Category: Explanation
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Causation, Existence, and the Modified Leibniz Question
Letting 'CCB' abbreviate 'concrete contingent beings,' we may formulate the modified Leibniz question as follows: Why are there any CCBs at all? We have been discussing whether this question is a pseudo-question. To be precise, we have been discussing whether it is a pseudo-question on the assumption that it does not collapse into one or more…
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The Modified Leibniz Question, Maitzen’s Critique of its Meaningfulness, and My Response
It is the thesis of Stephen Maitzen's Stop Asking Why There's Anything that the Leibniz question, 'Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all?' is ill-posed as it stands and unanswerable. Maitzen's point is intended to apply not only to the 'wide-open' formulation just mentioned but also to such other formulations as 'Why are there…
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Could the Universe Cause Itself to Exist?
I recently considered and rejected the suggestion that a universe with a metrically infinite past has the resources to explain its own existence. But what if, as the cosmologists tell us, the universe is only finitely old? Could a variant of the first argument be nonetheless mounted? Surprisingly, yes. Unsurprisingly, it fails. The following also…
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The ‘How Many?’ and the ‘Why Any?’ Questions and Their Connection
This post continues the ruminations begun here which were inspired by Stephen Maitzen's intriguing paper Stop Asking Why There's Anything (Erkenntnis 77:1 (2012), 51-63). Let 'CCB' abbreviate 'concrete contingent being.' For present purposes, the 'How many?' question is this: How many CCBs are there? And for present purposes the 'Why any?' question is this: Why are there any…
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Must We Stop Asking Why There’s Anything?
1. A Pseudo-Question: How Many Things are There? A while back, in response to a reader's question, I argued that one cannot count things as things. I can count the cats in my house, the tiles on my roof, and 'in principle' the subterranean termites within two feet of my foundation. What I cannot do is count…
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Siger of Brabant on Why Something Rather Than Nothing
London Ed offers this quick, over-breakfast but accurate as far as I can tell translation from the Latin (available at Ed's site): For not every being has a cause of its being, nor does every question about being have a cause. For if it is asked why there is something in the natural world rather…
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A Catalog of Possible Types of Response to ‘Why Is There Anything At All?’
By my count there are seven possible types of response to the above question, which I will call the Leibniz question. I will give them the following names: Rejectionism, Mysterianism, Brutalism, Theologism, Necessitarianism, Nomologism/Axiologism, and Cosmologism. As far as I can see, my typology, or rather my emendation of Rescher's typology, is exhaustive. All possible…
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The Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question and Contrastive Explanations
I argued yesterday that the following questions are distinct: Q1. Why does anything at all exist, rather than nothing? Q2. Why does anything at all exist? Today I explore a little further the difference between non-contrastive and contrastive explanations. Consider the difference between: 1. Why is Mary walking rather than swimming? 2.…
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Two Forms of the Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question
Why does anything at all exist? Someone could utter this interrogative form of words merely to express astonishment that anything should exist at all. But it is more natural to take the question as a request for an explanation: Why, for what reason or cause, does anything at all exist? What explains the sheer existence…
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Plantinga Versus Dawkins: Organized Complexity
This is the third in a series on Plantinga's new book. Here is the first, and here is the second. These posts are collected under the rubric Science and Religion besides being classified under other heads. This third post will examine just one argument of Dawkins' and Plantinga's response to it, pp. 26-28. Here is Plantinga…
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Jonathan Bennett’s Argument Against Explanatory Rationalism
The topic of explanatory rationalism has surfaced in a previous thread. So it's time for a re-run of the following post (ever so slightly emended) from nearly three years ago. How time does pass when you're having fun. ……………… Explanatory rationalism is the view that there is a satisfactory answer to every why-question. Equivalently, it…
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The Problem of the Existence of Consciousness
I tend to the view that all philosophical problems can be represented as aporetic polyads. What's more, I maintain that philosophical problems ought to be so represented. You haven't begun to philosophize until you have a well-defined puzzle, a putative inconsistency of plausibilities. When you have an aporetic polyad on the table you have something…
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Could a Concrete Individual be a Truthmaker?
Could a concrete individual such as the man Peter function as a truthmaker? Peter Lupu and I both find this idea highly counterintuitive. And yet many contemporary writers on truth and truthmaking have no problem with it. They have no problem with the notion that essential predications about x are made true by x itself, for…
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Jonathan Bennett’s Argument Against Explanatory Rationalism
Explanatory rationalism is the view that there is a satisfactory answer to every why-question. Equivalently, it is the view that there are no brute facts, where a brute fact is a fact that neither has, nor can have, an explanation. Are there some truths which simply must be accepted without explanation? Consider the conjunction of all…