PSR

Della Rocca, Michael

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PSR

Michael Della Rocca

July 2010, Volume 10, No. 07, pp. 1-13

Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0010.007

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Abstract

This paper presents an argument for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the PSR, the principle according to which each thing that exists has an explanation. I begin with several widespread and extremely plausible arguments that I call explicability arguments in which a certain situation is rejected precisely because it would be arbitrary. Building on these plausible cases, I construct a series of explicability arguments that culminates in an explicability argument concerning existence itself. This argument amounts to the claim that the PSR is true. The plausibility of the initial cases in the series provides the basis of an argument for the PSR, an argument that can be rebutted only by drawing a line between the plausible early cases in the series and the apparently unacceptable later cases. I argue that no principled reason for drawing this line has been found and that one cannot draw an unprincipled or arbitrary line without begging the question. The paper concludes that, therefore, this defense of the PSR remains unrebutted and that we have a powerful, new reason to embrace the PSR.

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Even if one recognizes that the explicability argument in the case of modality does not by itself commit one to the PSR, one may nonetheless deny that modality is in need of explanation; one may still be happy to treat modality as primitive. Fair enough, but a natural question arises at this point: given the other cases in which one does accept explicability arguments — e. g., the Parfit case, the Archimedean case, the cases concerning dispositions or causation or consciousness or Aristotelian forms or induction, take your pick — why does one reject the explicability argument in the case of modality, an argument that is structurally the same as the explicability arguments in the other cases? Is there a legitimate reason for not accepting this explicability argument — concerning modality — while one accepts others? Our practice of accepting explicability arguments in some cases puts pressure on us to accept this explicability argument or to find a principled reason for rejecting it. Without providing such a principled difference between the case of modality and the others, I think one should feel bad about rejecting this explicability argument while accepting some others. To insist on such a principled difference is, obviously, not to presuppose the full-blown PSR; rather, it is simply yet another plausible and local appeal to explicability. The apparent illegitimacy of the explicability argument concerning modality despite the legitimacy of other explicability arguments would seem to be inexplicable itself and problematically so. Of course, one can say that this explicability argument — concerning modality — is not acceptable, and the other ones are, and there is no reason why this should be so. On this view, the line between acceptable and unacceptable explicability arguments is itself arbitrary or a brute fact. This response, though perhaps unpalatable, begs no questions at this stage because — as I have been at pains to point out — no one has yet argued for the general claim that there are no brute facts. Thus, at this point, it may not be illegitimate to appeal to a brute fact to halt the slide from accepting some explicability arguments to accepting all such arguments and thus the PSR itself.

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