Necessary Truths Exist

[MindForgedManacle]

the PSR seems rather self evident to me, the relationship of cause and effect. but since you support Hume's view on the subject, I might as well tackle his argument. to be honest, I really don't think Hume is a good philosopher. he accepts the PSR only to attack it.

To be honest (and not to sound rude ), I don't care if it seems self-evident. The PSR is philosophically controversial, and thus isn't something you can wave aside as not being such. Hume's criticism is considered one among several that must be overcome in order for the PSR to get of the ground.

[Insert Theistic Abuse of Philosophy]

if the PSR is false, then we would have to accept the possibility of literally anything happening with no cause. but anyways, lets look at Hume's argument. he argues that the claims of cause and effect are distinct and separate and thus we can clearly conceive an object without a cause. the problem here is this doesn't show what he thinks it does. the problem is he is not following the consequences of his argument. he can conceive of an object and as long as that object isn't logically absurd (like a round cube or something) then it can exist conceptually. but in order for it to exist physically, other factors come into play. the statement "an object can exist without cause" is equivalent to "an object can exist with no cause" which is equivalent to "an object can exist because of nothing." to say that nothing caused something is logically absurd. just about everything that exists has a possibility of not existing. when we have multiple possibilities, there is always a reason as to why one of them is actualized because if there is no reason then we can't say how the other is actualized. if energy exists for no reason, then we can't say how it could possibly not exist even though we should since it's contingent. it's like saying __+5=X and the blank is nothing (and no, I don't mean zero).
I think I've dragged this out long enough, but the existence of truth is evident, and there must be a reason for something to be true.[/quote]

This is essentially what I like to call a theistic abuse of philosophy, because in the philosophical world this has essentially been thoroughly handled. For example, the philosopher Quentin Meillassoux (who rejects the PSR) points out that the assumption that what prevents, say, things from popping into existence or events without causes has a reason, specifically the PSR. This makes it predicated on a circular argument wherein the PSR is presumed to be true in order to support the PSR as true. And if you reject the PSR, WHY couldn't the world look as it does? It's no more and no less likely than any other world, because any of them would be without reason.

Hume only used the PSR as a methodological practice, not an ontological truth, which is NECESSARY for your argument.

Further, your quote of Pruss gives me a "So what?" reaction. It doesn't imply or support the PSR as true. o.o

IHume quote

even Hume thought something must have a reason to be true. a contingent fact without explanation is "entirely without foundation."

You are quote-mining Hume, and you're possibly directly copying from the YouTube user and theist "InspiringPhilosophy" and his nonsensical video the "Leibnizian Cosmological Argument", which uses the PSR, the Pruss quote and the Hume quote you've used. I am suspicious of you.

Further, Hume's critique of the PSR comes from pointing out the separability of the ideas of cause and effect to demonstrate there is no necessary conceptual relation between the two, since conceiving of one without the other implies no contradiction. Hume isn't saying (as you earlier asserted) that "an object exists because of nothing", rather it's a denial of the ontological trurh of the PSR. In other words, the actual rendering would be more along the lines of "there is not necessarily a necessary reason why an object exists".



My phone wouldn't load the entire post and I have classes to go to (it's morning over here), so I'll have to respond to the rest slightly indirectly (I'll say what I'm responding to in each case), because in the next bit you make a rather simplistic error about the nature of truth and realoty. Namely, you presume to have direct accesd to reality itself, rather than your perceptions (which is the actual truth of the matter), but I'll have to get to that this evening.