I hear the president is on tape from months ago saying how dangerous the virus is, but that he didn’t want the public to know the facts (and protect themselves?). An impeachable offense, you say, if only his time wasn’t running out? He is also reported to have said that joining the military and possibly being killed or wounded is dumb. It’s the kind of thing losers do. And California has its worst wildfire in history as the globe keeps on warming. But I’m on a news vacation until November, so enough of that.

In May, I wrote about a philosopher, Michael Della Rocca, who argued in an interview that we should adopt monism, which I described as:

. . . the view that reality is somehow one thing; the universe doesn’t consist of many things (such as electrons and gluons, or apples and oranges). Neither does it consist of only a couple of things (like mind and matter).

I didn’t like his argument, which is why the post was called “Punished by a Philosopher”.

One of the things Prof. Della Rocca said was that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is crucial to understanding “rationalist” philosophers like Spinoza and Leibniz, and presumably Descartes, their predecessor:

Rationalism can mean lots of different things to different people, but for me the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR) is central to rationalism. The PSR is the principle according to which there are no brute facts that obtain or no things that exist without an explanation. That is, each thing or each fact has an explanation. The PSR is the guiding force of Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s work. . . 

I was reminded of Prof. Della Rocca’s interview when I read an interview with another philosopher at the same site. John Carriero is also an expert on the rationalist philosophers. He doesn’t think the Principle of Sufficient Reason is as fundamental as Della Rocca does:

You ask about the secondary literature. I think scholars have become increasingly sensitive to the role that the First Principle Theory is playing in early modern rationalism. I think there sometimes remains a tendency, perhaps out of a principle of charity, to try to work around the First Principle Theory and extract something that feels less alien.

For example, sometimes scholars are more comfortable working with a (what seems to me ungrounded) “principle of sufficient reason”—or some other disembodied form of “rationality”—than thinking in terms of a really existing First Principle that is ultimate the universe’s intelligibility. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz do hold that reality is deeply intelligible, but that’s because reality originates in a First Principle with certain features, and, for them, the intelligibility of the universe bottoms out in the First Principle’s essence. 

I don’t think Prof. Carriero denies that the rationalist philosophers endorsed the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Unlike Della Rocca, however, he just thinks philosophers like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz believed there was something more fundamental. He calls it their (or a) “First Principle”.

I’m not 100% certain that I understand what this First Principle is supposed to be. But somebody named Uma who posts on the internet may have part of the explanation:

Aristotle defined a first principle as “the first basis from which a thing is known”.

A First Principle is a basic, essential, foundational truth that is “known by nature.” It is not an assumption or deduction based on another theory or supposition. A key element of First Principle thinking is that just because something is “known by nature” or true in the universe does not mean it has ever been articulated and described by humans.

Here’s what Corriera says about the rationalists’ First Principle in response to the interviewer (Richard Marshall aka 3:16):

3:16:  I think you position Descartes’ radical thinking in terms of a philosophical theology. So what’s the place of philosophical theology in Descartes’ work? You say something surprising (to me at least) when you say that it was probably more important to Descartes than it was to Aquinas! How come?

JC: Let’s think of philosophical theology as the theory of the universe’s First Principle: whether the universe has a First Principle, and, if so, the nature and character of that First Principle.

For Aquinas, First Principle Theory is the culmination of philosophy, what philosophy leads to. Each of the arguments for the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae —the so-called Five Ways—is based on each of the Aristotelian four causes . . .  Before you embark on philosophical theology you need to have studied the natural world, and learned what change or motion is, learned about . . . what form and matter are, and learned about the four causes and how they are related. So, for Aquinas, not only it is possible to do a lot of philosophy before you get to First Principle Theory, it is necessary to do so.

Descartes reverses this. A large part of the Meditations project is to position us as knowers within the universe, and for him that project is inextricable from philosophical theology. This means more than ticking off the “God exists” and “God is not a deceiver” boxes. It means understanding our position: this involves understanding what the First Principle is . . . , the nature of our dependence on God, how error enters a universe authored by a supremely perfect being, and, finally, seeing how all Scientia [knowledge] depends on the recognition of God. Descartes views the need to orient ourselves in this way as a sort of propaedeutic [preparatory study] that has to come before other disciplines; and so, for him, First Principle Theory does not come after natural philosophy, as it does for Aquinas.

But what is this First Principle? This is a long interview but I couldn’t find a precise definition. This comes closest:

[Descartes] thinks that Scientia requires a systematic understanding of our position as intellectual beings within the universe . . .  Achieving such an understanding involves knowing something about the First Principle of the universe (God), as the source of the universe’s intelligibility, the origin (or author) of our natures, and the Being that ultimately accounts for our minds’ being plugged into the universe’s order.

So, for the rationalist philosophers, the First Principle, apparently more fundamental than the Principle of Sufficient Reason, is God — or rather what the existence of God as a perfect being and creator of the universe means, as far as we human beings are concerned.

I think this makes a lot of sense. I don’t mean it makes sense for our intellectual starting point to be a perfect creator of the universe. I mean it makes sense that certain 17th century philosophers had that starting point. The rationalists began with their understanding of God and went on from there. Their writings are more understandable if they had God as their intellectual bedrock. It explains why God shows up in their arguments, sometimes seemingly out of the blue (like the most wonderful deus ex machina there could possibly be). Having this kind of philosophical/theological perspective explains why they rely on their understanding of God to justify so many other beliefs. 

Prof. Corriera’s view does explain a passage from Spinoza that he cites. Spinoza argues that empirically-minded philosophers or theologians who begin with the natural world and then draw conclusions about God have it backwards:

For the divine nature, which [philosophers like Aristotle and his followers, as well as, presumably, later philosophers as well] should have considered before all else—it being prior both in cognition and in Nature—they have taken to be last in the order of cognition, and the things that are called objects of sense they have taken as prior to everything. Hence it has come about that in considering natural phenomena, they have completely disregarded the divine nature. And when thereafter they turned to the contemplation of the divine nature, they could find no place in their thinking for those fictions on which they had built their natural science, since these fictions were of no avail in attaining knowledge of the divine nature. So it is little wonder that they have contradicted themselves on all sides. (Ethics, 2p10s)

The professors can argue whether God or the Principle of Sufficient Reason was more fundamental for the rationalist philosophers. Did God make things so that everything happens for a reason? Or does that fact that everything happens for a reason explain God’s presence and proclivities?

Or is there no God and stuff happens for no reason at all? That may be too cynical a view, but it’s definitely in the running.

By the way, I’m 100% certain the professors would agree that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz would all recommend making every effort to vote for Democrats this year. God or no God, it’s the only rational thing to do.