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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First, it is crucial to see that the non-rationalist must draw the line in a principled, non-arbitrary way. This is because the argument the non-rationalist is attempting to rebut is the explicability argument concerning existence, i. e., an argument for the PSR itself. In this dialectical context — in which the truth or falsity of the PSR is the very point at issue — the non-rationalist is not entitled to rely on the claim that it is legitimate for her to draw an arbitrary, unprincipled line between the explicability argument concerning existence and at least some other explicability arguments. To appeal to an arbitrary line is to appeal to a brute fact — the alleged fact that there is no explanation as to why the line between legitimate and illegitimate explicability arguments is to be drawn here: it just is drawn here. In appealing to a brute fact, the non-rationalist may seem to be remaining true to her position, which of course tolerates brute facts. However, to appeal to a brute fact in this dialectical context is simply to presuppose that the PSR is false, and this is the one thing that a non-rationalist may not do here. Thus we can see that while the explicability argument concerning modality can, perhaps, coherently be avoided by drawing an arbitrary line between explicability arguments, the explicability argument concerning existence — precisely because it is an argument for the PSR itself — cannot be avoided this way.

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