1 of 1- aftermathemat
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The Foundation of Intelligibility & PSR
Here's another argument for PSR I've recently been thinking about. It's not really systematic or anything, given that it's just a bunch of laid out thoughts put together, but for whatever it's worth here it is:
p: It is raining.
Why?
e: Because of the water cycle.
Why is there an explanation for p? P could have been a brute fact, but why not? Or to put it differently, why is p intelligible?
And if there is no reason why p is intelligible and not a brute fact, then maybe we could make the argument that because of this, p would not actually be intelligible because the intelligibility would not be foundational! The ultimate foundation of intelligibility would either be non-existent or a brute fact, meaning that intelligibility ultimately is without foundation and is ultimately and derivatively exactly as irrational and absurd as brute facts are!
In other words, intelligibility would be ultimately unintelligible and without roots.
Consider: "It is unintelligible why p is intelligible" is the same as "It is unintelligible that p is intelligible"
In other words, the intelligibility of anything would then have to be a brute fact as well! Or at least intelligibility would have to be secondary and derived from unintelligibility!
To consider it again, this time in a more Socratic way, and to see that the PSR denier would have to end up in an Infinite Regress: Why is p intelligible rather than brute?
For no reason.
But why is there no reason that p is intelligible rather than brute?
There is no reason why there is no reason that p is intelligible rather than brute?
This will of course go to infinity.But infinitely many brute answers do not collectively amount to anything in the same way infinitely many non-light-generating moons do not collectively amount to actually bringing forth light.
The PSR denier would then be forced to avoid the result of infinitely many brute propositions which collectively do not explain anything by appealing to yet more infinite instrumental chains of brute facts, and all of THOSE would also be avoided by infinitely many brute chains and so on ad infinitum and beyond.
The PSR denier is in a similar situation as the atheist who accepts PSR but thinks an infintely long contingent chain could amount to an actual explanation.
Or maybe not, as the difference between causal chains which are intelligible yet without explanation and an infinite regress of questions without answers is that, in the former, the PSR denier is one stipulating bruteness about a certain singular question, but in the latter, the PSR denier is being confronted with an infinite sequence of questions about why a thing is brute, and ends up regressing infinitely.
I don't know if the above is a seperate argument for PSR than the first I sketched out in the beginning, but I definitely think it's worth a mention as well.
What do you think?
- Miguel
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Re: The Foundation of Intelligibility & PSR
I agree with that argument, and it seems very close to Feser's argument that a nomological regress of explanations cannot end in a brute fact -- i.e., if you think a set of laws X explains the phenomena you're seeing, such as we understand by science, and you think X is explained by further laws Y, and further laws Y are explained by a basic law Z, but you think that Z has no explanation whatsoever (being simply a brute fact why it's true and why it does what it does), then likewise the laws X are not explanatory at all, and so we have no explanations after all. Hence his analogy of putting a book to rest on a small shelf, but just putting that shelf on thin air without any attachment to the wall etc -- the whole thing, having no ultimate support, falls down, including the book.
I myself have been developing a similar argument to that, though a bit different, I'll see what comes out of it when I feel more comfortable with it.
- aftermathemat
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Re: The Foundation of Intelligibility & PSR
Miguel wrote:
I agree with that argument, and it seems very close to Feser's argument that a nomological regress of explanations cannot end in a brute fact
I myself have been developing a similar argument to that, though a bit different, I'll see what comes out of it when I feel more comfortable with it.
So you think that we could make a succesful argument that, if PSR is false, then non-brute facts would be explicable for no reason, and that this concept of "brute intelligibility" would then undermine all of the non-brute facts there are and even end up forcing the PSR denier to conclude that all facts are brute facts?
One of the former commenters on Feser's blog called Scott Ryan mentioned that he was having similar thoughts about how a rejection of PSR entails that all facts are brute facts and that just one non-brute fact would be enough to conclude to the existence of God:
Scott: I haven't thought this though completely, but it does seem that even if it were admitted arguendo that there might be some brute facts, the classical theist could argue to God as long as there was at least one fact that was not brute. Then, having established the existence of God, the classical theist could turn around and argue that no facts can be "brute" after all.
He didn't go into detail as to why he thought this, even though there was some discussion; namely, his idea of a brute fact was one that was not ultimately grounded, not merely one that has an explanation that isn't grounded.
And furthermore, does this mean that the brute intelligibility argument that I laid out above is analogous to the nomic law argument that Feser laid out, but that it applies not only to laws of nature but to all facts universally? If this is the case, then we might be able to press the PSR denier into the position of having to hold that all facts are brute facts, and that no explanations are in fact valid.
Last edited by aftermathemat (1/23/2018 2:58 pm)
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