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The principle of sufficient reason in a cosmological context

שו”תCategory: faithThe principle of sufficient reason in a cosmological context
asked 6 years ago

In the first book, p. 252, the Rabbi explains why the principle of sufficient reason is “rather weak in the cosmological context and becomes more pronounced in the physico-theological context,” because in the cosmological context it only asks why the world exists at all, while in the physical context the question is why the world has this particular complexity.
Does the Rabbi intend to claim that, in addition to the very weakness of the cosmological argument (as already explained in the second conversation dealing with it), the principle of sufficient reason that relates to it has an additional weakness? Does the Rabbi believe that the question “Why is there anything at all and nothing” is not a strong enough question?
Apart from this, the question of why the world exists precisely as it does (the principle of sufficient reason in the physical context) can be answered by the theory of multiple universes (although it can always be said that Occam’s razor requires preferring one god over many universes), while the question of why there is anything at all (a principle, etc. in the cosmological context) seemingly has no answer.


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מיכי Staff answered 6 years ago
This is weaker than in physicotheology. Why something exists at all is a good question, but why it is the way it is is a better question (here the space of possibilities is defined: other beings of all kinds could exist). Multiplicity can answer all these kinds of questions. There is a universe that exists and other universes that don’t. Another way to put it: if you wait a long time, then one of the possibilities, that something exists, can come true.

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