Hume’s Attack on the “Impious Maxim” as the Hidden Spine of the Critique

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-160
Author(s):  
Abraham Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Empirical Thought

Chapter 5 tests the proposal that it was Hume’s attack on the principle of sufficient reason that first interrupted Kant’s dogmatic slumber and set Kant on the path to the Critique by looking, in the Critique, for echoes of Enquiry 12.29 note (d). It finds such echoes in the Transcendental Ideal, the Postulates of Empirical Thought, the Analogies of Experience, and the Antinomy of Pure Reason. It seeks to explain how Enquiry 12.29 note (d) might have helped suggest the solution to the Antinomy, transcendental idealism. It discusses Boehm’s view that the Antinomy is a reply to Spinoza. Kant is indeed responding to Spinoza, but also to Clarke; his response to both is inspired by Hume.

Afterword

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-164
Author(s):  
Abraham Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Practical Metaphysics

The proposal that Hume woke Kant by challenging the principle of sufficient reason lets us understand why Kant saw Hume as an opponent of speculative theodicy, since speculative theodicy was grounded in that principle. It thereby also allows us to understand Kant’s turn to Rousseau, who “saved Providence,” and the turn from speculative to practical metaphysics that characterizes Kant’s critical philosophy. The difficulty people have had in understanding Kant’s account of how Hume roused him has to do with the fact that they wish to avoid his transcendental idealism, since that account implies that Hume woke him by putting him on the path to transcendental idealism. To understand the Critique, we must understand it as the “execution” of Hume’s problem understood as the problem of metaphysics.

scholarly journals Hume's Correlationism: On Meillassoux, Necessity and Belief

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-160
Author(s):  
Paul O'Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Sufficient Criterion ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Final Causes ◽  
The Way ◽  
Priori Knowledge

The article argues that Meillassoux's 'After Finitude' underestimates the nature and profundity of Hume's sceptical challenge; it neglects the fact that Hume's scepticism concerns final causes (and agrees fundamentally with Bacon and Descartes in this respect), and that in Hume even the operations of reason do not furnish entirely a priori knowledge. We contend that Hume himself institutes a form of correlationism (which in part showed Kant the way to counter the sceptical challenge via transcendental idealism), and sought not merely to abolish the 'principle of sufficient reason' but to salvage it in a weak form, in turning his attention to the grounds for our beliefs in necessity. We argue further that the 'mathematizability' of properties is not a sufficient criterion to yield realist, non-correlational knowledge, or to demonstrate the 'irremediable realism' of the 'ancestral' statement. Finally, we contend that Meillassoux himself relies on a certain 'Kantian moment' which exempts the reasoning subject from otherwise 'omnipotent' chaos, and that ultimately the 'speculative materialist' position remains exposed to the original Humean sceptical challenge. 

Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham Anderson
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
New View

Kant, Hume, and the Interruption of Dogmatic Slumber offers an interpretation of Kant’s “confession,” in the Prolegomena, that “it was the objection of David Hume that first, many years ago, interrupted my dogmatic slumber.” It argues that Hume roused Kant not, as has often been thought, by challenging the principle “every event has a cause” that governs experience, but by attacking the principle of sufficient reason, the basis of rationalist metaphysics and of the cosmological proof of the existence of God. This proposal makes it possible to reconcile Kant’s declaration about Hume with his later assertion that it was the Antinomy of pure reason that first woke him from dogmatic slumber, because the Antinomy, like Hume’s challenge, is directed against the dogmatic use of the principle of sufficient reason. The proposal put forward here also makes it possible to understand why Kant speaks of “the objection of David Hume” after mentioning Hume’s attack on metaphysics; for the “objection” that Kant has in mind, it is argued here, is a challenge to metaphysics, rather than to the foundations of empirical knowledge. This work also leads to a new view of Hume himself—as primarily interested not in the foundations of experience but in the problem of metaphysics. It thereby lets us see both Kant and Hume as champions of the Enlightenment in its struggle with superstition.

The Necessity of Sufficiency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce L. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Ontic Structural Realism ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
Quantum Phenomena

There is an argument for the existence of God from the incompleteness of nature that is vaguely present in Plantinga’s recent work. This argument, which rests on the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and the philosophical deficiency of necessitarian conceptions of physical law, deserves to be given a clear formulation. The goal is to demonstrate, via a suitably articulated principle of sufficient reason, that divine action in an occasionalist mode is needed (and hence God’s existence is required) to bring causal closure to nature and render it ontologically functional. The best explanation for quantum phenomena and the most adequate understanding of general providence turns out to rest on an ontic structural realism in physics that is grounded in the immaterialist metaphysics of theistic idealism.

The Provenance of Consciousness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Vision
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Material Base ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Intrinsic Nature ◽  
Fundamental Particles ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason

Unlike brute ‘entities’, if conscious states (c-states) are brute, it will be a consequence of their primitive—viz., not admitting further elaboration—connection to their material base, what is commonly known as emergence. One might suppose the chief challenge to emergence comes from various materialist counter-proposals. However, given the distinctive character of c-states, a class of critics describe even materialist reductions as objectionable forms of emergentism. Instead, their fallback position is a reinvigorated panpsychism: consciousness is the intrinsic nature of the most fundamental particles. In this chapter the author examines that form of panpsychism, tracing its roots to a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and to suggestions aired in Bertrand Russell’s struggles with the issue. He concludes that this panpsychism fails, leaving the field to materialism and emergentist dualism.

Being and Reason

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Lin
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Existence And Nonexistence ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Necessary Existence

In Being and Reason, Martin Lin offers a new interpretation of Spinoza’s core metaphysical doctrines with attention to how and why, in Spinoza, metaphysical notions are entangled with cognitive, logical, and epistemic ones. For example, according to Spinoza, a substance is that which can be conceived through itself, and a mode is that which is conceived through another. Thus, metaphysical notions, substance and mode, appear to be defined through a notion that is either cognitive or logical, being conceived through. What are we to make of the intimate connections that Spinoza sees between metaphysical, cognitive, logical, and epistemic notions? Or between being and reason? Lin argues against idealist readings according to which the metaphysical is reducible to or grounded in something epistemic, logical, or psychological. He maintains that Spinoza sees the order of being and the order of reason as two independent structures that mirror one another. In the course of making this argument, he develops new interpretations of Spinoza’s notions of attribute and mode, and of Spinoza’s claim that all things strive for self-preservation. Lin also argues against prominent idealist readings of Spinoza according to which the Principle of Sufficient Reason is absolutely unrestricted for Spinoza and is the key to his system. He contends, rather, that Spinoza’s metaphysical rationalism is a diverse phenomenon and that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is limited to claims about existence and nonexistence which are applied only once by Spinoza to the case of the necessary existence of God.

A restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the cosmological argument

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER R. PRUSS
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Quantum Mechanical ◽  
Cosmological Argument ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Restricted Version ◽  
Van Inwagen ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Peter Van Inwagen ◽  
Mechanical Phenomena

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) says that, necessarily, every contingently true proposition has an explanation. The PSR is the most controversial premise in the cosmological argument for the existence of God. It is likely that one reason why a number of philosophers reject the PSR is that they think there are conceptual counter-examples to it. For instance, they may think, with Peter van Inwagen, that the conjunction of all contingent propositions cannot have an explanation, or they may believe that quantum mechanical phenomena cannot be explained. It may, however, be that these philosophers would be open to accepting a restricted version of the PSR as long as it was not ad hoc. I present a natural restricted version of the PSR that avoids all conceptual counter-examples, and yet that is strong enough to ground a cosmological argument. The restricted PSR says that all explainable true propositions have explanations.

scholarly journals Metaphysical Rationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-181
Author(s):  
Martin Lin
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Identity Of Indiscernibles ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Limited Scope

This chapter explores the meaning of Spinoza’s Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR) and the role it plays in his system. Some commentators have argued that Spinoza’s PSR applies to every truth and that Spinoza relies on it in deriving a great deal of his system. Against such interpretations, this chapter argues that Spinoza’s PSR is restricted to existential truths and is applied only once by Spinoza, to the case of the existence of God. In making this case, it considers Spinoza’s arguments for necessitarianism, causal and conceptual dependence, and the identity of indiscernibles, and it concludes that none of them rely on the PSR. It further argues that the limited scope of Spinoza’s PSR is a philosophical advantage because a fully unrestricted PSR is an unattractive doctrine that creates demands for explanation that cannot be met.

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