Brute facts are facts that have no explanation. If we come to know that a fact is brute, we obviously don’t get an explanation of that fact. Nevertheless, we do make some sort of epistemic gain. In this essay, I give an account of that epistemic gain, and suggest that the idea of brute facts allows us to distinguish between the notion of explanation and the notion of understanding. I also discuss Eric Barnes’ (1994) attack (...) on Friedman’s (1974) version of the uni-fication theory of explanation. The nification theory asserts that scientific understanding results from minimizing the number of brute facts that we have to accept in our view of he world. Barnes claims that the unification theory cannot do justice to he notion of being a brute fact, because it implies that brute facts are gaps in our understanding of the world. I defend Friedman’s theory against Barnes’ critique. (shrink)

Brute facts are facts that don't have explanations. They are instrumental in our attempts to give accounts of other facts or phenomena, and so they play a key role in many philosophers' views about the structure of the world. This volume explores neglected questions about the nature of brute facts and their explanatory role.

I aim to show that one way of testing the mettle of a theory of scientific explanation is to inquire what that theory entails about the status of brute facts. Here I consider the nature of brute facts, and survey several contemporary accounts of explanation vis a vis this subject. One problem with these accounts is that they seem to entail that brute facts represent a gap in scientific understanding. I argue that brute facts are non-mysterious (...) and indeed are even explainable by the lights of Salmon's ontic conception of explanation. The plausibility of various models of explanation, I suggest, depends to some extent on the tendency of their proponents to focus on certain examples of explananda - I ponder brute facts qua explananda here as a way of helping us to recognize this dependency. (shrink)

In ‘Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres, and the Identity of Indiscernibles,’ Della Rocca argues that any counterexample to the PII would involve ‘a brute fact of non-identity [. . .] not grounded in any qualitative difference.’ I respond that Adams's so-called Continuity Argument against the PII does not postulate qualitatively inexplicable brute facts of identity or non-identity if understood in the context of Kripkean modality. One upshot is that if the PII is understood to quantify over modal as (...) well as non-modal properties, the qualitative explicability of numerical distinctness requires not the PII but a principle of the identity of necessary indiscernibles. (shrink)

A vital point of dispute within both classical Indian thought and contemporary analytic ontology is the following: which facts are brute so that they are, so to speak, beyond any need of civilizing through logical transformations, conceptual revisions, or linguistic reformulations? In this article, we discuss certain strands of the debate in these fields with two central purposes in mind. Firstly, we shall argue that metaphysical debates are seemingly interminable partly because disputing parties carve up the ontological landscape in (...) such a manner that what one party views as primitive, basic, or fundamental is regarded by an opponent as derivative, imagined, or constructed and vice versa. Second, unlike debates over these themes in contemporary analytic ontology, the classical Indian counterparts were usually located within a soteriological context, where it was claimed that an individual should develop meditative praxis on the way towards the goal of ultimate liberation. While it might seem that one could appeal to “experience” in this manner to settle the debate over whether universals were fundamental ingredients of the fabric of reality or merely conceptual artefacts, we shall argue that this approach is complicated by the fact that aspirants in these traditions would interpret their experiences in accordance with their doctrinal schemes. Therefore, the question of whether or not this appeal succeeds leads us to an ongoing dispute in religious epistemology over whether experiences are completely “constructed” by doctrinal context. (shrink)

In ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Anscombe writes: ‘It is not profitable at present for us to do moral philosophy. It should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking’. In consideration of this Anscombe appeals to the relation of ‘brute-relative-to’ which holds between facts and descriptions of human affairs. This paper describes the reorientation in philosophy of action that this relation aims to effect and examines the claim that (...) this reorientation makes possible the sort of philosophy of psychology that can provide a starting point for ethics. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a critical reconstruction of John Searle's argument for what he calls `External Realism.' I argue that Searle's thesis is in fact ambiguous, and hence that it cannot establish the existence of brute entities . I further argue that, once properly understood, constitutive rules can be shown to be prior to, rather than dependent on, what Searle calls `brute facts' -- and hence that Searle's analysis reverses the order of priority between rules and (...) brute facts. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to offer a defense of the emergentist view concerning emergent brute facts. To this end, I review and evaluate the three main objections raised against the possibility of emergent brute facts; the simplicity argument, the question of whether the idea of emergent brute facts is a coherent idea and the question of empirical evidence. My contention is that none of these arguments is successful in refuting the possibility or the plausibility of (...) the existence of emergent brute facts. I also argue that, in the end, the question revolves around empirical evidence, and that empirical considerations favour the existence of emergent brute facts. (shrink)

According to the most prominent principle of early modern rationalists, the Principle of Sufficient Reason [PSR], there are no brute facts, hence, there are no facts without any explanation. Contrary to the PSR, some philosophers have argued that divine ideas are brute facts within Leibniz’s metaphysics. In this paper, I argue against brute-fact-theories of divine ideas, especially represented by Samuel Newlands in Leibniz and the Ground of Possibility, and elaborate an alternative Leibnizian theory of divine ideas.

The proposal to add the behavioral momentum metaphor to Skinnerian psychology and the use of other borrowed physical explanatory concepts such as velocity and inertial mass has only superficial value. The basic problem is that, in contrast to Newtonian physics, the “laws” do not apply to a significant proportion of the phenomena to be explained, and these evidential discrepancies are ignored, rather than being used to modify the scientific explanations and improve technological applications that are based on those explanations.

_Brute Science_ investigates whether biomedical research using animals is, in fact, scientifically justified. Hugh LaFollette and Niall Shanks examine the issues in scientific terms using the models that scientists themselves use. They argue that we need to reassess our use of animals and, indeed, rethink the standard positions in the debate.

In this paper I argue that whether or not a world is good can be a contingent fact about the world that is not dependent upon that world's natural facts, or, indeed, upon anyother facts. If so, the property, good, does not supervene upon the facts of nature (or upon any other facts). My argument for this claimis that it is possible to view the very world in which we live (viz. the natural facts that constitute it) as good (...) and to view it as bad. (shrink)

Ethical beliefs are not justified by familiar methods. We do not directly sense ethical properties, at least not in the straightforward way we sense colors or shapes. Nor is it plausible to think – despite a tradition claiming otherwise – that there are self-evident ethical truths that we can know in the way we know conceptual or mathematical truths. Yet, if we are justified in believing anything, we are justified in believing various ethical propositions e.g., that slavery is wrong. If (...) ethical beliefs are not justified in these familiar ways, how are they justified? -/- In her widely read, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” and in her short complimentary paper, “On Brute Facts,” G.E.M. Anscombe answers this question with a compelling and unorthodox account of justification in ethics. Because of her polemical tone and because “Modern Moral Philosophy” does so much else besides, this contribution is easy to overlook. But her account is worth taking seriously, since (a) it is an underappreciated yet plausible account that sidesteps traditional controversies, (b) it offers rich conceptual tools for interpreting and critiquing ethical theories, (c) it suggests an appealing account of the place of ethical theory in ethical knowledge and, (d) it provides useful guidance for doing applied ethics. (shrink)

It is often assumed that the first stage of many classical arguments for theism depends upon some version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason being true. Unfortunately for classical theists, PSR is a controversial thesis that has come under rather severe criticism in the contemporary literature. In this article, I grant for the sake of argument that every version of PSR is false. Thus, I concede with the critics of PSR, that it is possible that there is, at least, one (...) fact that is ontologically brute. I then proffer an epistemological challenge to ontological bruteness. Specifically, I argue that whenever a knowledge seeker, S, perceives some unexplained fact, F, it is never reasonable for S to believe F is ontologically brute. I conclude that, even if PSR is false, it is more reasonable to believe that the key premise in the first stage of classical arguments for theism is true. (shrink)

This paper discusses the difference between the factual and the legal, both as to terms and as to statements, on the analogy of the methodologists' distinction of the observational and the theoretical. No absolute distinction exists, and pure `brute facts' do not exist in law because of the socialisation of physical world and juridification of the social world.; also, the effect of evidentiary constraints. Law/fact distinction depends on `applicability rules'. The problem of `mixed terms' is partly a matter (...) of judicial pragmatics, partly to do with the character of applicability rules, and their extensiveness. Semantic realism versus semantic instrumentalism in respect of legal terms -- the latter preferred. Tendency to abstract terms in advanced legal orders. (shrink)

The structure of our ethical experience depends, crucially, on a fundamental distinction between what we are responsible for doing or deciding and what is given to us. As such, the boundary between chance and choice is the spine of our conventional morality, and any serious shift in that boundary is thoroughly dislocating. Against this background, I analyze the way in which techniques of prenatal genetic diagnosis (PGD) pose such a fundamental challenge to our conventional ideas of justice and moral responsibility. (...) After a short description of the situation, I first examine the influential luck egalitarian theory of justice, which is based on the distinction between choice and luck or, more specifically, between option luck and brute luck, and the way in which it would approach PGD (section II), followed by an analysis of the conceptual incoherencies (in section III) and moral problems (in section IV) that come with such an approach. Put shortly, the case of PGD shows that the luck egalitarian approach fails to express equal respect for the individual choices of people. The paradox of the matter is that by overemphasizing the fact of choice as such, without regard for the social framework in which they are being made, or for the fundamental and existential nature of particular choices—like choosing to have children and not to undergo PGD or not to abort a handicapped fetus—such choices actually become impossible. (shrink)

:The distinction between brute luck and option luck is fundamental for luck egalitarianism. Many luck egalitarians write as if it could be used to specify which outcomes people should be held responsible for. In this paper, I argue that the distinction can’t be used this way. In fact, luck egalitarians tend to rely instead on rough intuitive judgements about individual responsibility. This makes their view vulnerable to what’s known as the neutrality objection. I show that attempts to avoid (...) this objection are unsuccessful. I conclude that until it provides a better account of attributing responsibility, luck egalitarianism remains incomplete. (shrink)

My thesis is devoted to an attempt to offer, on behalf of mathematical Platonism, a reply to what may seem to be a powerful objection to it. The objection is this: If there is, as the Platonist supposes, mathematical knowledge of abstract objects, then there is a correlation between our beliefs and the mathematical facts. However, how is such a correlation to be explained given that mathematical objects are a-causal? The worry is that no explanation is possible and that this (...) is a considerable mark against mathematical Platonism. The source of the difficulty here is obvious: standard models for explaining such correlations proceed via the idea that facts cause beliefs, or that beliefs cause facts, or that there was a common cause. But these possibilities are not available to the Platonist given the a-causality of mathematical objects. ;I claim that such a correlation is explicable in a way which neither, contra expectation, renders abstract objects causal nor assigns to us capacities the exercise of which allows to us to explain the correlation on some implausible extension of a perceptual model. The thought is this: that explaining the correlation requires explaining conjunctions of facts and beliefs. But the conjunctions in question are, at least for the Platonism here considered, conjunctions of a brute fact and an explicable fact . However I argue, and this is the core of the thesis, that such conjunctions can always be explained by reiterating the brute fact and citing whatever explains the explicable fact. If this thesis about explanation is accepted, then such correlations are readily explicable. ;The rest of the thesis is devoted to examining various objections to this reply and to the thesis concerning explanation. I argue that they are not fatal. (shrink)

There are various conceptions of objectivity, a characteristic of the scientific enterprise, the most fundamental being objectivity as faithfulness to facts. A brute fact, which happens independently from us, becomes a scientific fact once we take cognisance of it through the means made available to us by science. Because of the complex, reciprocal relationship between scientific facts and scientific theory, the concept of objectivity as faithfulness to facts does not hold in the strict sense of an aperspectival (...) faithfulness to brute facts. Nevertheless, it holds in the large sense of an underdetermined faithfulness to scientific facts, as long as we keep in mind the complexity of the notion of scientific fact (as theory-laden), and the role of non-factual elements in theory choice (as underdetermined by facts). Science remains our best way to separate our factual beliefs from our other kinds of beliefs. (shrink)

Abstract Is it plausible to claim (some) non?human animals have beliefs, on the (non?behaviourist) assumption that believing is or involves subjects? engaging in practical reasoning which takes account of meanings? Some answer Yes, on the ground that evolutionary continuities linking humans with other animals must include psychological ones. But (1) evolution does not operate?even primarily?by means of continuities. Thus species, no matter how closely related (in fact, sometimes even conspecifics) operate with very different adaptive ?tricks'; and it is plausible (...) to think these, rather than the physiological ?groundings? underlying them, are the best means of (analogies for) explaining beliefs. Also (2) it is reasonable to assimilate most cases ?down? to creatures (e.g. flies) that obviously lack beliefs rather than ?up? to others (chimpanzees) that apparently possess belief?like states (proto?beliefs), because observation shows the internal workings of such middle animals? ?beliefs? differ markedly from the corresponding things humans do. For example, ducks do not have beliefs about the numbers of objects, because although they estimate numerically, they do it in a way that is much more firmly connected to perceiving than would be the case either with counting or a counting?like process. (shrink)

This paper discusses the difference between the factual and the legal, both as to terms and as to statements, on the analogy of the methodologists' distinction of the observational and the theoretical. No absolute distinction exists, and pure ‘brute facts’ do not exist in law because of the socialisation of physical world and juridification of the social world.; also, the effect of evidentiary constraints. Law/fact distinction depends on ‘applicability rules’. The problem of ‘mixed terms’ is partly a matter (...) of judicial pragmatics, partly to do with the character of applicability rules, and their extensiveness. Semantic realism versus semantic instrumentalism in respect of legal terms -- the latter preferred. Tendency to abstract terms in advanced legal orders. (shrink)

Timothy O’Connor’s book Theism and Ultimate Explanation offers a defense of a new version of the cosmological argument. In his discussion, O’Connor argues against the coherence of a brute fact “explanation” of the universe and for the claim that the God of theism cannot be logically contingent. In this paper, I take issue with both of these arguments. Regarding the former, I claim that contrary to what O’Connor asserts, we have no good reason to prefer an account according (...) to which the universe is explained via a necessary being to that of a naturalist who thinks that the universe is contingent and ultimately unexplained. Regarding the latter, I argue that the possibility of a logically contingent God is fully consistent with traditional theism. (shrink)

Some of our largely unchosen first-order reactions, such as disgust, can underwrite morally-laden character traits. This observation is in tension with the plausible idea that virtues and vices are based on reasons. I propose a way to resolve the tension.

Recently scholars have been claiming that Aristotle’s biological explanations treat “facts about matter”—facts such as the degree of heat or amount of fluidity in an organism’s material constitution—as explanatorily basic or “primitive.” That is, these facts about matter are taken to be unexplained, brute facts about organisms, rather than ones that are explained by the organism’s form or essence, as we would have expected from Aristotle’s general commitment to the causal and explanatory priority of form over matter. In this (...) paper, I present three considerations for rejecting the view that facts about matter are primitive. First, there is evidence that those putative unexplained facts about degrees of heat, dryness, fluidity, etc. are, in fact, explained. Second, there are certain cases, such as human intelligence, where it would be quite implausible to consider the explanation in terms of degrees of heat to be starting from what Aristotle considers primitive facts. Third, the idea that facts about matter are as explanatorily primitive as facts about form requires a particular conception of the causal processes that the explanations mirror. But this conception of the causal processes conflicts with the way Aristotle characterizes them in Generation of Animals. There, heat is not treated as a causal factor that works “independently” of soul. In my view, these three considerations provide compelling reason to reject the claim that Aristotle’s biology treats facts about matter as primitive. (shrink)

In the epicenter of his attempt to justify the “objective validity” of morality and freedom in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant introduces a so-called fact of reason, which is rendered as the fact that human beings are consciou s of the moral ought’s categorical authority. However, few parts of Kant’s thinking have bemused commentators as much as this. In this article, the author explores a set of intersecting problems related to the fact of reason: (1) the (...) problem of its general argumentative role in Kant’s practical philosophy, (2) the problem of the fact as a brute fact. He argues that both problems can be understood and resolved only if we regard Kant’s introduction of the fact of reason as an implicit attempt to articulate intrinsic problems with reductive explanations of morality. His main claim, which has been surprisingly absent in most interpretations of Kant’s fact of reason, will be that the fact of reason functions as an undeniable yet improvable fact (similar to mathematical principles) from which other practical truths (such as the objective reality of freedom) can be derived. As Kant says unambiguously in the Jäsche-Logic : the “reality” of the moral law “is an axiom.”. (shrink)

In this fine study, Hendrik Lorenz revisits Plato's argument for a tripartite soul in Republic IV. He proposes an interpretation that seeks to explain how the Principle of Opposites when supplemented by examples of motivational conflict, can show that reason, spirit, and appetite are basic, non-composite parts of the human soul.The discussion of parts of soul is merely a prelude to Lorenz's discussion of non-rational cognition in Plato and Aristotle in the final two parts of the book. Even readers who (...) wish to quibble with Lorenz's analysis of psychic parts are likely to find his detailed and textually astute analysis of non-rational cognition intrinsically rewarding. Here is how the themes connect: Lorenz holds that in order to prevent the principle of opposites from running amok, yielding a number of psychic subparts, Plato must deny the ability to reason, or even to understand the deliverances of reason, to the non-rational parts of the soul. How, then, can Plato account for the fact that non-rational parts are capable of giving rise to fully formed. (shrink)

Let us show how property is grasped as an institutional fact. If Jones steals a computer, he does not own it in the sense of property, but only exercises control towards it. If he buys the computer, he controls it too, and moreover owns it in the sense of property. In other words, simply exercising control towards something is a brute fact. This control counts asproperty only in a certain context: the computer counts as Jones’s property only (...) if he got it through a licit transfer. This is why property is not a brute fact, and is therefore an institutional fact. The same kind of reasoning applies to privacy. When a personal information P about Jones is openly diffused, it seems that P becomes public. From this point of view, a violation of privacy equates to a publication. The problem about this account is the following: who would call “publication of a book” the hacking of it on its author’s computer? No one, because the word “publication” is an institutional word that only refers to a licit diffusion. Considering this answer, we may conclude as follows: if the diffusion of P is illicit, P still countsas private, even if everyone knows about it. If that conclusion is true, privacy is an institutional fact. (shrink)

Much of the focus on Poincaré’s philosophy of science has been on the notion of convention, a crucial concept that has become distinctive of his position. However, other notions have received much less attention. That is the case of verifiable hypotheses. This kind of hypotheses seems to be constituted from the generalization of several observable facts. So, in order to understand what these hypotheses are, we need to know what a fact to Poincaré is. He divides facts into (...) class='Hi'>brute and scientific facts. The characterization of this duality is not trivial at all, and leads us to the following questions that we will discuss in this paper: which the part of construction that exists in a scientific fact and which the part of translation, that is, what remains from the brute fact in the scientific one?; and when we conceive a generalized hypothesis, are we supposed to do it from scientific or from brute facts? The clarification of these questions could lead to distinguish the part of construction and the part of translation in the first steps of science, which is essential to get a better understanding of Poincaré’s conception of science. (shrink)