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Topic: Principle of sufficient reason

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	Principle of indifference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The principle of indifference is meaningless under the frequency interpretation of probability, in which probabilities are relative frequencies rather than degrees of belief in uncertain propositions, conditional upon a state of information.
		The principle of insufficient reason was its first name, given to it by later writers, possibly as a play on Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason.
		The "Principle of insufficient reason" was renamed the "Principle of Indifference" by the economist John Maynard Keynes, who was careful to note that it applies only when there is no knowledge indicating unequal probabilities.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Principle_of_indifference (1573 words)

	Principle of sufficient reason - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		In fact Leibniz had a more nuanced and characteristic version of the principle, in which the contingent was admitted on the basis of infinitary reasons, to which God had access but humans did not.
		Without this qualification, the principle can be seen as a description of a certain notion of closed system, in which there is no 'outside' to provide unexplained events with causes.
		The principle was one of the four recognised laws of thought, that held a place in European pedagogy of logic and reasoning (and, to some extent, philosophy in general) in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Principle_of_Sufficient_Reason (329 words)

	PHIL 195 #2 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-19)
		The purpose of this story is to illustrate the principle of sufficient reason, which states that there is some sort of explanation, known or unknown, for everything that exists, regardless of its size, age, or location.
		Taylor then states that from the principle of sufficient reason, it naturally follows that there must be a reason for the existence of everything in the world.
		Due to the principle of sufficient reason, the something on which the world is dependent must also be either contingent or necessary.
	www.nd.edu /~pradkows/ndwork/phil1952.html (609 words)

	Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea
		The physical form of the principle of sufficient reason is the principle of becoming.
		The mathematical form of the principle of sufficient reason is the principle of being.
		The moral form of the principle of sufficient reaosn is the principle of acting.
	www.angelfire.com /md2/timewarp/schopenhauer.html (2810 words)

	Marcelo Dascal: The Balance of Reason
		The main thesis of this paper is that Leibniz’s encompassing rationalism, as expressed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason (as in the formula nihil est sine ratione: Grua 13, 267, 268, etc.), requires a substantial modification of the conception of Reason usually attributed to Leibniz.
		The reason for “existence” (in a broad sense, applied to both necessary and contingent “things”), he claims, is always a comparative matter, a matter of the existing thing having “more reason” to exist than other things that might exist instead of it (Grua 303).
		At times Leibniz seems to come close to such a view, as when, after affirming that the PSR is a principle “divinely implanted in our mind and confirmed by both reason and experience”, he adds the ominous cautionary phrase: “to the extent that we can penetrate things” (Grua 304).
	www.tau.ac.il /humanities/philos/dascal/papers/berlin.html (3110 words)

	Discussion of Principle of Sufficient Reason
		The reason that this principle is so signficant is, to put it very simply, that we believe that anything that is has a reason why it is, and that with either sufficient reflection and/or investigation (depending upon whether you are an empiricist or rationalist or some mixture) we can always, in principle, grasp that reason.
		And because of this, he rejects the Wollfians reduction of the principle of sufficient reason to the principle of contradiction.
		From: (Judy Wubnig) jwubnig@watarts.uwaterloo.ca The phrase translated as "the principle of sufficient reason" is from Leibniz.
	hume.ucdavis.edu /mattey/kant/PSR.HTM (1131 words)

	Mind, Cosmology, and Sufficient Reason
		But if she told you that there was no reason for the noise, that the car could be in exactly the same shape it is in now and the noise not occur, you would not accept that claim.
		It would appear the naturalist is committed only to PSR* in her views on materialism and compatibilism -- a principle that would not require her, on pain of inconsistency, to postulate a cause for the beginning of the universe.
		This, coupled with its usefulness elsewhere in philosophy and science, as well as the contention that it is a presupposition of reason, lead to the conclusion that it is more rational to assume that there is a sufficient reason for the beginning of the universe than to deny it.
	www.utexas.edu /cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/ntse/papers/Sennett.html (7151 words)

	Leibniz's Monadology
		Leibniz explains that reason is governed by two main principles: the principle of contradiction, and the principle of sufficient reason.
		Truths of reason have their sufficient reason in being opposed to the contradictoriness and logical inconsistency of propositions which deny them.
		The actions of some monads are a sufficient reason for the reactions of other monads.
	www.angelfire.com /md2/timewarp/leibniz.html (942 words)

	God's Existence and Nature by Seth Brotherton
		Principle of contradiction -- something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same aspect.
		Thus to deny the principle of sufficient reason would be to implicitly deny the principle of contradiction.
		This is contrary to the principle of sufficient reason, for every transition from potency to act must have a sufficient reason.
	www.bringyou.to /apologetics/p21.htm (1961 words)

	Lectures on Immanuel Kant
		The principle of contradiction states that what is contradictory is false, and that the opposite of the false is the true.
		For they imply that any alleged principle of sufficient reason is based on experience, in which objects of one kind are found to be associated with objects of another.
		The principle of substance is that every change is the change of the properties of a substance (which rules out the coming-to-be or passing away of any substance).
	www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu /mattey/phi023/kantLEC.HTM (7001 words)

	Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-19)
		sufficient reason, with its criterion of compossibility as
		This is the scholastic principle of Ockham, “enti-
		principle of plenitude is manifest in this temporal
	etext.lib.virginia.edu /cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-45 (7536 words)

	A DEFENSE OF A PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON, by Quentin Smith
		A sufficient reason for the truth of a contingent and positive proposition p is another proposition q that meets two conditions; (i) q explains why p is true, (ii) q entails p, in the sense of relevance logic.
		This is reasonably regarded as false since some things, such as virtual particles that begin to exist in a quantum mechanical vacuum, begin to exist without a sufficient reason.
		The reason for this is not that a necessary truth cannot be a sufficient reason for there being contingent truths.
	www.qsmithwmu.com /a_defense_of_a_principle_of_sufficient_reason.htm (4013 words)

	How to Refute Principles of Sufficient Reason
		In one version or another, PSR is presupposed in certain fundamental philosophical arguments, including perhaps most famously an argument for the existence of God -- the First-Cause or Cosmological Argument -- as well as arguments to the effect that there must always be something science and reason cannot explain.
		The sufficient reasons they postulate are supposed to be logically sufficient for the explained states of affairs.
		For according to PSRs, the statement T of the sufficient reason is supposed to be true, and the sufficient reasons are supposed to be logically sufficient, so that T entails the statement S of what is to be explained.
	www.vanderbilt.edu /~postjf/psr.htm (1553 words)

	Phl 356: Lecture #6
		For the medievals' principle of causality, Taylor substitutes the principle of sufficient reason.
		Taylor's Principle of Sufficient Reason states that for every positive truth, there is a reason why it is so, rather than not.
		It seems to reasonable to suppose that there is such a thing as the inertia of existence: what has been existing tends to continue to exist.
	www.utexas.edu /cola/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/356/lec6.html (2237 words)

	PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
		{ 1 } - is not based on the principle of sufficient reason.
		An infinite regress in creators created by another would not be a sufficient explanation of why anything existed, for an infinite series of explanations or causes is not an explanation.
		If the world always existed, (a possibility that Aquinas does not think can be disproved by reason), there could be an infinite regress in time in accidental changers changed by another.
	academic.uofs.edu /faculty/pm363/apology/god---01.htm (565 words)

	PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
		{ 3 } - is based on the principle of non-contradiction.
		The principle of sufficient reason states that there must be an adequate explanation for every being or statement requires a first explanation, for an infinite regress in explanations is not an adequate explanation.
		If there can be an infinite regress in accidental changers, which would be the case if the world always existed (a possibility that Aquinas does not think can be disproved by reason), then there need be no first unchanged accidental changer in the world.
	academic.uofs.edu /faculty/PM363/apology/god---0a.htm (566 words)

	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz -- Metaphysics [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-19)
		Leibniz has many reasons for distinguishing monads from atoms - the easiest to understand is perhaps that while atoms are meant to be the smallest unit of extension out of which all larger extended things are built, monads are unrelated to extension (remember, space is an illusion).
		Rather, Leibniz insists that we must understand that power together with (i) the sufficient reason of that power; (ii) the determination of the action at a certain time and in a certain way; (iii) together with all the results of the action, first as the merely potential and then as the actual.
		The principle of change becomes an original, internal and active power of the thing constantly becoming the thing that it is, as the spontaneous happening and internal principle of the particular order of things which make up that substance.
	www.utm.edu /research/iep/l/leib-met.htm (10245 words)

	[No title]
		This principle is equivalent to his doctrine of truth, namely, that the truth of a proposition is dependent upon the connection among its terms, but that this connection itself has its foundation in the concepts of those terms.
		Thus, the principle of sufficient reason appears to be closely allied to the principle of identity.]
		So, if the reason for the existence of this universe is simply God, and God is a necessary existent, then this universe is a necessary existent, in which case we cannot be assured of Premise 3.
	sun.soci.niu.edu /~phildept/Kapitan/Leibcos2.htm (701 words)

	An Argument Against the Principle of Sufficient Reason
		It is, perhaps, a sufficient explanation of why it is likely that this house will be burglarized in any 5-year period, but it is at best a very impartial explanation of this particular burglary.
		A sufficient explanation is an explanation that provides a sufficient condition for the fact it explains.
		Loosely, she says that God stops a regress of reasons because God requires nothing else to explain his existence; God’s nature is a sufficient explanation of God’s existence.
	comp.uark.edu /~senor/ContraPSR.html (1320 words)

	[No title]
		A logical consequence of Leibniz’s approach is that there is no cause which is not a sine qua non cause, namely no matter of fact can have a different «way of producing» from the one it has (the opposite position had been held by Ockham and his followers).
		In his more mature works, in fact, he often prefers to see his PSR as a consequence of his analytical doctrine of truth («each true proposition can be proved a priori»), applying it to propositions more than to events or states of affairs.
		In other words, Leibniz’s first attempts with the PSR shows how deeply his Principle depends on the post-Ockham Scholastic discussions on causality and necessity, but it shows also how different were Leibniz’s final views with regard to his first ones.
	www.tau.ac.il /humanities/philos/leibniz/abstracts/piro.doc (664 words)

	Table of contents for The principle of sufficient reason
		Kant 70 Chapter 3 The CP and the PSR 77 3.1.
		The ex nihilo nihil principle, the PSR and the CP 101 3.3.
		The Principle of Disjunctive Causation 221 7.4.2.a The Principle 221 7.4.2.b First objection: Disputing the PDC's main claim 222 7.4.2.c Second objection: Denying indeterministic causation 223 7.4.2.d Objection three: Equivocation 224 7.5.
	www.loc.gov /catdir/toc/ecip0514/2005015857.html (856 words)

	principle of sufficient reason -- Encyclopædia Britannica
		One of the reasons for the durability of these concepts is that they helped make the modern corporation with its multiple divisions and...
		Oceanographers use the principle to calculate salinity, for example, by measuring the concentration of only one major ion in seawater, usually the chloride ion.
		Short note explaining the principle of Archimedes theorem, based on the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere.
	www.britannica.com /eb/article-9001317 (860 words)

	Leibniz on Space and Time
		One is an appeal to the Principle of Sufficient Reason; the other is an appeal to the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles.
		A sufficient reason is a reason; it is not a mere arbitrary choice.
		The principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles says that if there is no way, even in principle, to tell one thing from another, then the "two" things are just one.
	brindedcow.umd.edu /105/leibniz.html (1796 words)

	[No title]
		Yet, in virtue of the principle of sufficient reason, some suitable reason or other must prompt the divine decision of creating or failing to create; and, if that reason is a divine intention of taking such a decision, that divine intention will also have to have its own sufficient reason.
		To maintain that the principle of sufficient reason is contingent.
		Then the decision to create this world has as its own sufficient reason the decision to decide to create it; and this, in turn, has as its sufficient reason the decision of taking the decision to decide to create it; and so on, infinitely.
	www.sorites.org /lp/articles/historia/essexlei.htm (5421 words)

	Ask The Radical Academy - Page 2
		The Principle of Causality is an outgrowth of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, just as the latter is a development of the Principle of Identity and of the Principle of Contradiction.
		In consequence of this, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is equally self-evident: "Everything must have a sufficient reason to be what it is." If it had no sufficient reason for its existence and being, it would not exist.
		If a thing could exist without sufficient reason, it would exist (that is the supposition) and not exist at the same time (because it has no sufficient reason for its existence), and that would be in violation of the Principle of Contradiction.
	radicalacademy.com /askacademy2.htm (4456 words)

	[No title]
		Principle of Sufficient Reason: Nothing occurs without a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise.
		For every contingent thing, there must be a sufficient reason why it has come into existence.
		The Principle of Sufficient Reason demands total or final explanations for any particular thing.
	www.unc.edu /~theis/phil32/cosmo3.ppt (600 words)

	[No title]
		Explain how Leibniz uses this principle in defending his claims (i) that there is a God and (ii) that this is the best possible world.
		The most general statement is that for every truth there is a sufficient reason that can be used to explain why it is true.
		If a thing exists contingently, then the sufficient reason for that thing must be independent of it (since no contingent thing explains itself).
	sun.soci.niu.edu /~phildept/Kapitan/exam2key.html (957 words)

	S5
		In some ways, what philosophers know as the Principle of Sufficient Reason (from here on just "the Principle") is the easiest way to introduce our common sense intuitions about causation and about causal explanation.
		Now suppose some interlocutor asks, "Why does the sun rise?" Assuming the Principle to be true, we know that there must be some answer to this question, some explanation for the rising of the sun.
		One possibility is that A, B and C are in fact jointly sufficient for E. Her research is over; she has found the answer.
	eee.uci.edu /faculty/losh/research/S5.html (1529 words)

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