- Camoden
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Callum wrote:
Also, stressing the intellect as prior to will only seems to push the question back a stage.
God wills the creation of world A -----> explained by God grasping the good of world A -----> explained by?
God grasping the good of world A being a neccessary truth seems to be the only way to terminate the series. Which seems to entail God is not free to will the creation of world B supposing PSR?Probably God's Essence, which serves as the ultimate standard for gradation. Secondly, there very well could be a regress of reasons here, which is fine because of God's actual infinitude (obviously these reasons would be coextensive with aspects of His being and not quantitative, but in order to avoid the accidental property objection I will refrain). Leibniz actually addressed this point funnily enough (he was quite good at anticipating objections, I honestly think he was aware of every objection raised against the argument).
It is on page 2:So something along the lines of;
God wills the creation of world A ---> explained by God grasping the good of World A ---> explained by God's Essence as Supreme Intellect itself, which is omniscient and a neccessary being?
This works in terminating the explanatory regress without appealing to a brute fact, thus maintaining the PSR.
However, I have trouble seeing why God grasping the good of world A actually explains anything!? Lets start the explanatory chain from the bottom and move up this time;
God is a neccessarily existing Supreme Intellect ---> this means that God is omniscient (he grasps all that is good) ---> God grasps the good of world A ---> God wills the existence of world A.
The problem is that God is omniscient. He also grasps the good of world B, C and D. Supposing God has free will in that nothing external to him or his internal nature compels him to act one way over another, then that second to last link in the chain (God grasps the good of world A) doesn't explain God's willing world A.
God essentially grasps the good of world A, B, C and D but only wills the creation of world A. God grasping the good of world A does not explain His choice to will it over other worlds.
It seems the difficulty is balancing on one hand, the free will of God in that whatever explains his choices don't strictly entail his choices (which rule out free will) and actually explaining his choice to create the world he has. To actually make it intelligible otherwise you appeal to brute facts.
Dilemma; is the PSR false or is God not free?
Well that isn’t my point. I am saying God’s essence and how the world matches up with God’s eternal power and wisdom explains it. Perhaps redemption is a real wish God has to manifest. The variety of goods in this world could be another one. There are plenty of posssible grounds, and hence, it need not be a brute fact. This at less possibly explains the choice for A over B. I don’t think God choosing one world over the other because it is better makes God unfree. Look at the earlier example I gave with Leibniz. It is a necessary fact that God chooses the best, given His essence, but it isn’t necessary when just look at the world for our perspective. God isn’t strictly Metaphysically ordered to any particular world from without, but God’s goodness does entail a particular choice. God does nothing not out of His wisdom, and Aquinas agrees. There is an incommensurability issue, but I don’t think that need be the case. I don’t see why one can’t be objectively better to God than the other. It isn’t strictly to perfect God, but so that creation can enjoy the fruits of God, and the variety of His perfections.
- Camoden
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Pruss seems to tackle my concerns, but i'm struggling to see what his argument is. Does anyone have any thoughts?
"Granted, it is necessary that God freely chose what to create while he was impressed by R. Let q be this necessary proposition. Let p be the BCCF. Then even though q is necessary, it is contingent that q explains p (or even that q explains anything—for if God created something else, that likely wouldn’t be explained by his being impressed by R, but by his being impressed by some other reason). And so we can ask why q explains p.
But at least one possible answer here is not particularly difficult. The question comes down to the question of why God acted on R to make p hold. But God acted on R to make p hold because he was impressed by R. And God’s acting on R to make p hold is explained by his making a decision while impressed by R, with its being a necessary truth that God is explained by R and by every other good reason. So, ultimately, q not only explains p, but also explains why q explains p. Had God acted on some other reason S that he is also impressed by to make not-p hold, then we could say that this was because he was impressed by S. "
Problem I see is that God is omniscient. He grasps all of the good reasons for anything possible world.
He grasps the good reasons R for creating this world and the good reasons S for not making this world. Pruss seems to be saying God's action to make this world is explained by (i) God impressed by the reasons for creating this world and (ii) God makes a decision when impressed by these reasons.
But, being omniscient, God would also know and be impressed by the reasons not to create this world. I don't see how (i) explains the specific reasons for *this* world being created and (ii) seems to beg the question. We want to know why *this* decision was made over another.
Well again, besides conjecture you probably aren’t going to be able to give the exact reason. I don’t see why you, or anyone, would expect that. There is a reason prayer exists. All that matters is that God had a reason for creating it, and it can be possibly grounded somewhere. We both should affirm as theists that God has the knowledge of the highest things, and that He never acts in a respect not based on this. I take this as a faith claim, but the atheist won’t. That is fine, but they will have to show why the possible groundings I have offered are deficient. I wish them best of luck, because they seem inherently plausible as explanations. Two essences seem to be better and worde than others, which Aquinas’s view of gradation seems to agree with, so I am not sure why worlds would not be in the equation. God out of the eternal Godhead in the Trinity wished to share love through creation. However, there is a level of justice that exists even in the Godhead (willing each person His due which is infinite love), and so it is even a good to permit the fall of some creatures. This is a type of variety.
Also, sorry my writing is horid. This is being typed on an iPhone.
Last edited by Camoden (10/22/2017 9:07 am)
- Callum
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Camoden, first and foremost i'm gonna thank you for replying. I really appreciate it. Second, I will reply properly to your posts later, I think I need to make myself clearer.
In the meantime, I was wondering about a comment you made on a continual regress. I remember WLC making this comment on his site regarding the BCCF;
" Or again, it may be supposed that the explanation for the BCCF is the fact that God freely wills the BCCF. (Notice that the proposition Possible World Two is the actual world is not the only proposition uniquely true in that world; so is the logically equivalent proposition God freely wills that Possible World Two be actual). Since that explanation is itself a contingent fact, it is also a constituent of the BCCF willed by God. It may then be regarded as self-explained or its explanation may be that God wills that He wills the BCCF, which fact will also be a constituent of the BCCF to be similarly explained in terms of yet another conjunct. This regress seems to be as innocuous as a series of entailments like its being true that it is true that p. The entire regress is contained in the BCCF and so is willed by God."
Read more:
That seemed a plausible alternative, however, Feser's argument for the PSR may undermine it. Wouldnt this be an essentially ordered causal series? Unless we can ground the whole series with intelligibility, it would seem to be unintelligible.
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Thread Starter- UGADawg
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
The sort of hypothetical necessity in question isn't incompatible with God being free. For one thing, recall his action is still free at least in the sense that it is not caused by anything prior to him. For another thing, understand that when we make a choice we (a) have some goal or end in mind; and (b) we think we know the means of achieving that end. Now, given God's nature, he has some specific goal or end in mind, and given his omniscience, he knows with absolute certainty how to achieve that end. For God to do anything to the contrary, then, would literally be for him to act irrationally, and it's absurd to suppose God isn't free merely because he doesn't behave irrationally.
See Lloyd Gerson's paper Two Criticisms of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
Last edited by UGADawg (10/22/2017 12:47 pm)
- Camoden
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
The sort of hypothetical necessity in question isn't incompatible with God being free. For one thing, recall his action is still free at least in the sense that it is not caused by anything prior to him. For another thing, understand that when we make a choice we (a) have some goal or end in mind; and (b) we think we know the means of achieving that end. Now, given God's nature, he has some specific goal or end in mind, and given his omniscience, he knows with absolute certainty how to achieve that end. For God to do anything to the contrary, then, would literally be for him to act irrationally, and it's absurd to suppose God isn't free merely because he doesn't behave irrationally.
See Lloyd Gerson's paper Two Criticisms of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
This is basically the gist of it. The force of the point is A. God is uncoerced B. God acts out of His wisdom. For Classical Theists like Anselm, this is the pinnacle of freedom, to hold to what one knows is good. When humans act irrationally, they are acting contrary to that. God cannot do this, as His goodness simply is His rationality.
Last edited by Camoden (10/22/2017 5:26 pm)
- Callum
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Thanks for you replies guys, you've helped alot!
I wont be able to reply until tomorrow most likely, but I have a few more questions. (I'll also try and get Gerson's paper!)
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Thread Starter- ficino
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Does the person who denies the PSR claim that there is at least one fact for which there is not a sufficient reason, or does that person merely decline to endorse the claim that all facts have sufficient reasons? Or some #1 and others #2?
- ficino
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Is anyone familiar with the work of Hugh McCann, a theist philosopher of religion who died in December, 2016? In Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 2012), 10-11, McCann defends a cosmological argument but rejects arguments from the PSR. McCann says that the PSR is brought into the argument as an additional premise, to help convert it from an inductive to a deductive argument. (Along with a second additional premise, namely, some sort of claim that the only satisfactory explanation of reality is the one being proffered. This latter claim can be fleshed out, e.g. that classical theism offers a better account than do all rivals.) But, he says, the possibility that one might be wrong is not a good reason for believing that one is wrong, so inductive arguments can't be dismissed for being inductive (ex: Kepler's arguments). But then, just go with the cosmo argument, because the PSR itself is inductive, so it doesn't do any work that isn't done already by the argument it's supposed to authorize. We only think the PSR is valid because we've had many experiences of finding sufficient reasons for phenomena, but the success of our past efforts at explanation was independent of our presuming that the PSR holds. The credibility of the PSR depends on past inductions, not vice versa. And maybe there are in fact some phenomena for which sufficient reason is in principle not cognizable (maybe at the quantum level). The inductive case for Kepler's first two laws is made by the tests which his principles pass successfully. If Kepler's principles pass validation tests, the case for them is as strong as it can be. The PSR doesn't add anything, since no one would reject Kepler's two laws on the basis of doubt about the PSR.
Last edited by ficino (10/23/2017 6:09 am)
- Callum
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Ok, i'll be able to post properly later, but heres one quick question;
The choice God has between creating a world and not creatin5a world is not the same as the old Buddhist donkey experiment, where the donkey has two pales of hay on either side of equal distance apart and died of starvation because he couldn't choose?
If the donkey did choose it would seem to be a brute fact which one was chosen. Is it the same for God creating or not creating? Or does he have something intrinsic too him (omniscience say) which would make one choice over the other the better choice?
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Thread Starter- Camoden
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Re: Does the Munnchausen trilemma prove brute facts and disprove the PSR
Ok, i'll be able to post properly later, but heres one quick question;
The choice God has between creating a world and not creatin5a world is not the same as the old Buddhist donkey experiment, where the donkey has two pales of hay on either side of equal distance apart and died of starvation because he couldn't choose?
If the donkey did choose it would seem to be a brute fact which one was chosen. Is it the same for God creating or not creating? Or does he have something intrinsic too him (omniscience say) which would make one choice over the other the better choice?
Well Leibniz denies Burdian's ass is even possible in his discourse with Clarke. He believes in the identity of the indiscernibles. I agree at some point the differences between worlds will become minuscule, but the God who numbers the hairs on your head (Luke 12:7) has wisdom that extends even to these ordinarily small matters. Augustine argued that the number of saved souls, and the types of souls that were saved was a great reason for creation. I am inclined to believe this is at least warranted.
Last edited by Camoden (10/25/2017 12:53 pm)