(I have talked about this to some of you, but I thought it
would be a good idea to get it out in writing).
The following is Alexander Pruss’ (2006) reconstruction of Peter
van Inwagen’s (1983) argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). (Roughly the principle of sufficient reason says that anything that is the case has a sufficient explanation for why it is the case. Pruss and others have restricted the principle to exclude necessary truths, so that only contingent truths are the kinds of things that need a sufficient explanation).
(1) If the PSR holds, then every true contingent proposition
has an explanation.
(2) No necessary proposition explains a contingent
proposition.
(3) No contingent proposition explains itself.
(4) If a proposition explains a conjunction, then it
explains every conjunct.
(5) A proposition q explains a proposition p only
if q is true.
(6) There is a Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact (BCCF) that
is the conjunction of all true contingent propositions, perhaps with logical redundancies
removed, and the BCCF is contingent.
(7) Assume PSR for reductio.
(8) So, the BCCF has an explanation, q. (1, 6, 7)
(9) So, the proposition q is not necessary. (2, 6, 8)
(10) So, q is a contingent true proposition. (5, 8, 9)
(11) So, q is a conjunct in the BCCF (6, 10)
(12) So, q is self explanatory. (4, 8, 11)
(13) But q is not self explanatiory. (3, 10)
(14) Therefore, PSR is false (7, 12, 13)
Pruss argues that we have good reason to reject (2) and (3).
Spinoza denied (6), since he thought that there were no contingent facts at all
(and therefore no conjunction of them). The rest of the premises seem
plausible.
My objection is as follows: (1)-(14) is formally invalid.
It is hard to point out whether the fallacious inference is
(9) or (10). Here is why:
(1) claims that every contingently true proposition has an
explanation. The inference to (10) (and plausibly to (9) as well) assumes that
the explanation of a contingently true proposition must itself be a
proposition. In order to amend this, and make the argument valid, we should
rewrite (1) as follows:
(1*) If the PSR holds, then every true contingent
proposition has an explanation that is itself a proposition.
With (1*), the argument above is valid. But it is not clear to me that we should accept (1*). Consider the following account of
explanation of conjunctive facts:
(A) The explanation of a conjunctive fact is the plurality
of its conjuncts.
(A) contradicts (1*), since a plurality of conjuncts is not itself a proposition. But I take (A) to be fairly plausible. If we are looking for the
explanation of a proposition of the form p & q, and we give an
explanation of p, and an explanation of q, it does not look like
there is anything left to explain.
Any thoughts?
