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    Every contingent truth has a sufficient reason — Carmelics
    Home/Modality & Possibility
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    Every contingent truth has a sufficient reason

    Modality & PossibilityTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.A sufficient reason exists when the concept of the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject
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    • 2.For every true contingent proposition, such a conceptual containment relation holds even if unreachable in finite steps
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    • 3.It is sufficient for a sufficient reason that such a conceptual connection exists, even if undiscoverable by finite minds
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Quantum mechanics provides empirical evidence that some events (radioactive decay) are genuinely probabilistic with no sufficient determining reason.
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    • 2.If a well-confirmed physical theory posits irreducibly probabilistic events, the PSR cannot be a necessary truth about all contingent facts.
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    • 3.A principle that fails for physical contingencies cannot serve as a universal claim about every contingent truth.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hume demonstrated that the inference from 'every event we have examined has a cause' to 'every event has a cause' is an illegitimate ampliative leap.
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    • 2.Leibniz's move from conceptual containment to the existence of an actual sufficient reason conflates logical relations between concepts with real causal-explanatory relations in the world.
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    • 3.Positing infinite conceptual containment chains inaccessible to finite minds renders the PSR empirically vacuous and unfalsifiable, stripping it of genuine explanatory force.
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    Related

    A principle that fails for physical contingencies cannot serve as a universal cl...A sufficient reason exists when the concept of the predicate is contained in the...For every true contingent proposition, such a conceptual containment relation ho...Hume demonstrated that the inference from 'every event we have examined has a ca...
    +5 moreShow less
    If a well-confirmed physical theory posits irreducibly probabilistic events, the...It is sufficient for a sufficient reason that such a conceptual connection exist...Leibniz's move from conceptual containment to the existence of an actual suffici...Positing infinite conceptual containment chains inaccessible to finite minds ren...Quantum mechanics provides empirical evidence that some events (radioactive deca...

    Similar

    A contingent truth cannot explain or ground a necessary truth without ...90%A contingent truth is an actual truth that could have been false under...89%The sufficient reason for contingent truths cannot be found in the con...89%If there are no contradictory contingent facts, then the Principle of ...87%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: sufficient-reason
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    This has led some commenters to think that Leibniz gave up the account of sufficient reason as an a priori proof. If there were a proof or demonstration, it would reveal that the concept of the predicate was contained in the concept of the subject in a finite number of steps and hence every proposition would be necessary. Leibniz is not a necessitarian in his mature philosophy and thus he could not have accepted this consequence. Instead, he must have shifted from the conception of a sufficient
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit