Questions tagged [principle-of-sufficient-reason]
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could the set of all contingent facts be necessary?
I was thinking about the PSR. when it comes to the set of all contingent things, it seems that the set must also be contingent and could fail to exist because each member could fail to exist. but ...
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Why do many philosophers consider a past-eternal universe to be self-explanatory but not a universe that began with no cause?
In philosophical papers that argue against theistic interpretations, many philosophers fight to demonstrate that the Big Bang was not a true beginning but merely a transformation, arguing that the ...
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Are explanations entailments?
Some philosophers say that explanations involve an entailment relation, that is if X explains Y then that means that X entails Y. Is this a valid way of understanding explanations? If not, what does ...
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How can the quality of "something being very improbable" be used as a philosophical argument?
Do you understand Marcelo Gleiser's "colossal waste of time" reasoning?
Physicist Marcelo Gleiser objects to the notion that posthumans would
have a reason to run simulated universes: "...
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Can the PSR be true for everything except the universe?
There is something called the principle of sufficient reason: everything happens for a reason. I believe that everything happens for a reason because inductively, that has been the case every time. It ...
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Does the PSR violate Occam’s razor?
The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) in a nutshell says that things happen for a reason. Occam’s razor suggests to not postulate things that bring in additional assumptions without doing any ...
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Justification for Aristotle's principle of causality?
[W]hen... a potential is actualized.. something already actual must be
what actualizes it. This is sometimes called the principle of
causality. (Feser, Edward. Five Proofs of the Existence of God. ...
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Does indeterminacy imply contingency?
If there is true indeterminacy in the world, does this imply that each state of affairs is contingent? I am assuming that by contingent, we mean that things could have happened otherwise.
Conceptually,...
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What is the reason for a god to create the world? [closed]
For the sake of the argument I make the assumption that the Jewish god Jahwe or gods from other religions like Brahma, Vishnu or Shiva actually exist and that one of them created the world.
Why did ...
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Does quantum mechanics rule out the principle of sufficient reason?
The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a philosophical principle stipulating that everything must have a reason, cause, or ground. My question is: does quantum mechanics serve as evidence against it as ...
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Everything must have a cause?
In a possible reality, if something came into existence without something giving rise to it, the fact would be that , there was nothing stopping something from coming into existence without anything ...
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Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply everything is necessary?
Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) states that: for every fact F, there must be a sufficient reason why F is the case (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/#WhatSuffReas). ...
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On the axiomatic behavior of the principle of sufficient reason
Have a look at the most controversial principle popularized as the principle of sufficient reason (PSR):
I mean that the concept of PSR, which has been introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, remains ...
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Does quantum mechanics disprove the Principle of Sufficient Reason?
Lets say a scientist were to perform the double slit experiment. He sends in one electron through the slits and then that he measures the random location on his measurement device after the ...
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A quantum mechanical response to van Inwagen's rejection of the PSR
Peter van Inwagen famously rejected the PSR due to his argument that it implied necessitarianism: Take the conjunct C of all contingent facts. Being contingent itself, the PSR demands an explanation F....