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    The version of the PSR used by traditional defenders of t... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
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    The version of the PSR used by traditional defenders of the cosmological argument is inadequate because it fails to provide the best explanation for the universe.

    Natural Theology
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Leibniz's original PSR demands that sufficient reason explain why things exist rather than not, requiring explanation of existence itself, not merely causal antecedents.
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    • 2.A complete explanation that leaves the explainer's own existence as a brute fact violates the very explanatory demand that motivated invoking the PSR in the first place.
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    • 3.Pruss's 'complete explanation' terminus generates an explanatory regress problem identical to the one it was invoked to solve, rendering it question-begging as a stopping point.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Van Inwagen's principle of explanatory loyalty holds that truncating an explanatory schema mid-application undermines the rational force of the schema's initial deployment.
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    • 2.If contingent facts about a necessary being's nature remain unexplained, the cosmological argument trades one set of brute contingencies for another without genuine explanatory gain.
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    • 3.Rescher's coherentist account of explanation requires that ultimate explanations be self-sustaining, meaning the explanans cannot itself introduce unexplained contingency.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
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    • 1.The best explanation required of a sound cosmological argument is an absolute explanation, where everything is explained completely and there are no brute or contingent facts.
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    • 2.Pruss and Swinburne reject absolute explanation for complete explanations, where the effect is explained fully by the cause but no explanation of the cause at the time of occurrence is required.
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    Natural Theology

    Related

    A complete explanation that leaves the explainer's own existence as a brute fact...If contingent facts about a necessary being's nature remain unexplained, the cos...Leibniz's original PSR demands that sufficient reason explain why things exist r...Pruss and Swinburne reject absolute explanation for complete explanations, where...
    +4 moreShow less
    Pruss's 'complete explanation' terminus generates an explanatory regress problem...Rescher's coherentist account of explanation requires that ultimate explanations...The best explanation required of a sound cosmological argument is an absolute ex...Van Inwagen's principle of explanatory loyalty holds that truncating an explanat...

    Similar

    Traditional defenders of the cosmological argument cannot invoke the r...83%The cosmological argument is defective.83%The cosmological argument fails because its causal foundations are too...80%The cosmological argument does not establish that God is the necessary...79%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: cosmological-argument
    Almeida 2018
    View source passageHide passage
    However, if we understand “necessary being” in this sense, we can dispose of the cosmological argument as irrelevant; what is needed rather is an argument to establish that God’s existence understood as logically necessary is possible, for if it is possible that it is necessary that God exists, then necessarily God exists (by Axiom S5). However, this need not be the sense in which “necessary being” is understood in the cosmological argument. A more adequate notion of necessary being is that the necessity is metaphysical or factual (Hick 1960). A necessary being is one that if it exists, it ne...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The premises accurately reflect Almeida's argument as presented in the passage: he contends that the traditional PSR is inadequate because it settles for complete rather than absolute explanation, and the premises together support (rather than attack) the conclusion—note that the argument type "attack" refers to this argument attacking the traditional cosmological argument's use of the PSR, which is faithfully represented.

    Confidence: Clearly stated critical argument by Almeida.

    Details

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