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- Miguel
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Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
Anthony Kenny came up with an interesting rebuttal to leibnizian/rationalist cosmological arguments. I don't think it ultimately suceeds but I'm posting it here to see what responses you lot would have for it. He says: "It is wrong to say that God provides the answer to the question, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ The question itself is ill-conceived: the proposition ‘There is nothing’ cannot be given a coherent sense, and therefore there is no need to ask why it is false."
This seems like a rebuttal against my man Della Rocca's argument, which is also defended by my main man Feser in Five Proofs. Basically, DR argues that we accept explicability arguments in general, or in many cases. But we can make an explicability argument as to why things exist, which leads us directly to the PSR. The PSR skeptic must therefore either deny explicaility arguments in general, which is crazy, or draw a principled line against extending the explicability argument to why things exist, but that seems very hard to do without begging the question. Did Kenny manage to draw a principled line, though?
What would you guys respond?
I think my first response would be to challenge the idea that "there is nothing" cannot be given a coherent sense. The fact that it would imply that there isn't anything at all does not preclude us from making sense of the idea of things not existing. There would be no state of affairs in which we could say "there is nothing", true, but "there is nothing" can be taken simply as a negation of "something exists" or "things exist", and in this sense, we can ask the explanation for the proposition "things exist" as much as we can ask the explanation of any positive state of affairs or any proposition.
A second response I would give is that it seems Kenny's suggestion would really imply PSR is false and would have bizarre consequences. If we can ask why a contingent being exists (and we certainly can), and it is a contingent fact that it exists, then we can keep asking until and ultimately ask why contingent beings exist at all. This is just as much a contingent fact as any other, and so if we cannot ask this one, we can't ask explanations for other facts. CQ1: why does this old geezer exist? CQ2: why do old geezers exist? CQ3: why do things exist? Being that they are all questions of the same relevant kind: contingent facts about the existence of stuff, it seems that there shouldn't be anything to stop us from asking CQ3 if we can ask CQ1 and CQ2, since they are all of the same relevant kind; it just so happens that for CQ3 the counter-factual would be that nothing exists, but this does not turn CQ3 into a necessary fact, and if it is not necessary, and it is a fact, it can only be a contingent fact, but then it should have an explanation per PSR. Thus if one holds PSR on other grounds (empirical arguments, epistemological argument, etc) Kenny's arg can be defeated. But of course this doesn't salvage DR's argument. However, one could also argue that if "there is nothing" would have no coherent sense, then the fact that "there are things" could have no coherent negation, and would therefore be a necessary fact; Kenny's position would entail necessitarianism (which would not be a problem for DR but would be for most others).
What do you think? What responses would you give?
- UGADawg
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
Why does Kenny think it's incoherent? I can see no strict logical incoherence in supposing it could have been the case that all positive existential predicates were false.
- Calhoun
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
Can't we simply circumvent the whole problem of making sense of nothing by simply making the question Why is there something contingent rather than nothing contingent?
- Miguel
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
I suppose Kenny is trying to say that "there is nothing" is linguistic non-sense. Because "nothing" cannot "be" at all, it could not be the case that "there is nothing". He is very influenced by Wittgenstein, after all. I don't think it is too clear though, and as I said I think we can clearly make sense of "there is nothing" if we limit it to a negation of "things exist" or "there is something", and also that his denial could have some bizarre consequences. I'd like to see if people agree or if they can think of other responses to that claim.
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Thread Starter- Miguel
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
Calhoun wrote:
Can't we simply circumvent the whole problem of making sense of nothing by simply making the question Why is there something contingent rather than nothing contingent?
Mah man. I hadn't thought of that. I think that could work as well, unless Kenny were to think that "there is no contingency" would also be incoherent; I know some wittgensteinians have issues with the idea of a necessary being for example. But that seems even worse, and if I am correct in my first post, Kenny's position could plausibly entail necessitarianism, so he can't really deny that "there is no contingency" has a coherent sense.
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Thread Starter- GeorgiusThomas
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
I really don't see how "there is nothing" is incoherent. Maybe I'm too influenced by Scholastic manuals, where you can see the PNC formulated as "being is not non-being" or "being is not nothing".
Perhaps the problem is with "there", rather than "is?" People sometimes forget to let go of this metaphorical "certain something", -where- things are. If you have it in the background (and we shouldn't), I can see how that might seem incoherent.
Last edited by GeorgiusThomas (12/02/2017 2:26 pm)
- Calhoun
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
Mah man. I hadn't thought of that. I think that could work as well, unless Kenny were to think that "there is no contingency" would also be incoherent; I know some wittgensteinians have issues with the idea of a necessary being for example. But that seems even worse, and if I am correct in my first post, Kenny's position could plausibly entail necessitarianism, so he can't really deny that "there is no contingency" has a coherent sense.
Yea , I think that would work well against Kenny, but there are other philosophers who think even asking "Why is there anything contingent?" is meaningless and if meaningful, can be answered by only invoking other contingent beings. I am currently looking for responses to that. I make that point on Ed's latest post here
- Miguel
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
Mah man. I hadn't thought of that. I think that could work as well, unless Kenny were to think that "there is no contingency" would also be incoherent; I know some wittgensteinians have issues with the idea of a necessary being for example. But that seems even worse, and if I am correct in my first post, Kenny's position could plausibly entail necessitarianism, so he can't really deny that "there is no contingency" has a coherent sense.
Yea , I think that would work well against Kenny, but there are other philosophers who think even asking "Why is there anything contingent?" is meaningless and if meaningful, can be answered by only invoking other contingent beings. I am currently looking for responses to that. I make that point on Ed's latest post here
I answered it there. Posting my reply here:
Seems like sophistry to me.
Clearly, a geometry book is a contingent thing. What then could stop us from asking "why are there contingent substantial-kinds at all?" If the author grants that KI is valid and there are substance-kinds, then we can ask why contingent substance-kinds exist, and that would lead us to a PSR for substance-kinds and also a cosmological argument of sorts for substance-kinds, unless I am missing something.
Moreover, I fail to see how we can explain the existence of contingent things simply by invoking an infinity of contingent things. Why? How? *It simply doesn't answer the question at hand and is a denial of PSR*. Our intuition tells us that what we are looking for is an explanation for contigency, and not that we only ask questions because we are seeing "substance kinds". Being told that there exists an infinity of contingent things doesn't explain shit to me, in fact it only enlarges the need for an explanation; why is there an infinity of contingent things? They could all fail to exist, they could all have been different, why on earth should we not be allowed to inquire about why these contingent things exist (as we in fact do)?
In fact I never thought of "substance kinds" until then, why should I believe that I only ever seek for explanations of "substance kinds" instead of, more generally, things that for whatever reason exist but could have failed to exist? It seems ad hoc, convoluted and implausible to me.
Also in his Blackwell article Pruss gives an argume for a causal principle for causal chains. Could be relevant for that.
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Thread Starter- Calhoun
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
I'll make replies on blog, as this isn't main topic of thread.
- Miguel
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Re: Anthony Kenny, PSR, and why there is something rather than nothing
I responded again, but I think we broke blogger and it's not showing responses anymore
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