I have a number of times over my career claimed that in the ordinary course of life, we don’t take seriously the hypothesis that something we can’t find an explanation for has no explanation.
Well, I now had an opportunity for observing what happens psychologically to me when I can’t find an explanation.
A couple of days ago, my wife found a significant pool of water in the morning on the top surface of our clothes dryer. When I looked at it, it was like 250ml or more. If it were on the floor or on the washer, I would expect it was from a washer-related leak. If our clothes dryer had a water connection for steaming clothes, a leak would make sense (ChatGPT 3.5 suggested this hypothesis). If the quantity were lower, it could easily be from wet clothes put carelessly on top of the dryer or condensation. If there was wetness in the cabinets above the dryer, it would likely be a leak in one of the many containers of cleaning, photo-developing and other chemicals stored there. If the ceiling showed a discoloration above the dryer, it would be a leak from upstairs. If the liquid smelled, it might be urine from the cat sneaking in.
But none of these apply, to the point where my best four explanations are all hard to believe:
a family member sleepwalking with a glass of water, wandering into the laundry room, spilling the water, and walking away,
God doing a miracle just to impress on me that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in my natural philosophy,
a very precisely aimed horizontal leak from one of the faucets in the room, none of which are above the dryer (the next morning, there were slight leaks in two faucets in the room, but the leaks were a non-directional wetness rather than a jet aimed at a precise target).
a family member spilling water (from what?) on the dryer and forgetting all about it.
(A plumber called in for the faucet leaks could think of no explanation, except to note that there are many plumbing problems given our current Texas freeze.)
What is my psychology about this? I can’t get myself to believe any of (a)–(d), or even their disjunction. I find myself strongly pulled to just forget the event, to pretend to myself that the event was but a dream, and it now seems to me that that is one way in which we cope with unexplained events. But of course my wife remembers the event, and I can’t get myself to take seriously the idea that we both had the same dream (plus there was no waking up after it—after we cleaned up the spill, I launched into other activities rather than finding myself back in bed).
What about this option?
- The event has an explanation: it violates the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
I also can’t take (e) seriously. But do I take (e) less seriously than the options in (a)–(d)? Speaking of subjective feelings, I don’t think I feel much more incredulous about (e) than about (a)–(d).
So what do I really think? I guess:
- There is a mundane explanation and I am not smart enough to think of it.
18 comments:
Do you have a cat?
We do have a cat.
I ask this because our cat had a problem with her blatter and she urinated all over the place. Normally it was very smelly, but sometimes it looked a lot like water and it did not have a ery distinctive smell.
Now, concerning your claim that in the ordinary course of life, we don’t take seriously the hypothesis that something we can’t find an explanation for has no explanation.
I think that is true, but that does not help as aan argument for the PSR. Hardly anyone who doubts the PSR would think that in the ordinary course of life there are really inexplicable things. The inexplicable thing is at the very edge of existence.
Things do not come from nothing. Therefore there has always been something, but since this something cannot be proved to be necessary, there is nothing wrong with calling it a brute fact that has no explanation.
That's my view anyway.
An interesting paradox with brute facts is that it seems one COULD use them as a quasi-explanation in this case - say things COULD happen without cause or explanation objectively. If that were the case, and some concrete event or effect happens brutely, then if one accepted brute facts as a metaphysical possibility, one could then dispel one's uneasiness about the event by remembering that brute facts are also possible, and this could just be a brute fact.
If it is a brute fact, oh well. Just as one wouldn't feel amazed at a mystery if one KNEW the explanation, one also wouldn't feel amazed at a mystery if one KNEW it was a brute fact lacking an explanation, and that BFs happen for no reason totally unpredictably with nothing to expect from them one way or the other.
@Walter Something not coming from nothing seems to cause some confusion, as the term "nothing" is misunderstood sometimes. When theists say that something can't come from nothing, they generally mean something coming about with no cause or explanation doing so, or things coming about on their own self-causedly, or that "nothing" isn't a metaphysical reality with causal powers that could somehow generate something new from itself, and it's literally a LACK of potency or power because it is NO thing.
Parmenidians however take that term to mean that it's impossible for potency to become actuality because they think potency isn't a reality unto itself but sheerly NO thing at all. Or that it's impossible for there to be an objective state of affairs where a transition happens between a given entity not existing and then fully existing. In other words, it's impossible for something that doesn't exist to then start existing, so there can be no transition between not existing and existing, for anything.
A converse of this would be that nothing that actually exists could strictly speaking STOP existing altogether. Just as coming into existence absolutely speaking is impossible, so too is the ceasing to exist absolutely speaking. Such a parmenidian-like view would basically imply that the existence of any of the things that DO actually exist is metaphysically necessary, because it's impossible for there to be a state of affairs where a possibility of X existing gets actualised such that there is a transition from not existing to fully existing, and it's also impossible for there to be a state of affairs where an actually existing X gets annihilated from existence to non-existence.
But this would ALSO have interesting consequences for the idea of brute facts - if the universe has always existed and doesn't have a temporal starting point, then it's not like the eternal universe could CEASE existing at any point. But it also couldn't have been a possibility that just so happens to have been actualised with no cause or explanation. It's not as if the eternal universe exists but only brutely - the very fact of it's existence wouldn't be a TEMPORAL TRANSITION from non-being to being, but would still be a state of affairs that is distinguished from nothing at all existing. And that difference between nothing at all existing and the eternal universe existing can still be viewed as a "transition" insofar as the actual existence of isn't necessary, and could not have obtained. The fact that it obtains is from nothing - it is simply the fact that it exists as opposed to not existing. And that simple non-temporally-transitive fact is still something existing at all from nothing.
And so I don't think this position is compatible with affirming brute facts - one would have to affirm that the existence of an eternal universe is metaphysically necessary, and so not a brute fact.
Wesley
The eternal universe is only necessary dit is impossible for nothing to exist.
So, until I have seen a convincing argument against the possibility of nothing at all existing, I refuse to call any concrete being necessary.
Walter:
The door of the laundry room is kept closed. Occasionally the cat sneaks in while we're getting in, but then since we close the door, the cat gets closed in the laundry, and next time we come into the laundry room we see her there. I don't think anybody saw the cat there. Nor have we had any urine issues with the cat before.
Well, it probably wasn't the cat then.
Walter saying its impossible for nothing to exist is like saying its impossible for me to have zero dollars in my bank account.
Michael
So, I gather you don 't think it's impossible for nothing to exist?
Norm:
The quantity of water was sufficiently large that it would be surprising that there was no sign of any sort on the ceiling if it came from there.
You have no idea how relatable this is. As someone who read your work on the PSR in a formative period of my life, it's my first thought when something inexplicable happens. Often I have these mini-philosophical crises when objects disappear from rooms when I distinctly remember leaving them there. Often, I conclude that since the PSR mustn't be violated, I have encountered the first instance in history of an object spontaneously quantum tunneling to a great distance (possible if all the atoms tunnel simultaneously, but unimaginably rare). After concluding that I've witnessed the first large scale long distance tunneling incident, I lament why it had to be me to lose my belongings to it. Usually my items turn up somewhere else (usually).
What do you make of this response given by a friend of mine to one of your defenses of the PSR. You argue that we should accept a limited causal principle. We should accept that, for the things in our experience, they have explanations. But, you claim, there's no non-arbitrary way to restrict the causal principle to just the things in our experience. My friend claims that there is no such strong causal principle, but instead just a principle of parsimony. We should posit less fundamental stuff, so we should think the ordinary things in our experience have explanations. This is not guaranteed, but it is overwhelmingly more likely.
DUIC:
Couldn't that principle also be used to run the cosmological argument? Consider the following two views:
(i) There is a fundamental necessary being, which causally explains the existence of contingent concrete objects.
(ii) The existence of contingent concrete objects is unexplained.
(i) seems to be more parsimonious than (ii): after all, it posits less fundamental stuff! (I suppose one could have a view on which the fundamental being which explains everything else isn't necessary, but all the same, parsimony seems to push us towards a view on which one fundamental entity explains everything else.)
James Reilly.
Yeah, that will be a reason why positing an explanation of contingent reality is better. But if one doesn't find the idea of a necessary being independently plausible, then they'll just take the parsimony hit
Alex, the same thing happened to me--except the light fixture in the laundry room had water in it. I took apart the fixture, opened the panel behind the upstairs bathroom, and checked the roof for leaks. Dry as a bone. Months later, I asked my son if he'd ever filled the bathtub full enough to reach the trip lever for the drain. That was it. PSR saved.
This morning I was sitting on the stairs, and then got up and some time later I saw a puddle on the stairs. I had a water bottle in my pocket that apparently wasn't sufficiently closed. Maybe someone went into the laundry room, put down a water bottle they were holding on top of the dryer, did whatever they needed to, picked it back up, and never noticed the puddle. I can't think of any particular suspect for this, but it could happen without anybody remembering.
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