Maverick Philosopher

An Insufficient Argument against Sufficient Reason

This is an emended version of an entry that first saw the light of day on 21 May 2016. It is a set-up for a response to a question put to me by Tom Oberle.  I'll try to answer Tom's question tomorrow.

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Explanatory rationalism is the view that there is a satisfactory answer to every explanation-seeking why question. Equivalently, it is the view that there are no propositions that are just true, i.e., true, contingently true, but without explanation of their being true. Are there some contingent truths that lack explanation? Consider the conjunction of all contingent truths. The conjunction of all contingent truths is itself a contingent truth. Could this contingent conjunctive truth have an explanation? Jonathan Bennett thinks not:

Let P be the great proposition stating the whole contingent truth about the actual world, down to its finest detail, in respect of all times. Then the question 'Why is it the case that P?' cannot be answered in a satisfying way. Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'; but if Q is only contingently the case then it is a conjunct in P, and the offered explanation doesn't explain; and if Q is necessarily the case then the explanation, if it is cogent, implies that P is necessary also. But if P is necessary then the universe had to be exactly as it is, down to the tiniest detail -- i.e., this is the only possible world. (Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, Hackett 1984, p. 115)

A clever little argument, this. Either Q is contingent or Q is necessary. If Q is contingent, then it is a conjunct in P and no explanation of P is to be had. But if Q is necessary,  then so is P.  So explanatory rationalism fails: there is no explanation of P's contingent truth.

Bennett's point is that explanatory rationalism entails the collapse of modal distinctions.  To put it another way, the principle of sufficient reason, call it PSR, according to which every truth has a sufficient reason for its being true, entails the extensional equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary.  These modal words would then differ at most in their sense but not in their reference. If we assume, as most of us will, the non-equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary, then, by modus tollens, we will infer the falsity of explanatory rationalism/PSR.  

This is relevant to the God question.  If PSR is false, then cosmological arguments for the existence of God which rest on PSR will be all of them unsound.

Now let's look at Bennett's argument in detail.

The world-proposition P is a conjunction of truths all of which are contingent. So P is contingent. Now if explanatory rationalism is true, then P has an explanation of its being true.  Bennett assumes that this explanation must be in terms of a proposition Q distinct from P such that Q entails P, and is thus a sufficient reason for P. Now  Q is either necessary or contingent. If Q is necessary, and a proposition is explained by citing a distinct proposition that entails it, and Q explains P, then P is necessary, contrary to what we have assumed. On the other hand, if Q is contingent, then Q is a conjunct in P, and again no successful explanation has been arrived at. Therefore, either explanatory rationalism is false, or it is true only on pain of a collapse of modal distinctions.  We take it for granted that said collapse would be a Bad Thing.  

Preliminary Skirmishing

Bennett's is a cute little argument, a variant of which  impresses the illustrious Peter van Inwagen as well,  but I must report that I do not find the argument in either version  compelling. Why is P true? We can say that P is true because each conjunct of P is true. We are not forced to say that P is true because of a distinct proposition Q which entails P.

I am not saying that P is true because P is true; I am saying that P is true because each conjunct of P is true, and that this adequately and non-circularly explains why P is true. Some wholes are adequately and non-circularly explained when their parts are explained.  In a broad sense of 'whole' and 'part,' a conjunction of propositions is a whole the parts of which are its conjuncts. Suppose I want to explain why the conjunction Tom is broke & Tom is fat is true.  It suffices to say that Tom is broke is true and that Tom is fat is true. Their being conjoined does not require a separate explanation since for any propositions their  conjunction automatically exists. Nor does the truth of a conjunction need a separate explanation since the truth of a conjunction supervenes upon the truth of its conjuncts. It is an aletheiological free lunch.

Suppose three bums are hanging around the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Why is this threesome there? The explanations of why each is there add up (automatically) to an explanation of why the three of them are there. Someone who understands why A is there, why B is there, and why C is there, does not need to understand some further fact in order to understand why the three of them are there. Similarly, it suffices to explain the truth of a conjunction to adduce the truth of its conjuncts. The conjunction is true because each conjunct is true. There is no need for an explanation of why a conjunctive proposition is true which is above and beyond the explanations of why its conjuncts are true.

Bennett falsely assumes that "Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'. . ." This ignores my suggestion that P is the case because each of its conjuncts is the case. So P does have an explanation; it is just that the explanation is not in terms of a proposition Q distinct from P which entails P.

Going Deeper 

But we can and should go deeper.  P is true because each of its conjuncts is true.  But why are they each true?  Each is true because its truth-maker makes it true.  A strong case can be made that there are truth-makers and that truth-makers are concrete facts or states of affairs.  (See D. M. Armstrong, et al.)  A truth-making fact is not a proposition, but that which makes a contingently true proposition true.  Contingent truths need ontological grounds. Armstrong finds the thought already in Aristotle. My being seated, for example, makes-true 'BV is seated.'  The sentence (as well as the proposition it is used to express) cannot just be true: there must be something external to the sentence that makes it true, and this something cannot be another sentence or anyone's say-so.  As for Bennett's "great proposition P," we can say that its truth-maker is the concrete universe. Why is P true?  Because the concrete universe makes it true.  'Makes true' as used in truth-maker theory does not mean entails even though there is a loose sense of 'makes true' according to which a true proposition makes true any proposition it entails.  Entailment is a relation defined over propositions: it connects propositions to propositions.  It thus remains within the sphere of propositions. Truth-making, however, connects non-propositions to propositions.  Therefore, truth-making is not entailment.  

We are now outside the sphere of propositions and can easily evade Bennett's clever argument.  It is simply not the case that any purported answer to the question why P is the case must invoke a proposition that entails it. A genuine explanation of why a contingent proposition is true cannot ultimately remain within the sphere of propositions.  In the case of P it is the existence and character of the concrete universe that explains why P is true.

Going Deeper Still

But we can and should go deeper still.  Proposition P is true because the actual concrete universe U -- which is not a proposition -- makes it true.  But what makes U exist and have the truth-making power?  If propositional truth is grounded in ontic truth, the truth of things, what grounds ontic truth?  Onto-theological truth?

Theists have a ready answer: the contingent concrete universe U exists because God freely created it ex nihilo.  It exists because God created it; it exists contingently because God might not have created it or any concrete universe.  The ultimate explanation of why P is true is that God created its truth-maker, U.

Now consider the proposition, God creates U.  Call it G.  Does a re-run of Bennett's argument cause trouble?  G entails P.  G is either necessary or contingent.  If G is necessary, then so is P, and modal distinctions collapse.  If G is contingent, however, it is included as a conjunct within P.  Does the explanation in terms of divine free creation therefore fail?

Not at all.  For it is not a proposition that explains P's being true but God's extra-propositional activity, which is not a proposition. God's extra-propositional activity makes true P including G and including the proposition, God's extra-propositional activity makes true P.

Conclusions 

I conclude that Professor Bennett has given us an insufficient reason to reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

I apply a similar critique to Peter van Inwagen's version of the argument in my "On An Insufficient Argument Against Sufficient Reason," Ratio, vol. 10, no. 1 (April 1997), pp. 76-81.

Arguments to God a contingentia mundi that rely on PSR are not refuted by the Bennett argument. 

Metaphysical Explanation Again

One question I am discussing with Micheal Lacey is whether any sense can be attached to the notion of metaphysical explanation. I answer in the affirmative. Perhaps he can tell me whether he agrees with the following, and if not, then why not.

Tom is a tomato of my acquaintance. The predicate 'red' is true of Tom. Equivalently, 'Tom is  red' is true.  Now the sentence just mentioned is contingently true. (It is obviously not necessarily true in any of the ways a sentence, or the proposition it expresses, could be necessarily true. For example, it is not true ex vi terminorum.)  

Now ask: could a contingently true sentence such as 'Tom is red' just be true?  "Look man, the sentence is just true; that is all that can be said, what more do you want?"  This response is no good. It cannot be a brute fact that our sample sentence is true.  By 'brute fact' I mean a fact that neither has nor needs an explanation.  So the fact that 'Tom is red' is true needs an explanation.  And since the fact is not self-explanatory, the explanation must invoke something external to the sentence.

This strikes me as a non-negotiable datum, especially if we confine our attention to present-tensed contingently true sentences.

I hope it is clear that what is wanted is not a causal explanation of why a particular tomato is red as opposed to green. Such an explanation would make mention of such factors as exposure to light, temperature, etc.  What is wanted is not a causal explanation of Tom's being ripe and red as opposed to unripe and green, but an explanation of a sentential/propositional representation's being actually true as opposed to possibly true.  The question, then, is this: WHAT MAKES A CONTINGENTLY TRUE PRESENT-TENSED SENTENCE/PROPOSITION TRUE?

Our contingently true sentence is about something, something in particular, namely Tom, and not about Tim. And what the sentence is about is not part of the sentence or the (Fregean) proposition it expresses.  It is external to both, not internal to either.  And it is not an item in the speaker's mind either.  Tom, then, is in the extralinguistic and extramental world.  Now I will assume, pace Meinong, that everything exists, that there are no nonexistent items.  Given that assumption I say: VERITAS SEQUITUR ESSE (VSE).  Truth follows being. Truth supervenes on being if we are talking about contingently true, present-tensed, truth-bearers.

That is to say: every contingently true, present-tensed, truth-bearer has need of at least one thing in the extralinguistic world for its truth.  Thus 'Tom is red' cannot be true unless there is at least one thing external to the sentence on which its truth depends. What I have just said lays down a necessary condition for a contingent sentence's being true.

But VSE is not sufficient for an adequate explanation of the truth of 'Tom is red.'  If Tom alone was all one needed for the explanation, then we wouldn't be able to account for the difference between the true 'Tom is red' and the false 'Tom is green.'  In short, the truth-maker must have a proposition-like structure, but without being a proposition. The truth-maker of 'Tom is red' is not Tom, not is it any proposition; the truth-maker of 'Tom is red' is the state of affairs, Tom's being red.  (I am sketching the Armstrong line; there are other ways to go.)

The state of affairs Tom's being red is the ontological ground of the truth of the corresponding sentence/proposition.  It is not a logical ground because it is not a proposition.  Nor is it a cause.  

It seems to me that I have just attached a tolerably clear sense to the notion of a metaphysical explanation. I have explained the truth of the sentence 'Tom is red' by invoking the state of affairs, Tom's being red.  The explanation is not causal, nor is it logical. And so we can call it metaphysical or ontological.

Have I convinced you, Micheal?

Is There Such a Thing as Metaphysical Explanation?

M. L. writes,

 

I've been enjoying your critique of [Peter] van Inwagen. [The reader is presumably referring to  my "Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method" in Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism, 2015, vol. 12, no. 2, 99-125]  I was initially astonished at his claim that metaphysics/ontology doesn't explain, but it also got me curious about where the explanation is going on in ontological accounts (especially of properties, however construed).

 

I'm doing a Ph.D. in metaontology and I'm contrasting neo-Quinean (van Inwagen) and neo-Aristotelian (Lowe) approaches. 

 

Can you direct me to where you might have written about, if indeed you have, how it is ontology/metaphysics explains?

 

Well, I haven't discussed the issue head-on in a separate publication, but I have discussed it en passant in various contexts. Below is a re-do of a 2012 weblog entry that addresses the question and may spark discussion. Combox open.

 

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Let 'Tom' name a particular tomato.  Let us agree that if a predicate applies to a particular, then the predicate is true of the particular.  Predicates are linguistic items.  Tomatoes are not. If Tom is red, then 'red' is true of Tom, and if 'red' is true of Tom, then Tom is red. This yields the material biconditional

1. Tom is red iff 'red' is true of Tom.

Now it seems to me that the following question is intelligible:  Is Tom red because 'red' is true of Tom, or is 'red' true of Tom because Tom is red?  'Because' here does not have a causal sense.  So the question is not whether Tom's being red causes 'red' to be true of Tom, or vice versa.  So I won't speak of causation in this context.  I will speak of metaphysical/ontological grounding.  The question then is what grounds what, not what causes what.   Does Tom's being red ground the application (the being-applied)  of 'red' to Tom, or does the application (the being-applied) of 'red' to Tom ground Tom's being red?

I am not primarily concerned with the correct answer to this question, but with meaningfulness/intelligibility of the question itself.

Grounding is asymmetrical: if x grounds y, then y does not ground x.  (It is also irreflexive and transitive.)  Now if there is such a relation as grounding, then there will be a distinctive form of explanation we can call metaphysical/ontological explanation.  (Grounding, even though it is not causation, is analogous to causation, and metaphysical explanation, even though distinct from causal explanation, is analogous to causal explanation.)

Explaining is something we do: in worlds without minds there is no explaining and there are no explanations, including metaphysical explanations.  But I assume that, if there are any metaphysical grounding relations, then  in every world metaphysical grounding relations obtain.  (Of course, there is no grounding of the application of predicates in a world without languages and predicates, but there are other grounding relations. For example, if propositions are abstract objects that necessarily exist, and some of the true ones need truth-makers, then truth-making, which is a grounding relation, exists in worlds in which there are no minds and no languages and hence no sentences.)

Grounding is not causation. It is not a relation between event tokens such as Jack's touching a live wire and Jack's death by electrocution.  Grounding is also not a relation between propositions.  It is not a logical relation that connects propositions to propositions.  It is not the relation of material implication, nor is it entailment (the necessitation of material implication), nor any other logical relation wholly situated at the level of propositions.  Propositions, let us assume, are the primary truth-bearers. 

In our example, grounding is not a relation between propositions -- it is not a logical relation -- since neither Tom nor 'red' are propositions. 

I want to say the following.  Tom's being red grounds the correctness of the application of 'red' to Tom.  'Red' is true of Tom because (metaphysically, not causally or logically) Tom is red, and not vice versa.  'Red' is true of Tom in virtue of  Tom's being red.  Tom's being red is metaphysically prior to the truth of 'Tom is red' where this metaphysical priority cannot be reduced to some ordinary type of priority, whether logical, causal, temporal, or what have you.  Tom's being red metaphysically accounts for the truth of 'Tom is red.' Tom's being red makes it the case the 'red' is true of Tom.  Tom's being red makes 'Tom is red' true.  

I conclude that there is at least one type of metaphysical grounding relation, and at least one form of irreducibly metaphysical explanation. 

We can ask similar questions with respect to normative properties.  Suppose Jesus commands us to love one another.  We distinguish among the commander, the act of commanding, the content of the command, and the normative property of the commanded content, in this case the obligatoriness of loving one another.  If Jesus is God, then whatever he commands is morally obligatory. Nevertheless, we can intelligibly ask whether the content is obligatory because Jesus/God commands it, or whether he (rightly) commands it because it is obligatory.  The 'because' here is neither causal not logical.  It is metaphysical/ontological.

 

This of course a variation on the old Euthyphro Dilemma in the eponymous Platonic dialog.

 

I freely admit that there is something obscure about a grounding relation that is neither causal nor logical. But of course logical and causal relations too are problematic when subjected to squinty-eyed scrutiny. 

 

I conclude with a dogmatic slogan. Metaphysics without metaphysical explanation is not metaphysics at all.  

The Multiverse Idea: Does it Help with the Question 'Why Something Rather than Nothing?'

If 'universe' refers to the totality of what exists in space-time, then there can be only one universe. Call that the ontological use of 'universe.' On that use, which accords with etymology and common sense, there cannot be multiple universes or parallel universes. But if 'universe' refers to the totality of what we can 'see' (empirically detect) with our best telescopes in all directions out to around 14 billion light-years -- call that the epistemological use of the term -- then it is a reasonable speculation that there are many such universes. 

After all, it is epistemically possible -- possible for all we know -- that there are other self-contained spatio-temporal regions beyond our current ken.  Let's run with the speculation.

These many universes would then make up the one actual universe (in the ontological sense) which we can now call the multiverse: one universe with many spatio-temporally disconnected regions each with its origin in its own big bang.

Some journalists succumb to the conflation of the MODAL notion of possible worlds with the COSMOLOGICAL notion of a multiplicity of universes. These need to be kept distinct.

If there are many physical universes, as some cosmologists speculate, they are parts of total physical reality, albeit spatio-temporally disconnected parts thereof, and therefore parts of the total way things are, using 'are' tenselessly.  But the total way things are is just what we mean by the actual world.  To invoke the Tractarian Wittgenstein, "The [actual] world is all that is the case." "The [actual] world is the totality of facts not of things."  The actual world is the total (maximal) way things are, and merely possible worlds are total ways things could have been.  Therefore, if there are many physical universes, they are all  'located within' the actual world in the sense that they are all parts of what is actually the case. 

In other words, each universe in the multiverse is a huge chunk of actuality; universes other than ours are not merely possible.  They are actually out there beyond our ken. So it is a mistake to refer to the universes in the multiverse as possible worlds.  This should be obvious from the fact that there is a possible world in which there are no universes beyond the one we 'see.'  Obviously, this possible world is not identical to a physical universe beyond the reach of our telescopes.

Now suppose we want an answer to the question, Why is there anything physical at all, and not rather nothing physical at all? Does the multiverse idea help with this question?

Not in the least. 

First of all, we can ask the same question about the multiverse that we asked about the plain old universe prior to the popularity of the multiverse theory.  We can ask: why does the multiverse exist? After all, it is just as modally contingent as 'our' universe, the one we 'see.' Even if there are infinitely many universes in the multiverse, there might not have been any. What then explains  the existence of the multiverse?

If I want to know why 'our' universe exists, it does no good to say that it is one of the universes in the multiverse, for that simply invites the question: why does the multiverse exist?

You might say, "The multiverse contains every possible universe, and therefore, necessarily, it contains ours." This is not a good answer because the ensemble of universes -- the multiverse -- might not have existence at all.  Surely there is a possible world in which nothing physical exists.

Let us also not forget that the multiplicity of universes comes into existence. So there is need of a multiverse-generating  mechanism which will have to operate on some pre-given stuff according to laws of nature. Even if different universes have different laws, there is need for meta-laws to explain how the base-level laws come to be. According to Paul Davies, as paraphrased and quoted here, 

. . .to get a multiverse, you need a universe-generating mechanism, "something that's going to make all those Big Bangs go bang. You're going to need some laws of physics. All theories of the multiverse assume quantum physics to provide the element of spontaneity, to make the bangs happen. They assume pre-existing space and time. They assume the normal notion of causality, a whole host of pre-existing conditions." Davies said there are about "10 different basic assumptions" of physical laws that are required "to get the multiverse theory to work."

Davies then made his deep point. "OK, where did those laws all come from? What about those meta-laws that generate all the universes in the first place? Where did they come from? Then what about the laws or meta-laws that impose diverse local laws upon each individual universe? How do they work? What is the distribution mechanism?" Davies argues that the only thing the multiverse theory does is shift the problem of existence up from the level of one universe to the level of multiple universes. "But you haven't explained it," Davies asserted.

Davies dismissed the idea that "any universe you like is out there somewhere. I think such an idea is just ridiculous and it explains nothing. Having all possible universes is not an explanation, because by invoking everything, you explain nothing."

Here Davies may be going too far. If you want to explain why the physical constants are so finely tuned as to allow the emergence of life and consciousness and the minds of physicists, then it does seem to be a good explanation to say that there are all the possible universes there might have been; it would then be no surprise that in our universe physics exists. It had to exist in at least one! One would not then need God to do the fine-tuning or to actualize a life-supporting universe. But this still leaves unexplained why there is the ensemble of universes in the first place.  

Davies' critique of the multiverse goes deeper. To explain the universe, he rejects "outside explanations," he said.

"I suppose, for me, the main problem [with a multiverse] is that what we're trying to do is explain why the universe is as it is by appealing to something outside of it," Davies told me. "In this case, an infinite number of multiple universes outside of our universe is used as the explanation for our universe." 

Then Davies makes his damning comparison. "To me, multiverse explanations are no better than traditional religion, which appeals to an unseen, unexplained God — a God that is outside of the universe — to explain the universe. In fact, I think both explanations — multiverse and God — are pretty much equivalent." To Davies, this equivalence is not a compliment. 

I don't see the damnation nor the equivalency. The appeal to God is the appeal to a necessary being about which it make no sense to ask: But why does it exist?  The crucial difference between appealing to God and appealing to the multiverse is that the former is a necessary being while the second is not.

I grant, though, that the idea of a necessary being is a very difficult one! 

An Insufficient Argument Against Sufficient Reason

Explanatory rationalism is the view that there is a satisfactory answer to every explanation-seeking why question. Equivalently, it is the view that there are no propositions that are just true, i.e., true, contingently true, but without explanation of their being true. Are there some contingent truths that lack explanation? Consider the conjunction of all contingent truths. The conjunction of all contingent truths is itself a contingent truth.    Could this contingent conjunctive truth have an explanation? Jonathan Bennett thinks not:

Let P be the great proposition stating the whole contingent truth about the actual world, down to its finest detail, in respect of all times. Then the question 'Why is it the case that P?' cannot be answered in a satisfying way. Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'; but if Q is only contingently the case then it is a conjunct in P, and the offered explanation doesn't explain; and if Q is necessarily the case then the explanation, if it is cogent, implies that P is necessary also. But if P is necessary then the universe had to be exactly as it is, down to the tiniest detail -- i.e., this is the only possible world. (Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, Hackett 1984, p. 115)

Bennett's point is that explanatory rationalism entails the collapse of modal distinctions.  To put it another way, the principle of sufficient reason, call it PSR, according to which every truth has a sufficient reason for its being true, entails the extensional equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary.  These modal words would then differ at most in their sense but not in their reference.  If we assume, as most of us will, the non-equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary, then, by modus tollens, we will infer the falsity of explanatory rationalism/PSR.  

This is relevant to the God question.  If PSR is false, then cosmological arguments for the existence of God which rest on PSR will be all of them unsound.

Now let's look at Bennett's argument in detail.

The world-proposition P is a conjunction of truths all of which are contingent. So P is contingent. Now if explanatory rationalism is true, then P has an explanation of its being true.  Bennett assumes that this explanation must be in terms of a proposition Q distinct from P such that Q entails P, and is thus a sufficient reason for P. Now  Q is either necessary or contingent. If Q is necessary, and a proposition is explained by citing a distinct proposition that entails it, and Q explains P, then P is necessary, contrary to what we have assumed. On the other hand, if Q is contingent, then Q is a conjunct of P, and again no successful explanation has been arrived at. Therefore, either explanatory rationalism is false, or it is true only on pain of a collapse of modal distinctions.  We take it for granted that said collapse would be a Bad Thing.  

Preliminary Skirmishing

Bennett's is a cute little argument, a variant of which  impresses the illustrious Peter van Inwagen as well,  but I must report that I do not find the argument in either version  compelling. Why is P true? We can say that P is true because each conjunct of P is true. We are not forced to say that P is true because of a distinct proposition Q which entails P.

I am not saying that P is true because P is true; I am saying that P is true because each conjunct of P is true, and that this adequately and non-circularly explains why P is true. Some wholes are adequately and noncircularly explained when their parts are explained.  In a broad sense of 'whole' and 'part,' a conjunction of propositions is a whole the parts of which are its conjuncts. Suppose I want to explain why the conjunction Tom is broke & Tom is fat is true.  It suffices to say that Tom is broke is true and that Tom is fat is true. Their being conjoined does not require a separate explanation since for any propositions their  conjunction automatically exists.

Suppose three bums are hanging around the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Why is this threesome there? The explanations of why each is there add up (automatically) to an explanation of why the three of them are there. Someone who understands why A is there, why B is there, and why C is there, does not need to understand some further fact in order to understand why the three of them are there. Similarly, it suffices to explain the truth of a conjunction to adduce the truth of its conjuncts. The conjunction is true because each conjunct is true. There is no need for an explanation of why a conjunctive proposition is true which is above and beyond the explanations of why its conjuncts are true.

Bennett falsely assumes that "Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'. . ." This ignores my suggestion that P is the case because each of its conjuncts is the case. So P does have an explanation; it is just that the explanation is not in terms of a proposition Q distinct from P which entails P.

Going Deeper 

But we can and should go deeper.  P is true because each of its conjuncts is true.  But why are they true?  Each is true because its truth-maker makes it true.  A strong case can be made that there are truth-makers and that truth-makers are concrete facts or states of affairs.  (See D. M. Armstrong, et al.)  A fact is not a proposition, but that which makes a contingently true proposition true.  My being seated, for example, makes-true 'BV is seated.'  The sentence (as well as the proposition it is used to express) cannot just be true: there must be something external to the sentence that makes it true, and this something cannot be another sentence or anyone's say-so.  As for Bennett's "great proposition P," we can say that its truth-maker is the concrete universe. Why is P true?  Because the concrete universe makes it true.  'Makes true' as used in truth-maker theory does not mean entails even though there is a loose sense of 'makes true' according to which a true proposition makes true any proposition it entails.  Entailment is a relation defined over propositions: it connects propositions to propositions.  It thus remains within the sphere of propositions. Truth-making, however, connects non-propositions to propositions.  Therefore, truth-making is not entailment.  

We are now outside the sphere of propositions and can easily evade Bennett's clever argument.  It is simply not the case that any purported answer to the question why P is the case must invoke a proposition that entails it. A genuine explanation of why a contingent proposition is true cannot ultimately remain within the sphere of propositions.  In the case of P it is the existence and character of the concrete universe that explains why P is true.

Going Deeper Still

But we can and should go deeper still.  Proposition P is true because the actual concrete universe U -- which is not a proposition -- makes it true.  But what makes U exist and have the truth-making power?  If propositional truth is grounded in ontic truth, the truth of things, what grounds ontic truth?  Onto-theological truth?

Theists have a ready answer: the contingent concrete universe U exists because God freely created it ex nihilo.  It exists because God created it; it exists contingently because God might not have created it or any concrete universe.  The ultimate explanation of why P is true is that God created its truth-maker, U.

Now consider the proposition, God creates U.  Call it G.  Does a re-run of Bennett's argument cause trouble?  G entails P.  G is either necessary or contingent.  If G is necessary, then so is P, and modal distinctions collapse.  If G is contingent, however, it is included as a conjunct within P.  Does the explanation in terms of divine free creation therefore fail?

Not at all.  For it is not a proposition that explains P's being true but God's extra-propositional activity, which is not a proposition. God's extra-propositional activity makes true P including G and including the proposition, God's extra-propositional activity makes true P.

Conclusions 

I conclude that Professor Bennett has given us an insufficient reason to reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

I apply a similar critique to Peter van Inwagen's version of the argument in my "On An Insufficient Argument Against Sufficient Reason," Ratio, vol. 10, no. 1 (April 1997), pp. 76-81.

Arguments to God a contingentia mundi that rely on PSR are not refuted by the Bennett argument. 

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Peter van Inwagen on Burden of Proof in Philosophy

Review of Barry Miller, A Most Unlikely God

Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?

A Question About God and Existence

What the Meinongian Means by 'Has Being' and 'Lacks Being'

Van Inwagen, Properties, and Bare Particulars

Bare Particulars and Prime Matter: Similarities and Differences

An Indiscernibility Argument for Dualism: Does it Beg the Question?

Peter van Inwagen, "A Theory of Properties," Exposition and Critique

Parsimony, Burden of Proof, and God

From an e-mail by Spencer Case:

. . . by my lights, parsimony might be a consideration that puts the burden of proof on the theist. Theories that multiply entities unnecessarily are less likely to be true and the theist's theory postulates an entity. Now, it may be that the theist will say that we need God as a first cause or something like that-- that could be enough to absolve him of the burden. But in the absence of other reasons for believing in God (known to the interlocutors), the burden of proof would be on the theist.

Let's think about this.  I doubt the usefulness in philosophy of burden-of-proof considerations, at least  when we are discussing such big questions as God, freedom, and immortality.  I also doubt the usefulness in philosophy of considerations of parsimony.  What is parsimony anyway?

Parsimony

Parsimony or Occam's Razor is  a principle of theoretical economy that states or rather enjoins:

   OR. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.

It is sometimes formulated in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. The principle or rather injunction is presumably to be interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitatively, thus:

   OR*. Do not multiply TYPES or CATEGORIES of entity beyond necessity.

Thus it is not individual entities that are not to be multiplied, but types or kinds or categories of entity.  To illustrate.  Some criticized David Lewis' extreme modal realism on the ground that it proliferates concreta: there are not only all the actual  concreta , there are all those merely possible ones as well.  He responded quite plausibly to the proliferation charge by pointing out that the Razor applies to categories of entity, not individual entities, and that category-wise his ontology is sparse indeed.

'Multiply' is a picturesque way of saying posit. (Obviously, there are as many categories of entity as there are, and one cannot cause them to 'multiply.')  And let's not forget the crucial qualification: beyond necessity.  That means: beyond what is needed for purposes of adequate explanation of the data that are to be explained.  Hence:

OR**  Do not posit types of entity in excess of what is needed for purposes of explanation.

So the principle enjoins us to refrain from positing more types of entity than we need to explain the phenomena that need to be explained. It is obvious that (OR**) does not tell us to prefer theory T1 over theory T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity than T2. What it tells us is to prefer T1 over T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity AND accounts adequately for all  the data. So there is a trade-off between positing and accounting.

Spencer tells us that "Theories that multiply entities unnecessarily are less likely to be true . . . ."  I don't think this is right.  Theories that posit entities or types of entity beyond the needs of explanation are uneconomical and to be rejected for this reason.  We prefer simpler theories to save cognitive labor, not because simplicity is the mark of truth (simplex sigillum veri) or even because simpler theories are more likely to be true.  Now it may be that simpler theories are more likely to be true  -- how would one show this? -- but this is no part of the principle of parsimony as I understand it.  It is a principle of Denkoekonomie.

The defeasible presumption in favor of parsimonious explanations is very much like the defeasible presumption of innocence (POI) in the law.  The accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty even if the probability of his being innocent is low or even near or at zero. The presumption of innocence does not vary with the probability of innocence, and is in fact logically consistent wth guilt.  And of course the presumption of innocence does not entail innocence.

POI is a procedural rule: we proceed in the law as if the accused is innocent even if it is evident that he isn't.  (Suppose 100 reputable winesses observe a man in a non-self-defense situation bludgeoning a woman to death.  There still has to be a trial, the accused will enjoy the POI, and the prosecutors will bear the burden of proof.  It's just that this trial will be very short.)  Similarly, the principle of parsimony is a principle of procedural presumption. (See N. Rescher, Presumption and the Practices of Tentative Cognition, Cambridge UP, 2006. p. 124 ff.)

God

Suppose everything could be explained just as well without God as with God.  Then we would have no reason to posit God as playing an explanatory role.  But it wouldn't follow that God doesn't exist, or even that it is unlikely that God exists.  All that would follow is that we would have no reason to posit God as an explanation of the existence, order, intelligibility of the universe: The 'God hypothesis' would not be rationally motivated.  

Now one point I want to make is that Parsimony is a fairly useless and trivial injunction.  After all, who wants to posit types of entity in excess of what is needed for purposes of explanation?  The real question is what is needed for explanation.  Parsimony gives us no help with this question.  I would argue that God is needed to explain the existence and the intelligibility of the universe.  Now that is a meaty set of issues that cannot be resolved by brandishing the Razor.  We all agree about the Razor.  What we don't agree about is what is necessary for an adequate explanation of what needs explaining.

And so it would be a cheap shot for an atheist to claim that theists violate Parsimony by positing God.  Spencer of course understands this.  For again, the issue is whether the posit is necessary for explanation.

Burden of Proof

Who bears the burden?  Theist or atheist?  The question is senseless or else has a trivial answer: both bear it.  For it is not evident that God exists, nor it is evident that God does not exist.  Neither side can invoke a defeasible presumption.

But there is a defeasible presumption in favor of the reliability of memory as a source of knowledge; so it does make sense to place the burden of proof on one who denies it.

Finally, does parsimony put the burden of proof on the theist as Spencer claims?  No and for two reasons. First, Parsimony is a trivial injunction that, by itself, cannot decide between theism and atheism.  Second, it is either senseless or trivial to ask where the BOP lies in the atheism-theism dispute.

UPDATE  (10/28):  Spencer Case e-mails:  "I think you should make clear to your readers that your post attributes views to me that I do not hold. The part you quote from me is given in a context that is meant to show how my view of burden of proof would apply to a particular dialectical situation where an atheist thought parsimony mattered for the reason I stated. I wasn't actually subscribing to that view of parsimony. My account of what philosophical burden of proof amounts to was the main point of my comments.

Related articles

Are Burden-of-Proof Considerations Relevant in Philosophy?

Can Wanting to Believe Make Us Believers?

Dawkins Versus Swinburne

Richard Dawkins reviews Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? (Oxford, 1996) here. What follows are the meatiest excerpts from Dawkins' review together with my critical comments. I have bolded the passages to which I object.

(show)

Swinburne is ambitious. He will not shrink into those few remaining backwaters which scientific explanation has so far failed to reach. He offers a theistic explanation for those very aspects of the world where science claims to have succeeded, and he insists that his explanation is better. Better, moreover, by a criterion likely to appeal to a scientist: simplicity. He shows that his heart is in the right place by convincingly demonstrating why we should always prefer the simplest hypothesis that fits the facts. But then comes the great banana skin experience. By an amazing exploit of doublethink, Swinburne manages to convince himself that theistic explanations are simple explanations.

It is not true that Swinburne offers an explanation for those very aspects of the world where science claims to have succeeded. Part of what Swinburne is saying is that there are aspects of the world that theism can explain but that materialism cannot explain. But let's back up a bit.

Swinburne rightly points out that "intellectual enquiry demands that we postulate the smallest number of brute facts." (49) But on a materialist explanation there are more brute facts than on a theistic explanation, and Swinburne takes this as a point in favor of theism. One thing that science cannot explain but that theism can explain is the fact that every electron has the same causal powers and liabilities as every other one in the universe. Indeed, the same goes for every kind of particle and every kind of macro-object as well: tigers here behave like tigers elsewhere, bread nourishes an Eskimo no less than it nourishes a Mexican, etc.

A rational enquirer, however, cannot just accept that it is a brute fact that every electron has the powers and liabilities of every other one. Reason demands an explanation of that fact. Swinburne offers the following analogy. "If all the coins found on an archaeological site have the same markings, or all the documents in a room are written with the same characteristic handwriting, we look for an explanation in terms of a common source. The apparently coincidental cries out for explanation." (50) Now back to Dawkins:

Science explains complex things in terms of the interactions of simpler things, ultimately the interactions of fundamental particles. I (and I dare say you) think it a beautifully simple idea that all things are made of different combinations of fundamental particles which, although exceedingly numerous, are drawn from a small, finite set. If we are sceptical, it is likely to be because we think the idea too simple. But for Swinburne it is not simple at all, quite the reverse.

His reasoning is very odd indeed. Given that the number of particles of any one type, say electrons, is large, Swinburne thinks it too much of a coincidence for so many to have the same properties. One electron, he could stomach. But billions and billions of electrons, all with the same properties, that is what really excites his incredulity. For him it would be simpler, more natural, less demanding of explanation, if all electrons were different from each other. Worse, no one electron should naturally retain its properties for more than an instant at a time, but would be expected to change capriciously, haphazardly and fleetingly from moment to moment. That is Swinburne’s view of the simple, native state of affairs. Anything more uniform (what you or I would call more simple) requires a special explanation.

[I]t is only because electrons and bits of copper and all other material objects have the same powers in the twentieth century as they did in the nineteenth century that things are as they are now. (Is There a God? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 2. [Dawkins gets the pagination wrong. This passage is on p. 42.])

Now where does Swinburne say what Dawkins attributes to him in the bolded passage? What Swinburne is saying is that science must take it to be a brute fact that electrons (e.g.) have the same powers and liabilities everywhere and everywhen. He is not saying that their natural tendency is not to have the same powers and liabilities. In other words, Swinburne does not invoke God to explain why electrons don't follow a natural tendency to collapse into irregularity; he invokes God to explain why they are regular. Returning to Dawkins:

Enter God. God comes to the rescue by deliberately and continuously sustaining the properties of all those billions of electrons and bits of copper, and neutralising their otherwise ingrained inclination to wild and erratic fluctuation. That is why when you’ve seen one electron you’ve seen them all, that is why bits of copper all behave like bits of copper, and that is why each electron and each bit of copper stays the same as itself from microsecond to microsecond. It is because God is constantly hanging on to each and every particle, curbing its reckless excesses and whipping it into line with its colleagues to keep them all the same.

It seems to me that Dawkins, whose tone betrays an unwillingness to grapple seriously with what Swinburne is saying, simply does not understand Swinburne's point. It is not that the fundamental particles are inclined to erratic fluctuation and that God must be brought in to keep them in line. It is rather that the fact of their regular behavior cannot be explained by science but must be taken to be a brute fact -- in violation of the principle that animates all science and inquiry, namely, to push explanations as far as one can and to admit as few brute facts as possible.

Swinburne, impressed by the regularity of nature, asks why it is regular. Dawkins, however, takes the regularity for granted and considers it to be a brute given. Thus at any time the regularity of nature has no explanation. But it is worse than this since over time there can be no explanation of why things having certain powers exist at all. As Swinburne puts it, "The present powers of objects may have been brought about by a past cause, but their present continuing in existence is -- on the materialist hypothesis -- an ultimate brute fact." (42)

In other words, the materialist must take to it to be a brute fact that the universe continues to exist.

Theism is arguably superior to materialism because it explains more with less. Its explanation is relatively simple whereas that of materialism must postulate innumerable separate objects that just happen to have the same powers as each other.

The materialist, one could say, tolerates an unacceptable amount of brute-factuality. Consider all the samples of boiling water that have ever existed. Not only is it a brute fact that all of these samples exhibit the propensity to boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea-level, but is is also a brute fact that each of these samples exists. But it is worse than this since each sample is composed of H₂O molecules which are composed of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, which are composed of electrons, protons, and so on down the line, where at each level there are inexplicable regularities and inexplicable existences.

I don't say that Swinburne's case for theism is absolutely compelling, but it is quite reasonable, and indeed more reasonable that Dawkin's case for materialism. But even if you disagree with me on the last point, I hope I have convinced you that Dawkin's critical remarks contra Swinburne are quite worthless.

Related articles

Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Overview

Thomas Nagel Reviews Alvin Plantinga

On Dawkins's Atheism: A Response

Infinite Regresses: Vicious and Benign

A reader asks: 

   Are all infinite regresses (regressions?) vicious? Why the pejorative
   label? Of the many things I don't understand, this must be near the
   top of my list, and it's an ignorance that dates back to my undergrad
   Intro to Philosophy days. When I first read the Thomistic cosmological
   proofs, I found myself wondering why Aquinas had such trouble
   countenancing the possibility that, as the lady says, "it's turtles
   all the way down."

   Without a first, there can't be a second... so what? It doesn't follow
   that there must be a first element to a series. What makes a
   temporally infinite series (of moments, causes/effects, etc.)
   impossible?

No, not all infinite regresses are vicious. Some are, if not 'virtuous,' at least innocuous or benign. The term 'benign' is standardly used. The truth regress is an example of a benign infinite regress. Let p be any true proposition. And let 'T' stand for the operator 'It is true that ( ).' Clearly, p entails T(p). For example, *Snow is white* entails *It is true that snow is white.*  The operation is iterable. So T(p) entails T(T(p)). And so on, ad infinitum or ad indefinitum if you  prefer. The resulting infinite series is  unproblematic. Whether you call this a progression or a regression, it doesn't cause any conceptual trouble.  Nor does it matter whether you think that infinity is potential only, or hold to actual infinities.  Either way, the truth regress is a nice clear example of an infinite regress that is benign.

So some infinite regresses are benign.

Setting aside the lady and her turtles, suppose, contrary to current cosmology, that the universe has an infinite past, and that each phase of the universe is caused by an earlier phase. Suppose further that there is nothing problematic in the notion of an actual (as opposed to potential) infinity, and that there is a good answer to the question of how, given the actual infinity of the past, we ever arrived at the present moment. Granting all that, the infinite regress of causes is benign.

But note that one cannot explain why the universe exists by saying that it always existed. For even if there is no time at which it did not exist, there remains the question why it exists at all. The universe is contingent: it might not have existed. So even if it exists at every time with earlier phases causing later phases,  that does not explain why it exists at all.

To say that the universe always existed is to say that it has no temporal beginning, no temporally first cause. But this gives no  answer to the question why this temporally beginningless universe exists in the first place. 

Here is where the theist invokes God. God is the ontologically, not temporally,  first cause.  Now if Mill asks, "But what causes God?" the answer is that God is a necessary being. If God were a contingent being, then a vicious infinite regress would arise. For one cannot get an ultimate  explanation of U if one invokes a contingent G. And if there were an  infinite regress of Gs, the whole series would be without ultimate explanation.  Thts is true whether the regress is potentially infinite or actually infinite.

If we compare the truth regress with the regress just mentioned, we can perhaps see what makes the latter vicious.  The viciousness consists in the failure to satisfy the need for an explanation.  P if and only it is true that p.  No one will take either side of this biconditional as explaining the other.  But explanation comes in when you ask why the universe U exists.  If you say that U exists because G caused it to exist, then you can reasonably ask: what caused G?  The classical answer is that G is causa sui, i.e., a necessary being.  The buck stops here.  If, on the other hand, you say that G is contingent, then it cannot be causa sui, in which case the regress is up and running.  Because the explanatory demand cannot be satisfied by embarking upon the regress, the regress is said to be vicious.

To answer the reader's  question, there is perhaps nothing vicious about a temporally infinite regress of empirical causes. But that gives us no explanation of why a temporally infinite universe exists in the first place.

Related articles

The Modified Leibniz Question, Maitzen's Critique of its Meaningfulness, and My Response

On Infinitely Regressive Explanations of the Universe's Existence

If Life Has a Meaning, Then it Cannot be Subjective

Causation, Existence, and the Modified Leibniz Question

Is Natural Causation Existence-Conferring?

When I reported to Peter Lupu over Sunday breakfast that Hugh McCann denies that natural causation is existence-conferring, he demanded to know McCann's reasons.  He has three. I'll discuss one of them in this post, the third one McCann mentions. (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, p. 18)

The reason is essentially Humean.  Rather than quote McCann, I'll put the matter in my own rather more detailed way.

But first I should limn the broader context.    McCann's God is not a mere cosmic starter-upper.  He keeps the universe in existence moment to moment after its beginning to exist -- assuming it has a beginning --  such that, were God to cease his creative sustenance, the universe would vanish.  On such a scheme, God is needed  to explain the universe and its continuance in existence even if it always existed.  But now suppose natural causation is existence-conferring and the universe always existed.  Then the naturalist might argue as follows:  (i) the universe is just the sum-total of its states; (ii) each state is caused to exist by earlier states; (iii) there is no first state; ergo (iv) every state has an immanent causal explanation in terms of earlier states; (v) if every state has an explanation of its existence in terms of earlier states, then the universe has an immanent, naturalistic explanation of its existence; ergo, (vi) there is no need for a God to explain why the universe exists, and (vii) if there were a God of McCann's stripe, then the existence of the universe would be causally overdetermined.

The above reasoning rests on the assumption that natural causation is existence-conferring.  This is why McCann needs to show that natural causation is not existence-conferring.  Here is one reason, a Humean reason.

One monsoon season I observed a lightning bolt hit a palm tree which then exploded into flame.  A paradigm case of event causation.  Call the one event token Strike and the other Ignition.  One would naturally say that Strike caused Ignition.  To say such a thing is to refer to the salient cause without denyng the  contribution of such necessary causal conditions as the presence of atmospheric oxygen. 

But what exactly did I observe?  Did I observe, literally observe, an instance of causation?  Not clear!  What is clear is that that I observed two spatiotemporally contiguous events.  I also observed that Strike occurred slightly earlier than Ignition.  Thus I observed the temporal precedence of the cause over the effect.  But I did not observe the production (the bringing-into-existence) of the effect by the cause.  Thus I did not observe the cause conferring existence on the effect.  Strike and Ignition were nearby in space and time and Ignition followed Strike.  That I literally saw.  But I did not literally see any producing or causing-to-exist.  What I actually saw was consistent with there being no causal production of the effect by the cause.  Admittedly, it was also consistent with there being unobservable causal production.

The point is that conferral of existence by natural  causation is not empirically detectable.  One cannot see it, or hear it, etc.  Nor is there any such instrument as a causation-detector that one could use to detect what one's gross outer senses cannot detect.

Nothing changes if we add the third Humean condition, constant conjunction.  Some event sequences are causal and some are not.  How do we distinguish the causal from the noncausal?  Since we cannot empirically detect existence-conferral, we cannot say that causal event sequences are those that involve existence-conferral.  So the Humean invokes constant conjunction: in terms of our example, whenever an event of the Strike-type occurs it is spatiotemporally contiguously followed by an event of the Ignition type.  Accordingly, there is nothing more to causation on this empiricist approach than regular succession.  A causal event sequence is one that instantiates a regularity.  What makes a causal sequence causal is just its instantiation of a regularity.  But then, causation is not the bringing into existence of one event by another.  The two events are what Hume calls "distinct existences."  The events are out there in the world.  But the causal link is not out there in the world, or rather, it is not empirically detectable. 

I hope my friend Peter will agree to at least the following:  if we adopt a regularity theory of causation, then natural causation is not existence-conferring.  The regularity theory can be stated as follows:

RT. x (directly) causes y =df (i) x and y are spatiotemporally contiguous; (ii) x
occurs earlier than y; (iii) x and y are subsumed under event types X and Y that
are related by the de facto empirical generalization that all events of type X are followed by events of type Y.

If this is what causation is, it is is not existentially productive: the cause does not produce, bring about, bring into existence the effect.  On the contrary, the holding of the causal relation presupposes the existence of the cause-event and the effect-event.  It follows that causation as understood on (RT) merely orders already existent events and cannot account for the very existence of these events.  Since Peter is a B-theorist about time, he should be comfortable with the notion that the universe is a four-dimensional space-time manifold the states or events of which are all tenselessly existent logically in advance of any ordering by whatever the exact relation is that is the causal relation.

Peter should tell me whether he accepts this much.

Of course, the naturalist needn't be a Humean about causation.  But then the naturalist ought to tell us what theory of causation he accepts and how it can be pressed into service to explain the very existence of events.  My challenge to Peter: describe a theory of natural causation on which the cause event confers existence on the effect event, as opposed to merely ordering already existent events.  Nomological and counterfactual theories won't fill the bill (or satisfy the Bill.)

Here is another little puzzle for Peter to ruminate over.  Causation is presumably a relation.  But a relation cannot obtain unless all its relata exist.  So if x directly causes y, and causation is a relation, then both x and y exist.  But then x in causing y does not confer existence on y.  To the contrary, the obtaining of the causal relation presupposes the logically antecedent existence of y.

This little conundrum works with any theory of causation (regularity, nomological, counterfactual, etc.) so long as it is assumed that causation is a relation and that no relation can hold or obtain unless all its relata exist.  For example, suppose you say that x causes y iff had x not occurred, then y would not have occurred.  That presupposes the existence of both relata, ergo, etc.

For details and a much more rigorous development, see my article "The Hume-Edwards Objection to the Cosmological Argument," Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. XXII, 1997, pp. 425-443, and the second article below.

Related articles

Causation, Existence, and the Modified Leibniz Question

Could the Universe Cause Itself to Exist?

Sweet Dreams of Dennett

The following first appeared on 15 January 2006 at the old Powerblogs site.  Here it is again, considerably reworked.

...........

I saw Daniel Dennett's Sweet Dreams (MIT Press, 2005) on offer a while back at full price, but declined to buy it: why shell out $30 to hear Dennett repeat himself one more time? But the other day it turned up for $13 in a used bookstore. So I  bought it, unable to resist the self-infliction of yet more Dennettian   sophistry. What am I? A masochist? A completist? A compulsive consciousness and qualia freak?

The subtitle is "Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness." That raises the question of how there could even be philosophical obstacles to such a science. I am not aware that philosophers control the sources of funding for neuroscience projects. And what could a philosopher say that could stymie brain science?

But let's look at a passage:

     If we are are to explain the conscious Subject, one way or another
     the transition from clueless cells to knowing organizations of
     cells must be made without any magic ingredients. This requirement
     presents theorists with what some see as a nasty dilemma . . . . If
     you propose a theory of the knowing Subject that describes whatever
     it describes as like the working of a vacant automated factory --
     not a Subject in sight -- you will seem to many observers to have
     changed the subject or missed the point. On the other hand, if your
     theory still has tasks for a Subject to perform, still has a need
     for a Subject as witness, then . . . you have actually postponed
     the task of explaining what needs explaining.

     To me, one of the most fascinating bifurcations in the intellectual
     world today is between those to whom it is obvious -- obvious --
     that a theory that leaves out the Subject is thereby disqualified
     as a theory of consciousness (in Chalmer's terms, it evades the
     Hard Problem), and those to whom it is just as obvious that any
     theory that doesn't leave out the Subject is disqualified. I submit
     that the former have to be wrong. . . . (p. 145)

Dennett has done a good job of focusing the issue. On the one side, the eliminativists who hold that the only way to explain the conscious Subject is by explaining it away. On the other side, those who are convinced that one cannot explain a datum by denying its existence.

What we have here fundamentally is a deep philosophical dispute about the nature of explanation, and not a debate confined to the philosophy of mind. What's more, it is not a debate that is going to be resolved by further empirical research.  Not all legitimate questions are empirical questions.

It ought to be self-evident that any explanation that consigns the explanandum (that which is to be explained) to the status of nonexistence is a failure as an explanation. Eliminativist moves are confessions of failure. Any genuine explanation of X presupposes (and so cannot eliminate) the
existence of X.  One cannot explain something by explaining it away.  Two related points:

1. One cannot explain what does not exist.  One cannot explain why unicorns roam the Superstition Wilderness, or why the surface of the moon is perfectly smooth.  There is nothing to explain.  In the case of consciousness, however, there is something to explain.  So it at least makes sense to attempt to explain consciousness.

2. An explanation that entails the nonexistence of the explanandum is no explanation at all.

Both (1) and (2) are analytic truths that simply unpack the concept of explanation.

I once heard a proponent of Advaita Vedanta claim that advaitins don't explain the world; they explain it away.  Now it is surely dubious in the extreme to think of this insistent and troubling plural world of our ongoing everyday acquaintance as an illusion.  Whatever its exact ontological status, it exists.  If it didn't there would be nothing to explain or explain away.  And if one were to explain it away, as one with Brahman, then one would have precisely failed to explain it.

What Dennet is maintaining about consciousness and the Subject is even worse.  There is some vestige of sense in the claim that the world is an illusion.  It makes sense, at least initially, to say that there is an Absolute Consciousness and that the world is its illusion.  But it is utterly absurd to maintain that consciousness is an illusion. The very distinction between illusion and reality presupposes consciousness.  In a world without consciousness, nothing would appear, and so nothing would appear
falsely.  Necessarily, no consciousness, no illusions. Illusions prove the reality of consciousness.

This is a very simple point. It is an 'armchair' point.  All you have to do is think to know that it is true.  But neither its being 'armchair' nor its being simple is an argument against it.  The law of non-contradiction is simple and  'armchair' too. 

The denigration of a priori knowledge is part and parcel of the pseudophilosophy of scientism.

Since consciousness exists, the project of explaining it at least makes sense, by (1).  By (2), an eliminativist explanation is no explanation at all.

The thing about consciousness is that the only way to explain it in terms satisfactory to a materialist is by denying its existence. It is to Dennett's 'credit' that he drives to the very end of this dead-end road, thereby showing that it is a dead-end.

My most rigorous demolition of Dennett's scientistic sophistry is in Can Consciousness be Explained? Dennett Debunked.

If Dennett were right, then we would all be zombies, including Dennett.  (See Searle, Dennett, and Zombies.) But then there would be no consciousness to explain and to write fat books about.

The demand that consciousness be exhaustively explained in terms involving no tincture of  consciousness is a demand that cannot be met.  Explanation of what by whom to whom?  Explanation is an inherently mind-involving notion.  There are no explanations in nature.  There is no way the science of matter can somehow close around the phenomena of mind and include them within its ambit.  Science, like explanation, is inherently mind-involving.  

Related articles

Can Consciousness Be Explained? Dennett Debunked

Galen Strawson versus Nicholas Humphrey on Consciousness

Bull Meets Shovel: Could Consciousness Be A Conjuring Trick?

The Modified Leibniz Question: The Debate So Far

What follows is a guest post by Peter Lupu with some additions and corrections by BV. 'CCB' abbreviates 'concrete contingent being.'  The last post in this series is here.  Thanks again to Vlastimil Vohamka for pointing us to Maitzen's article, which has proven to be stimulating indeed.

 

 

So far as I can see Steve Maitzen (in Stop Asking Why There's Anything)  holds three theses:

 

A. Semantic Thesis

 

1. As a general rule, dummy sortals such as ‘thing’, ‘object’, ‘CCB’, etc., are not referential terms, unless there is an explicit or implicit background presupposition as to which sortal term is intended as a replacement. This presupposition, if satisfied, fixes the referent of the dummy sortal. In the absence of the satisfaction of such a presupposition, sentences in which they are used (not mentioned) have no truth-conditions and questions in which they are used (not mentioned) have no answer-conditions.

 

2. Examples such as ‘Cats are CCBs’ are no exception. Either this sentence has no truth-conditions because the term ‘CCB’ is merely a place holder for an unspecified sortal or it should be understood along the lines of: ‘Cats are animals’, etc., where ‘animal’ is (one possible) substitution term for the dummy sortal ‘CCB.'

 

BV adds:  Right here I think a very simple objection can be brought against the semantic thesis.  We know that cats exist, we know that they are concrete, and we know that they are contingent.  So we know that 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is true.  Now whatever is true is meaningful (though not vice versa). Therefore, 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is meaningful.  Now if a sentence is meaningful, then its constituent terms are meaningful.  Hence 'CCB' is meaningful despite its being a dummy sortal.  I would also underscore a point I have made several times  before.  The immediate inference from the admittedly true (a) to (b) below is invalid:

 

a. The question 'How many CCBs are there?' is unanswerable, hence senseless

ergo

b. The question 'Why are there any CCBs?' is unanswerable, hence senseless.

 

3. The semantic thesis is the driving force behind Steve M’s view. It is the fallback position in all of his responses to challenges by Bill, Steven, and others. So far as I can tell, Steve M. did not defend the general form of the semantic thesis in his original paper. It is, therefore, surprising that it has been ignored by almost everyone in these discussions and that neither Bill nor Steven challenged the semantic thesis. I have written an extensive comment on this thesis and challenged it on several grounds.

 

 

B.  Explanatory Thesis

  

1. As a general rule, Why-Questions are answered by giving an explanation. ‘Why are there any CCBs?’
is a [explanation-seeking] Why-Question. [It is worth noting that the grammatically interrogative form of words 'Why is there anything at all?' could be used simply to express wonder that anything at all should exist, and not as a demand for an explanation.]  Therefore, it invites an explanation. What sort of explanation? Steve M. holds two theses about this last question:

 

 

(MI) The Adequacy Thesis: empirical explanations typical in science offer (at least in principle) adequate explanations for the Why-CCBs question, provided the Why-CCB questions are meaningful at all (and their meaningfulness is a function of satisfying the semantic thesis);

 

(MII) The Completeness Thesis: Once an empirical explanation is given to Why CCBs?, there is nothing left to explain. And in any case there are no suitable forms of explanation beyond empirical
explanations that could be even relevant to explain Why-CCBs?

 

2. Bill and Steven certainly deny (MII). They may also have some reservations about MI. What is the
basis on which Bill and Steven challenge MII? They maintain that even if we assume that an adequate empirical explanation is offered (i.e., MI is satisfied) to each and every CCB, there is something else left over to explain. What is that “something else” that is left over that needs explaining (Steve M. asks)?

 

3. It is at this juncture that the discussion either reverts back to the semantic thesis or it
needs to be advanced into a new metaphysical realm.

 

C. Metaphysical Thesis

 

Dummy sortals do not pick out any  properties or universals (monadic or relational) except via the mediation of genuine sortals. i.e., there are no properties over and beyond those picked out by genuine sortals.

 

1. Steven attempted to answer the challenge posed by the question at the end of B2 in one of his posts.
His answer is this: what is left over after all empirical explanations favored by Steve M. are assumed to have been given is a very general property, feature, or aspect that all CCBs, and only CCBs, have in common. So why shouldn't ‘Why-CCBs’ questions be understood as inquiring into an explanation of this general feature that all and only CCBs share? Call this alleged general feature ‘X’.

 

2. The dispute has turned to whether X has any content, i.e., Steve M. challenged the contention
that there is any phenomenon described by X that was not already accounted for by his favorite empirical explanations. Bill and Steven tried to articulate the content of X without (apparently) noticing that every such effort was rebutted by Steve M. either by appealing to the semantic thesis or to the explanatory thesis or both.

 

3. So what could X be? I suggest the following: X is the (second-order) property such that the
property of *is a contingent being* is instantiated (or something along these lines).  [I would put it this way:  X is the being-instantiated of the property of being a contingent being.]

 

4. Since the universal/property *is a contingent being* need not be instantiated, the fact that it is in fact instantiated in the actual world (i.e., that X holds) needs explaining (So claim Bill and Steven). And whatever is the explanation (including a “brute-fact” explanation) for this fact, it cannot take the form of an empirical explanation.

 

5. The Metaphysical Thesis I am attributing to Steve M. of course rules out that there is a property
such as X. Why? Two reasons: first, the property *is a contingent being* is not a sortal property; second, the predicate ‘is a contingent being’ (or any of its variants) contains a dummy sortal and therefore it does not pick out a property (nor does it have an extension) in the absence of a specific background presupposition of a specific sortal substituend.

 

D. Conclusion

  

Unless these three theses are clearly separated, the discussion will be going in circles. As one can see, the driving force behind the explanatory and metaphysical theses is ultimately the semantic thesis. No one challenged this thesis directly (except me in a comment that was ignored by everyone with the exception of Bill).

Causation, Existence, and the Modified Leibniz Question

Letting 'CCB' abbreviate 'concrete contingent beings,' we may formulate the modified Leibniz question as follows: Why are there any CCBs at all?  We have been discussing whether this question is a pseudo-question.  To be precise, we have been discussing whether it is a pseudo-question on the assumption that it does not collapse into one or more naturalistically tractable questions: questions that can be answered by natural science.

My thesis is that the modified Leibniz question is a genuine question that does not collapse into one or more naturalistically tractable questions.

I

Consider a universe that consists of a beginningless actually infinite series of contingent beings. Let us assume that each CCB in this universe is (deterministically)  caused by a preceding CCB.  The beginninglessness of the series insures that every CCB has a cause.  Since every CCB has a cause, each has a causal explanation in terms of an earlier one. And since each has a causal explanation, the whole lot of them does. (Some may smell the fallacy of composition in this last sentence, but let's assume arguendo that no fallacy has been committed.)  Accordingly, the totality of CCBs, the universe, has an explanation in virtue of each CCB's having an explanation. 

Some will say that on this scenario the modified Leibniz question has received a naturalistic  answer.  Why are there CCBs as as opposed to no CCBs?  Because each CCB is causally explained by other CCBs, and because explaining each of them amounts to explaining the whole lot of them.  And since the question has this naturalistic or universe-immanent answer, the specifically philiosophical form of the question, the question as Leibniz intended it, is a pseudo-question.

Others, like me, will insist that on the scenario sketched the question has not been answered.  We will insist that a legitimate question remains:  why is there this whole infinite system of contingent beings?  After all, it is contingent, just as its parts are contingent whether taken distributively or collectively.  There might not have been any concrete contingent beings at all, in which case there would not have been any CCBs to cause other CCBs.  And nothing is changed by the fact that the series of CCBs is actually  infinite in the past direction.  The fact that the series always existed does not show that it could not have failed to exist.  The temporal 'always' does not get the length of the modal 'necessarily.'  If time is infinite in both directions, and the universe exists at every time, it does not follow that the universe necessarily exists.  But if it contingently exists, then we are entitled to ask why it exists.

It is no answer to be told that each member of the universe, each CCB, is caused by others.  I may cheerfully grant that but still sensibly ask: But what accounts for the whole causal system in the first place?

Please note that a possible answer here is: nothing does.  The existence of the universe is a brute fact.  Nothing I have said entails a theistic answer. My point is simply  that the modified Leibniz question is a genuine question that cannot be answered by invoking causal relations within the universe.

II

There another line of attack open to me, one that focuses on the connection between causation and existence.  It seems to me that the naturalist or 'immanentist' must assume that if x causes y, then x causes y to exist.  The assumption, in other words, is that causation is existentially productive, that the cause brings the effect into existence.  But on what theory of causation that the naturalist is likely to accept is  causation productive?

This is a huge topic and I can only begin to explore it in this post.  Suppose our naturalist, good empiricist that he is, subscribes to a Humean or regularity theory of causation along the following lines:

RT. x (directly) causes y =df (i) x and y are spatiotemporally contiguous; (ii) x occurs earlier than y; (iii) x and y are subsumed under event types X and Y that are related by the de facto empirical generalization that all events of type X are followed by events of type Y.

 If this is what causation is, it is is not existentially productive: the cause does not produce, bring about, bring into existence the effect.  On the contrary, the holding of the causal relation presupposes the existence of the cause-event and the effect-event.  It follows that causation as understood on (RT) merely orders already existent events and cannot account for the very existence of these events. 

Of course, the naturalist needn't be a Humean about causation.  But then he ought to tell us what theory of causation he accepts and how it can be pressed into service to explain the very existence of CCBs.

For details and a much more rigorous development, see my article "The Hume-Edwards Objection to the Cosmological Argument," Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. XXII, 1997, pp. 425-443.  

The Modified Leibniz Question, Maitzen's Critique of its Meaningfulness, and My Response

It is the thesis of Stephen Maitzen's Stop Asking Why There's Anything that the Leibniz question, 'Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all?' is ill-posed as it stands and unanswerable.  Maitzen's point is intended to apply not only to the 'wide-open' formulation just mentioned but also to such other formulations as 'Why are there any concrete contingent beings at all?'  I will discuss only the latter formulation.  It is defensible in ways that the wide-open question is not.  Call it the modified Leibniz question.  For Maitzen it is a pseudo-question.  For me it is a genuine question.  On my classificatory scheme, Maitzen is a rejectionist concerning the modified Leibniz question.  The question is not to be answered but  rejected as senseless, because of an internal semantic defect that renders it necessarily unanswerable and therefore illegitimate as a question.

My defense of the meaningfulness of the modified Leibniz question does not commit me to any particular answer to the question such as the theistic answer.  For there are several possible types of answer, one of them being the 'brutal' answer:  it is simply a brute fact that concrete contingent beings (CCBs) exist.  When Russell, in his famous BBC debate with the Jesuit Copleston, said that the the universe is just there and that is all, he was answering the question, not rejecting it.  His answer presupposed the meaningfulness of the question.

1. Getting a Sense of What the Dispute is About

Maitzen's paper is in the context of a defense of naturalism and an attack on theism.  So I have to be careful not to assume theism or anything that entails or presupposes theism.  Defining 'naturalism' is a tricky business but it suffices for present purposes to say that naturalism entails the nonexistence of God as classically conceived, and the nonexistence of immortal souls, but does not entail the nonexistence of abstracta, many of which are necessary beings. 

To make things hard on theists let us assume (contrary to current cosmology)  that the universe has an actually infinite past. Hence it always existed. Let us also assume that the each total state of the universe at a time is (deterministically) caused to exist by an earlier such state of the universe. A third assumption is that the universe is nothing over and above the sum of its states. The third assumption implies that if each state has a causal explanation in terms of earlier states (in accordance with the laws of nature), then all of the states have an explanation, in which case the universe itself has a causal explanation. This in turn implies that there is no need to posit anything external to the universe, such as God, to explain why the universe exists. The idea, then, is that the universe exists because it causes itself to exist in that later states are caused to exist by earlier states, there being no earliest, uncaused, state. We thereby explain why the universe exists via an infinite regress of universe-immanent causes and in so doing obviate the need for a transcendent cause.

If this could be made to work, then we would have a nice neat self-contained universe whose existence was not a brute fact but also not dependent on anything external to the universe.  We would also have an answer to the modified Leibniz question.  Why are there any CCBs given the (broadly logical) possibility that there not be any?  Because each is caused to exist by other CCBs.

The five or so assumptions behind this reasoning can all be questioned. But even if they are all true, the argument is still no good for a fairly obvious (to me!) reason. The whole collection of states, despite its being beginningless and endless, is (modally) contingent: it might not have existed at all.  So, despite every state's having a cause, we can still ask why there are any states in the first place.

The fact that U always existed, if it is a fact, does not entail that U must exist. If I want to know why this universe of ours exists as opposed to there being some other universe or no universe at all, it does no good to tell me that it always existed. For what I want to know is why it exists at all, or 'in the first place.'   I am not asking about its temporal duration but about its very existence. Why it exists at all is a legitimate question since there is no necessity that there be a universe in the first place.  There might have been no universe, where 'universe' stands for the sum-total of concrete contingent beings all of which, on the assumption of naturalism, are physical or material beings.  And it seems obvious that the fact, if it is a fact, that every state has a cause in earlier states does not explain why there is the whole system of states.

The dispute between Maitzen and me can now be formulated.

BV:  The question 'Why are there any CCBs at all? is a legitimate question ( a meaningful question) that cannot be answered in a universe-immanent or naturalistic way as above where every CCB is causally explained by other CCBs. 

SM:  The question 'Why are there any CCBs at all?' is not a legitimate question (not a meaningful question) except insofar as it can be reformulated as a question whose answer can take a universe-immanent or naturalistic form.

2. Maitzen's Argument For the Meaninglessness of the Modified Leibniz Question

The argument begins with considerations about counting.  Maitzen arrives at a result that I do not question.  We can counts pens, plums and penguins, but we cannot count things, entities, or concrete contingent beings.  Or at least we cannot count them under those heads.  The reason is quite simple.  The first trio of terms is a trio of sortals, the second of dummy sortals. Sortals encapsulate individuative criteria that make possible the counting of the items to which the sortals apply.  Thus it makes sense to ask how many cats are on my desk.  The answer at the moment is two.  But it makes no sense to ask how many CCBs are on my desk at the moment. For to answer the question I would have to  be able to count the CCBs, and that is something I cannot do because of the semantic indeterminacy of 'CCB.'  When one counts cats one does not count the proper parts of cats for the simple reason that the proper parts of cats are not cats. (Pre-born babies inside a mother are not proper parts of the mother.)  In fact, it occurs to me now that a necessary condition of a term's being a sortal is that it be such that, if it applies to a thing, then it does not apply to the proper parts of the thing.  When I set out to count CCBs, however, I get no guidance from the term: I don't know whether to count the proper parts of the cat as CCBs or not.  It is not that I or we contingently lack the ability to count them, but that the semantic indeterminateness of 'CCB' makes it impossible to count them.  Things get even hairier -- you will forgive the pun -- when we ask about undetached arbitrary parts (e.g., Manny minus his tail) and mereological sums (e.g., Manny + the cigar in the ashtray).

All of this was discussed in greater detail in earlier posts. For now the point is simply that the question 'How many CCBs are there?' cannot be answered due to the semantic indeterminateness of 'CCB.'  And since it cannot be answered for this semantic reason, the question is senseless, a pseudo-question.

So far, so good.  But then on p. 56  of Maitzen's paper we find the following sudden but crucial move: "These considerations, I believe, also show that the question ‘Why is there anything?' (i.e., ‘Why is there any thing?’) confuses grammatical and logical function and hence necessarily lacks an answer . . . . "  The main weakness of Maitzen's paper, as I see it, is that he doesn't adequately explain the inferential connection between the counting question and the explanation question, between the 'How many?' question and the 'Why any?' question.  I cheerfully concede that it is senseless to ask how many CCBs there are if all we have to go on is 'CCB' as it is commonly understood.  (Of course there is a difference between 'thing,' say, and 'concrete contingent being.'  The first is a bit of ordinary English while the second is a term of art (terminus technicus).  But this difference does not make a difference for present purposes.)  But why should the fact that 'CCB' is a dummy sortal also make the 'Why any?' question senseless?  For that is precisely what Maitzen is claiming.  'Why is there anything?' is senseless because "the question's reliance on the dummy sortal 'thing' leaves it indeterminate what's being asked." (p. 56)

But wait a minute.  What is being asked about CCBs in the second question is not how many, but why they exist at all.  Why should the fact that we cannot assign a precise number to them render the second question senseless?  I know that there are at least two CCBs.  Here is one cat, here is another (he said Mooreanly).  Each is a concrete contingent being.  So there are at least two.  If there are at least two, then there are some. If there are some, then 'CCBs exist' is true.  Since it is true, it is meaningful. (Not every meaningful proposition is true, but every true proposition is meaningful.) 

To put it another way, 'CCBs exist' is a (closed) sentence.  It expresses a complete thought, a proposition.  It is not an open sentence like 'Xs exist.'  The latter is no more a sentence than a dummy sortal is a sortal.  Unlike 'CCBs exist,' it cannot be evaluated as either true or false.  So, while 'CCB' lacks the semantic determinacy of a sortal, it is not wholly semantically indeterminate like the variable 'X.'  It makes a semantic contribution to the sentence 'CCBs exist.'

Now if it is meaningful to assert that CCBs exist, despite their number being indeterminate, then it is also meaningful to ask why CCBs exist, despite their number being indeterminate.  Now it is meaningful to assert that CCBs exist.  Therefore, it is meaningful to ask why they exist, despite their number being indeterminate.

Although the uncountability of CCBs is a good reason to think that 'How many CCBs are there?' is senseless, it is not a good reason to think that 'Why are there any CCBs?' is also senseless.

My point is that it is a non sequitur for Maitzen to move from

a. 'How many CCBs are there?' is  a senseless question

to

b. 'Why are there any CCBs?' is a senseless question.

(a) is true.  But one can hold (a) consistently with holding the negation of (b).

How might Maitzen respond?

3. 'Concrete Contingent Being' as a Mere Covering Term

For Maitzen, 'CCB' is "only a covering term for pens, plums, penguins . . . ." (p. 57)  and other instances of sorts.  It doesn't refer to anything distinct from pens, plums, penguins, cats, human births, explosions, and so on. In other words, 'CCB' does not pick out a special sort -- an uber-sort, if you will -- the instances of which are distinct from the instances of genuine sorts.  And so 'CCB' does not pick out a sort whose instances elude natural-scientific explanation and therefore EITHER require some special explanation by God or some other entity transcendent of the physical universe OR are such that their existence is a brute fact.  As Maitzen puts it, "there aren't any contingent things whose explanations outstrip the explanations available for the individuals covered by the covering term 'contingent things.'" (p. 58)  The 'Why any?' question "has no content until we replace referentially indeterminate words with genuine sortals." (p. 59) 

If Maitzen is telling us that CCBs are not a sort of thing distinct  from ordinary sorts, then he is right, and I agree.      Suppose we we have a complete list of all the sorts of thing in the universe: pens, plums, pussycats, penguins, and so on.  It would be absurd if someone were to object: "But you forgot to list the concrete contingent beings!"  That would be absurd since each pen, plum etc. is a CCB, and there is no CCB that is not either a pen or a plum or, etc. But it doesn't follow that a sentence in which 'CCB' occurs is without content. 

It is simply false to say that the 'Why any?' question "has no content until we replace referentially indeterminate words with genuine sortals." (p. 59)   Right here is where Maitzen makes the mistake that invalidates the move from (a) to (b).  He conflates the partial semantic indeterminacy of dummy sortals with the total semantic indeterminacy of variables. Compare:

• Why are there any penguins?
• Why are there any concrete contingent beings?
• Why are there any Xs?

 The first two questions are genuine, despte the fact we can count only penguins.  The third question is pseudo since it has no definite sense.

Note finally that we cannot replace the second question with a long disjunctive question like 'Why are there either penguins or plums or pussycats or pens, or . . . ?'  For suppose you had a complete naturalistic answer to the latter question.  You could still meaningfully ask why there are any CCBs at all as opposed to none at all, and why these rather than some other possible set.

There is more to say, but tomorrow's another day, and brevity is the soul of blog.

Could the Universe Cause Itself to Exist?

I recently considered and rejected the suggestion that a universe with a metrically infinite past has the resources to explain its own existence.  But what if, as the cosmologists tell us, the universe is only finitely old? Could a variant of the first argument be nonetheless mounted?  Surprisingly, yes.  Unsurprisingly, it fails.

The following also fleshes out a version of what I called Cosmologism and listed recently as one possible type of response to the Leibniz question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Written in the summer of 1999. Submitted to The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 25 January 2000. The acceptance letter is dated 14 February 2000. Published in Philosophy 75 (2000), pp. 604-612. Copyright held by The Royal Society of Philosophy,  London.  Philosophy pagination is provided  in brackets, e.g., [P 604]. Endnote numbers are also given in brackets, e.g., [1].

ABSTRACT: This article responds to Quentin Smith's, "The Reason the Universe Exists is that it Caused Itself to Exist," Philosophy 74 (1999), 579-586. My rejoinder makes three main points. The first is that Smith's argument for a finitely old, but causally self-explanatory, universe fails from probative overkill: if sound, it also shows that all manner of paltry event-sequences are causally self-explanatory. The second point is that the refutation of Smith's  argument extends to Hume's argument for an infinitely old causally self-explanatory universe, as well as to Smith's two 'causal loop'  arguments. The problem with all four arguments is their reliance on Hume's principle that to explain the members of a collection is ipso facto to explain the collection. This principle succumbs to counterexamples. The third point is that, even if Hume's principle were true, Smith's argument could not succeed without the aid of a theory of causation according to which causation is production (causation of existence).

The 'How Many?' and the 'Why Any?' Questions and Their Connection

This post continues the ruminations begun here which were inspired by Stephen Maitzen's intriguing paper Stop Asking Why There's Anything (Erkenntnis 77:1 (2012), 51-63).

Let 'CCB' abbreviate 'concrete contingent being.'  For present purposes, the 'How many?' question is this: How many CCBs are there?  And for present purposes the 'Why any?' question is this: Why are there any CCBs?  There might have been none, but there are some, so why are there some?  (I take that to be equivalent to asking why there are any.)

What I want to get clear about is the connection between these two questions.  In particular,  I want to see if the senselessness of the first, if it is senseless, entails the senselessness of the second.

I think it is clear that 'CCB,' like 'thing,' 'entity,' 'existent,' object,' etc. is not a sortal expression.  There are different ways of explaining what a sortal is, but for present purposes a sortal

• supplies a criterion for counting the items to which the term applies
• provides a criterion of identity and non-identity among the items to which the term applies
• gives a criterion for the continued existence of the items to which the term applies.

'Pen' and 'penguin' are examples of sortals.  I can count the pens and penguins on my desk.  There are five pens and zero penguins. (It's a tad warm for penguins here in the Sonoran desert.)  The penguins in Antartica are countable as well, in principle if not in practice.  (This use of 'countable' is not to be confused with its use in set theory.  A countable (uncountable) set is an infinite set the members of which can be (cannot be) placed in one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers.)

'CCB' is not a sortal because it does not provide a criterion for counting the items to which it applies, say, the things on my desk.  Is a pen together with its cap one CCB  or two?  And what about the particular blackness of the cap?  Presumably it too is a CCB. Are we now up to three CCBs?  And so on.

Maitzen concludes that the 'How many?' question is a pseudo-question because ill-formed, and its is ill-formed because   it features a dummy sortal, a term that functions grammatically like a sortal, but is not a sortal.  As senseless, the question is to be rejected, not answered.

From this result Maitzen straightaway (without any intermediate steps) infers that the 'Why any?'' question is also senseless and for the same reason, namely, that it harbors a dummy sortal.  It is not clear, however, why the fact that the second question features the dummy sortal 'CCB' should render the second question senseless.  We need an argument to forge a link between the two questions.  Perhaps the following will do the trick.

1. If it makes sense to claim that penguins exist, then it makes sense to claim that there is in reality some definite number of penguins.  (It cannot  be true both that there are penguins and that there is no definite number of penguins.) Therefore:
2. If it makes sense to claim that CCBs exist, then it makes sense to claim that there is in reality some definite number of CCBs.  But:
3. It makes no sense to claim that there is in reality some definite number of CCBs. Therefore:
4. It makes no sense to claim that CCBs exist. (2, 3, Modus Tollens)
5. If it makes no sense to claim that CCBs exist, then it makes no sense to ask why CCBs exist.  Therefore:
6. It makes no sense to ask why CCBs exist. (4, 5 Modus Ponens)

I suspect that some such argument as the foregoing is running behind the scenes of Maitzen's text.  The crucial premise is (3).  But has Maitzen established (3)?  I agree that WE cannot count CCBs.  We cannot count them because 'CCB' is not a sortal.  And so FOR US the number of CCBs must remain indeterminate.  But from a God's Eye point of view -- which does not presuppose the actual existence of God --  there could easily be a definite number (finite or transfinite) that is the number of CCBs.

On can conceive of an ideally rational spectator (IRS) who knows the true ontology and so knows what all the categories of entity are and knows the members of each category.  What is to stop the IRS from computing the number of CCBs?  We can't do the computation because we are at sea when it comes to the true ontology.  All we have are a bunch of competing theories, and the English language is no help: 'CCB' does not supply us with a criterion for counting.

In short, we must distinguish the question whether the number of CCBs is indeterminate in reality or only indeterminate for us.  If the latter, then we cannot move from the senselessness of the 'How many?' question to the senselessness of the 'Why any?' question.  If the former, the move is valid, but as far as I can see, Maitzen has not given any reason to think that the former is the case.

 

Must We Stop Asking Why There's Anything?

1. A Pseudo-Question:  How Many Things are There?

A while back, in response to a reader's question, I argued that one cannot count things as things.  I can count the cats in my house, the tiles on my roof, and 'in principle' the subterranean termites within two feet of my foundation.  What I cannot do is count things (entities, beings, existents, items, objects, etc.) as things. The reason, briefly, is that 'thing,' unlike 'cat,' is not a sortal.  It is a dummy sortal.  It is a term that functions grammatically like a sortal, and can serve as a placeholder for a sortal, but is logically unlike a sortal in that it supplies no criteria of identification and re-identification for the things to which it applies.  I can count the cats in my house because I know what it is to be a cat; I know what 'counts' as a cat and what does not 'count' as a cat: the lifespan of a cat is not a cat; the location of a cat is not a cat; the posture of a cat is not a cat; the parts of a cat are not cats; the properties and relations of a cat are not cats, etc.

But I can't count the things in my house because I don't know what all counts as a thing, and what all doesn't.  Are only middle-sized specimens of dry goods things?  Or are persons also things?  Are my cats things?  Is their blackness a thing? Everything black is colored.  So do I count the cat as one thing, its blackness as a second thing, the being colored of the cat as a third thing?  If I have a cat on my lap, do I have at least three things on my lap, or only one, or perhaps a countable or (heaven forbid) an uncountable infinity of things on my lap?  And what about the parts of the cat, and the parts of the parts, and how far do we go with that?  To the molecular level. the atomic level. the quark level?

I trust the point is clear: one cannot count things (entities, etc.) as things.  It seems to follow that the question 'How many things are there?' is a pseudo-question.  It is a pseudo-question because it is unanswerable in principle.  'Many' and 'more than one' are not answers.  A Parmenidean monist might insist that there is exactly one thing, and a nihilist that there are none.

2. Why is There Anything at All?  A Pseudo-Question?

But now a vexing question arises:  does the fact that 'thing' is a dummy sortal, hence not a sortal, constitute a reason for holding that the question 'Why is there anything (any thing) at all?' is also a pseudo-question?  Stephen Maitzen answers in the affirmative in his paper, Stop Asking Why There's Anything. (Thanks to Vlastimil Vohanka for alerting me to the article.)

Maitzen seems to be reasoning along the following lines.  We can sensibly ask why there are apples, trees, plants, living things, and sensibly expect a natural-scientific answer.  But we cannot sensibly ask why there are things (existents, beings, etc.).  The same goes for the restricted question why there are any contingent beings.  This is because 'contingent being' is just as much a dummy sortal as 'being.'   Dummy sortals are referentially indeterminate unless replaced by a genuine sortal such as 'penguin.' 

Maitzen's point could be put as follows.  There are various sorts of thing, and of each sort we can sensibly ask: why are there things of this sort?  But we cannot sensibly ask: why are there things at all, or contingent things at all?  Things that are are not a sort of thing. And the same goes for things that are contingently.

So perhaps the point is simply this.  'Why is there anything at all?' is a pseudo-question because (a)  things that are are not a sort of thing, and (b) we can sensibly ask the 'why' question only about sorts of things.

3. Tentative Evaluation

Well, I think it is perfectly clear that things that are are not a sort of thing.  Aristotle said essentially that long ago when he said that being is not a genus (Metaph. 998b22, Anal Prior. 92b10).  We could put the point in formal mode by saying that 'being,' ens, das Seiende, are not sortal expressions.  (I am thinking of Heidegger's question, Warum ist das Seiende und nicht vielmehr nichts? )  But who ever said they were?

Maitzen's explanation of why people fall for the pseudo-question 'Why is there anything at all?' is because they confuse dummy sortals with genuine sortals.  But it seems to me that we can avoid the confusion and still sensibly ask the question.

Consider the question, 'Does anything exist?'  The question makes sense and has an obvious answer: 'Yes, things exist.'  Both the question and the answer make sense despite the presence in them of the dummy sortal 'thing.'  So why shouldn't it also make sense to ask why things exist?

Maitzen mistakenly assimilates the question 'Why does anything exist?' to the obviously senseless question 'How many things exist?'  This is the central weakness of his paper.  He never adequately explains the connection between the 'how many?' question and the 'why?' question.  The former is senseless and precisely for the reason that 'thing' is not a sortal.  But from the fact that 'thing' is not a sortal, how is it supposed to follow that the 'Why?' question is also senseless? 

Siger of Brabant on Why Something Rather Than Nothing

London Ed offers this quick, over-breakfast but accurate as far as I can tell translation from the Latin (available at Ed's site):

For not every being has a cause of its being, nor does every question about being have a cause. For if it is asked why there is something in the natural world rather than nothing, speaking about the world of created things, it can be replied that there is a First immoveable Mover, and a first unchangeable cause. But if it is asked about the whole universe of beings why there is something there rather than nothing, it is not possible to give a cause, for it's the same to ask this as to ask why there is a God or not, and this does not have a cause. Hence not every question has a cause, nor even every being.

Ed comments, "I'm not sure how Siger's reply falls into the categories given by Bill."  Note first that the question that interests me is in the second of Siger's questions, the 'wide-open' question: not the question why there are created things, but the question why there is anything at all.   To that wide-open question Siger's response falls under Rejectionism in my typology of possible responses.  Siger rejects the question as unanswerable when he says, idiosyncratically to our ears, "it is not possible to give a cause," and "not every question has a cause."  That could be read as saying that not every interrogative form of words expresses a genuine question.

Ed also mentions Wittgenstein and suggests that he "had a go" at the Leibniz question.  I don't think so.  We must distinguish between 'Why is there anything at all?' as an explanation-seeking why-question and the same grammatically interrogative formulation as a mere expression of wonderment equivalent to 'Wittgenstein's "How extraordinary that anything should exist!"  Wittgenstein was not raising or trying to answer the former.  He was merely expressing wonder at the sheer existence of things.

I would be very surprised if someone can find in the history or philosophy, or out of his own head, a response to the wide-open explanation-seeking Leibniz question that cannot be booked under one of my rubrics.  (Credit where credit is due: my catalog post is highly derivative from the work of N. Rescher.)

A Catalog of Possible Types of Response to 'Why Is There Anything At All?'

By my count there are seven possible types of response to the above question, which I will call the Leibniz question.  I will give them the following names: Rejectionism, Mysterianism, Brutalism, Theologism, Necessitarianism,  Nomologism/Axiologism, and Cosmologism.  As far as I can see, my typology, or rather my emendation of Rescher's typology,  is exhaustive.  All possible solutions must fall under one of these heads.  You may send me an e-mail if you think that there is an eighth type of solution.

Either the Leibniz question is illegitimate, a pseudo-question, or it is a genuine question.  If the   former, then it cannot be answered and ought to be rejected.  Following Rescher, we can call this first response  

Rejectionism.  The rejectionist rejects the question as ill-formed, as senseless.  Compare the question, 'How fast does time flow?'  The latter is pretty obviously a pseudo-question resting as it does on a false presupposition, namely, that time is a  measurable process within time.  Whatever time is, it is not a process in time. If it flows, it doesn't flow like a river at some measurable rate.  One does not answer a pseudo-question; one rejects it.  Same with such complex questions as 'When did you stop smoking dope?' The Leibniz question in its contrastive formulation -- Why is there something rather than nothing? -- may well be a pseudo-question. I gave an argument for this earlier.

If the the Leibniz question is legitimate, however, then it is either unanswerable or answerable.  If unanswerable, then the question points to a mystery.  We can call this response

Mysterianism.  On this approach the  question is held to be genuine, not pseudo as on the rejectionist approach, but unanswerable.  The question has a clear sense and does not rest on any false presupposition.  But no satisfying answer is available.

If the question is answerable, then there are five more possible responses.

Brutalism or Brute Fact Approach.  On this approach there is no explanation as to why anything at all exists.  It is a factum brutum.  As Russell said in his famous BBC debate with the Jesuit Copleston, "The universe is just there, and that is all." (Caveat lector: Quoted from memory!)  A brute fact may be defined as an obtaining state of affairs that obtains without cause and without reason.  If the Principle of Sufficient Reason holds, then of course there are no brute facts.  The principle in question, however, is contested.

Theologism or Theological Approach.  There is a metaphysically necessary and thus self-explanatory  being, God, whose existence and  activity explains the existence of everything other than God.  Why is there anything at all?  Because everything is either self-explanatory (causa sui) or caused to exist by that which is self-explanatory.

Necessitarianism.  On this approach, the metaphysical necessity that traditional theology ascribes to God is ascribed to the totality of existents: it exists as a matter of metaphysical necessity.  It is necessary that there be some totality of existents or other, and (what's worse) that there be precisely this totality and no other. There is no real contingency. Contingency is merely epistemic.  Why is there anything at all?  Because it couldn't have been otherwise!

Nomologism/Axiologism. Theories of this type have been proposed by A. C. Ewing (Value and Reality, 1973), John Leslie (Universes, 1989), and Nicholas Rescher, The Riddle of Existence, 1984).  I will provide a rough sketch of Rescher's approach. 

For Rescher, there is a self-subsistent realm of real possibilities or "proto-laws" whose mode of being is independent of the existence of substances.  This realm of real possibilities is  not nothing, but it is not a realm of existents.  Rescher's claim is that the proto-laws account for the existence of things "without being themselves embodied in some existing thing or things." (27)  Some facts, e.g., that there are things (substances) at all, is "Grounded in the nature of possibility." (27)  What is the nature of this grounding? R. speaks of "nomological causality" as opposed to "efficient causality." (21)  Somehow -- and I confess to finding this all rather murky -- the proto-laws nomologically cause the existence of physical substances.  How does this explain why there is something rather than nothing?

R. argues, p. 31: (a) If every R-possible world is F, then the actual world is F. (b) Every R-possible world is nonempty. Therefore, (c) The actual world is nonempty: there is something rather than nothing (31).  That is, only nonempty worlds are really possible. As R. remarks, the reasoning here is like the ontological argument: only an actual God is really possible.  Rescher's view seems to be that, while there is a plurality of possible worlds, there is no possible world empty of physical existents.  But how does Rescher support premise (b): Every R-possible world is nonempty?  He gives a ridiculous question-begging argument (p. 32) that I won't bother to reproduce.

Cosmologism.  The above six approaches are listed by N. Rescher (The Riddle of Existence, 1984, Ch. 1).  But I believe there is a seventh approach which I learned from my old friend Quentin Smith. (A later post will deal with this in detail.)    On this approach the Leibniz question is genuine (contra Rejectionism) and has an answer (contra Mysterianism).  Moreover, the answer has the form of an explanation (contra Brutalism).  But the answer do not involve any necessary substance such as God, nor does it take the line that the universe itself exists of necessity.  Nor does the answer ascribe any causal efficacy to abstract laws or values.  The idea is that the universe has the resources to explain its own existence:  it caused itself to exist.  Roughly, everything (space-time, matter, laws) came into existence 13.7 billion years ago; it was caused to come into existence; but it was not caused to come into existence by anything distinct from the universe.  How?  Well, assume that the universe is just the sum total of its states.   Assume further that if each state has an explanation, then this suffices as an explanation of the sum total of states.  Now each state has a causal explanation in terms of an earlier state.  There is no first state despite the fact that the universe is metrically finite in age: 13.7 billion years old.   There is no first state because of the continuity of time and causation: for every state there are earlier states in its causal ancestry.  Because every state has a cause, and the universe is just the sum-total of its states, the universe has  a cause.  But this cause is immanent to the universe.  So the universe caused itself to exist!

The Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question and Contrastive Explanations

I argued yesterday that the following questions are distinct:

   Q1. Why does anything at all exist, rather than nothing?
  
   Q2. Why does anything at all exist?

Today I explore a little further  the difference between non-contrastive and contrastive explanations. Consider the difference between:

   1. Why is Mary walking rather than swimming?

   2. Why is Mary walking?

An answer to (2) might be: She exercises daily and her preferred form of exercise is walking. But this answer is no answer to (1). For here it is not the phenomenon of her walking that needs explaining, but the contrastive phenomenon of her walking instead of swimming. An answer to (1) might run: Mary is walking rather than swimming because she had an operation on her arm and she doesn't want to get the bandage wet.

So answering (2) does not answer (1). But it is also true that answering (1) does not answer (2). For if she is walking rather than swimming so as not to get her bandage wet, this does not explain why she is walking in the first place. It leaves open whether she walks to exercise, or to meet her neighbors, or for some other reason.

I conclude that (1) and (2) are distinct. They are distinct because their answers need not be the same.

Now let us consider the presuppositions of (1). It is obvious -- isn't it? -- that only what is the case can be explained. That there are leprechauns cavorting in my yard cannot be explained since it is not the case. I will allow you to say that there is a possible world in which leprechauns cavort in my yard; but since that world is merely possible, nothing in it needs to be explained. So (1) presupposes that Mary is walking. (1) also presupposes that Mary is not swimming. No one can both walk and swim at the same time; so a person who is  walking is not swimming.

A third presupposition of (1) is that it is possible that Mary be swimming. If I aim to explain why she is walking rather than swimming, then I presuppose that she is not swimming. But her not swimming is consistent with the possibility of her swimming. Her not swimming is also consistent with the impossibility of her swimming. Nevertheless, if I ask why walking rather than swimming, I presuppose that she might have been swimming. 'Rather than' means 'instead of' (in place of). So if she is walking instead of swimming, and walking is possible because actual, then swimming must also be possible if it is to be something that can be done instead of walking. It might help to consider

   3. Why is Mary walking rather than levitating?

   or

   4. Why is Mary walking rather than levitating and not levitating at
   the same time?

These two questions have presuppositions that are false. (3) presupposes that it is possible that Mary be doing something nomologically impossible, while (4) presupposes that it is possible that Mary being doing something that is narrowly-logically impossible.  Questions (3) and (4) are therefore not to be answered but to be rejected -- by rejecting the false presuppositions upon which they rest.

The same holds for the rather more interesting (Q1) and (Q2). (Q1) presupposes that it is possible that nothing exist. For again it is a contrastive phenomenon that wants explaining: something rather than nothing. Either (Q1)'s presupposition is false, or it is such that, if it were true, then every being would be contingent, in which case there could be no ultimate regress-stopping explanation of why something rather than nothing exists.  That is the point I made yesterday.

So the correct response to (Q1) is either to reject it by rejecting the false presupposition upon which it is based, or to reject it by pointing out that, if said presupposition were true, no ultimate regress-stopping explantion would be possible. (Q2), however, does not presuppose that it is possible that nothing exist. It does not suffer from the internal defect that bedevils (Q1).
 

Two Forms of the Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question

Why does anything at all exist? Someone could utter this interrogative form of words merely to express astonishment that anything should exist at all. But it is more natural to take the question as a request for an explanation: Why, for what reason or cause, does anything at all exist? What explains the sheer existence of things? Suppose we call this the ultimate explanation-seeking why-question.

Before attempting to answer this question, one ought to examine it carefully. One ought to question the question. If we do so, we soon realize that the question why anything at all exists can be formulated in two ways. One formulation is contrastive, the other non-contrastive:

Q1. Why does anything at all exist, rather than nothing?

Q2. Why does anything at all exist?

What this post argues is that Q1 suffers from a defect that makes it unanswerable, but that Q2 does not suffer from this defect. Failure to distinguish Q1 and Q2 may lead one to reject both questions as unanswerable. It appears that Paul Edwards makes this mistake in his entry "Why?" in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Anthony Flood may be repeating it here.

That these are distinct questions becomes apparent when we note that the questions rest on different presuppositions. Both questions presuppose that something exists. If that were not the case, there would be nothing to explain. But Q1 also presupposes that it is possible that nothing at all exist. Call this further presupposition P. P is no part of Q2, as I will explain in a moment.

Let us first think about P and what it entails. P may be expressed in several logically equivalent ways:

There might have been nothing at all
It is possible that nothing exist
Possibly, nothing exists
There is a possible world in which nothing exists

where ‘possible’ and cognates pick out broadly logical possibility.

No matter how P is formulated, it entails that everything that exists is contingent, equivalently, that nothing that exists is a necessary being. For if there might have been nothing at all, then any thing X that exists is such that it might not have existed. That is just to say that X is a contingent being. So given that Q1 presupposes P, and that P entails that there are no necessary beings, it follows that Q1 presupposes that there are no necessary beings. But this seems to imply that the question Q1 cannot be answered.

For if Q1 – or the asking of Q1 – presupposes that no being  is a necessary being, then the asking of Q1 presupposes that there is nothing in terms of which an ultimate explanation could be couched. This is because an ultimate explanation of why anything at all exists cannot be in terms of a contingent entity. A contingent explainer would need explanation just as much as any other entity. An ultimate explanation, if one is to be had, must invoke a noncontingent, but possible, entity: one that either explains itself or at least is not in need of an explanation by another. (I am assuming that there cannot be an actually infinite regress of contingent explainers. This assumption is quite easy to defend, but I won’t address that task here.)

The upshot is that Q1 entails its own unanswerability. This is not because we are unable to know the answer, but because the question itself by its very structure rules out an answer. In other words, Q1 is self-defeating in that it rests on a presupposition that rules out an answer. The proper procedure with respect to Q1, then, is to reject it, not try to answer it.

But the situation is different with Q2. Q2 does not presuppose that every being is contingent. It does not presuppose the opposite (some being is noncontingent) either. Q2 is neutral on the question whether every being is contingent. This is why Q2 is not just a truncated form of Q1. It is not as if ‘rather than nothing’ is implied but not stated in Q2. Q2, resting as it does on different presuppositions than Q1, is a different question. Q2 does not presuppose the possibility of there being nothing at all, hence, does not presuppose that only what is contingent can exist.

Thus Q2 allows the possibility of a necessary being. Nothing about Q2 entails its own unanswerability. Q2 allows the following answer: things exist because one of the things that exist is a necessary being whose existence is self-explanatory, while everything else is explained in terms of this necessary being.

Whether this answer is correct is a further question.  The present point is merely that Q2, unlike Q1, is answerable.

Plantinga Versus Dawkins: Organized Complexity

This is the third in a series on Plantinga's new book.  Here is the first, and here is the second.  These posts are collected under the rubric Science and Religion besides being classified under other heads.  This third post will examine just one argument of Dawkins' and Plantinga's response to it, pp. 26-28. Here is Plantinga in Chapter One of Where the Conflict Really Lies quoting from Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, p. 141.  (The ellipses are Plantinga's; the emphasis is Dawkins'; I have added a sentence from Dawkins that Plantinga did not quote; and I should note that Plantinga gives the wrong page reference.  The passage is on 141, not 140.)

Organized complexity is the thing we are having difficulty in explaining. Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating engine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity. . . .  But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein replicating machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself. .... To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like "God was always there", and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say "DNA was always there", or "Life was always there", and be done with it. (1986, p. 141)

Dawkins seems to me to be arguing as follows.

1. What is needed is an explanation of organized complexity as such.
2. God is an instance of organized complexity.
3. If God is invoked as that whose existence and operation explains organized complexity as such, then the explanation is manifestly circular: the explanandum has been imported into the explanans.
4. Circular explanations are worthless: they explain nothing.
Therefore
5. To posit God as cosmic designer fails as an explanation of organized complexity as such.

The argument on my reconstruction is unexceptionable, but how is it relevant? if the task is to explain organized complexity as such, this cannot be done via an instance of it.  No doubt.  But the argument misses the point.  The point is not to explain organized complexity as such, or even the organized complexity of all actual or possible life, but to explain the organized complexity of terrestrial life.  More precisely, the point is to show that this cannot be done by invoking God in one's explanation.  Obviously the argument as reconstructed does not succeed in showing that.

Note that there is no mention of any facts of biology in the above argument.  Now Plantinga doesn't say the following, but I will: the argument is purely a priori.  It is a proof, from concepts alone and without recourse to empirical facts, that an explanation of organized complexity as such cannot be had if the explanans mentions an instance of organized complexity.  How then, Plantinga asks, does the (empirical) evidence of evolution reveal a world without design? (p. 27)

Now suppose we substitute the following proposition for (1):

1* What is needed is an explanation of the organized complexity of terrestrial life.

But if we plug (1*) into the original argument, and modify (3) accordingly, then (3) is false and the argument is unsound.  If we are not trying to explain organized complexity in general, but only the organized complexity of terrestrial life, then there is nothing fallacious about invoking an explainer that is an instance of organized complexity.

The Dawkins passage suggests another sort of argument, oft-heard:  If there is a supernatural designer, what explains his existence?  If you say that God always existed, then you may as well say that life always existed.

This puerile argument is based on a failure to understand that explanations, of necessity, must come to an end.

Why did that tree in my backyard die?  Because subterranean beetles attacked its roots.  If the explanation is correct, it is correct whether or not I can explain how the subterranean beetles got into the soil, or which other beetles were their parents, and grandparents, etc.  Explanations come to an end, and an explanation of a given phenomenon in terms of its proximate cause can be perfectly adequate even in the absence of explanations of other events in the explanandum's causal ancestry.

It is the puerile atheist who demands to know what caused God.  As Plantinga remarks, "Explanations come to an end; for theism they come to an end in God." (p. 28)  I would add that this is obvious if God is an necessary being: such a being is in no need of explanation.  But it holds also if God is a contingent being.  For again, not everything can be explained.

But if God was "always there" as Dawkins puts it, why not say that life was "always there"?  Because life wasn't always there! 

Ultimately, the theist explains everything in terms of the divine mind.  Since explanations must come to an end, the theist has no explanation of the existence or complexity of the divine mind.  But, as Plantinga remarks, p. 28, the materalist or physicalist is in the same position. He cannot explain everything. He "doesn't have an explanation of the existence of elementary particles or, more generally, contingent physical or material beings . . . ." (28)  I would also ask whether the materialist can explain why there are natural laws at all, why the universe is intelligible in terms of them, and why there are these laws and constants rather than some other possible set. 

There is one point that ought to be conceded to Dawkins, however.  It certainly would be a "lazy way out" to invoke divine intervention in cases where  a naturalistic explanation is at hand. 

So far, then, Plantinga 1, Dawkins 0.

Jonathan Bennett's Argument Against Explanatory Rationalism

The topic of explanatory rationalism has surfaced in a previous thread.  So it's time for a re-run of the following post  (ever so slightly emended) from nearly three years ago.  How time does pass when you're having fun.

 ..................

Explanatory rationalism is the view that there is a satisfactory answer to every why-question. Equivalently, it is the view that there are no brute facts, where a brute fact is a fact that neither has, nor can have, an explanation. Are there some truths that simply must be accepted without explanation? Consider the conjunction of all truths. Could this conjunctive truth have an explanation? Jonathan Bennett thinks not:

 

Let P be the great proposition stating the whole contingent truth about the actual world, down to its finest detail, in respect of all times. Then the question 'Why is it the case that P?' cannot be answered in a satisfying way. Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'; but if Q is only contingently the case then it is a conjunct in P, and the offered explanation doesn't explain; and if Q is necessarily the case then the explanation, if it is cogent, implies that P is necessary also. But if P is necessary then the universe had to be exactly as it is, down to the tiniest detail -- i.e., this is the only possible world. (Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, Hackett 1984, p. 115)

 Bennett's point is that explanatory rationalism entails the collapse of modal distinctions.

The world-proposition P is a conjunction of truths some of which are contingent. So P is contingent. Now if explanatory rationalism is true, then P has an explanation in terms of a Q distinct from P. Q is either necessary or contingent. If Q is necessary, and a proposition is explained by citing a distinct proposition that entails it, and Q explains P, then P is necessary, contrary to what we have already established. On the other hand, if Q is contingent, then Q is a conjunct of P, and again no successful explanation has been arrived at. Therefore, either explanatory rationalism is false, or it is true only on pain of a collapse of modal distinctions.  We take it for granted that said collapse would be a Bad Thing.

That is a cute little argument, one that impresses the illustrious Peter van Inwagen as well who gives his own version of it, but I must report that I do not find it compelling. Why is P true? We can say that P is true because each conjunct of P is true. We are not forced to say that P is true because of a proposition Q which is a conjunct of P.

I am not saying that P is true because P is true; I am saying that P is true because each conjunct of P is true, and that this adequately and noncircularly explains why P is true. Some wholes are adequately and noncircularly explained when their parts are explained.

Suppose three bums are hanging around the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Why is this threesome there? The explanations of why each is there add up (automatically) to an explanation of why the three of them are there. Someone who understands why A is there, why B is there, and why C is there, does not need to understand some further fact in order to understand why the three of them are there. Similarly, it suffices to explain the truth of a conjunction to adduce the truth of its conjuncts. The conjunction is true because each conjunct is true. There is no need for an explanation of why a conjunctive proposition is true which is above and beyond the explanations of why its conjuncts are true.

Suppose the three bums engage in a ménage à trois. To explain the ménage à trois it is not sufficient to explain why each person is present; one must also explain their 'congress': not every trio is a ménage à trois. A conjunction, however, exists automatically iff  its conjuncts exist.

Bennett falsely assumes that "Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'. . ." This ignores my suggestion that P is the case because each of its conjuncts is the case. So P does have an explanation; it is just that the explanation is not in terms of a proposition Q which is a conjunct of P.

I conclude that Professor Bennett has given us an insufficient reason to reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

I apply a similar critique to Peter van Inwagen's version of the argument in my "On An Insufficient Argument Against Sufficient Reason," Ratio, vol. 10, no. 1 (April 1997), pp. 76-81.

The Problem of the Existence of Consciousness

I tend to the view that all philosophical problems can be represented as aporetic polyads.  What's more, I maintain that philosophical problems ought to be so represented.  You haven't begun to philosophize until you have a well-defined puzzle, a putative inconsistency of plausibilities.  When you have an aporetic polyad on the table you have something to think your teeth into.  (An interesting and auspicious typo, that; I shall let it stand.)

Consider the problem of the existence of consciousness.  Nicholas Maxwell  formulates it as follows: "Why does sentience or consciousness exist at all?"  The trouble with this formulation is that it invites the retort:  Why not?  The question smacks of gratuitousness.  Why raise it? To remove the felt gratuitiousness a motive has to be supplied for posing the question. Now a most excellent motive is contradiction-avoidance.  If a set of plausibilities form an inconsistent set, then we have a problem.  For we cannot abide a contradiction.  Philosophers love a paradox, but they hate a contradiction.  So I suggest we put the problem of the existence of consciousness as follows:

1. Consciousness (sentience) exists.
2. Consciousness is contingent: given that it exists it might not have.
3. If x contingently exists, then x has an explanation of its existence in terms of a y distinct from x.
4. Consciousness has no explanation in terms of anything distinct from it.

A tetrad of plausibilities.  Each limb makes a strong claim on our acceptance.  Unfortunately, this foursome is logically inconsistent: the conjunction of any three limbs entails the negation of the remaining one. Thus the conjunction of (1) and (2) and (3) entails the negation of (4).  So the limbs cannot all be true.  But they are all very plausible.  Therein lies the problem.  Which one ought we reject to remove the contradiction?

Note the superiority of my aporetic formulation to Maxwell's formulation.  On my formulation we have a very clear problem that cries out for a solution.  But if I merely ask, 'Why does consciousness exist?' there is no clear problem.  You could retort, 'Why shouldn't it exist?' 'What's the problem?'  There is a problem because the existence of conbsciousness conflicts with other things we take for granted.

(1) is absolutely datanic and so undeniable.  If some crazy eliminativist were to deny (1) I would show him the door and give him the boot.  (Life is too short for discussions with lunatics.)

(4) is exceedingly plausible. To explain consciousness in terms of itself would be circular, hence no explanation.  So it has to be explained, if it can be explained, in terms of something distinct from it.  Since abstract objects cannot be invoked to explain concrete consciousness, consciousness, if it can be explained, must be explained in physical and physiological and chemical and biological terms. But this is also impossible as Maxwell makes clear using a version of the 'knowledge argument' made popular by T. Nagel and F. Jackson:

But physics, and that part of natural science in principle re-ducible to physics, cannot conceivably predict and explain fully the mental, or experiential, aspect of brain processes. Being blind from birth—or being deprived of ever having oneself experienced visual sensations—cannot in itself prevent one from understanding any part of physics. It cannot prevent one from understanding the physics of colour, light, physiology of colour perception and discrimination, just as well as any nor-mally sighted person. In order to understand physical concepts, such as mass, force, wavelength, energy, spin, charge, it is not necessary to have had the experience of any particular kind of sensation, such as the visual sensation of colour. All predictions of physics must also have this feature. In order to understand what it is for a poppy to be red, however, it is necessary to have experienced a special kind of sensation at some time in one’s life, namely the visual sensation of redness. A person blind from birth, who has never experienced any visual sensation, cannot know what redness is, where redness is the perceptual property, what we (normally sighted) see and experience, and not some physical correlate of this, light of such and wave-lengths, or the molecular structure of the surface of an object which causes it to absorb and reflect light of such and such wavelengths. It follows that no set of physical statements, however comprehensive, can predict that a poppy is red, or that a person has the visual experience of redness. Associated with neurological processes going on in our brains, there are mental or experiential features which lie irredeemably beyond the scope of physical description and explanation.

(2) is also exceedingly plausible: how could consciousness (sentience)  exist necessarily?  But (3), whichis a versionof the principle of sufficient reason, is also very plausible despite the glib asseverations of those who think quantum mechanics provides counterexamples to it. 

So what will it be?  Which of the four limbs will you reject? 

I am tempted to say that the problem is genuine but insoluble, that the problem is an aporia in the strongest sense of the term: a conceptual impasse, an intellectual knot that our paltry minds cannot untie.

But this invites the metaphilosophical response that all genuine problems are soluble.  Thus arises a metaphilosophical puzzle that can be set forth as an aporetic triad:

5. Only soluble problems are genuine.
6. The problem of the existence of consciousness is not soluble.
7.  The problem of the existence of consciousness is genuine.

This too is an inconsistent set.  But each limb is plausible.  Which will you reject? 

Could a Concrete Individual be a Truthmaker?

Could a concrete individual such as the man Peter function as a truthmaker?  Peter Lupu and I both find this idea highly counterintuitive.  And yet many contemporary writers on truth and truthmaking have no problem with it.  They have no problem with the notion that essential predications about x are made true by x itself, for any x.  Assume that the primary truthbearers are Fregean propositions and consider the Fregean proposition *Peter is human.*  (Asterisks around a declarative sentence form a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.)  Being human is an essential property of Peter: it is a property he has in every possible world in which he exists.  It follows that there is no world in which Peter exists and *Peter is human* is not true.  Hence Peter himself logically suffices for the truth of *Peter is human.*  Similarly for every essential  predication involving our man.  Why then balk at the notion that a concrete individual can serve as a truthmaker?

Here is an argument in support of balking:

1. Every asymmetric relation is irreflexive.  (Provable within first-order predicate logic.  Exercise for the reader: prove it!)

2. Truthmaking is an asymmetric relation.  If  T makes true *p*, then  *p* does not make true T.

3. Truthmaking is irreflexive. (From 1, 2)

4. Whatever makes true a proposition admitting of existential generalization also makes true the proposition which is its existential  generalization.  For example, if Peter makes true *Peter is human,* then Peter makes true the existential generalization *There are humans.* And if *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition,* then *Peter is human* makes true *There are propositions.*  (It is a universally accepted axiom of truthmaking that one and the same truthmaker can make true more than one truthbearer. Truthmaking is not a one-to-one relation.)

5.  If a concrete individual, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, can make a true an essential predication about it, then an entity of any ontological category can, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, make true an essential predication about it.  And conversely.  For example, if Peter makes true *Peter is human,* then *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition* and also **Peter is human* is an abstract object,* etc.  And conversely: if *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition,* then Peter makes true *Peter is human.*

6. *There are propositions* is essentially a proposition.

7. A concrete individual, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, can make true an essential predication about it.

8. *There are propositions* is made true by *Peter is human* and indeed by any proposition, including *There are propositions.*   (From 4, 5, 6, 7.  To spell it out:  Peter makes true *Peter is human* by 7; *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition* by 5 and 6.  *There are propositions* is the existential generalization of **Peter is human* is a proposition.* *Peter is human* makes true *There are propositions* by 4.  *Peter is human,*, however, can be replaced by any proposition in this reasoning.  Therefore, *There are propositions* is made true by any proposition including  *There are propositions.*

9. *There are propositions* has itself as one of its truthmakers. (From 8)

10. It is not the case that truthmaking is irreflexive.  (From 9.  Note that when we say of a relation that it has a property such as symmetry or irreflexivity, we mean that that has this property essentially.)

11. (10) contradicts (3).

12. One of the premises is false. (From 11)

13. The only premises that are even remotely controvertible are (2) and (7). 

14. (2), which affirms the asymmetry of truthmaking, cannot be reasonably denied.  Why not?  Well, the whole point of truthmaking is to provide a metohysical, not empirical, explanation of the truth of truthbearers.  Explanation, however, is asymmetric by its very nature: if x explains y, then y does not explain x. 

15. (7) is false: it it not the case that a concrete individual, by itself, can serve as a truthmaker. 

Credit where credit is due:  The above is my attempt to put into a rigorous form some remarks of Marian David which point up the tension between the asymmetry of truthmaking and the notion that concrete individuals, by themselves, can serve as the truthmakers for essential predications about them.  See his essay "Truth-making and Correspondence" in Truth and Truth-Making, eds. Lowe and Rami. McGill 2009, 137-157, esp. 152-154.

Deus Ex Machina: Leibniz Contra Malebranche

I have been searching the 'Net and various databases such as JSTOR without success for a good article on deus ex machina objections in philosophy.  What exactly is a deus ex machina (DEM)?  When one taxes a theory or an explanatory posit with DEM, what exactly is one alleging?  How does a DEM differ from a legitimate philosophical explanation that invokes divine or some other nonnaturalistic agency?  Since it is presumably the case that not every recourse to divine agency in philosophical theories is a DEM, what exactly distinguishes legitimate recourse to divine agency from DEM? Does anyone have any references for me?  Herewith, some preliminary exploratory notes on deus ex machina.

Jonathan Bennett's Argument Against Explanatory Rationalism

Explanatory rationalism is the view that there is a satisfactory answer to every why-question. Equivalently, it is the view that there are no brute facts, where a brute fact is a fact that neither has, nor can have, an explanation.  Are there some truths which simply must be accepted without explanation? Consider the conjunction of all truths.  Could this conjunctive truth have an explanation?  Jonathan Bennett thinks not:

Let P be the great proposition stating the whole contingent truth about the actual world, down to its finest detail, in respect of all times. Then the question 'Why is it the case that P?' cannot be answered in a satisfying way. Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'; but if Q is only contingently the case then it is a conjunct in P, and the offered explanation doesn't explain; and if Q is necessarily the case then the explanation, if it is cogent, implies that P is necessary also. But if P is necessary then the universe had to be exactly as it is, down to the tiniest detail -- i.e., this is the only possible world. (Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, Hackett 1984, p. 115)

Bennett's point is that explanatory rationalism entails the collapse of modal distinctions.

The world-proposition P is a conjunction of truths some of which are contingent. So P is contingent. Now if explanatory rationalism is true, then P has an explanation in terms of a Q distinct from P. Q is either necessary or contingent. If Q is necessary, and a proposition is explained by citing a distinct proposition that entails it, and Q explains P, then P is necessary, contrary to what we have already established. On the other hand, if Q is contingent, then Q is a conjunct of P, and again no successful explanation has been arrived at. Therefore, either explanatory rationalism is false, or it is true only on pain of a collapse of modal distinctions.

That is a cute little argument, one that impresses van Inwagen as well who gives his own version of it, but I must report that I do not find it compelling. Why is P true? We can say that P is true because each conjunct of P is true. We are not forced to say that P is true because of a proposition Q which is a conjunct of P.

I am not saying that P is true because P is true; I am saying that P is true because each conjunct of P is true, and that this adequately and noncircularly explains why P is true. Some wholes are adequately and noncircularly explained when their parts are explained. Suppose three bums are hanging around the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Why is this theesome there? The explanations of why each is there add up (automatically) to an explanation of why the three of them are there. Someone who understands why A is there, why B is there, and why C is there, does not need to understand some further fact in order to understand why the three of them are there. Similarly, it suffices to explain the truth of a conjunction to adduce the truth of its conjuncts. The conjunction is true because each conjunct is true. There is no need for an explanation of why a conjunctive proposition is true which is above and beyond the explanations of why its conjuncts are true.

Suppose the three bums engage in a ménage à trois. To explain the ménage à trois it is not sufficient to explain why each person is present; one must also explain their 'congress': not every trio is a ménage à trois. A conjunction, however, exists automatically if its conjuncts exist.

Bennett falsely assumes that "Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'. . ." This ignores my suggestion that P is the case because each of its conjuncts is the case. So P does have an explanation; it is just that the explanation is not in terms of a proposition Q which is a conjunct of P.

I conclude that Professor Bennett has given us an insufficient reason to reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

I apply a similar critique to Peter van Inwagen's version of the argument in my "On An Insufficient Argument Against Sufficient Reason," Ratio, vol. 10, no. 1 (April 1997), pp. 76-81.