• Corpus ID: 118686445

The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment

@inproceedings{Pruss2006ThePO,
  title={The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment},
  author={Alexander R. Pruss},
  year={2006}
}
  • A. Pruss
  • Published 20 March 2006
  • Philosophy
1 Introduction 2. Reflection on some historical episodes 3. The CP and the PSR objections to the PSR 4. A modern version of the Hume objection 5. The anti-theological argument: 'There are no necessary beings' 6. Modal fatalism 7. Free will 8. Quantum mechanics 9. Turning Leibniz against the PSR 10. What survives the criticisms of the PSR? justification of the PSR 11. Self-evidence 12. Three Thomistic arguments 13. Modal arguments 14. Is the universe reasonable? 15. Explanation of negative… 
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43 Citations
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43 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Grounding the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Leibnizian Rationalism and the Humean Challenge
This paper concerns the philosophical justifications of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and the main challenge to the PSR. Leibniz is most often associated with the PSR, and it is usually…
Epistemological Foundations for the Cosmological Argument
The cosmological argument – the argument from contingency to the existence of a necessary First Cause – forms the core of a long-standing research program in philosophical theology. Even if such…
Existential inertia and the Aristotelian proof
Edward Feser defends the ‘Aristotelian proof’ for the existence of God, which reasons that the only adequate explanation of the existence of change is in terms of an unchangeable, purely actual…
Explanation, Entailment, and Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments
I argue that there are Leibnizian-style cosmological arguments for the existence of God which start from very mild premises which affirm the mere possibility of a principle of sufficient reason. The…
On Misrepresenting the Thomistic Five Ways
A number of recent discussions of atheism allude to cosmological arguments in support of theism. The five ways of Aquinas are classic instances, offered as rational justification for theistic belief.…
The New Cosmological Argument: O’Connor on Ultimate Explanation
Timothy O’Connor presents a novel and powerful version of the cosmological argument from contingency. What distinguishes his argument is that it does not depend on the Principle of Sufficient Reason.…
The Principle of Sufficient Reason Defended: There Is No Conjunction of All Contingently True Propositions
Toward the end of his classic treatise An Essay on Free Will, Peter van Inwagen offers a modal argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason which he argues shows that the principle “collapses…
Skepticism and the principle of sufficient reason
The Principle of Sufficient Reason must be justified dialectically: by showing the disastrous consequences of denying it. We formulate a version of the Principle that is restricted to basic natural…
A Church-Fitch proof for the universality of causation
TLDR
A much more intuitive argument for the universality of causation is developed which takes as its inspiration a result from Frederic B. Fitch’s work that if all truths are such that they are knowable, then (counter-intuitively) all truth are known.
Brute Facts about Emergence
  • J. Symons
  • Philosophy
    Oxford Scholarship Online
  • 2018
This chapter explores the relationship between the concept of emergence, the goal of theoretical completeness, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Samuel Alexander and C. D. Broad argued for…
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References

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In one of its versions, the principle of sufficient reason maintains that every true proposition has a sufficient reason for its truth. Recently, a number of philosophers have argued against the…
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