Infinite regress vs. brute fact
Reader Paul Beke answered my latest call for comments and questions. Paul wrote that he finds some infinities intuitively acceptable, such as the infinite stretch of time from now into the endless future. (Even the cosmological “heat death” hypothesis implies an infinite future in which the universe always approaches, but never reaches, a state of maximum entropy.)
But other infinities Paul finds intuitively awkward, including an infinite regress of prior causes (i.e., explanations) and an infinite regress of ontological levels, both of which I defend in my book. I’ll address them here briefly.
First, accepting an infinite future commits you, as I’ve argued, to accepting an infinite past. (Moreover, those philosophers who reject the possibility of an infinite past do so on faulty grounds, as I explain in section 4.1 of my book.) An infinite past has room for infinitely many prior causes. I’ll grant that without a first-ever cause, the universe can’t have got started. But that’s the point. The universe never got started; it was always going, a claim that’s consistent with all known scientific data.
Second, all known scientific data permit an infinite regress of ontological levels in which every physical thing depends on smaller things.
Importantly, the only noncircular alternative to an infinite explanatory or ontological regress is a brute fact. (Circular explanations are nonstarters. In section 4.2 of my book, I rebut the objection that infinite explanatory regresses are circular explanations in disguise.) By definition, a brute fact exists for no reason at all. In our practical affairs, we reject the existence of brute facts. I know of no good theoretical reason to accept them either, and in the entire edited volume Brute Facts (Oxford, 2018), I found not a single good argument that they exist.
If contemplating an infinite explanatory or ontological regress feels to you like falling endlessly through the void, then contemplating a brute fact should feel like slamming into an obstacle that has no reason to be there.
