Talk:Principle of sufficient reason

message: The introduction claims the principle to be "controversial" but does not say how. There is nothing further on this. What are the criticisms of the principle? 
Delunaluno (talk) 08:39, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's obviously controversial since it is widely disputed, but that information has been dropped from this extremely POV article. Asking "how" some (sweeping, baseless) assertion is controversial doesn't make sense. The obvious criticism is that it need not be valid. The burden of proof is on those who claim the the PSR holds. -- 72.205.126.89 (talk)  — Preceding undated comment added 07:51, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  What controversy? 

message: I substantially changed the formulation section. Although the previous version contained a scholarly reference, it seemed both overly opaque and wandering. I also think the reasons/causes distinction is important. Perhaps the formulation section does not fit as well now with the rest of the article, but maybe someone else can help with that.Pascal's Revenge 03:58, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Principle of Sufficient Reason 

message: It is a scholarly esoteric thingy. The opening sentence would lead one to believe that everything is because of Gottfried Leibniz. Now I know he was a bright lad but that seems to be giving him a bit too much credit.
--83.70.241.121 23:48, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whooaaa 

message: <From Principle of Sufficient Reason—"Thus the sufficient reason, which needs no other reason, must be outside this series of contingent things, and must be found in a substance which is its cause, and which is a necessary being, carrying the reason of its existence with itself. Otherwise, we would not yet have a sufficient reason where one could end the series.]"
From Matthew Stewart's The Courier and the Heretic 2006; 
0393058980; p.160—Things Happen Necessarily: 
 
:[1] Spinoza deduces many things from his concept of G-D, but one in particilar deserves mention for its central role in subsequent controversies. In Spinoza's world, everything that happens, happens necessarily. One of the most notorious propositions of the Ethics is 1P3: "Things could not have been produced by G-D in any manner or in any order different from that which in fact exists". This is a logical inference from the proposition that the relation of G-D to the world is something like that of an essence to its properties {circle to roundness}: G-D cannot one day decide to do things differently any more than a circle can choose not to be round, or a mountain can forswear the valley that forms on its side. The view that there is a "necessary" aspect of things may be referred to by the sometimes inappropriate name of "determinism:"  
:[2] Of course, Spinoza acknowledges, in the world we see around us, many things seem to be contingent—or merely possible, and not necessary. That is, it seems that things don't have to be the way that they are: the earth might never have formed; this book might never have been published; and so on. In fact, Spinoza goes on to say, every particular thing in the world is contingent when considered solely with respect to its own nature. In technical terms, he says that "existence" pertains to the essence of nothing—save G-D. Thus, at some level, Spinoza stands for the opposite of the usual caricature of the determinist as reductivist, for, according to his line of thinking, we humans are never in a position to understand the complete and specific chain of causality that gives any individual thing its necessary character; consequently, we will never be in a position to reduce all phenomena to a finite set of intelligible causes, and all things must always appear to us to be at some level radically free. (In this sense, incidentally, he should count as a radical empiricist.) In somewhat less technical terms, we could say that, from a human point of view, everything must always seem contingent; even though from a divine or philosophical point of view, everything is nonetheless necessary. From the philosophical point of view—and only from the philosophical point of view—the distinction between possibility and actuality vanishes: if something may be, it is; if it may not be, it is not.
Yesselman 16:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Things Happen Necessarily 

message: How about tossing us a source or two? Alcmaeonid 14:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources? 

message: Would the fact that the continuum hypothesis is provably untrue not be an argument against the principle of sufficient reason (namely point 3 in the article). Surely, there must be this countering viewpoint in the logic/mathematics community. — metaprimer (talk) 21:22, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm by no means an expert in set theory, but I do know the impossibility of proof and disproof of CH in ZFC (which is the "standard" set of axioms of set-theory. But anyways, your argument still applies: If one can't prove or disprove CH, then doesn't that violate the principle of sufficient reason? I think we need to have in mind here that principle of sufficient is concerned with physical phenomena, and not mathematical constructs. For example, Gödel's incompleteness theoremss, namely the first, show that a statement formulated with some theory can be true, yet unprovable using the axioms from that theory. Goldencako 00:08, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The continuum hypothesis is not provably untrue, so your proposition has no bearing on the principle. See the CH article.68.34.210.83 (talk) 19:08, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continuum Hypothesis, etc. 

message: According to the article, Anaximander was the originator of the principle. This should be explained because Leucippus is a very strong candidate to be the first to publicly state the principle of sufficient reason. Leucippus wrote: "Nothing happens at random, but everything from reason and by necessity." What were Anaximander's words regarding this topic?Lestrade (talk) 19:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Priority

message: The article doesn't contain any hint about critiques of PSR, which are quite widespread in contemporary philosophy. See here:
The article is from the Metaphilosophy Journal, which is scholarly and renowned in the branch of metaphilosophy and philosophy.
It criticises and tries to defend various versions of PSR, using extensive quotations from other scholarly sources. 
In my view,  it should be mentioned here. 
Kind Regards, Critto (talk) 00:08, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. This article is a theist playground and is in very poor extreme POV shape. Gregory Chaitin has formally proved that there are mathematical facts that are true for no reason. If something can be true for no reason in mathematics, then surely something can be true for no reason in the physical world. The PSR is asserted without any basis for it. There's a section of the article that claims it's been proven, but it's poorly written and devoid of citations. -- 72.205.126.89 (talk) 07:57, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Could you provide a citation of Chaitin's proof? Do you mean Chaitin's incompleteness theorem? - Jochen Burghardt (talk) 16:46, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: The sentence "[The Principle of Sufficient Reason] is a powerful and controversial philosophical principle stipulating that everything must have a reason or cause" is taken verbatim from [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/ 
The SEP entry on the principle of sufficient reason]. Is this acceptable?
SchipholAirport (talk) 14:00, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not acceptable. I don't like the "powerful and controversial" part, so I'll take that out, and I don't like the definition as it starts out with a double negative, so I'll keep just the end of the sentence as it states the "principle" in the affirmative. The other alternative is to footnote it. Bill Wvbailey (talk) 14:19, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text taken from the SEP