Answering two questions
My earlier request for comments and questions generated just the stimulating feedback I hoped it would. Thank you, readers! I plan future posts based on this feedback, which I hope I’ll continue to receive.
My last post discussed the argument from section 4.4 of my book that the universe ‒ i.e., concrete reality ‒ must be ontologically bottomless. Today I take up two questions that Paul Beke raised in an email about that post. First: “Wouldn’t I need to understand every item in an infinite regress for it to help me much in understanding reality?” Happily, no. The concept of explanation allows us to answer “Why A?” with “Because B” even if we can’t yet answer “Why B?” Our understanding of the universe will always be finite, but we understand much already and seem well-placed to understand much more. Importantly, because no entities are fundamental, we never have to take “No reason” for an answer. There’s always a reason why something is the way it is, even if we have no guarantee that we’ll always find the reason.
Second, Paul asks, “Does the Principle of Sufficient Reason imply that logic has an infinite regress of metaphysical underpinnings, or does logic fit your troubling metaphor of something resting on nothing?” The answer is closer to the first of those. Unlike concrete reality, logic is abstract and has no physical structure. So logic contains no endless regress of entities that are literally composed of smaller entities. Instead, logic consists of abstract principles. Nevertheless, logic satisfies PSR’s requirement that every well-posed question about logic must have an answer other than “Just because.” These well-posed questions include “Why can’t a contradiction be true?” I see no reason why there can’t be infinitely many such questions.
