The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Moral Argument

Religious Studies 32 (1):15-26 (1996)
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Abstract

The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other justifications of the Principle of Universalizability on offer, including Richard Hare's, are inadequate

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Mark T. Nelson
Westmont College

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References found in this work

Principia ethica.George Edward Moore - 1903 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Baldwin.
The language of morals.Richard Mervyn Hare - 1963 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.
Freedom and reason.Richard Mervyn Hare - 1963 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.
Moral thinking: its levels, method, and point.R. M. Hare (ed.) - 1981 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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