Quentin Meillassoux and the Rehabilitation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Cosmos and History 13 (3):263-275 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Quentin Meillassoux has sparked new debates within contemporary philosophy. One of his suggestions is that the principle of sufficient reason leads to an infinite regress, unless the ontological argument uncovers a reason that accounts for everything. Graham Harman has indicated that the infinite regress of sufficient reasons that Meillassoux refers to does not necessarily lead to an absurd. A similar claim has been made by the proponents of infinitism for the infinite regress of propositions. It can be shown that the principle of sufficient reason does not need to be abandoned, and it is not necessary to accept the ontological argument either. Furthermore, the infinite regress of orders of facticity that Meillassoux refers to does not lead to an absurd. Instead, it suggests than facticity is not necessarily absolute. The consequence of this last point is that one does not need to accept the concept of the hyper-Chaos either.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,752

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

On ‘a new cosmological argument’.Graham Oppy - 2000 - Religious Studies 36 (3):345-353.
El principio de razón suficiente.Rubén Pereda - 2015 - Scientia et Fides 3 (2):181-192.
Quentin Meillassoux: Philosophy in the Making.Graham Harman - 2011 - Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Principle of Sufficient Reason.Yitzhak Melamed & Martin Lin - unknown - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The trouble with infinitism.Andrew D. Cling - 2004 - Synthese 138 (1):101 - 123.
Hume's Correlationism: On Meillassoux, Necessity and Belief.Paul O'Mahoney - 2013 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 21 (1):132-160.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-11-22

Downloads
12 (#1,081,406)

6 months
7 (#421,763)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references