tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post3377457657957766809..comments2024-03-27T23:49:45.668-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Marmodoro on PSR and PCEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44191843231136626662014-09-13T17:34:35.193-07:002014-09-13T17:34:35.193-07:00If you deny PSR – the principle that everything ha...If you deny PSR – the principle that everything has a sufficient reason for its being, either in itself on in some other – then some things would admit of no explanation at all or, even worse, would admit of an irrational explanation (oxymoronic as that is). It would lead to admitting the possibility of denying the principle of non-contradiction at least in some cases, which is impossible. <br /><br />To put it in other words, some beings would simply be irrational. Now magic is sometimes cited as an instance of what happens when you allow nature or the world to actually be at any time, place or instance irrational; however, as someone has once noted, even magic isn’t totally irrational. Magic is more of a parody of the way nature actually is (say the right words/ do the right thing using/with the right stuff and you get some result that would otherwise be totally unrelated or even impossible). But even that belief (i.e. in magic) is not totally irrational (it satisfies and assumes formal, material, efficient and final causes after all). But actually admitting an irrational explanation for (a) being would destroy all science as actually rational explanations or even the pursuit of them would not be justified as we’d have no reason to actually expect there to be necessarily be one. This would destroy scientific confidence and, of course, lead to a radical scepticism.<br /><br />Again, the problem with denying PSR is that you admit the ultimately psychotic belief that being can even in principle sometimes actually be irrational in account or explanation, which of course leads to the possibility of admitting the absurd, thus even opening the door to violating or denying PNC. Denying PSR is saying possibly some thing or being can exist exactly <i>because</i> it does not exist, for example.<br />Timocratesnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-91321879023924653512014-09-11T20:17:32.697-07:002014-09-11T20:17:32.697-07:00The question is where the evidence points, and to ...<i>The question is where the evidence points, and to the PSR skeptic's mind, much of his evidence points to him not having brute believings.</i><br /><br />If the conclusion is based on evidence, what evidential inference would he be using that wouldn't presuppose some form of PSR?Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-12174367976010708822014-09-11T18:21:35.987-07:002014-09-11T18:21:35.987-07:00(Er, pretend that "&mdsah;" is a das...(Er, pretend that "&mdsah;" is a dash, please.)Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-64021007725225640502014-09-11T18:20:36.248-07:002014-09-11T18:20:36.248-07:00"I agree, though I don't see how the PSR ..."I agree, though I don't see how the PSR skeptic would be troubled by this. He can say we rarely have anything close to perfect certainty with our beliefs, so our being unable to rule out brute beliefs isn't bothering. The question is where the evidence points, and to the PSR skeptic's mind, much of his evidence points to him not having brute believings."<br /><br />Fair enough, but I still think this leaves the PSR skeptic in a much weaker epistemic position than the PSR believer. However much the evidence may seem to direct him to believe that he doesn't have brute believings, his PSR-skepticism will have to applied to <i>that</i> belief as well, and…well, you see where I'm going.<br /><br />I'd say that "give[s] him a reason to think his beliefs are undermined"&mdsah;though perhaps not positively falsified, which would be a good deal stronger.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-24003294171240297922014-09-11T17:45:20.420-07:002014-09-11T17:45:20.420-07:00Scott -
"if the PSR doesn't hold...I ca...Scott - <br /><br />"if the PSR doesn't hold...I can never confidently rule out that there just isn't any such reason."<br /><br />I agree, though I don't see how the PSR skeptic would be troubled by this. He can say we rarely have anything close to perfect certainty with our beliefs, so our being unable to rule out brute beliefs isn't bothering. The question is where the evidence points, and to the PSR skeptic's mind, much of his evidence points to him not having brute believings.<br /><br />So the PSR skeptic can grant what you say. It still doesn't give him a reason to think his beliefs are undermined. Or so it seems to my mind. Maybe I'm missing something though.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-9985506135005627942014-09-11T11:56:55.017-07:002014-09-11T11:56:55.017-07:00@Bob
I will be honest in that I am making a littl...@Bob<br /><br />I will be honest in that I am making a little bit of an educated guess. Metaphysics is prior at least in 'importance' in so far as any view of thought or knowledge et al entails there a being something at all to experience it. Somewhat like Descartes "I think, thus I am". Although maybe not in the exact context he meant it.<br /><br /><a href="http://lyfaber.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/metaphysics-prior-to-epistemology_03.html" rel="nofollow">Help From The Smithy</a>Irish Thomistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-28242702993002909442014-09-11T09:29:08.262-07:002014-09-11T09:29:08.262-07:00@ irish thomist
I made my statement in the sense ...@ irish thomist<br /><br /><i>I made my statement in the sense in which we must establish 'being'. This doesn't exclude but works in union with concepts of 'knowing'. Otherwise we end up in the nonsense of much of modern philosophy. </i><br /><br />Thanks. Since this is probably off-topic, do you know if Dr. Feser has written about this (priority of metaphysics over epistemology) in any previous blog posts?<br /><br />It seems to me that there can be no firm dividing line between the two subjects, and to the extent that each presupposes the other there can be no priority. I'm happy to be proved wrong though. ;-)Bobnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-80460735850221632642014-09-11T09:06:38.146-07:002014-09-11T09:06:38.146-07:00"[I]t still isn't clear to me how Feser g..."[I]t still isn't clear to me how Feser gets from that epistemic possibility to the claim that our beliefs are undermined."<br /><br />In the ordinary case of belief, we believe something for reasons. I believe there's an apple in my hand because I see certain shapes and colors, feel certain temperatures and pressures, and so forth. I believe that the squares of the legs of a Euclidean triangle add up to the square of the hypotenuse because I've successfully followed a proof to that effect. I believe the Principle of Non-Contradiction because I understand that even in attempting to deny it, I have to assume it.<br /><br />Now, if the PSR holds, I may be mistaken in any or all of those cases about the reasons why I believe those things, but I can't be mistaken about the fact that there <i>are</i> reasons why I believe them. I may think I understood the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, for example, but maybe I'm wrong: I didn't really understand it and I'm actually believing its conclusion on the basis of my geometry teacher's authority.<br /><br />Nevertheless I can, with a high degree of confidence, <i>find out</i> whether this is the case by the usual methods of investigating such things. I'm able, say, to reproduce the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem "under my own steam" and explain it to the satisfaction of a(nother) geometry teacher; I may also be able to rule out that I accept the Theorem based on one teacher's authority by noting that I've seriously questioned that same teacher's authority on other relevant issues.<br /><br />But if the PSR doesn't hold, then <i>I might not believe those things for any "reasons" at all</i>. In that case I'm in a far worse position: no matter how much I investigate my reasons for believing this or that, I can never confidently rule out that there just <i>isn't</i> any such reason. Maybe my accepting the Pythagorean Theorem is just a brute fact. If so, I could <i>never learn this</i>, even in principle.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-33734013268440396922014-09-11T08:39:20.213-07:002014-09-11T08:39:20.213-07:00Thank you for the replies, especially Scott - your...Thank you for the replies, especially Scott - your reply was very helpful. I'm now starting to see that, if the PSR is true, it isn't clear that there is the epistemic possibility that what causes our belief has nothing to do with the deliverances of our cognitive faculties.<br /><br />But it still isn't clear to me how Feser gets from that epistemic possibility to the claim that our beliefs are undermined. Can someone explain this to me? :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-53392533761516613982014-09-11T08:01:28.229-07:002014-09-11T08:01:28.229-07:00"Either the epistemic possibility that what c..."Either the epistemic possibility that what causes us to assent to a claim has nothing to with the deliverances of our cognitive faculties entails that our beliefs are undermined, or not."<br /><br />But you haven't given any other cases in which what causes us to assent to a claim has <i>nothing</i> to do with the deliverances of our cognitive faculties.<br /><br />In the Cartesian-demon scenario and the brain-in-a-vat scenario, we <i>do</i> give our assent based on the deliverances of our cognitive faculties; it's just that in these cases, unbeknownst to us, we ought not to trust the deliverances of our faculties because our faculties are being made to operate under unusual conditions (though, significantly, still <i>causally</i>). And in principle, we could find that out, even if the precise conditions of the scenario preclude us from doing so in fact.<br /><br />And if you tighten up either scenario so that, in it, what causes us to assent to a claim <i>does</i> have nothing to do with the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, then you'll just be talking again about a (the) case in which the PSR fails to hold. (It's just that we'd know <i>why</i> it didn't hold—an interesting position to be in, but never mind that.) Or so it seems to me.<br /><br />So I don't see the dilemma. As far as I can tell, you haven't adduced any genuinely distinct case in which our belief in the general causal efficacy of our cognitive faculties is undermined even if the PSR is true.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-17438229926117731922014-09-11T05:30:42.130-07:002014-09-11T05:30:42.130-07:00Anonymous,
I'm not sure I fully understand yo...Anonymous,<br /><br />I'm not sure I fully understand your dilemma, which seems less clear than your original statement. But you haven't established that the 'epistemic possibility' exists; Ed's 'for all we know', which is the one you originally said you were using, was only in the assume-PSR-is-not-true branch, since the point was that any principled response would require PSR, but now you're trying to use it as if it were a general thing. So either your first branch is off(because you're either putting the modality in the wrong place or equivocating) or your second (because you're shifting away from Ed's actual conclusion).Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-76725354869640860102014-09-11T04:35:21.193-07:002014-09-11T04:35:21.193-07:00@Anon
I think the force that your dilemma prima f...@Anon<br /><br />I think the force that your dilemma prima facie might have is due to equivocation concealed under the vague notion of "epistemic possibility", as there simply is no real epistemology without PSR, as in this case there simply are no reasons as reasons/no way to tell if reasons are reasons.<br />I think the Irish Thomist is right: you seem to be keeping PSR in order to allow for epistemology and sacking it when it comes to ontology.<br /><br />Affirming PSR allows for us being deceived in a particular case (the deus deceptor case you've cited), but reasons are still reasons, as Scott noted, whereas there's no "perhaps this is a reason" after denying PSR, for it's impossible to differentiate, as, I think, Brandon noted, you'd end up appealing to reasons.Mancz Pomponhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06206842793763754910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-9228434310460187442014-09-11T04:25:48.641-07:002014-09-11T04:25:48.641-07:00@Bob
I made my statement in the sense in which we...@Bob<br /><br />I made my statement in the sense in which we must establish 'being'. This doesn't exclude but works in union with concepts of 'knowing'. Otherwise we end up in the nonsense of much of modern philosophy. Feser's book on the philosophy of mind gets into some of these topics more indepth.Irish Thomistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-88566923583248332882014-09-11T03:50:56.076-07:002014-09-11T03:50:56.076-07:00The problem is Scholastics (at least Thomists anyw...<i>The problem is Scholastics (at least Thomists anyway) just do not begin with epistemology but rather metaphysics. Since if there is not that which is, there is not possible that which is to be known.</i><br /><br />I have to say that this is a big stumbling block for me. Talk of "mind-independent reality" seems like an oxymoron, since it isn't possible to know something "outside" the mind (or rather, that it <i>is</i> outside the mind), without a mind. Common sense tells us that there <i>is</i> a world out there, but how can we say that being is prior to knowing?. And if causes are simultaneous with their effects (and not simply "constant conjunctions" in temporal sequence, a la Hume) how is it possible to know(!) which causes which?Bobnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-73307350572240585562014-09-11T03:01:04.633-07:002014-09-11T03:01:04.633-07:00Hi Irish, how does placing metaphysics first under...Hi Irish, how does placing metaphysics first undermine the dilemma I posed for Feser's argument? It's not so clear to me, I'm afraid.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-37529312551881423622014-09-11T02:14:52.695-07:002014-09-11T02:14:52.695-07:00@Anon
The problem is Scholastics (at least Thomis...@Anon<br /><br />The problem is Scholastics (at least Thomists anyway) just do not begin with epistemology but rather metaphysics. Since if there is not that which is, there is not possible that which is to be known.<br /><br />Might help to look into transcendentals to understand some problems with dividing being and truth.<br /><br />http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=transcendentalsIrish Thomistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-52488887673750567342014-09-10T23:45:56.539-07:002014-09-10T23:45:56.539-07:00Thank you for all your replies, a lot to think abo...Thank you for all your replies, a lot to think about :) Perhaps this is the best way of putting the problem I have in mind:<br /><br />Either the epistemic possibility that what causes us to assent to a claim has nothing to with the deliverances of our cognitive faculties entails that our beliefs are undermined, or not.<br /><br />If so, then our beliefs are undermined even if the PSR is true - even if the PSR is true, that epistemic possibility still exists. <br /><br />If not, then Feser's argument doesn't establish its intended conclusion.<br /><br />Hope that's clearer!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-29648732215110770052014-09-10T18:26:27.856-07:002014-09-10T18:26:27.856-07:00Isn't this an example of a reason that doesn&#...Isn't this an example of a reason that doesn't constitute a cause: a reductio argument. <br /><br />In the reductio, you end up with a solid REASON to affirm a truth, but you may still not have the CAUSE of the truth being true. The cause is often something more difficult to see, e.g. it is sometimes more difficult to identify the essence of a thing sufficiently to know exactly why the truth is true. Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-5336121109141906742014-09-10T15:59:12.905-07:002014-09-10T15:59:12.905-07:00@ Scott et al. I suppose, stepping away from phil...@ Scott et al. I suppose, stepping away from philosophy, we can (as we actually do) use heuristic science to measure consistency in nature and thereby estimate its compliance to laws as we formulate them. So while today we cannot tell if any particular discrepancy is an error in our model or incoherence in nature, we can, over time, narrow our uncertainty. Put another way, the best we can do is to keep doing what we are doing.Alannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44067883377580626452014-09-10T14:45:35.000-07:002014-09-10T14:45:35.000-07:00@Alan:
"Is it not such that if PSR is false,...@Alan:<br /><br />"Is it not such that if PSR is false, the universe itself is irrational?"<br /><br />Well, what Anon is basically proposing (as I understand him/her—henceforth <i>he</i>, <i>him</i>, etc.) is that this needn't be the case; it might be that the PSR might fail to hold on a limited domain without thereby threatening the rationality of our beliefs, and therefore that there are regions of reality that <i>are</i> intelligible "all the way down" even if not <i>all</i> such regions are. So no, on his proposal it wouldn't (or needn't) be the case that the universe is unintelligible/irrational, full stop.<br /><br />To my mind, at any rate, the key question in reply to his proposal is how we confine the unintelligibility to a domain that <i>doesn't</i> include the causal bases of our beliefs. I don't think it can be done.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-37112080209434309662014-09-10T11:40:20.677-07:002014-09-10T11:40:20.677-07:00Is it not such that if PSR is false, the universe ...Is it not such that if PSR is false, the universe itself is irrational? Absent PSR I don’t think we could have ‘laws of nature’ but rather an arbitrary sequence of miracles. We might as well toss virgins into volcanoes as study science.Alannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-12283502136475945472014-09-10T07:57:37.457-07:002014-09-10T07:57:37.457-07:00There's a huge difference in principle between...There's a huge difference in principle between the possibility that my beliefs might have been formed in the wrong way and/or for the wrong reasons, on the one hand, and the possibility that they might have been formed <i>for no reason at all</i>, on the other. In the former case I can reasonably count on all the usual things (sensory perception, memory, introspection, reasoning, and so forth) to help me <i>find out</i> how I arrived at any particular belief, and I can conclude in some instances that I have every reason to belief that my belief was formed in the right way. In the latter I can't ever conclude that, because I can't ever rule out the possibility that even my beliefs in the trustworthiness of my memory and senses, etc., were formed for no reason at all. My epistemic justifications never "bottom out" anywhere.<br /><br />"I'm distinguishing between causes and reasons here. The Cartesian demon causes my belief, but I have that belief for no reason (justified or not)[.]"<br /><br />That's fine in some contexts. However, for the purposes of the PSR, the demon's activity (at least partly) explains how you came to hold your beliefs and is therefore (at least part of) the reason for them. (To put it another way, <i>there is</i> a reason why you hold your beliefs, even if <i>you don't personally have</i> such a reason.)<br /><br />"To deny the PSR isn't to say everything lacks a reason or cause, so even if the PSR is false, it is still possible for our beliefs to be rational."<br /><br />But it's also possible for them <i>not</i> to be. If it's possible in principle for some things to exist or occur without sufficient reason/explanation, then in principle we can never know what the exceptions might be; as far as we can see, it could always be the case that our cognitive faculties do what they do for no reason at all.<br /><br />I think what you're supposing here is roughly that even without the PSR, we might still adopt a principle along the lines of <i>Well, maybe there are </i>some<i> things that lack reasons or causes, but our beliefs aren't among them</i>. But the question is: if we deny that the PSR holds universally, then how could we ever justifiably adopt such a principle?Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-5267701318797514772014-09-10T05:48:33.291-07:002014-09-10T05:48:33.291-07:00Just because, for all we know, we are brains in va...<i> Just because, for all we know, we are brains in vats, it doesn't seem to follow that our beliefs about the external world are undermined.</i><br /><br />But while this is technically true, it seems to be only because you are switching modalities midstream. If, for all we know, we are brains in vats, it does follow that, for all we know, our beliefs about the external world are unsupported. And, indeed, this is the problem almost everyone takes BIV scenarios to raise.<br /><br />It isn't clear what you are taking the PSR denier to be arguing. Is it that, in any given case, we cannot know beforehand whether there is a reason or cause for it? Or is it that we can know this beforehand for some domains (like beliefs) and not others? And if the latter, what, at this high level of generality, is supposed to make such a substantive difference between beliefs and other things, and how does one identify this difference in a way that does not itself assume the general applicability of PSR? One of the issues with the latter is that if the denial is supposed to be based on either evidence or analysis, both of these kinds of inference seem to be structured by taking PSR to be true beforehand; so if it's a matter of inference we seem to need a kind of atypical inference that is neither evidential nor analytic. On the other hand, if it's not based on inference, it isn't clear how we get the 'for all we know' modality, which seems to require a prior ability to make some kind of inference from what we know. So what's the actual claim being made?Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-31346958865114427092014-09-10T05:42:00.148-07:002014-09-10T05:42:00.148-07:00Another sort of general problem with denying PSR i...Another sort of general problem with denying PSR is that it allows for global overdetermination if I want to allow any legitimate explanations. Even if p explains q, it will always be epistemically possible that q is brute. So q is overdetermined; it has a sufficient cause, that actually obtains, when it doesn't need one and could have occurred without it. I can provide no principled reason why any phenomenon <i>needs</i> an explanation.<br /><br />Further trouble ensues because it is impossible to assign a probability to a brute event, though sometimes we would like different hypotheses about events to compete. So the hypothesis that p causes q competes with the non-probabilistic hypothesis that q is brute, and it is impossible to decide which is legitimate.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-67204226032373871302014-09-10T05:35:44.232-07:002014-09-10T05:35:44.232-07:00@ Anon
How does the latter follow from the former...@ Anon<br /><br /><i>How does the latter follow from the former? To deny the PSR isn't to say everything lacks a reason or cause, so even if the PSR is false, it is still possible for our beliefs to be rational. And this is precisely what the PSR denier can say - even if not everything has a reason or cause, I see no reason to think my beliefs have no reasons or causes. <br /><br />What do you guys think?</i><br /><br />Well, I see a difficulty in denying PSR but allowing that there are some explanations. If things don't need explanations, why do some things have explanations, and what basis do I have for believing so? (What makes particular classes of events susceptible to or exempt from explanation?) Surely it couldn't be that a particular classes of events must remain explicable in order that my theory remain consistent.<br /><br />That is a separate line of argument, though, so I would prefer that Feser's argument that rejecting PSR is undermining not rely on it.<br /><br />I'm in agreement with you that a defective cognitive state might arise by an evil demon giving us faulty perceptions, or by faulty perceptions that just arise uncaused and without explanation. I think the salient difference would have to lie in the problems that remain for the PSR denier even if we are in normal cognitive circumstances. (Though perhaps someone would like to defend the stronger point?)<br /><br />I agree with Georgy Mancz that denying the PSR is different in scale. For instance, if there is an evil demon (or one is hallucinating, or whatever) then the defects in our belief formation are in principle explicable. If PSR is false, then faulty beliefs (because uncaused and unrelated to truth) remain inexplicable. We just have them.Gregnoreply@blogger.com