Some facts require explanation to us, others seem to just be (brute facts). Although I can’t (yet) pry into the mind of a crocodile, I have a hunch that it perceives everything (eg. the hatching of its eggs) as brute fact. It just doesn’t seem to have a brain complex enough to have the concept of an explanation. Nor would the crocodile be unjustified in not seeking an explanation. This means whether or not a fact requires explanation is a completely subjective thing: it depends only on the mind of the observer.
A more human example. When you leave a piece of meat out (without refrigeration) it becomes infested with maggots. Centuries ago, people didn’t think this needed explanation. They believed in spontaneous generation so to them it was perfectly natural to think of maggots as just coming from nothing. But as soon as we learned about the basic processes of life we’ve realised the maggots do need explanation. Again, before we knew this, it was quite justifiable to believe life “just happens” — it was our daily experience.
This relates to an argument for God that’s become quite common since the 20th century (related to the arguments of Cornelius Van Til but today favoured by theistic debate pundits like Dinesh D’Souza). It goes something like this: Christianity [you can insert another religion] asserts that the world is rational. Without a creator you would have no reason to expect the world to conform to laws or to be investigable. Therefore, the mere use of science/logic presupposes and requires a rational creator.
Like the ontological argument(s) something about this looks strangely compelling to the unfocussed eye. Of course there’s plenty wrong with it but I want to focus on the brute facts side of it. D’Souza is saying that we need God to explain the laws of logic or the existence of the laws of physics. To him it’s a fact that needs explanation. But I think if there are any facts left that should remain brute facts it would be these. There’s no reason to think the existence of natural laws needs explanation. For starters, what would a world where this wasn’t the case look like? Of course this is only relative to my mind but I think we can agree here — and even if like the maggots on meat we later find we do need an explanation, we’re still justified in not demanding one now.
There is an interesting counterargument to be made: historically facts almost always go from being brute facts in our mind to needing explanation. I can’t think of a single example where it went the other way (if you can please comment, I’d love to know). But even that doesn’t suggest the brute fact of natural law will be transformed in the future into something that needs explanation.
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[...] I posted about brute facts there was a little salmon of doubt gnawing away (which I mentioned in the post). It was a [...]
The fact that anything exists at all, instead of absolutely nothing, was previously thought to need an explanation, in terms of the existence of a necessary being. In these atheistic times, it is more likely to be taken as a brute fact
Artie, I agree completely this was one of the other related points that I should have mentioned but didn’t.
There’s a problem, which is that what we experience are brute facts. You bring up the natural laws, when natural laws are just based on particulars, which are what we experience. So all we’re doing is just explaining these brute facts of experience by general statements, like All swans are white. In fact, there are only particular objects like “This white swan”. That is just a brute fact that “This is a white swan”. Brute facts are particular “This is a white swan”, and these explanations are general “All swans are white”. You haven’t gone beyond brute facts, but turned a whole bunch of brute facts into general statements, which themselves are just brute facts.
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing — by brute fact I mean something that occurs in the world “just because” and not because of a particular thing. Are you saying there are no cases of some things causing other things (regardless of what natural laws we may come up with about these and how justified we may or may not be)?
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