0

The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason. Let us suppose that this is false. Let us further suppose that one comes across something and cannot find a current existing explanation for it.

Given the falsity of PSR, can one simply leave it at that and just accept that observation as brute fact without looking for an explanation?

  • are there different versions of the PSR? what exactly is false? i personally don't feel i can account for everything i believe will occur. –  Sep 11 '23 at 16:53
  • Are we compelled to look for an explanation even if the PSR (would be better to use the full name in the title) is true? No. Should be "Given the assumed falsity of PSR..." as it is an assumption of the hypothetical scenario. – Dikran Marsupial Sep 11 '23 at 17:12
  • 1
    According to Kant, the inability to prove the PSR shouldn’t affect science in the least. I.e., scientists keep searching no matter what. – Hokon Sep 11 '23 at 17:15
  • You are using a strong variant of PSR: Everything has a reason. Assume it is false, in classical logic, we have that: there is at least one thing with no explanation. This does not imply that any particular c has no explanation. Hence the restriction of most extant versions of PSR, say to contingent things, which suffices (perhaps too powerful often) for everyday science. – emesupap Sep 11 '23 at 17:42
  • 1
    The apparent random nature of quantum events may be the best explanation we have, even though it is a non-explanation, and it is possible that it is correct. Though science is essentially a search for the best explanation, it is open to the possibility that one doesn't exist, PSR or no PSR. – Dikran Marsupial Sep 11 '23 at 17:51
  • 1
    Well no, “PSR or no PSR” wouldn’t be accurate. If PSR is true, then the possibility of no explanation, or atleast no reason, doesn’t exist. –  Sep 11 '23 at 18:08
  • Just accepting observation as brute fact seems to imply that if you see a shadowy figure in the dark, and you turn on the light to only find a coat rack, you'll presumably accept that there was indeed a shadowy figure, which just moves very fast or turns into a coat rack when you turn the light on. Never mind dreams, which you'd all accept as corresponding to reality? What I'm saying is that it doesn't seem like a very good principle. Although it depends what you mean by "brute fact", because that might not refer to external reality, but just to the act of observing, which could be fine. – NotThatGuy Sep 11 '23 at 20:32
  • No. PSR is a metaphysical is, what one should do when they fail to find an explanation is a methodological ought. Oughts do not follow from ises, so PSR is, in any case, irrelevant. The methodological maxim is to not give up on searching for explanations easily, and without having a positive reason for it. In the case of QM, for example, the explanations of collapse were only abandoned (and still, not by everybody) when it was shown by no-go theorems that possible explanations would be unsatisfactory on grounds deemed more important (like avoiding superluminal speeds and causality violations). – Conifold Sep 11 '23 at 22:31
  • ". If PSR is true, then the possibility of no explanation, or atleast no reason, doesn’t exist." @thinkingman you are missing the point. We are not compelled to search for explanations if we don't want to, whether an explanation exists or it doesn't is irrelevant. Of course we can leave it as a "brute fact" we are allowed to be lazy, incurious or radically skeptical (and not see the point). – Dikran Marsupial Sep 12 '23 at 09:08

2 Answers2

1

So, what you seem to be asking is, is the Principle of Sufficient Reason falsifiable. I would say simply, no it isn't.

This is like whether Popper's take on falsifiability, is itself falsifiable, which of course it isn't. And it makes me think more generally of the Problem of Induction: Can we use observations to prove that patterns in observations will continue. Again, logically, we cannot.

I would argue these are about meta-analysis, which is to day are heuristics to think about how we think.

The PSR is not really a claim about the world, but a statement about humans and what explanations mean to us. It frames new information as being capable of being integrated with what is already known, which is to say explained by it or in terms of it, which I'd interpret as a belief in the unity of experience, and implicitly of the cosmos. We see this at work in science, where say the other branches of reality in the Many Worlds Interpretation can be described as not being real on the basis that they cannot be observed or interacted with. It is not the claim that all experience is in the same knowledge or experience domain, but rather that we can generate the means to translate between or interface between domains; for instance using concepts like energy which cross domains as discussed here Is the idea that "Everything is energy" even coherent? Information is another such, and trends in physics are increasingly looking at information as a more fundamental and unifying language than energy, or at a deeper domain from which energy and information transfer constraints like locality are emergent (eg Loop Quantum Gravity).

The universe always gets the last word. And our explanations are limited by our imaginations (see Popper on hypothesis generation). We may very well for all our apparent insights be looking at our cosmos like a dog watching a lecture by Einstein - just incapable of grasping what we are seeing, and what it means. But as humans, it is our defining quality to try to explain.

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."

-Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

There are types of philosophy which seek to recognise this, and even use this recognition towards generating insights and living well. Discussed here: Philosophers or philosophical traditions that reject symbolic reasoning

CriglCragl
  • 21,494
  • 4
  • 27
  • 67
1

There's also the move that if the PSR fails, a slightly weaker version is the next best movie, not brute fact.

The first weakening for the principle would say that if p is true then there is a sufficient reason for p or there is a sufficient reason for there not being a sufficient reason for p

There is then a chain of weakened PSR's, each more likely than brute fact goes the story.

There may be a truth with no sufficient reason for it, and no sufficient reason for there being no sufficient reason, while there is a sufficient reason for that

And so on. It's inline with CriglCragl's unfalsifiablity. We may not have a sufficient reason at hand, but will never tread to brute facts according to the above.

Robert Nozick's Philosophical Explanations https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780674664791/page/142/mode/2up pg. 142

J Kusin
  • 2,668
  • 1
  • 7
  • 15