FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

Thank you all for your answers.

As far as I'm aware, I thought that God is a brute fact (since there is no explanation for His existence).

My doubts come from reading Democritus (on the topic of finality), and Dennett (for the existence of the self). I can safely deduce the existence of a Prime Being (whether a sea of possibilities or an uncaused cause), but I have doubts moving towards intelligence.

Indeed, my initial objection reduces to blind pantheism : there is nothing but things imploding into being for no reason. I know that it is absurd, but I never understood why something absurd cannot be, unless we suppose being to be rational.

Though I consider myself to be broadly in the Scholastic camp i'm still uncertain as to Thomism. What i will say, however, is that Feser's work on the philosophy of mind impresses me the most.

I recommend reading TLS and Neo Scholastic essays for a strong rebuttal to Dennett. I'd also look through the series feser has done on his blog (that's free at least).

Alexander wrote:

In fact, if this is your most basic difficulty (and I do think it is the strongest position against theism)

Alexander, you're spot on. I guess I will read Lonergan, though if you can confirm that it resolves the "being is not rational" objection.

Alexander wrote:

As David Bentley Hart says, atheism requires one to see reality as fundamentally irrational.

I'm having doubts (HA HA) that this position can be possible. I mean, if you argue reality as fundamentally irrational, aren't you affirming that reality is rational too? :/

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

I'm going to disagree here. For example, if you assume reality in itself down there is irrational, then it means that the PoI or the PNC breaks down, for they are the basic bricks for something to be intelligible (and a break of the PNC on "intelligibility" would blend the distinction between rational/irrational). Would you agree? And if not, why?

I sort of sympathize with this. I'm not sure how I would hash this out in, say, a syllogism but I've been toying with an idea similar to what you describe here. If there is no PSR then there is no necessary connection between the explanans and explanandum. What does it mean then for something to operate intelligibly? If I explain the position of the apple by the table holding it up, would such a scenario still be intelligible if there is no principled tendency for the apple to have an explanation for its position?

If brute facts, if unintelligibility, can seep into the world then can we really say things operate intelligibly? For even in the case where things have a sufficient reason for their being, that sufficient reason isn't really sufficient insofar as said being could have existed without a reason for its being (in  a ~PSR world). Perhaps I'm rambling and none of this makes sense. It's just been something on my mind recently.

I'm also trying to understand Garrigou-Lagrange's way of explaining diverse composition--that is, diverse parts that are in union need an explanation for their union, and such an explanation must be external to the union.  Firstly, what constitutes something as diverse?Secondly, why must the explanation be external to the union? If anyone here has any clarifying points on this matter that would be great.

Camoden wrote:

Hopefully one of these days I will feel comfortable enough to post my essay on Lagrange’s PNC based argument for the PSR. Unfortunately that is not now. I will say, the best PNC based argument for the PSR I have heard is from a manualist named Charles Hart. He states that since Being is intelligible can be proven by the law of identity, to deny intelligibility is an exclusive property of being is to say nothing is intelligible, which implicitly makes nothing have the same necessary property as being, clearly absurd. The reason he draws this from the PoI is because when the mind declares being is being, the is of predication reveals truth. In doing so, it declares it has the power to understand reality, claiming that something is, a judgement of truth. When we claim being is being, we say something that holds true for all beings, and to say something is unintelligible is simply to say it doesn’t exist, as truth is merely virtually distinct from being. Obviously this is reliant on Thomistic epistemology, but under this assumption it is manifest why the PSR is self evident and cannot be coherently denied. A collolary of this is if something isn’t intelligible of itself, it has to receive its intelligibility elsewhere. If it didn’t, it would simply be unintelligible. Since to all appearances the universe is existent, and yet seeming unintelligible of itself, it must be caused.

The supposition is that the Law of Identity cannot be coherently denied. This seems obvious.

Have been mulling over Lagrange's argument the past few days. Would love to read your paper.