Explanation – Maverick Philosopher

Successful Explanation Again

Returning once again to the article by Tomas Bogardus, with a 'hat tip' to him for writing it and to Malcolm Pollack for bring it to my attention, let us reconsider his premise (2), about which I raised some questions in earlier posts:

2. Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.

I suggested earlier that an explanation might count as successful even if it does contain one or more unexplained elements. Suppose a man is found dead. Why did he die? What was the salient cause of his death? (I assume a distinction between a salient cause and circumambient causal factors.)* Did the man die from stroke, heart attack, gunshot, smoke inhalation while asleep? Suppose the latter. Why was there smoke in his bedroom? Because his house caught on fire. Why did it catch on fire? Because the house was hit by lightning.

My question: Couldn't a successful explanation of the man's death stop right here? If we were to stop here would we not have achieved sufficient understanding of the man's death for practical purposes (purposes of ordinary life and the law). We would know why the man died and we would be able to rule out foul play. We would know that he did not die from ill health, suicide, or from such foolish behavior as smoking in bed. Bear in mind that the topic here is explanation, not causation, even in this case in which the explanation is a causal explanation.

If I understand (2), it implies a negative answer to my question. (2) seem to be telling us that one cannot provide a successful causal explanation of any particular empirical fact unless (i) it is possible in principle to explain every temporally antecedent salient event and causal factor in the series of events and factors culminating in the fact to be explained (the man's death in the example) subject to the proviso that (ii) the explanation cannot 'bottom out' in brute or unexplainable facts.

This amounts to saying that to explain successfully any contingent thing or event it must be possible in principle — logically possible — to explain every contingent thing or event in the causal ancestry of the thing or event to be explained. I say 'possible in principle' because no finite person has the ability to explain every thing or event in the causal ancestry of the thing or event to be explained.

In endnote 18 of his paper, Bogardus entertains something like my objection to his (2) and makes a reply:

Or suppose a meal appears before you, from nothing, with no explanation. You eat it, satisfying your hunger. Surely, you can now successfully explain your satiety by reference to the meal you ate, even if that meal itself has no explanation, yet calls out for one. [. . .]

Response: I deny that I would have a successful explanation of . . . the satiety.

The problem with this response is that I could not know that the meal appeared ex nihilo, and thus without a cause. If I were seated at table and a meal were suddenly to pop into existence before me, I would lose my appetite from fear! (No appetite, no sating thereof.) I would very reasonably believe that I was either hallucinating or losing my mind or that a preternatural event had occurred from a preternatural cause, and that either angelic or demonic or divine or some other kind of paranormal agency was involved. I would have no good reason to think that the meal sprang into existence out of nothing without cause. The counterexample works only if I know or reasonably believe that the meal sprang into existence ex nihilo without cause. But I do not know or reasonably believe that. So how does the magic meal show that a successful explanation must regress back to an unexplained explainer? How does it show that there cannot be brute facts? I do not see that TB's response to my dead man counterexample to (2) 'cuts the mustard' — to remain with the prandial theme.

______________

*For example, the salient cause of a forest fire is not the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere, which is merely a causal factor without which the fire could not have occurred. A salient proximate cause might be lightning, the actions of an arsonist. or the carelessness of a camper who did not properly douse his campfire.)

Explanation and Understanding: More on Bogardus

What follows are some further ruminations occasioned by the article by Tomas Bogardus first referenced and commented upon here. I will begin by explaining the distinction between personal and impersonal explanations. The explanation I am about to give is itself a personal explanation, as should become clear after I define 'personal explanation.'

A lightning bolt hits a tree and it bursts into flame. A young child coming on the scene sees a tree on fire and asks me why it is on fire. The child desires to understand why the tree is on fire. I seek to satisfy the child's desire by providing an explanation. I explain to the child that the tree is on fire because it was struck by a bolt of lightning.

Personal explanation

My explanation to the child is an example of a personal as opposed to an impersonal explanation. One person explains something to another person, or to a group of persons, or in the zero-case of personal explanation, to oneself. Personal explanations of the first type — the only type I will consider here — have a triadic structure and involve a minimum of three terms: P1, P2, and E where E is a proposition. One person conveys a proposition to a second person. In the example, I convey the proposition A lightning strike caused the tree to explode into flame to the child. This communicative process or act of explaining is not itself a truth-bearer: it is neither true nor false.

Neither true nor false, it is either successful or unsuccessful. The act of explaining is successful if the recipient of the explanation 'gets it' and comes to understand something he did not understand before. It is unsuccessful if the recipient fails to 'get it.' Now I nuance the point with a further distinction.

Strongly successful versus weakly successful

Two conditions must be satisfied for a personal explanation to be what I will call strongly successful. First, the proposition conveyed must be true. Second, the proposition must be understandable and understood by the recipient of the explanation. If either condition goes unsatisfied, the personal explanation is not strongly successful. For a personal explanation to be what I will call weakly successful, it suffices that the recipient of the explanation be satisfied by the explanation, where satisfaction requires only that the recipient understand the proposition conveyed in the explanation, and find it believable, whether or not the proposition is true.

Although the act of explaining is not a truth-bearer and thus not a proposition, the act of explaining embeds a proposition. Call the latter the content of the act of explaining. Every act of personal explaining has a content which may or may not be true. But the explaining, although it includes a propositional content, is not itself a proposition. As a performance of a concrete person it is itself concrete and thus not abstract as is a proposition. Note also that the performance as an individual event is categorially barred from being either true or false.

Impersonal explanation

Impersonal explanations are two-termed, both terms being propositions that record events. For example Lightning struck the tree explains The tree burst into flame. Schematically, p explains q, where 'p' and 'q' are free variables the values of which can only be propositions. No person is a proposition, although of course there are plenty of (infinitely many) propositions about every person, some true, the others false.

Now if two propositions are related by the impersonal explanation relation, then the result is itself a proposition. We could say that an impersonal explanation is a dyadic relational proposition.

I think it is obvious that the explains relation must not be confused with the causation relation, assuming that causation is in fact a relation. (To dilate further on whether causation is, strictly speaking, a relation would open up a can of worms that is best put on the back burner for the nonce, if you will forgive my highly unappetizing mixed metaphor). What is the difference? Well, the impersonal explains relation relates propositions which are abstracta whereas the causal relation relates events which are concreta. Roughly, explanation is at the level of thought; empirical causation is at the level of concrete reality.

Complete impersonal explanations

Now consider the second premise in Bogardus's main argument:

2) Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls
out for explanation but lacks one.

In the simple example I gave, call the two events Strike and Ignition. Strike is the salient cause of Ignition. I won't pause to proffer a rigorous definition of 'salient cause,' but you know what I mean. Salient cause as opposed to all the many causal factors that have to be in place for Ignition to occur. If there is no oxygen in the atmosphere around the tree, for example, then there is no Ignition. Nobody will say that the cause of Ignition is the presence of oxygen even though its presence is a necessary condition of Ignition, a condition without which Ignition is nomologically impossible. (The nomologically possible is that which is possible given the laws of nature. These laws are themselves presumably broadly logically, i.e. metaphysically, contingent.)

I read "no element" in (2) as covering both salient causes and what I am calling causal factors. I also read (2) as telling us that one cannot provide a successful causal explanation of any particular empirical fact unless (i) it is possible in principle to explain every temporally antecedent salient event and causal factor in the entire series of events and factors culminating in the fact to be explained (Ignition in the example) subject to the proviso that (ii) the explanation cannot 'bottom out' in brute or unexplainable facts.

I am having trouble understanding (2): it strikes me as ambiguous as between

2a) Any personal explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one

and

2b) Any impersonal explanation can be complete only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one.

It seems to me that (2a) is false, whereas (2b) is true. (2a) is false because I can stop explaining right after citing the lightning strike. I do not need to explain that lightning is an atmospheric electrical discharge, caused by electrostatic activity occurring between two electrically charged regions, etc. Same with the other example I gave. Kid asks, "Why did the crops fail, Grandpa?" Old man replies, "Because of the drought." The kid's desire to understand has been satisfied, and so the personal explanation is successful without being complete. There is no need to regress further although one could, and in some context should.

To fully appreciate this, we must understand what Bogardus takes to be the link between explanation and understanding. The following is from one of his endnotes:

Recall the link between explanation and understanding. A successful explanation can produce in us understanding of the phenomenon, an understanding of why or how it’s happening. But if there’s part of a proposed explanation that cannot be understood, because it’s brute – how can it produce in us understanding of why or how the phenomenon is happening? Yet if it cannot produce in us that understanding, then it isn’t a successful explanation. In each of these cases, there is a part of the proposed explanation that cannot be understood – in the first, the mare, in the second, the meal – and, so, in neither case do we have a successful explanation. To put it another way, to understand why (or how) is to understand an acceptable answer to the relevant ‘Why?’ (or ‘How?’) question. But if part of that answer is unintelligible, unable to be understood, totally mysterious, then one cannot understand the answer. And, in that case, one cannot understand why (or how) the phenomenon is happening. But, if so, then these answers cannot be successful explanations. In that case, they are not counterexamples to premise 2, despite appearances.

On the basis of this passage and other things Bogardus says in his article, I fear that he may be confusing personal with impersonal explanation. He seems to be talking about personal explanation above. If so, how, given that our paltry minds are notoriously finite, could we grasp or understand any complete explanation? I am also wondering whether 'brutality,' brute-factuality is a red herring here.

Suppose I grant him arguendo that there are no brute facts. I could then easily grant him that a complete impersonal explanation of an event such as Ignition must take the form of proposition of the form X explains Y, where Y is the proposition Ignition occurs and X is a huge conjunction of propositions (and thus a conjunctive proposition) the conjuncts of which record all of the salient causes and causal factors involved at every step in the causal regress from Ignition back in time.

But as I said, our minds are finite. Being exceedingly finite, they cannot 'process,' i.e., understand an impersonal explanation given that an impersonal explanation is a proposition with a huge number of conjuncts, even if the number of conjuncts is itself finite. An explanation we cannot understand may be, in itself, complete, but for us, must be unintelligible. An unintelligible explanation, however, cannot count as either strongly or weakly successful as I defined these terms above. To be either, it must be able to satisfy our desire for understanding.

Dilemma: Explanation is either personal or impersonal. If the former, the explanation may be successful in generating understanding, but cannot be completely true. If the latter, the explanation may be completely true, but cannot be successful in generating understanding in finite minds like ours.

I may take up the ex nihilo mare and meal examples in a separate post.

Naturalism, Ultimate Explanation, and Brute Facts and Laws

Malcolm Pollack solicited my comments on an article by Tomas Bogardus that appeared in Religious Studies under the title, If naturalism is true, then scientific explanation
is impossible.

Malcolm summarizes:

I’ve just read a brief and remarkably persuasive philosophical paper by Tomas Bogardus, a professor of philosophy at Pepperdine University. In it, he argues that, if we are to have confidence in the explanatory power of science (and he believes we should), then the naturalistic worldview must be false.

Here is the abstract:

I begin by retracing an argument from Aristotle for final causes in science. Then, I advance this ancient thought, and defend an argument for a stronger conclusion: that no scientific explanation can succeed, if Naturalism is true. The argument goes like this: (1) Any scientific explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves a natural regularity. Next, I argue that (2) any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls out for explanation but lacks one. From (1) and (2) it follows that (3) a scientific explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves a natural regularity, and this regularity does not call out for explanation while lacking
one. I then argue that (4) if Naturalism is true, then every natural regularity calls out for explanation but lacks one. From (3) and (4) it follows that (5) if Naturalism is true, then no scientific explanation can be successful. If you believe that scientific explanation can be (indeed, often has been) successful, as I do, then this is a reason to reject Naturalism.

Keywords: philosophy of religion; philosophy of science; scientific explanation; naturalism; supernaturalism; theism; atheism

The gist of the argument is that science, which is in the business of explaining observable phenomena, must offer for every explanandum (i.e., that which is to be explained) some explanans (that which explains). But if the explanans itself requires explaining, the explanation is incomplete, and must rest upon some deeper explanans.

Bogardus’s paper explores the varieties of possible explanatory regression. Either a) we bottom out on a “brute fact”, or b) we encounter an infinite stack of explanations (“turtles all the way down”), or c) our explanations loop back on themselves (so that at some point every explanandum also becomes an explanans), or d) we come at last to some explanans that breaks the chain, by requiring no further explanation.

Bogardus argues that of all brute facts, infinite regressions, and circular explanations explain nothing; the only kind of thing that will serve is (d). But the “laws of nature” do not meet this requirement, because they do not (and cannot) explain themselves.

The heart of Bogardus’s argument, then, is that only some sort of necessary truth, some teleological principle that stands outside of the chain of scientific explanation, can serve as the anchor to which that chain must be fastened. And because Naturalism admits of no such entity, then if scientific explanations are to be considered valid, Naturalism must be false.

My Evaluation

It is given that nature is regular. She exhibits all sorts of regularities. Some of them are codified in scientific law statements. Coulomb's Law, for example, states that particles of like charge repel and particles of unlike charge attract. Another regularity we are all familiar with is that if a gas is heated it expands. This is why I do not store my can of WD-40 in the garage in the Arizona summer. The regularity is codified is Gay Lussac's law: the pressure of a given amount of gas held at constant volume is directly proportional to the Kelvin temperature. Now why should that be the case? What explains the law? The kinetic theory of gases. If you heat a gas you give the molecules more energy so they move faster. This means more impacts on the walls of the container and an increase in the pressure. Conversely if you cool the molecules down they will slow down and the pressure will be decreased. The temperature of the gas varies with the kinetic energy of the gas molecules.

But invoking the kinetic theory of gases is not an ultimate explanation. What about those molecules and the laws that govern them?

So here is a question for Malcolm: Is Bogardus assuming that a genuine explanation must be or involve an ultimate explanation? And if he is making that assumption, is the assumption true?

Here is another example. Farmer John's crops have failed. Why? Because of the drought. The drought in turn is explained in terms of atmospheric conditions, which have their explanations, and so on. Question is: have I not explained the crop failure by just saying that that drought caused it?

Must I explain everything to explain anything? Is no proximate explanation a genuine explanation?

But we are philosophers in quest of the ultimate. That's just the kind of people we are. So we want ultimate explanations. And let us suppose, with Bogardus, that such explanations cannot be non-terminating, that is, they cannot be infinitely regressive or 'loopy,' i.e. coherentist. Ultimate explanations must end somewhere. Bogardus:

. . . I believe many Naturalists subscribe to scientific explanation in the pattern of Brute Foundationalism, either of the Simple or Extended variety, depending on the regularity. Here’s Carroll’s (2012, 193) impression of the state of the field: ‘Granted, it is always nice to be able to provide reasons why something is the case. Most scientists, however, suspect that the search for ultimate explanations eventually terminates in some final theory of the world, along with the phrase “and that’s just how it is”.’31

My question to Malcolm (and anyone): Why can't scientific explanations end with brute laws and brute facts? Has Bogardus given us an argument against brute laws? I don't see that he has. Or did I miss the argument for (2) below in Bogardus's main argument:

1) Any scientific explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves a natural
regularity.
2) Any explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves no element that calls
out for explanation but lacks one.
3) So, a scientific explanation can be successful only if it crucially involves a natural
regularity, and this regularity does not call out for explanation while lacking one.

4) If Naturalism is true, then every natural regularity calls out for explanation but
lacks one.
5) So, if Naturalism is true, then no scientific explanation can be successful.

Bogardus tries to argue for (2), but I don't see that he succeeds in giving us a non-question-begging reason to accept (2).

I myself reject naturalism and brute facts. My point is that Bogardus has failed to refute it and them. He has merely opposed it and them. As I use 'refute,' it is a verb of success. To oppose me is not to refute me. I will oppose you right back.

There is another question that I will address in a separate post: Can it be demonstrated that there is a Necessary Explainer? Pace the presuppositionalists, the demonstration cannot be circular. A circular demonstration is no demonstration at all. You cannot prove a proposition by presupposing it. You are of course free to presuppose anything you like. You can even presuppose naturalism and then 'argue': it is true because it is true, and then try to account for everything is naturalistic terms.

Soul as Homunculus? On Homuncular Explanation

The following quotation is reproduced verbatim from Michael Gilleland's classics blog, Laudator Temporis Acti:

Augustine, Sermons 241.2 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 1134; tr. Edmund Hill):

They could see their bodies, they couldn't see their souls. But they could only see the body from the soul. I mean, they saw with their eyes, but inside there was someone looking out through these windows. Finally, when the occupant departs, the house lies still; when the controller departs, what was being controlled falls down; and because it falls down, it's called a cadaver, a corpse. Aren't the eyes complete in it? Even if they're open, they see nothing. There are ears there, but the hearer has moved on; the instrument of the tongue remains, but the musician who used to play it has withdrawn. (emphasis added by BV)

Videbant corpus, animam non videbant. Sed corpus nisi de anima non videbant. Videbant enim per oculum, sed intus erat qui per fenestras aspiciebat. Denique discedente habitatore, iacet domus: discedente qui regebat, cadit quod regebatur: et quoniam cadit, cadaver vocatur. Nonne ibi oculi integri? Etsi pateant, nihil vident. Aures adsunt; sed migravit auditor: linguae organum manet; sed abscessit musicus qui movebat.

Read uncharitably, Augustine is anthropomorphizing the soul: he is telling us that the soul is a little man in your head. This uncharitable eisegesis is suggested by inside there was someone looking out through these windows. A couple of sentences later the suggestion is that the open eyes of a dead man see nothing because no one is looking through these un-shuttered windows — as if there had to be someone looking through them for anything to be seen.

The uncharitable reading is obviously false. The one who sees when I see something cannot be a little man in my head. There is obviously no little man in my head looking through my eyes or hearing through my ears. Nor is there any little man in my head sitting at the controls, driving my body. Neither the thinker of my thoughts nor the agent of my actions is a little man in my head. And even if there were a little man in my head, what would explain his seeing, hearing, controlling etc.? A second homunculus in his head?

A vicious infinite explanatory regress would then be up and running. Now not every infinite regress is vicious; some are, if not virtuous, benign. The homuncular regress, however, is vicious. It doesn't get the length of a final explanation, which is what we want in philosophy.

Charitably read, however, the Augustinian passage raises legitimate and important questions.

Who are the seers when we see something? Who or what is doing the seeing? Not the eyes, since they are mere instruments of vision. We see with our eyes, says Augustine, likening the eyes to windows through which we peer. There is something right about this inasmuch as it is not my eyes that see the sunset, any more than my glasses see the sunset. Put eyeglasses on a statue and visual experiences will accrue neither to the glasses nor to the statue. Eyeglasses, binoculars, telescopes, etc., are clearly instruments of vision, but they themselves see nothing.

But then the same must also be true of the eyes in my head, their parts, the optic nerve, the neural pathways, the visual cortex, and every other material element in the instrumentality of vision. None of these items, taken individually or taken collectively, taken separately or taken in synergy, is the subject of visual experience. Similarly for ears and tongue. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. But it is not these auditory transducers that hear; you hear and understand — or else you don't. You cannot speak without a tongue, but it is not the tongue that speaks. You speak using your tongue.

Question is: what does 'you' refer to in the immediately preceding sentence? Who are you? Who or what am I? Substituting a third-person designator for the first-person singular pronoun won't get us anywhere. I am BV. No doubt. But 'BV' refers to a publicly accessible animated body who (or rather that) instantiates various social roles. You could of course say that the animal bearing my name is the subject of my experiences. That would involve no violation of ordinary language. And it makes sense from a third-person point of view (POV). It does not, however, make sense from a first-person POV. I see the sunset, not the animal that wears my clothes or bears my name.

And please note that the first-person POV takes precedence over, since it is presupposed by, the third-person POV. For it is I who adopts the third-person POV. The third-person POV without an I, an ego, who adopts it is a view from nowhere by nobody. There is no view of anything without an I whose view it is.

So I ask again: who or what is this I? Who or what is the ultimate subject of my experience? Who or what is the seer of my sights, the thinker of my thoughts, the agent of my actions, the patient of my pleasures and pains? Two things seem clear: the ultimate subject of my experience, the transcendental subject, is not this hairy beast sitting in my chair, and the ultimate subject, the transcendental subject, is not an homunculus.

Should we therefore follow Augustine and postulate an immaterial soul substance as the ultimate subject of visual and other experiences? Should we speak with Descartes of a thinking thing, res cogitans, as the source and seat of our cogitationes? Is the res cogitans literally a res, a thing, or is this an illicit reification ('thingification')? On this third approach, call it Platonic-Augustinian-Cartesian, there is a thing that is conscious when I am conscious of something, but it is not a little man in my head, nor is it my body or my brain or any part of my brain. It cannot be my body or brain or any part thereof because these items one and all are actual or possible objects of experience and therefore cannot be the ultimate subject of experience. And so one is tempted to conclude that, since it cannot be anything physical, the ultimate subject of experience must be something meta-physical.

This third approach, however, has difficulties of its own. The dialectic issues in the thought that the ultimate subject of experience, the transcendental ego, is unobjectifiable. But if so, how could it be a meta-physical thing? Would that not be just another object, an immaterial, purely spiritual, object? Are we not, with the meta-physical move, engaging in an illicit reification just as we would be if we identified the ultimate subject with the brain or with an homunculus? And what would a spiritual thing be if not a subtle body composed of rarefied matter, ghostly matter, geistige Materie. Reification of the ultimate subject appears to terminate in 'spiritual materialism,' which smacks of contradiction.

But maybe there is no contradiction. There may well be ghosts, spooks made of spook stuff. I told you about my eldritch experience in the Charles Doughty Memorial Suite in which, one night, someone switched on my radio and tuned it to the AM band that I never listened to. Maybe it was the ghost of the bitter old man who had recently had a heart attack and who had threatened to kill me. But who was the seer of that ghost's sights and the agent of his actions?

Do you see the problem? The regress to the ultimate subject of experience is a regress to the wholly unobjectifiable, to 'something' utterly un-thing-like composed of no sort of matter gross or subtle.

Should we adopt a fourth approach and say, instead, that the ultimate subject of experience is no thing at all whether physical or meta-physical? If we go down this road, we end up in the company of Jean-Paul Sartre and Panayot Butchvarov.

But there is fifth approach, homuncular functionalism, which cannot be explained here. The idea is that there is a regress of stupider and stupider homunculi until we get to a level of homunculi so stupid that they are indistinguishable from mindless matter. See here and here.

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.

…………………………..

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.

………………………

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

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)

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

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.

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.

Going Deeper Still

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).