Interestingly, I've never seen someone reject the position that not all explanation logically entail the explanandum.

Also forgot to just say I thought the article was very good and raises pertinent issues. I think you're entirely right that Feser moves far too quickly through the modal fatalism objection. You also made a point I've been trying (and failing, evidently) to make for a while now, which is that the retorsion argument requires a great deal of fleshing out in terms of the details before it becomes fully convincing. 

That's for the comments fellows. I will reply individually to each response over the next couple of days. First Miguel

Miguel wrote:

You say that the examples Feser "gives of statistical and scientific explanation are unconvincing: in each case they appear merely to be incomplete explanations which, if sufficiently fleshed out, would give the same appearance of entailment". To me, this seems to miss the point. I don't think we should be too confident that these explanations can actually be completed in a way that "would give the same appearance of entailment", however, even if that were the case, the point is that even as of now, without there being any appearance of entailment, these proposed explanations are actually taken to be genuine explanations, and illuminating ones at that, even though they do not entail the explananda.

The italicised point is crucial here. Why should we think such explanations cannot be completed in such way? From the looks of it they are based on indeterminate incomplete descriptions can easily be translated into explanations which do have the form of entailment. This point is of particular force for Feser or any one else who holds that the laws of nature i.e. the behavior and interactions between substances is necessary.

Call a complete explanation an explanation that that give us all there is to know about a certain fact. Clearly statistical and scientific explanations, at least of the example Feser and Pruss use* are not complete explanations as we fill them out further about the behavior of and relations between the substances involved. What is it about the scenarios then that makes you think we shouldn't be too confidant that such complete explanations can be found? It looks to me like one is stuck between epistemic and ontological brute facts, either we are not in an epistemic position to find all aspects of the explanation or there is no explanation for some aspects.

*A different example. Let's say some of the seemingly random motions of quantum particles are genuinely indeterminate, there is no explanation for why they do X at this moment of time rather than earlier or later. This sounds like a brute fact to me, albeit one which only threatens the strong and not the weak PSR claim.

I leave it open as to whether a complete explanation might not involve entailment. If so then I think we are at least owed an explanation as to why this is so.

 

Miguel wrote:

There is no reason, therefore, to think that an explanans must necessitate its explanandum; there is nothing absurd in the idea that a genuine explanans does not necessitate the explanandum, and in fact -- as these examples confirm -- we do accept non-necessitating explanations as genuine explanations. So the modal fatalism objection is successfully defused.

In other words, even if in the future we end up discovering that some of these proposed explanations necessarily entail their explananda, the fact remains that they can be considered genuine explanations even when we don't see any necessitarian entailment involved, as is the case right now. And indeed when we search for an explanation, we don't have to specifically settle only for an explanans that necessitates the explanandum; instead we'll look for anything that makes the explanandum at least intelligible, which doesn't have to involve necessary entailment. And PSR requires nothing more than that.

The critic of this can claim that all the explanations involved can be subject to translation into full explanations. Indeed they might go further and claim that all incomplete explanations only gain their explanatory force from being debt notes to be cashed out in the form of a full expatiation (even if these further features are at present epistemic brute). What is at work here is linguistic indeterminacy and not any genuine explanatory stopping point in reality. 

Last edited by DanielCC (1/09/2018 8:28 am)

Calhoun wrote:

What Do you think of Stephen Maitzen's objection? It seems one way Naturalist can justify restricting PSR to local scientific or naturalistic facts and defend Hume-Edwards objection.

Which essay is this from? The only essay of his I am familiar with is 'The Problem of Magic', which is, to put it politely, not very good. (I might write up my notes on that sometime as it's a prime example of how not to be a naturalist). I had him pegged as a Stephen Law tire atheist. 

I don't think the Hume-Edwards objection has any force as long as one can ask questions about the membership of sets or which world is actual.

In his Papers "Stop asking why is there anything" and Later "Questioning the Question" (I recommend reading this one as this is the one that I have actually read) He argues that Either the question "why is there anything?" is meaningless or it has a perfectly naturalistic answer (There are infinite contingent beings as Hume-Edward principle contends and question can be answered by referring to them).

I discussed this before on Ed's blog here , other users don't find it very convincing, what do you think? I think it doesn't completely refute all lines of reasoning the argument uses but maybe it does undermine certain ways and reasons for establishing necessary being as explanation of infinite contingent beings.