Phanes

I've recently been reading a few articles on the Kalam cosmological argument for God's existence, and needless to say the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) has come up a bit. Just for background purposes (I don't want it to be the focus of this thread), here's a very simple explanation of the Kalam argument, for those who are unfamiliar:

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
[4) further arguments for why that cause is an omnimax deity]

Essentially, Kalam is supposed to get around the stereotypical atheist question, "Well what caused God?", by putting God in a separate category from caused things, like the universe.

Anyway, back to the point. The first premise in this argument more or less rests on the PSR. Again, a brief explanation. Intuitively, there are three possibilities for any fact:

5) A thing may be explained by something else.
6) A thing may be explained by itself (necessity).
7) A thing may have no explanation.

The PSR denies that there are any cases of 7. In other words, everything has an explanation (either it's a necessary truth or there's an explanation outside of itself). [This is relevant to P1 as something with no explanation certainly wouldn't have a "cause."]

Now, here's my problem. God is not supposed to be affected by the PSR, because he is "self-explanatory" or a necessary being, or whatever you like to call it. This might work up to a point (depending on your views about necessary beings), but I think there are some consequences of the PSR that are incompatible with traditional monotheism. Allow me to elaborate.

When we say that God is self-explanatory, because he is a necessary being, what do we mean? "God necessarily exists" is a meaningless phrase unless "God" refers to some positive qualities or characteristics. Thus we might say instead "A particular being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent necessarily exists."

Okay. For the sake of discussion at least, I can accept this latter sentence. But as I said, invoking necessity only works up to a point, and then things get hairy. Maybe the being described so far necessarily exists, but there are additional attributes of God's that are hard to explain. The PSR is supposed to apply to any positive fact about the world (i.e. there is an explanation for any positive fact). Now here's one such (potential) fact: God created this world (with its subsequent diseases, natural disasters, etc.) rather than some other world. According to the PSR, there is an explanation for this fact. Here is one possible explanation: this is the best of all possible worlds. Note that this statement alone is not a complete explanation though, as shown:

8) Our possible world (the one that was made actual by God) is the best of all possible worlds.
9) Therefore, God made our world rather than some other one.

This argument is invalid as is. To have a complete explanation, we need a few additional facts.

8) Our possible world is the best of all possible worlds.
10) God desires to make the best of all possible worlds.
11) God is able to make the best of all possible worlds.
12) God does whatever he desires, so long as he is able.
9) Therefore, God made our world rather than some other one.

This argument is valid; lines 8, 10-12 above would indeed count as an explanation of why God made this world, rather than some other. However, note that lines 8, 10-12 are also positive facts. According to the PSR, each of them also has an explanation. What could these explanations be? Let's see.

P8 could be claimed necessarily true without too much trouble, I think (if the goodness of possible worlds is intrinsic).
P10 could be explained as follows: A) God is an infinitely good being. B) An infinitely good being would desire to make the best of all possible worlds. These might also be claimed necessary truths.
P11 would be explained by God's (necessary) omnipotence.
P12 is tricky. Why must it be true that God does whatever he desires, so long as he is able? I don't know. But for brevity's sake, let's just say it's a necessary psychological fact that any rational being (including God) does what it desires to do, if it is able and there are no conflicting desires. (This is plausible enough, even for non-egoists. "That other people not be unduly harmed", etc. are simply included in the list of one's desires).

Granted a lot of necessary claims mentioned above, now we do in fact have a complete explanation of why God would make this world (note that I am not saying we should believe any of this, only that if it were all true, it would be a complete explanation). Certain necessary truths - particularly relating to God - actually entail that he make this world.

There are two things to point out here.

One - it seems like God has no free will at all about this issue. The PSR has reduced the act of Creation to a completely necessary action on his part. He could not have made any other world, because he could not have desired to make any other world, because he necessarily has to be infinitely good, and an infinitely good being would necessarily desire to make this world. This is very odd, but apologetics already have an answer to this (albeit not a very good one), and it's not the major point.

The second, significant point is this - it seems to me that every seemingly contingent fact (e.g. God making this world rather than another one) would be reduced to a necessary truth. Take any positive statement at all - according to the PSR, there is an explanation. Either that fact is necessary, or it's explained by something else. If it's explained by something else, let's say that explanation consists of n additional facts. Each of these facts is also either necessary or explained by some other facts. And again, each of those facts is necessary, or explained by other facts, and so on down the line.

Here's The Big Problem: if the PSR is true (and if I haven't made a stupid mistake somewhere [admittedly plausible]), either we have an infinite regress of contingent facts, or everything can be reduced to necessity. Either way looks like big trouble for the monotheistic tradition. If everything is reducible to necessity, what on earth is free will? If we really have a complete explanation, you'd be doing something because you have to do it.

On the other hand, how can you have an infinite regress of contingent facts when there's a stopping point in the causal timeline, i.e. when God alone existed, before creating the universe? Is there an infinite regress of contingent facts about God? What does this even mean? Does it contradict the doctrine that God never changes? I can't make any sense of this possibility.

Of course, it may be that the PSR is false. It may be that similar problems arise on atheist positions as well. I don't know about that yet; all I'm thinking about is traditional monotheism.

Anyway, that's the gist of my thoughts. I've tried to make everything as simple as possible (both for my own sake and others'), but if anything is still unclear, I shall do my best to explain it better (or at least admit I didn't know what the hell I was talking about ).

Any thoughts on this? Did I make any huge, glaring errors? Has anyone seen any articles specifically relating to the compatibility of PSR with different religious stances?

diana

!

Indeed. Interesting refutation. It takes a completely different tangent from my standard observation that God must necessarily be defined in such a way that his existence is presupposed.

I like it.

I'm sure someone will have some, ah, constructive criticism for you, though.

d

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Phanes :

I agree that PSR seems to present a problem for free will. For libertarian freedom to exist, our decisions must be contingent facts. That is, we might have done something else. But if our decisions are explained by something, that doesn't look like libertarian freedom either, because something is making us do those things.

I think the theist might say that our decisions are explained by us, as agents. I don't think this move will work in the end, because I don't believe in agent-causation per se. Something still must explain why our decisions are explained by x. I think the theist would say, in response, that there's got to be some randomness introduced in the mix somewhere. Something like a "partial explanation" for why some things turn out the way they do. So while everything reduces to a contingency by a chain of explanation, something magical happens that allows something to explain something else without fully determining it. (I don't think this notion will be coherent in the end.)

Phanes

That actually reminds me (IIRC) of Leibniz's discussion on the PoE and his own deterministic system. In one of his works, he says something like the following: "Why must Judas betray Jesus? Because if he had not, he would not actually be Judas." Of course, I thought that was very bizarre, because it makes the betrayal a necessary attribute of Judas' - it would literally be contradictory to suggest Judas not committing it. He also says we should not complain about our pre-determined actions, since a killer, for instance, still wills that he kill someone. And then the obvious point is that his willing is caused by something too...

I am also skeptical of any appeal to "partial" explanations, without rejecting the PSR entirely.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Phanes :

Oh, most certainly. Leibniz was weird. He thought the "complete concept" of everyone was chosen by God in advance. That means God chose Judas to betray Jesus. Again, we've got a problem with free will. The way to analyze libertarian freedom is to say that if I freely did T, there's a person in another possible world who's transworldly identical to me and didn't do T. But Leibniz has done away with the essential/accidental property distinction, so there's no way to decide questions of transworld identity.

Eric H

Hello Phanes

quote
I've recently been reading a few articles on the Kalam cosmological argument for God's existence, and needless to say the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) has come up a bit.
--------------------

It would probably easier using PSR to prove that nothing should exist at all.

If nothing existed to start with, then nothing should come into existence from nothing.

Whether the first thing in existence is an atom or a god, it either had to have no beginning, or come from nothing, and nothing made it.

Using sufficient reason only, this should not happen.

As we exist, then something had to break one of these rules, something from nothing, or something with no beginning.

How can you prove something that is illogical, by using reason in a logical way?

Peace

Eric

Phanes

That's the beginning of the cosmological argument, yes. But as intuitive as it may seem, some philosophers have argued that we don't have any particular reason to believe it's true; maybe some things do just spring into existence for no reason (i.e. from nothing).

If there was a first thing (or several first things), that's correct. The other alternative is that there is an infinite regress of existing things, i.e. there was no time when nothing existed.

It's not generally considered a rule that nothing can exist without having a beginning. For instance, time*, causality, the number two... Of course, there are questions about whether you can really say those "exist" in the same sense, but you get the idea. If - as theologians have argued - the PSR is correct and we can't have an infinite regress, then that leaves something that must not have had a beginning.

(*Not really true on the big bang theory, but if you say "Time began to exist here" it sounds as if there was a time before time existed, which is very odd).


Anyway, I don't want to digress into the cosmological argument too much.


To be honest, I'm a little bothered by how few responses this has received. Practically everyone (sans philosophers) takes it for granted that the PSR is true (that everything happens for a reason), but as I described, I don't see how it's compatible with other traditional thoughts about God and the universe. Am I overestimating the significance of this, or does no one have anything else to say?