(April 22, 2014 at 6:13 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: -sigh- I usually go all out with point-by-point response, but shit I'm not doing that to another First Cause post.
Spidey, the problem that you completely failed to address is that claiming that even an infinite chain of explanations itself requires an explanation itself is just an assertion. Specifically, it's nothing but a lazy assumption that the Principle of Sufficient Reason - which claims that EVERYTHING requires a reason or cause, either externally or by necessity - is an ontological truth. The problem is on this basis I can ask "What is the reason or cause for the ontological truth of the PSR?" Hume basically realized that claiming the PSR is necessarily true can be easily refuted by showing that causal events bear out no necessary connection. Worse, saying the PSR is necessary is no different than saying the PSR is a brute fact, because no further explanation is given, nor could it even be given in principle.
And ponder this: If you're going to claim that the PSR is true because otherwise things would just pop into existence, you're begging the question. You'd be saying that the reason that things don't pop into existence is because the PSR is true. In other words, you'd be claiming that the reason things have reasons they exist is because things have reasons they exist. Round and round we go.
MFM, I know you like Hume but I always think of him as a cynic without any positive position. He presents a case for divorcing causes from effects while supplying no unifying principle to reestablish the relationship. It seems to me a refutation that devolves into incoherence isn't a very compelling one.
