PHILOSOPHY 441 (METAPHYSICS)
SPRING 2006, WILBURN
LECTURE 3 (Rescher [cont.], Parfit on ultimate “Why” questions)
The Burke piece canvassed various types of positions that one might assume with regard
to the question of why there is something rather than nothing or why the world is, in
general character, as it is. So did the first half of the Rescher piece. In particular, it
considered six general possible approaches:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
theological
necessitarian
rejectionist
nomological
mystificational
arational
Some of these are more obvious than others:
(1)
theological.
(5) The mystificational position sees the "problem of existence" as genuine
but unsolvable.
(6) The arational resolution in effect maintains that things exist "just
because." It takes the stance that there simply is no particular reason for
existence. There is just no appropriate explanation of the world's existence or
fundamental nature.
(2) The necessitarian approach has it that the world exists as a matter of strict
(or "logical") necessity. Its very nature requires its existence: like the God of
traditional theology, it is something that cannot but exist.
How could the constraints of logic alone possibly engender the arrangements
of fact?
(3) The Rejectionist approach: Questions like "Why is there anything at all?",
"Why arc things-in-general as they actually are?", and "Why is the law
structure of the world as it is?" cannot be answered within the standard causal
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framework.
Causal explanations need inputs: they are essentially transformational (rather
than formational pure and simple).
Rescher: "They can address themselves to specific issues distributively and
seriatim, but not collectively and holistically. If we persist in posing the sorts
of global questions at issue, we cannot hope to resolve them in orthodox
causal terms. Does this mean that such questions are improper?"
On the rejectionist approach, the entire question of obtaining the (or a) reason for the
existence of things is simply dismissed as illegitimate.
Hempel:Why is there anything at all rather than nothing? .. . But what kind of an answer
could be appropriate? What seems to be wanted is an explanatory account which does
not assume the existence of something or other. But such an account, I would submit, is
a logical impossibility. For generally, the question "Why is it the case that A?" is
answered by "Because B is the case" . . . [Am answer to our riddle which made no
assumptions about the existence of anything cannot possibly provide adequate grounds. .
. . The riddle has been constructed in a manner that makes an answer logically
impossible. . . .
At work in Hempel’s passage he sees a presupposition that he thinks consititutes a
prejudice as deep-rooted as any in Western philosophy. And he thinks this presupposition
is flawed. What is the presupposition – principle of genetic homogeneity.
Historical Precedents:
Hume: no existential conclusions from nonexistential premisses.
Leibniz: [T]he sufficient reason [of contingent existence] .. . must be outside this series
of contingent things, and must reside in a substance which is the cause of this series
(is/ought and ontological arguments).
Rescher: “The idea that things can only originate from things, that nothing can come
from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit) in the sense that no thing can emerge from a thingless
condition."
"things must come from things," that substances must inevitably be invoked
to explain the existence of substances.
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“the thesis that everything in nature has an efficient cause in some other
natural thing that is its causal source, its reason for being.”
“The ancient Greek principle that "like must come from like."
“But how has this line of reasoning fared in the history of science” Life, Matter.
Rescher: “Dogmas about explanatory homogeneity aside, there is no discernible reason
why an existential fact cannot be grounded in nonexistential ones, and why the existence
of substantival things cannot be explained on the basis of some nonsubstantival
circumstance or principle whose operations can constrain existence in something of the
way in which equations can constrain nonzero solutions. Once we give up the principle
of genetic homogeneity and abandon the idea that existing things must originate in
existing things, we remove the key prop of the idea that asking for an explanation of
things in general is a logically inappropriate demand. The footing of the rejectionist
approach is gravely undermined.”
When it comes to explaining everything at once, it seems as though this is something
that people might try to reasonably do.
Kant claims that it is illegitimate to try to account for the phenomenal universe as a
whole, so that it is in principle improper to ask for an account of phenomena-as-a-whole.
But why? It seems as though science tries to explain the age and structure and volume
and laws and composition of the universe-as-a-whole. So, why not its existence?
THE NOMOLOGICAL APPROACH
Table 2 An Inconsistent Quartet
(1) Everything—that is, literally everything—that exists in nature has a causal
explanation. (The Principle of Causality.)
(2) Natural-existence-as-a-whole must itself be counted as a natural thing: the universe
itself qualifies as a thing or substance of some sort. (The Principle of Totalization:
The entire universe that consists of things (substances) is itself a thing (substance).)
(A) The universe has a causal explanation. (From (1) and (2).)
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(3) Causal explanations of existential facts require existential inputs to afford the
requisite causes. (The Principle of Genetic Homogeneity.)
(4) No existential inputs are available to explain the existence of natural-existence-as-awhole, the totality of things within the world (the universe). For any existent invoked by
the explanation would constitute part of the explanatory problem, thus vitiating the
explanation on grounds of circularity. (The Principle of Causal Comprehension:
Anything that stands in causally explanatory connection with the universe is thereby,
ipso facto, a part of it.)
(B) No (adequate) causal explanation can be given for the universe. (From (3) and (4).)
So, consider the premises
(1) The Principle of Causality – Everything has a causal explanation.
(2) The Principle of Totalization – All there is counts as a thing.
(3) Principle of Genetic Homogeneity – Substances must be caused by substances.
(4) Principle of Causal Comprehension – Anything that stands in causally explanatory
connection with the universe is thereby, ipso facto, a part of it.
Rescher’s conclusion: The Hylarchic Principle in lieu of the Principle of Genetic
Homogeneity.
Recourse in existence explanation to a principle of lawfulness that does not itself have an
existential grounding in a substance is the best available alternative. The justificatory
rationale is not one of alternative-elimination ("this or nothing"), but of comparative
optimization ("this or nothing better"). Nomological explanation enables us to address
the "riddle of existence" without theological involvements.
PROTOLAWS AND METAPHYSICAL POSSIBILITY
Explain what’s going on here?
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Examples of each:
Logical possibility – law of non-contradiction.
Physical possibility – Newton’s third law.
Real Possibility ?????
Real possibility is supposed to regard the realm of laws that determine which logically
possible world comes to actually exist.
Rescher: “But real possibility is something intermediate between these, a matter of
compatibility with the protophysical laws of nature that set the preconditions for its
realization and determine not actualities as such, but realistic possibilities for potential
actualization.”
They "precede" nature and delineate among all the abstractly available possibilities certain ones as, alone "real," ruling out the rest as unreal, remote, merely
hypothetical or the like.
Protolaws are not immanent in things but transcend their particular nature. They
are "laws of nature" in being laws for nature — laws that set preconditions upon
the realizability of possibilities.
(If we are to explain the existence of things in terms of laws, we must of course
refrain from thinking of laws as representing the dispositions of existing things –
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e.g., conductivity of copper.)
The Nomological approach rejects the presupposition that every fact has a
substantival embodiment, that that facts must always root in the make-up of
existents; that existence inevitably precedes essence.
A natural law is grounded in the make-up and dispositions of things; its electricityconductivity roots in the make-up of copper. With protolaws the situation is
different. That certain possibilities arc "unreal"—that they arc protolawfully
unrealizable—lies not in the make-up of actual things but in "the nature of things."
It is not a facet of actuality at all, but a feature of the realm of possibility itself.
These protolaws are not reality-reflecting at all, but possibility-determinative. They
reflect the fact that a field of possibility is prior to and grounds any physical
field—that there must be "laws of possibility" before there can be the powers and
dispositions that encapsulate the "laws of things," the "laws of nature" as ordinarily
understood.
“these protolaws brood over the realm of the possible like the primal logos over the
waters.”
Reference to St. John’s gospel: “In the begining was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God . . .”
EXPLAINING EXISTENCE BY MEANS OF A HYLARCHIC PRINCIPLE
(1) If every really possible (R-possible) world has a certain feature F, then F will
necessarily (i.e., R-necessarily) obtain in the actual world.
(2) Every R-possible world is nonempty: any R-possible worlds will contain certain
things.
So, this is meant to tell us something about what the form of the protolaws. They
have to say that the only really possible worlds are one’s which have one or more set
of features F. So, the question now becomes “What are those features?”
What does Rescher suggest concerning where these features might be found????
Perhaps the higher-level features of the field equations of general relativity theory.
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This is a good point to move on to Parfeit. He has the same overall strategy, even
though he doesn’t talk about protolaws.
Why Is Reality as It Is? DEREK PARFIT
He picks up close to where Rescher leaves off. He grants that one might not be able
to provide a causal explanation for the cosmos as a whole. But then he says the
might be other kinds of answers and explanations. So, pretty much from the outset
he accepts the kind of acausalist strategy that Rescher adopts.
Then he dismisses a number of types of response from the outset.
Big Bang – initial conditions???
(1) Anthropomorphic Principle -- Some say "If they had not been right, we couldn't even
ask this question."
Parfit: But that is no answer. It could be baffling how we survived some crash even
though, if we hadn't, we could not be baffled. This seems right.
(2) Had to be some way Principle -- Others say: "There had to be some initial conditions,
and those conditions were likely as any others. So there is nothing to be explained."
To we what is wrong with this reply, we must distinguish two kinds of case.
Suppose that, of a million people facing death, only one can be rescued. If there is a
lottery to pick this one survivor, and I win, I would be very lucky. But there would be
nothing to be explained. Someone had to win, and why not me?
Consider next a second lottery. Unless I pick the longest of a million straws, I shall be
beheaded. If I win this lottery, there would be some-thing to be explained. It would not
be enough to say, "That result was as likely as any other."
In the first lottery, nothing special happened: whatever the result, someone's life would be
saved. In this second lottery, the result was special. Of the million possible results, only
one would save a life. Why was this what happened? Though this might be a coincidence,
the chance of that is only one in a million. I could be almost certain that this lottery was
rigged.
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The Big Bang, it seems, was like the second lottery. For life to be possible, the initial
conditions had to be selected with the kind of accuracy that would be needed to hit a
bull's-eye in a distant galaxy. Since it is not arrogant to think life special, this appearance
of fine-tuning needs to be explained. Of the countless possible initial conditions, why were
the ones that allowed for life also the ones that actually obtained?
Which suggests two possible kinds of explanation:
(1)
(2)
God as fine-tuner who had special end (intelligent life) in mind.
Many-worlds hypothesis????
Which is better????
(1)
(2)
Problem of evil
Extravagant plurality of posits.
Let’s talk about many worlds hypothesis. Local vs. global possiblilities????
Three broad classes of global possibilities.
(1)
(2)
(3)
Null possiblility.
In-between possibility.
Infinite possibility.
Necessaritarian Account
Platonic, or Axiarchic Account?????
(1) It would be best if reality were a certain way.
(2) Reality is that way.
(3) (1) explains (2).
Axiarchists think: that there is a best way for reality to be explains directly why reality is
that way. Truths about value are creatively effective.
So what kind of value could the way things are implement?
Moral Value: Is this plausible or possible? What could it mean?
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What are the other choices?
Economic?
Maximal: as full and varied as it could possibly be?
Most elegant?
Whatever this feature is, call it the Selector.
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