The Principle of Sufficient Reason

This video outlines an argument for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the principle that for everything that exists, there must be a sufficient reason why it exists.

0:00 - The principle of sufficient reason
2:13 - Explicability arguments
10:12 - From explicability to the PSR
15:19 - Against explicability
22:50 - Drawing a line
29:29 - Intuitions about explicability
33:13 - Unattractive consequences of the PSR
44:34 - An unknown line?

[HerrEinzige]

Clearly the like button exists so that it can be clicked, and the comment section exists so we can remind others to click said like button by leaving a comment.

[StunningCurrency]

there is a sufficient reason why I liked this video even before watching it (I know it's gonna be high quality)

[Kentrosauruses]

Thank you, Dr. B
I liked the Moorean shift argument against the PSR.

[dylansmith]

Was planning to read Schopenhauer’s four fold root for the principle of sufficient reason and I see this video pop up ha good timing

[whatsinaname]

I think Christipher Tomaszewski gives a beautiful and simple solution to the necessitarianism problem: there is no big conjunctive contingent fact, and he gives a perfectly robust mathematical explanation for his position.

[zusm]

"For anything to happen or exist, the conditions must be ripe for the thing to happen or exist" is the way I've typically formulated it. This way it more clearly relates to potential or capacitance

[isidoreaerys]

The way I see it. In a plain of healthy green grass, a Brown crunchy discolored patch must have a reason, a deviation from the base parameter will always have an accompanying reason.
But I don’t think that same expectation is rational to present towards the base conditions. They are the frame of reference itself.
An unconditional state does not demand an explanation.

[СергейМакеев-жн]

Kane, have you read David Bloor? The "plane crash" example reminds me of his "train derailment" analogy for scientific progress.

If the train either derails or it doesn't, which of the two options cries out for explanation? Do we consider a *successful* run of the train to be the "default", and if it derails, then we search for the culprit? Or do we say that machines are *expected to crash and burn* by default, and it's the *success* of the train that requires an explanation for why it worked so well?

And in a similar way, should we assume that the human mind just "has the power" to figure out the truth, and a *mistaken* scientific theory cries out for an explanation (like a cognitive bias, or faulty measurement tool, etc.)? Or do we assume that anything the mind concocts is *by default mistaken, * and it's the successful theories that must be explained by some "special trick" the scientists used?

[francescodefilippo]

Very interesting video. Regarding the experiment with the split brains I agree with Parfit. If you see the experiment backwards, so that both of A and B lend an half of their brain to a new body without any brain you would of course create a new person. A and B can't be the same at the beginning in the sense that no consciousness can be found at the same time in two or more places. Consciousness is not personal identity, it is a point of view, and it is absurd imagining to share one consciousness in two people at the same time. Their brains must be different merely because they occupy different positions therefore neural firings can't be the same neither can their experience. I hope I've been clear, English is not my first language and it's not easy to discuss these topics

[silverharloe]

23:30 would "R is neither necessary nor contingent" be a possible response here for exactly the same reason that the barber both must and must not shave himself?

I guess the answer is, "no, that's not really a comparable scenario, because the barber paradox describes a situation where both horns lead to logical paradoxes, but R explaining C or not merely leads to unappealing consequences, " except that I think that the "R is contingent" horn did, in fact, lead to a logical paradox (which might seem to count as a proof-by-contradiction that R must be necessary, even if that is unappealing).

[minch]

I like these little logical proofs that pop up in analytic philosophy. I was getting convinced by the argument for the principle and then the proof really convincingly demonstrated that all truths being necessary follows from the principle and then I was like 'huh...'

[humeanrgmnt]

S5 suggests a contradiction because if it is possible that something has no reason, this possiibility would necessarily exist across all possible worlds; perhaps PSR is limited to accomodate modal implications.

[orangereplyer]

Leaving a comment for the algorithm. The PSR is weird and interesting

[JackPullen-Paradox]

Doesn't requiring a reason require the assumption of strict determinism? If we look at the subatomic world., then why does electron E spin up may or may not be questioned. But if it is, the whole enterprise falls down.

[MideoKuze]

A note on consciousness, and here I'm specifically referencing P-consciousness: if we suppose that consciousness is epistemically privileged (Chalmers says "intrinsically epistemic"), then we can require no epistemically contingent reason for it, as the necessary cannot be conditioned by the merely possible. Very little besides P-consciousness is said to be beyond doubt in this way, and if we have nothing, metaphysically, to explain it with, then it must be a brute fact. This position then seems to implicitly require skepticism of conscious experience. In other words, immediate appearances can conceivably be _false_.

(Note this is epistemic modality, not the usual sort; a necessary truth can be conceivably false, but we usually say that it is inconceivable that appearance can be false, or rather, a false appearance is a disagreement of appearances with the facts, but it is not even conceivable that appearances could be different from appearances. Hence, appearance is epistemically necessary. There is no evidence that could cause one to doubt that what immediately appears to be is what immediately appears to be.)

[NostraDumass]

Sometimes Hawking Radiation spits a saxophone out of a black hole.

[MoleyMoleo]

If you are a hard determinist, then necessitarianism seems fine. There are no other possibilities under hard determinism, and so all truths would be necesarry.
EDIT: I mis-spoke and went a step to far.
There needn't be other possibilities, so necessitarianism is consistent with hard determinism. i.e. determinism *allows* for necessitarianism.

[GottfriedLeibnizYT]

How does it differ for something to have a reason from having a cause?

[JackPullen-Paradox]

I am particularly interested in the position that if two substances have the same molecular structure, then they must be identical.

I'm considering the case that the first substance may be at its freezing point, and the second at its boiling point. Now, if we consider solubility, then the second would not behave as the first. Hence, one must include many, many other properties and environmental facts to define a substance. We can truncate the definition, but, in fact, we cannot: if we were to try to identify a substance based on its properties, we would have to have cataloged those properties. We could take a spectrum of the substance, but again, we would have to know how, say, the substance at its boiling point behaves.

I'm wondering how the principle of sufficient reason would be used to approach this. In the video, we are told that it would enforce the conclusion that both substances are the same. And in terms of gross molecular structure, they are. But how would one know absolutely? One could analyze the first substance and then heat it to its boiling point. However, to be absolutely certain, one must again analyze it at its boiling point if that is possible. If the gross structure is the same, we can say the two substances are similar. Yet we know they are not identical in type because one is frozen and the other is boiling.

Of course, I am assuming the possibility of error in the science and induction in general. That is why one wants all knowable properties of a thing. For chemical substances, the idea that the molecular structure is defining may be incorrect. To a certainty, it is a shortcut to the definition. To take any substance and verify the notion, one would have to heat or cool the specimen and manipulate it according to procedures cataloged somewhere. So, in fact, such a definition that a substance is simply its chemical structure is a fiction.

[morefuncompute]

I've never once found a reason that any given cloud has the particular shape that it has. ☁️

In any case, thank you for this video. I found this very informative because I had been wondering what exactly PSR meant to philosophers these days. And very insightful critiques.