Inquiry and Metaphysical Rationalism

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4):809-823 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

ABSTRACT According to an important version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, every fact has a metaphysical explanation, where a metaphysical explanation of some fact tells us what makes it the case that the fact obtains. I argue that, so long as we have not yet discovered that any fact is brute, we ought to be committed to this version of the principle—henceforth ‘the PSR’—because it is indispensable to a species of inquiry in which we ought to engage. I argue, first, that a practical indispensability argument applied to this species of inquiry supports a commitment to the PSR. I then show that we ought to engage in this inquiry. If my argument succeeds, then our attitude at the outset of such inquiry should not be agnosticism about whether any particular fact has a metaphysical explanation. Instead, we ought to be committed to the PSR.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

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

Principle of Sufficient Reason.Fatema Amijee - 2020 - In Michael J. Raven (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. New York: Routledge. pp. 63-75.
Rationalism and Necessitarianism.Martin Lin - 2012 - Noûs 46 (3):418-448.
Explaining essences.Michael J. Raven - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1043-1064.
Metaphysical Rationalism.Shamik Dasgupta - 2016 - Noûs 50 (2):379-418.
Explaining contingent facts.Fatema Amijee - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1163-1181.
A universe of explanations.Ghislain Guigon - 2015 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 9.
Adventures in Rationalism.Michael Della Rocca - 2013 - Philosophic Exchange 43 (1).
Principle of Sufficient Reason.Fatema Amijee - 2021 - Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences.
Kant and the Principle of Sufficient Reason.Huaping Lu-Adler - 2021 - Review of Metaphysics 74 (3):301–30.
Leibniz, Spinoza and an Alleged Dilemma for Rationalists.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2015 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 2.
Critical rationalism and the principle of sufficient reason.Gunnar Andersson - 2009 - In Zuzana Parusniková & R. S. Cohen (eds.), Rethinking Popper. Springer. pp. 21--30.
The ground of ground, essence, and explanation.Michael Wallner - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 6):1257-1277.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-03-23

Downloads
158 (#111,782)

6 months
63 (#61,068)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Fatema Amijee
University of British Columbia

References found in this work

Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Knowledge and its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):200-201.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2003 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):105-116.
Studies in the logic of explanation.Carl Gustav Hempel & Paul Oppenheim - 1948 - Philosophy of Science 15 (2):135-175.
The Construction of Logical Space.Agustín Rayo - 2013 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

View all 23 references / Add more references