I wish one could formulate and defend a version of explanatory finitism, roughly saying that nothing has infinitely many explanations or an infinite chain of explanations, even if these explanations are not causal (causal finitism of course rules out the causal case). But it seems hard to do so. There do seem to be counterexamples to explanatory finitism. Here some I’m thinking about right now:
Why are there infinitely many primes? Because there are infinitely many primes bigger than two. Why are there infinitely many primes bigger than two? Because there are infinitely many primes bigger than three. And so on.
Alice has just gone to heaven. Why is she going to experience a day of bliss? Because she will have a day of bliss tomorrow. And also because she will have a day of bliss the day after tomorrow. And also because she will have a day of bliss the day after that. And so on.
Alice has just gone to heaven. Why is she going to experience bliss on every future day? Partly because she will have bliss tomorrow. And partly because she will have bliss the day after tomorrow. And so on.
No comments:
Post a Comment