What Is a Brute Fact? (Quick Philosophy Guide)

[@dr.tafazzi]

I'm really enjoying this series, keep it up!

[@PhilosophyforthePeople]

@@dr.tafazzi thank you!

[@JH_Phillips]

Could you do a video on PSR and how an intelligent person could deny it? (Steel man the case then offer your view?)

[@PhilosophyforthePeople]

Will consider it, for sure. Thanks for the idea.

[@PerisaSekondo]

@@PhilosophyforthePeople and if you can include the part on how it relates to principle of causality it would be great. Your book is really good, congrats!

[@yadurajdas532]

So much polarity of opinion in philosophy can only proof that there is true in both positions We will have embraced a conclusion that reconciles all contradictions We are simultaneously determined and free

[@PerisaSekondo]

Pat, in your article on Substack on cosmological arguments you state the following regarding justification problem and explanatory principles used in the arguments: "There are various ways to motivate these explanatory principles... Some arguments appeal to self-evidence or common sense, others to inference to the best explanation, and still others use dialectical strategies to show the catastrophic consequences of denying such principles (for example, leading to empirical skepticism or undermining scientific knowledge). Some thinkers even believe that denying these principles leads to contradiction." Is Barry Miller's argument commited to the last kind of defense (denying=contradiction)? Feser's seems to be commited to PSR as a strongest defense of the principle of causality and I don't know how Kerr justifies it.

[@PhilosophyforthePeople]

@@PerisaSekondo no, that isn’t exactly Miller’s approach. He doesn’t try to defend the usual casual principle/PSR at all. He shows how to run a cosmological argument entirely without it. However, I think as a *result* of his approach, you wind up with PSR. Feser does defend PSR through a variety of means, similar in approach to Pruss & Koons.

[@trevorgiroux7784]

Do you think that we can avoid brute facts regarding similarity between things? I like the Aristotelian view that distinct substances are similar because they have substantial or accidental forms that ground the similarity, but I think at some point the similarity has to be brute. For example my prime matter and your prime matter are both similar in their ability to be informed by form but they do not share a form that makes them similar. Or a form in the category substance and a form in the category quantity can both inform matter but once again there is nothing common to the category substance or category quantity that can ground that similarity.

[@shlamallama6433]

Thoughtful Points

[@soupeverywhere9565]

Pruss defends Libertarian Free Will while still affirming the PSR? That's absolutely fascinating. What work does Pruss examine Liberterian Free Will & PSR?

[@PhilosophyforthePeople]

@@soupeverywhere9565 Several places but you might want to start with his PSR: A Reassessment book.

[@benquinneyiii7941]

It’s given in the problem

[@ericb9804]

A "brute fact" is how naive empiricists refer to "The Myth of the Given" when they don't understand why the linguistic turn happened in late 20th century philosophy.

[@ferreus]

I don't understand why the universe as a whole would be the most fundamental aspect of reality, or whatever (and thus be the thing that could be a brute fact that the rest is derived from). The universe as a whole is the unity that is the absolutely most loosely united and arbitrary unit. Like the set of 3 bananas in China and a gnome in Andromeda, but much much worse.

[@PhilosophyforthePeople]

Certainly many people share your perspective!