TY  - UNPB
ID  - cogprints390
UR  - http://cogprints.org/390/
A1  - Post, John F.
TI  - How to Refute Principles of Sufficient Reason
Y1  - 1999///
N2  - Outlines a conceptual argument against the Principle of Sufficient reason. The argument is presented in detail in earlier work, and is based on deductive inferences from PSR's own concept of explanation. The argument shows that not everything can have an explanation of the sort claimed by PSR. So far from being a presupposition of reason itself, as some think, PSR can be refuted by reason, arguing only from PSR's own concept of explanation. Hence PSR cannot be used to argue that there must be some explanation or reason for existence, invisible at least to science, or that because we do not or cannot know the explanation, there must be irreducible mystery about why there is anything at all rather than nothing, including why there was a Big Bang in the first place.
AV  - public
KW  - cosmological argument
KW  -  first-cause argument
KW  -  causalargument
KW  -  sufficient reason
KW  -  principle of sufficient reason
KW  -  causalprinciple
KW  -  Gale
KW  -  theism
KW  -  arguments for the existenceof God
KW  -  explanation
KW  -  ultimate explanation
KW  -  big bang
KW  -  mystery
KW  -  mystery of existence
KW  -  question of being
KW  -  necessary being
ER  -

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