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Single Idea 14018

[filed under theme 2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason ]

Full Idea

Mackie (1983) dismisses the Principle of Sufficient Reason quickly, arguing that it is self-refuting: there is no sufficient reason to accept it. However, a principle is not invalidated by not applying to itself; it can be a powerful heuristic tool.

Gist of Idea

Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool?

Source

Craig Bourne (A Future for Presentism [2006], 6.VI)

Book Ref

Bourne,Craig: 'A Future for Presentism' [OUP 2006], p.180

A Reaction

If God was entirely rational, and created everything, that would be a sufficient reason to accept the principle. You would never, though, get to the reason why God was entirely rational. Something will always elude the principle.

The 14 ideas from Craig Bourne

14007 How can presentists talk of 'earlier than', and distinguish past from future? [Bourne]
14008 The redundancy theory conflates metalinguistic bivalence with object-language excluded middle [Bourne]
14010 All relations between spatio-temporal objects are either spatio-temporal, or causal [Bourne]
14009 It is a necessary condition for the existence of relations that both of the relata exist [Bourne]
14011 Presentism seems to deny causation, because the cause and the effect can never coexist [Bourne]
14013 Special Relativity allows an absolute past, future, elsewhere and simultaneity [Bourne]
14015 No-Futurists believe in past and present, but not future, and say the world grows as facts increase [Bourne]
14016 The idea of simultaneity in Special Relativity is full of verificationist assumptions [Bourne]
14017 Since presentists treat the presentness of events as basic, simultaneity should be define by that means [Bourne]
14018 Is Sufficient Reason self-refuting (no reason to accept it!), or is it a legitimate explanatory tool? [Bourne]
14019 Relativity denies simultaneity, so it needs past, present and future (unlike Presentism) [Bourne]
14003 Time is tensed or tenseless; the latter says all times and objects are real, and there is no passage of time [Bourne]
14005 B-series objects relate to each other; A-series objects relate to the present [Bourne]
14006 Time flows, past is fixed, future is open, future is feared but not past, we remember past, we plan future [Bourne]