Sufficient Reason Vindicated

SOME ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON AND COSMOLOGICAL PROOFS "Laws like the principle of sufficient reason . . . are about the net and not about what the net describes." (Ludwig Wittgenstein) "What a pity science cannot resolve to keep people under discipline and to keep itself in check!" (Kierkegaard 's Vigilius Haufniensis) RCENT literature concerning cosmological proofs for the existence of God has stressed their employment of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Though in the past many critics of theistic arguments have not only not recognized the operation of this principle but also have criticized theists for employing a version of the principle of causality explicitly rejected by many in the theistic tradition/ contemporary criticism has generally acknowledged the functioning of the PSR. This is not to .say, however, that the principle has not been found wanting. In fact, confining ourselves just to discussions of what we might call in a preliminary way its " truth," two types of criticism seem to have been advanced. The first type, developing a characterization used by James F. Ross, might be called "Humean" so as to stress its epistemological character as well as its similarity with standard empiricist procedures against the principleof causality. The other type, which might be called " theological," attempts to reveal the incompatibility of the PSR with the existence of 1 See W. Norris Clarke, S. J., "A Curious Blindspot in the Anglo-American Tradition of Anti-Theistic Argument," The Monist, 54 (1970), pp. 181-~00. ~58 SUFFICIENT REASON AND COSMOLOGICAL PROOFS fl59 a free creator God; the PSR must thus be repudiated by traditional theists themselves. Our first concern, in section I, will be a presentation of various " Humean" arguments as they have been developed by Professor Ross 2 and by Professor William L. Rowe.3 In section II we shall develop and discuss their criticisms of the PSR in an effort to come to a correct understanding of the meaning, status, and function of the principle. Our contention will be that both critics and defenders have not always been clear on these issues, especially on the difference between " Rationalist " and " Aristotelian " understandings of the PSR and cosmological argumentation. We shall argue that there are at least two ways the PSR oan be denied, that there is a different type of absurdity involved in each denial, and that the context and nature of the denials must be stressed by one who would successfully defend the principle. In view of the complex structure of the " theological " ·argumentation of both Ross and Rowe, and since much of what we would say in response would be a reiteration of what was developed earlier, we shall confine ourselves in section III to a presentation of what we consider the basic claims of this type of critique. Our analysis in section IV will stress the essential modesty of the " Aristotelian " PSR; instead of providing the basis for an overbearing rationalism, scientism, and determinism, this PSR seemingly functions to render philosophical theology a discipline which attains its goal in a simultaneous recognition of its essential incompleteness with regard to possible truths about the divine. 2 James F. Ross, Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis and New York: The BobbsMerrill Company, 1969). 3 In "The Cosmological Argument and the Principle of Sufficient Reason," Man and World, 1 (1968), pp. ~78-9~. In "The Cosmological Argument," No-Us, 5 (1971), pp. 49-61, Rowe presents a "theological" argument, but in the process clarifies his formulations of the PSR. (Our essay was written previously to the publication of Rowe's more detailed analyses in his The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)). 260 CHARLES J. KELLY I. The following four objections to the PSR havebeen advanced (the first two by James F. Ross, the third and fourth byWilliam L. Rowe): 1. Since the principle that everything has (must have) an explanation or sufficient reason is assumed without proof, how is it known to be true? Any attempt to establish it as true runs into the dilemma: a) If the PSR is known by induction its absolute universality cannot be established. It can only be a synthetic principle of doubtful truth, since a finite body of evidence is available which could...

While Meillassoux has famously argued for the necessity of contingency, this chapter offers a critique of Meillassoux in order to pose the possibility of the contingency of necessity. An alternative conception of chaos, in opposition to Meillassoux’s Hyper-Chaos, is offered that is not amenable to an empirical rather than rationalist approach, even if Meillassoux does reject the principle of sufficient reason. In addition, Meillassoux’s argument for factiality and his argument that only contradictory beings are necessary beings, and therefore cannot exist, are exposed as sophistical.

Heidegger frequently quotes Angelius Sigelius’s statement that the “rose is without why?”1 In The Principle of Reason, Heidegger appeals to this aphorism in order to circumscribe the limits of the principle of sufficient reason. He outlines the transformation whereby that principle no longer defines the subordination of grounded to ground, but instead prefigures the movement of stepping back into the difference between being and beings, into the priority of that difference.2 As he suggests, that principle must undergo a two thousand year incubation in order that the evoking of these new relations, the “crossing over” of a metaphysical emphasis by an alternative configuration of sense, can occur.3 This “crossing over” redefines the philosophical landscape so as to shift the precedence from what has occupied thought to what has remained unthought. The fixity of metaphysical terms gives way to “polyvalent words” like Satz, which denotes not only the conventional meaning of “principle” or “statement,” but also a richer sense of “movement.”4 Such transpositions of meanings prompt thought to undergo a “leap.” Thus, the “why?” is placed in abeyance as a receding ground from which thought “leaps” in the direction of an Abgrund, an abyss.5 KeywordsCreative PowerAnalogical ThinkingTraditional TheologyDivine EssenceMetaphysical TermThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The subject of this article is Leibnizian interpretation of the principle of reason. Although the German philosopher called it principium grande of his philosophy, we do not find its systematic exposition in Leibniz’s works. The main aim of my paper is to present a short exposition of the principle. The article consists of three parts: in the first I present systematic exposition of the principle of reason with particular emphasis on explication of terms “principle” and “reason,” in the second, I show the origins of the principle, finally, in the third part, I discuss in detail three forms of it: the principle of sufficient reason, the principle of determining reason and the principle of rendering reason. I accept two main theses: firstly, a proper interpretation of this principle requires taking into account the whole context of Leibnizian philosophy, i.e. one cannot limit oneself (as it is usually happens among researchers) to only one discipline, e.g. logic. Secondly, the ultimate methodological and heuristical foundation of the principle of reason is Leibnizian metaphysics, especially natural theology.

I examine several alleged grounds of the principle of sufficient reason in Leibniz’s philosophy. These include the nature of a requisite and a sufficient condition, the nature of truth, and the nature of harmony. I argue that Leibniz does not ground the PSR in any of these ways. Instead, he is committed to a value-based grounds of the PSR: God creates the best possible world, and the fact that the PSR obtains in this world contributes to it being the best. I conclude by considering some objections to this way of grounding the PSR.

I discuss an argument for Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason, the argument that he gives from considerations about necessary and sufficient conditions. I consider two versions that Leibniz offers, a longer and a shorter one. I also wish to assess a criticism of the longer version of Leibniz’s argument made by the distinguished Leibniz scholar Robert Merrihew Adams in 1994. Adams claims that Leibniz’s argument for the principle of sufficient reason begs the question. A simple formalization of the argument in propositional logic shows that this is not the case, but reveals two further difficulties. The first difficulty (a) has to do with the apparent failure of the derivation of the principle that the existence of the “aggregate” of the necessary conditions for the existence of a thing implies the existence of the sufficient conditions. The second difficulty (b) is that Leibniz’s second premise plays no obvious role in his derivation. I try to solve these problems, on his behalf.

Keynes’s definition and concept of uncertainty in the General Theory has no connection with the terms fundamental uncertainty, radical uncertainty or irreducible uncertainty, which all mean complete and total uncertainty. Keynes’s concept of uncertainty is an inverse function of Keynes’s concept and definition of the weight of the evidence from the A Treatise on Probability. That definition is that the Evidential weight of the argument, V(a/h), is equal to degree w, where w has been normalized and is defined on the unit interval so that 0≤w≤ 1.A w=1 means that the relevant evidence is complete. Exact, precise, numerical probabilities can be specified. A w between 0 and 1 can only be represented by indeterminate (chapters 15-17,20,22) or imprecise (chapters 29,30) interval valued probabilities or decision weights, like Keynes’s original c coefficient of chapter 26 of the A Treatise on Probability. A w=0 means that there is no relevant evidence currently available. No probability, either ordinal, cardinal, or interval, exists. Keynes calls such a situation ignorance. It represented his fundamental disagreement with Laplace’s Principle of Non sufficient Reason, which was based on an equally balanced ignorance. Keynes replaced Laplace’s Principle of Non sufficient Reason with his Principle of Indifference, which requires equally balanced, symmetric Knowledge. Keynes’s Principle of Indifference has no connection with Laplace’s Principle of Non sufficient Reason. In the General Theory, ignorance is an issue only as regard the case of lonr run mec calculations. Keynes made it very clear in his 1937 Quarterly Journal of Economics article that the case of w=0 applies only to the very special case of long run mec calculations about either the distant future (10 years) or very distant future (the rate of interest or price of copper 20 years from now). Keynes emphasizes that degrees of uncertainty, degrees of confidence or degrees of liquidity preference exist throughout the article. It is impossible to have such different degrees under ignorance. In the Keynes-Townshend exchanges of 1937-38, Keynes agreed with Townshend’s summary of the General Theory as being based on the A Treatise on Probability concepts of the weight of the evidence and non numerical probabilities. It is not based on the belief of the existence of complete ignorance of the future. It is the fallacious and deliberately misleading arguments of Joan Robinson, GLS Shackle, and Paul Davidson, who attempted to reinterpret Keynes’s different degrees of knowledge, based on his logical relation, V(a/h)=w, in terms of a completely different binary approach to uncertainty, where there is only knowledge and un knowledge. “un” is translated as no, so that h=0 in Keynes’s V relation, so that w=0 is the Robinson-Shackle concept of uncertainty. Recent publications by Skidelsky, Kay, King, Fels and Krugman reveal the extent to which these authors are analyzing the Keynes-Knight concept of uncertainty through the mistaken Robinson-Shackle binary view of knowledge - radical uncertainty. The modern restatement and updating of Keynes was done by Ellsberg in 2001 (1962).

THE BODY OF SUBLIME KNOWLEDGE: THE AESTHETIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

Nihil est sine ratione, "nothing is without reason." For everything that is, there is an answer to the question why it is just so and not otherwise-and, ultimately, there is a reason (ratio) grounding the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Reality as a whole is thus "rational" or "reasonable," in the sense that everything is based on something and has a "why" or a "how come" that grounds it, rendering it comprehensible and meaningful and thus letting it be part of meaningful reality. Nothing is without something that lets it be what it is. This is the famous "principle of reason" (principium rationis)-in a slightly different formulation, the "principle of the restoration of sufficient reason" (principium reddendae rationis sufficientis)-which was first explicitly formulated in these words by G. W. Leibniz, although not as a doctrine of his own but as a fundamental and generally accepted philosophical principle. There is in Nature a reason [ratio] why something should exist rather than nothing. This is a consequence of the great principle that nothing comes to be without reason, just as there also must be a reason why this exists, rather than something else.1 Indeed, in one form or another, the principle of reason has been an integral part of Occidental metaphysics ever since antiquity. The central issue of Aristotle's Metaphysics-the question which Heidegger names the leading question (Leitfrage) of Occidental metaphysics as a whole-concerns that-which-is, beings.2 What is a being as such? What is a being insofar as it is a being? Or, as Aristotle reformulates the question, what is the being-ness (ousia), the fundamental being-character, of beings as such? For Aristotle, the first essential characteristic of being-ness is fundamentality, foundationality.3 What truly is must be a hypokeimenon (in Latin substantia, "substance," or subiectum, "subject")-literally, something that "lies beneath" as an ontological basis or foundation, letting other, dependent beings be while itself remaining ontologically independent. The most being of all beings is that on which all other beings are dependent but which is itself absolutely independent of anything beyond itself. The ontological investigation of Books Zeta, Eta, and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics thus finds its culmination in the theology of Book Lambda-a discussion of God as the absolute, the most fundamental and necessary being-ness and principle. The Aristotelian notion of God as absolute self-awareness, as perfect being in-itself and for-itself, was then taken over by medieval Scholasticism-for St. Thomas, God as the uncreated creator and the ultimate cause of things is not only the most being of beings (maxime ens) but subsistence and permanence, that is, being-ness, as such (ipsum esse subsistens).4 Heidegger's famous genealogy of modernity shows how, since Descartes, the self-conscious I, now interpreted with regard to the absolute and immediate self-certainty of the cogito, gradually replaces God as the fundamental subject of reality. As modern metaphysics unfolds, human subjectivity as the basis of meaningfulness becomes more and more absolute, and self-sufficient; this "subjectivization" culminates in Nietzsche's idea of the "superhuman" subject who no longer simply apprehends given objectivity but instead gives itself its own "truths" as fuel for its essence, i.e., the ceaseless will to self-enhancement.5 In asking its leading question concerning the being-ness of beings, the metaphysical tradition has, according to Heidegger, constantly sought a supreme, ideal form of being-ness which all beings could be referred back to and founded upon. Yet from Plato to Nietzsche, metaphysics has been unable to radically pose what Heidegger calls the "basic question" or "fundamental question" (Grundfrage) of philosophy;6 it has never really inquired into the origin of its own "rationality." What are the experience of ideal being-ness as something foundational and the subsequent metaphysical demand for foundations in themselves based on? …

Today, can we speak of the university? I put my question in the negative, for two reasons. On the one hand, as we all know, it is impossible, now more than ever, to dissociate the work we do, within one discipline or several, from a reflection on the political and institutional conditions of that work. Such a reflection is unavoidable. It is no longer an external complement to teaching and research; it must make its way through the very objects we work with, shaping them as it goes, along our norms, procedures, and aims. We cannot speak of such things. On the other hand, the question how can we not gives notice of the negative, or perhaps we should say preventive, complexion of the preliminary reflections I should like to put to you. Indeed, since I am seeking to initiate discussion, I shall content myself saying one should speak of the university. Some of the typical risks to be avoided, it seems to me, take the form of a bottomless pit, while others take the form of a protectionist barrier. Does the university, today, have is called a raison d' tre? I have chosen to put my question in a phrase-raison d'etre, literally, to be-which is quite idiomatically French. In two or three words, that phrase names everything I shall be talking about: and being, of course, and the essence of the University in its connections to and being; but also the cause, purpose, direction, necessity, justification, meaning and mission of the University; in a word, its destination. To have a raison d'etre, a for being, is to have a justification for existence, to have a meaning, an intended purpose, a destination; but also, to have a cause, to be explainable according to the principle of reason or the law of sufficient reason, as it is sometimes calledin terms of a which is also a cause (a ground, ein Grund), that is to say also a footing and a foundation, ground to stand on. In the phrase raison d' tre, that idea of causality takes on above all the sense of final cause, in the wake of Leibniz, the author of the formulation-and it was much more than a formulation -the Principle of Reason. To ask whether the University has a for being is to wonder there is a University, but the question why verges on with a view to The University a view to what? What is the University's view? What are its views? Or again: do we see from the University, whether for instance, we are simply in it, on board; or whether, puzzling over destinations, we look out from it while in port or, as French has it, au large, on the open sea, at large? As you may have noticed, in asking what is the view from the University? I was echoing the title of the impeccable parable James Siegel published in Diacritics two years ago: Academic Work:

Whether or not the principle of sufficient reason is a fundamental rule of formal logic is a question that merits serious discussion. In debates from as early as the 1960s, when discussing the subject and functions of formal logic, some comrades pointed out that formal logic cannot study just the forms of thought alone. One of their basic arguments was that "the principle of sufficient reason demands that the content of a premise must be true." In discussions concerning the truth and validity of formal logic, some comrades likewise suggested that the validity of thought forms and the truth of their content were identical, their reason being that "one of the demands of the principle of sufficient reason is that a reason must be true." These discussions have already touched on the question of the nature of the principle of sufficient reason. Thus, this discussion now under way is a continuation and deepening of the past discussions on logic. Not only does it involve the content of the principle of sufficient reason and its role and function in formal logic, it also involves the object of study and the direction of the future development of this science, formal logic. The discussion of this problem is undoubtedly highly significant.

Chapter 3 investigates more precisely where in the Enquiry Kant finds Hume showing that we cannot know causal connections via pure concepts, and thus that we cannot know the principle of sufficient reason. Hume’s rejection of the principle of sufficient reason comes to a head at 4.13, and Hume returns to it at 12.29 note (d). 12.29 note (d) is directed not, as Hume pretends, against Lucretius’s principle Ex nihilo, nihil fit, but against the causal principle that Descartes, Locke, and Clarke had used to prove the existence of God. This is confirmed by reading 12.29 note (d) against the background of Bayle’s “Spinoza.” Descartes’s Ex nihilo, nihil fit is equivalent, for our purposes, to the principle of sufficient reason found in Wolff, Baumgarten, and the early Kant. The chapter addresses Michael Della Rocca’s argument that Hume failed in his attack on the principle of sufficient reason.

The principle of sufficient reason asserts that anything that happens does so for a reason: no definite state of affairs can come into being unless there is a sufficient reason why that particular thing should happen. This principle is usually attributed to Leibniz, although the first recorded Western philosopher to use it was Anaximander of Miletus. The demand that nature be rational, in the sense that it be compatible with the principle of sufficient reason, conflicts with a basic feature of contemporary orthodox physical theory, namely the notion that nature's response to the probing action of an observer is determined by pure chance, and hence on the basis of absolutely no reason at all. This appeal to pure chance can be deemed to have no rational fundamental place in reason‐based Western science. It is argued here, on the basis of the other basic principles of quantum physics, that in a world that conforms to the principle of sufficient reason, the usual quantum statistical rules will naturally emerge at the pragmatic level, in cases where the reason behind nature's choice of response is unknown, but that the usual statistics can become biased in an empirically manifest way when the reason for the choice is empirically identifiable. It is shown here that if the statistical laws of quantum mechanics were to be biased in this way then the basically forward‐in‐time unfolding of empirical reality described by orthodox quantum mechanics would generate the appearances of backward‐time‐effects of the kind that have been reported in the scientific literature.

I. Enigma of Time WHEN WRITERS TAKE UP the knotty issue of time, they often acknowledge their frustration by invoking this famous passage from St. Augustine's Confessions: So just what he asks. If no one asks me, I know. But if I wish to explain it to anyone who asks, I know not. (1) Perhaps these same writers, once they have admitted their despair, will go on to invoke another famous line from one of Shakespeare's sonnets: And time that gave doth now his gift confound. (2) Taken together, these two passages sum up the strange paradox of time: it both inexorably ubiquitous, yet also maddeningly difficult to talk about. Lots of things, after all, are difficult on their own terms without their being familiar to us in our ordinary lives--and in fact are difficult precisely in their unfamiliarity. One thinks here of cryptography, the Latin of Duns Scotus or the Greek of Maximus the Confessor, the chemistry of polymers, Attic epigraphy, Kremlin politics. But time, weirdly, both difficult to analyze yet inescapable. As science writer Dan Falk says, The great paradox of time that it at once intimately familiar and yet deeply mysterious: nothing more central and yet so remote. To be human to be aware of the passage of time; no concept lies closer to the core of our consciousness. Yet who can say just what time is? It thoroughly intangible. We cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch Yet we do feel Or at least we think we feel it. (3) Despite this ineluctable dilemma, perhaps there a way out. One way of beginning to say something meaningful about time might be to look at an eighteenth-century debate between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. Newton had claimed that time was absolute, that is, that it served as the presupposition for nondivine reality inside of which the universe was created. Leibniz disagreed and held instead that time was entirely relational, allowing one event to be related to another. In other words, without a universe of interrelated events there would be no time. Leibniz's argument rested--as did so much of his philosophy--on his most fundamental bedrock, the so-called Principle of Sufficient Reason, which says that nothing happens without there first being a reason for it to happen. In other words, this principle insists that the universe rational through and through: there can be no event without a precedent cause that brings about that event. Without a reason for it to occur, an event simply doesn't happen. Period. But for Leibniz the same principle applies, much more controversially, to God: God does nothing on a whim but always motivated by a sufficient reason for doing so. It was this principle of course that got Leibniz into so much trouble when he said that, out of all the possible worlds God could have created, he pick what he called the of all possible worlds. Any other possible world would lack a sufficient reason to exist. As everyone knows, this conclusion threw theodicy (a word he invented) into disrepute thereafter. But he was on surer ground when he invoked that same principle to dispute Newton's notion of absolute time, as Falk explains: Leibniz believed that if time were absolute--continuing even when no change observed--then time must have been passing even before God created the universe. In that case, God created the universe at some particular time. But why that particular time? Why not five minutes earlier or five minutes later? After all, in the Newtonian scheme, every moment alike. (The best that Newton's ally [Samuel] Clarke could offer in reply was that sometimes God did do certain things on a whim. That did not satisfy Leibniz, who said such a notion is plainly maintaining that God wills something, without any sufficient reason for his will.) (4) We know Leibniz's argument ultimately proved successful (albeit shorn of its reliance on the Principle of Sufficient Reason) because of Albert Einstein's later theory of relativity. …

On three occasions in the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant takes credit for having finally provided the proof of the “principle of sufficient reason” that his predecessors in post-Leibnizian German philosophy had sought in vain. They could not provide such a proof, he says, because they lacked the transcendental method of the Critique of Pure Reason . According to this method, one proves the truth of a synthetic a priori principle (for instance, the causal principle) by proving two things: (1) that the conditions of possibility of our experience of an object are also the conditions of possibility of this object itself (this is the argument Kant makes in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories); (2) that presupposing the truth of the synthetic principle under consideration (for instance, the causal principle, but also all the other “principles of pure understanding”) is a condition of possibility of our experience of any object, and therefore (by virtue of [1]), of this object itself. What Kant describes as his “proof of the principle of sufficient reason” is none other than his proof, according to this method, of the causal principle in the Second Analogy of Experience, in the Critique of Pure Reason (cf. A200–1/B246–7, A217/B265, A783/B811). Now this claim is somewhat surprising. In Leibniz, and in Christian Wolff – the main representative of the post-Leibnizian school of German philosophy discussed by Kant – the causal principle is only one of the specifications of the principle of sufficient reason.