way to rule that out.
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
What will not do is to accept that mixtures of act/potency, composite beings, mixtures of essence/existence, and so on, will require no explanation of the relevant kind if they happen to be modally necessary. That to me is just stronger than any problems you've raised, including worries about special pleading.
Otherwise the possibility of modal necessity would be a valid objection to each and every one of Feser's proofs, which he nowhere deals with; "no need to get to a purely actual actualizer/one unifier/one being who just is existence etc, things just are like that by modal necessity", and while it is a silly suggestion, it would be a possible route for the atheist and you should've mentioned it in your review.
Quick response (it was written in reponse to the first quote but will apply to the second): no it would not be, because most of the concepts appealed to e.g. 'mixtures of act/potency and mixtures of essence/existence' themselves contain modal primitives. For instance to say something has an admixture of potency is just to it is not necessary (because a potency, technically a passive potency, just is a possibility to be otherwise. Ditto for saying a being does not exist of its own nature.
(This is why the statement that something has no potencies is no more of an explanation of its being necessary than than saying that it exists in all possible worlds is, as both just are ways of stating that is necessary)
As for my review: I did say that one route the atheist could take with the PSR is to claim that different explanatory chains terminate in different necessary beings and that, aside from the obvious appeal to Ockham's Razor, the PSR itself provides no way to rule that out.
But they are different concepts nonetheless. That things change require a changer, that's the point. When we are dealing with modality we have to make sure to not leave some obviously odd cases completely unintelligible; that is to say, we do not want potency/act without an actualizer, essence/existence without a cause, composites without unity and a unifier, etc. This is why people are willing to grant even limited PSR, such as Stephen Davis's and Craig's, which allows for the possibility of brute facts, but not "brute things".
Your review: but that's not what I'm saying. You said it could lead to different necessary beings; what I'm saying is that if you take modal necessity to trump a requirement of explanation for act/potency composite essence/existence etc., you could block all such arguments at the level of the "glendower" and "regress" steps; "there IS no pure act, just necessary change with no explanation since otherwise it would lead to absurdities; necessary composite beings; necessary beings whose essence isn't existence; etc". This is a big part of what I'm saying, I think these would all be absurd possibilities even granting modal necessity, which is a reason why I defend the stronger PSR (or at least restricted versions which would include those cases). Of course you could argue that these cases are impossible (every act/potency, composite, essence/existence etc is contingent, for them to be like that is for there to be a possible world in which they don't exist, etc) as I've mentioned.
To put it differently: I don't think an atheist can block the aristotelian, thomistic, neoplatonist, etc arguments merely by appealing to modal necessity for the features we are applying PC/PSR to. Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, what do you think this shows? That we ought to take the features as contingent -- which would imply by itself some kind of argument for modal contingency -- or that we therefore have reason, as I said, to accept either PSR for ncessary truths also or a relevantly restricted PSR?
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
What will not do is to accept that mixtures of act/potency, composite beings, mixtures of essence/existence, and so on, will require no explanation of the relevant kind if they happen to be modally necessary. That to me is just stronger than any problems you've raised, including worries about special pleading.
Otherwise the possibility of modal necessity would be a valid objection to each and every one of Feser's proofs, which he nowhere deals with; "no need to get to a purely actual actualizer/one unifier/one being who just is existence etc, things just are like that by modal necessity", and while it is a silly suggestion, it would be a possible route for the atheist and you should've mentioned it in your review.
Quick response (it was written in reponse to the first quote but will apply to the second): no it would not be, because most of the concepts appealed to e.g. 'mixtures of act/potency and mixtures of essence/existence' themselves contain modal primitives. For instance to say something has an admixture of potency is just to it is not necessary (because a potency, technically a passive potency, just is a possibility to be otherwise. Ditto for saying a being does not exist of its own nature.
(This is why the statement that something has no potencies is no more of an explanation of its being necessary than than saying that it exists in all possible worlds is, as both just are ways of stating that is necessary)
As for my review: I did say that one route the atheist could take with the PSR is to claim that different explanatory chains terminate in different necessary beings and that, aside from the obvious appeal to Ockham's Razor, the PSR itself provides no way to rule that out.
But they are different concepts nonetheless. That things change require a changer, that's the point. When we are dealing with modality we have to make sure to not leave some obviously odd cases completely unintelligible; that is to say, we do not want potency/act without an actualizer, essence/existence without a cause, composites without unity and a unifier, etc. This is why people are willing to grant even limited PSR, such as Stephen Davis's and Craig's, which allows for the possibility of brute facts, but not "brute things".
Your review: but that's not what I'm saying. You said it could lead to different necessary beings; what I'm saying is that if you take modal necessity to trump a requirement of explanation for act/potency composite essence/existence etc., you could block all such arguments at the level of the "glendower" and "regress" steps; "there IS no pure act, just necessary change with no explanation since otherwise it would lead to absurdities; necessary composite beings; necessary beings whose essence isn't existence; etc". This is a big part of what I'm saying, I think these would all be absurd possibilities even granting modal necessity, which is a reason why I defend the stronger PSR (or at least restricted versions which would include those cases). Of course you could argue that these cases are impossible (every act/potency, composite, essence/existence etc is contingent, for them to be like that is for there to be a possible world in which they don't exist, etc) as I've mentioned.
To put it differently: I don't think an atheist can block the aristotelian, thomistic, neoplatonist, etc arguments merely by appealing to modal necessity for the features we are applying PC/PSR to. Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, what do you think this shows? That we ought to take the features as contingent -- which would imply by itself some kind of argument for modal contingency -- or that we therefore have reason, as I said, to accept either PSR for ncessary truths also or a relevantly restricted PSR?
I am saying that talk of necessity, act and potency and essence and existence are at least near synonymous* (analytical in older parlance), so I would query whether they are even conceptually distinct. (The early scholastics had problems with the term necessity since the term still had Aristotelian connotations of temporal necessity, so they often had to qualify it in terms of other elements of their metaphysics to express the kind of necessity they had in mind). I deny this in the case of the Neo-Platonic proof (if it is true then it's not true analytically).
So I agree most of those arguments can't be blocked but I don't take it to show anything deeper about modal primitives, as said arguments are just another way of expressing them* e.g. the First Way and the Second Way just are more confused variants on the strong and weak PSR respectively.
*For instance if the atheist claimed the universe was the necessary being they would also have to claim that it was actuality without admixture of potency (all apparent potency being an illusion - which one would expect as potency is serving as a near synonym for contingency). This is no more or less incoherent than claiming straight out that the universe is necessery though.
As for the Thomist argument I think it does try to do something deeper when it posits God not just as a being the essence of which contains existence (a being which exists of its nature to use non Real distinction speak) but as being the essence of which is identical to its existence. Some sort of attempt is made to reduce necessity (or at least necessary property-possession) to identity.
*This partly why I think the powers theory of modality is common sense - we talk about modal properties, being able to do X, all the time and its only the spell of exotic Goodmanesque/Quinian counter-factual translations that lead modern philosophers to play the obvious conclusions down.
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Re: A simple argument for the personhood of the first cause, by Lonergan
So you think act/potency and essence/existence imply modal contingency? If I'm reading you right. I'm trying to understand what you said before proceeding any further. Since you think that in the context of the aristotelian proof (for instance) the atheist has to argue that if the universe is necessary then he must argue that it is pure actuality and all apparent potency would have to be an illusion.
(I don't wanna change the topic too much, but this is of particular interest to me)
1) If that is the case however, you say that the atheist position in this case would be "no more or less incoherent than claiming straight out that the universe is necessary", and you believe this because you take act/potency and essence/existence to ultimately express modal contingency. However, don't you think it is easier to show that things change, or are caused, than to show they are contingent? I understand you're ultimately saying we'd be talking of contingency, but don't you think it's easier to tell that a thing's existence is dependent upon a cause (it has to be actualized by an actual cause, to take act/potency as example) than to tell that the same thing could've failed to exist in a possible world?
Because in general, arguments for the modal contingency of things would involve the possibility of conceiving of a different possible world in which such things don't exist, just ultimately relying on modal intuitions. Perhaps you can say that our understanding of causality would also rely on intuition, but - as I think the literature shows, afaik - it is much harder to deny that there are caused/dependent/changing things than it is to say that the universe is modally necessary. The second is sometimes claimed as an atheist defense against cosmological arguments, but the first is never even contemplated. If, however, a thing's being a mixture of act/potency, or of essence/existence, implies that it is modally contingent, then we'd have a specific argument for the modal contingency of things.
2) If you are granting that act/potency and essence/existence beings are always contingent, why wouldn't you grant it for composite things? Don't you think that if a thing is composed of conjoined parts, that is, parts distinct from itself, there is at least one possible world in which these parts wouldn't be conjoined (i.e. the thing doesn't exist in all possible worlds)?
3) I used to think that if a being was dependent in any sense (including: act/potency, essence/existence, being dependent upon another being to exist - ab alio, instead of a se, we might say) then that being could *not* be modally necessary, as it could at least in principle be the case that it could fail to exist, not having its existence conditioned by its cause. What first made me change my mind was numbers, eternal truths, etc., since (taking the lead from the augustinian argument) on a rejection of both platonism and aristotelianism it would be plausible that they would be ab alio dependent upon a divine mind, yet would remain modally necessary. Which is somewhat close to the scholastic jargon of derived necessity (though the medievals would use it to refer to the idea of eternity and incorruptibility; I'm talking about modal necessity). But then in this case we'd have things (or maybe we should call them facts) which are ab alio dependent for their existence, but which nevertheless are modally necessary.
The problem is it seems to me self-evident that every being whose existence is not self-sufficient, but rather dependent upon something else, would have to have an explanation in terms of a cause or whatever external being that provides sufficient conditions for its existence. In the case of numbers and eternal truths in an augustinian proof, it would be God, for example. This need for an explanation isn't just self-evident, but also seems to follow from the standard arguments given in support for PSR. This is one reason why I have a really serious problem with attempts to restrict PSR to modally contingent facts/beings.
4) What is your opinion on Stephen Davis's formulation of PSR? That every being has an explanation for its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. Notably, it avoids the inclusion of facts and would, I assume, avoid most if not all of your worries about explanations for necessary facts, but would still accomodate the need for explanations for dependent beings in any case.
For myself it wouldn't be completely satisfactory, as I think there should be explanations for necessary eternal truths as I mentioned in 3 for example, but it would be better than nothing anyway.
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