Ontological wonder-sickness

'the never-resting clock of metaphysics'

1

‘Why Anything? Why This?’ is the title of Derek Parfit’s well known attempt, in 1998, to answer the Great Unanswerable Question: ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’.

I don’t suppose Parfit knew that his title was embedded word for word in something William James wrote in 1879:

‘… thought stands oscillating to and fro, wondering “Why was there anything but nonentity; why just this universal datum and not another?” and finds no end, in wandering mazes lost …. [I]t is just when the attempt to fuse the manifold into a single totality has been most successful, when the conception of the universe as a unique fact is nearest its perfection, that the craving for further explanation, the ontological wonder-sickness, arises in its extremest form. As Schopenhauer says, “The uneasiness which keeps the never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence.”’ [1]

This is from the extended version of ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’ [good title!] that James published in 1897. The wording in the original 1879 article is more ornate:

‘it is just when the attempt to fuse the manifold into a single totality has been most successful, when the conception of the universe as a fait unique (in D’Alembert’s words) is nearest its perfection, that the craving for further explanation, the ontological θαυμάζειν, arises in its extremest pungency’. [2]

2

Back in the last century I had an email exchange with David Deutsch in which he expressed his optimism about our ability to explain how things are. I asked him if I could include the last part of the exchange in a note about ‘ontological wonder-sickness’. He replied that he had no objection, adding ‘I don’t necessarily still agree with everything I said there’. The same goes for me.

From: Galen Strawson Date: 9 April 1997 18:43:08 GMT+01:00 To: David Deutsch Subject: Re: [No Subject]

… at what point will you accept the intrinsically inexplicable? When the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ is raised? Derek Parfit in All Souls is trying to set out possible substantive answers to this — but I’m not sure he’s getting very far.

From: "David Deutsch" Date: 11 April 1997 14:34:23 GMT+01:00 To: galen.strawson Subject: Re: [No Subject]

[at what point will you accept the intrinsically inexplicable?]

I don’t quite see how this is relevant, but speaking for myself, I don’t think that anything interesting is intrinsically inexplicable.

[When the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ is raised? Derek Parfit in All Souls is trying to set out possible substantive answers to this — but I’m not sure he’s getting very far.]

Interesting question though -- and therefore there must be an explanation!

From: Galen Strawson Date: 16 April 1997 17:18:54 GMT+01:00 To: David Deutsch Subject: Re: [No Subject]

Hello . .

[DD speaking for myself, I don’t think that anything interesting is intrinsically inexplicable.]

You sound very Leibnizian here (not a bad thing to be). But you might be forced to make it true by definition.

Many would say that the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ — which you admit to be interesting — cannot have an explanation [/answer].

From: "David Deutsch" Date: 17 April 1997 03:06:50 GMT+01:00 To: galen.strawson Subject: Re: [No Subject]

[GS Many would say that the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ - which you admit to be interesting - cannot have an explanation [/answer].]

*Cannot*? Well, unless they have a *very* watertight argument, they should bear in mind that almost everything important seems incomprehensible until it is understood. That is, one cannot see why it is comprehensible until one actually understands it.

— David

From: Galen Strawson Date: 22 April 1997 12:41:36 GMT+01:00 To: David Deutsch Subject: Re: [No Subject]

[DD Well, unless they have a *very* watertight argument, they should bear in mind that almost everything important seems incomprehensible until it is understood. That is, one cannot see why it is comprehensible until one actually understands it.]

They might say (1) ‘explanations come to an end’ (Wittgenstein, not original of course).[3] Necessary truth. So we go: Why A? Because B. But why B? Because C. . . . Why K? Well, that’s just the way things are – brute unexplained fact. We can go no further.

Connectedly (2) all explanation is (necessarily) explanation relative to something else taken for granted — call it G. So not everything can be explained. The question then is: can we get to a G that is so self-evident that it doesn’t call out for explanation in any way? Example: I find your explanation of [the] interference effect in terms of shadow particles irresistible. But its G is, roughly, a mechanistic picture of particle interaction, and some say ‘Look, we have no real or ultimate *understanding* of why billiard ball X does this when b.b. Y bumps into it in way W. It might equally well have turned into a swan and flown away etc. It feels deeply intuitive to us — we feel it needs no explanation — but that’s ultimately just a evolutionary/sociological fact about us etc etc.’ To many, the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ looks like one such G terminus that cannot be dealt with by showing that it’s self-evident that there has to be something rather than nothing.

*Galen

From: "David Deutsch" Date: 23 April 1997 21:56:36 GMT+01:00 To: galen.strawson Subject: Re: [No Subject]

… I don’t think that the above argument is watertight. I think is based on too narrow a view of what explanation is. Explanation does not necessarily consist of logically reducing something not-yet-understood to something already understood and ultimately to something self-evident. (And I don’t think that anything is entirely self-evident anyway.) Thus although I believe that we shall never reach an explanation of *everything*, I don’t think that this is for the quasi-logical reason you give. For although every explanation must rely on some self-evident assumptions, they need only be self-evident *after* one has understood the explanation. An explanation is not a proof, nor do we need to *prove* that it is convincing. It need only *be* convincing, and the reason why it is might well have been invented along with the explanation itself. I believe that in fact (contingently) the structure of what we can understand is infinitely complex, that no explanation is ever *perfectly* satisfactory, and there are always better explanations to be had than the ones we already have. Although every particular explanation we have appeals to something G that is as yet unexplained, we shall never come across a G that is in principle inexplicable.

— David

3

I haven’t been able to think of a better example of an explanation that leaves nothing unexplained than the one I used long ago.

‘Explanations of action in terms of reasons may be thought to offer a paradigm of explanation where we are not just left with something unexplained. Why did Georgia turn on the light? Because it was dark, and she believed it was dark, and she wanted to see across the room and believed that turning on the light would make this possible and also that it was the best or only way available to her, and she had no reason not to turn on the light, etc. Of course, one can go on to ask why she wanted to see across the room. But to ask “Why should it be the case that someone who wants to see across the room turns on the light, even given everything else stated in the explanation?” is simply to show that one has failed to understand what has been said. To say “That’s just the way things are” — “That’s just the way things are with desires, beliefs, and actions”—is not, in this case, to admit that these connections are ultimately a matter of brute, unintelligible correlation.’ [4]

[1] James, W. (1879–80/1897) ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, in The Will to Believe and Other Popular Essays In Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co) pp. 63–110, p. 72.

[2] James, W. (1879) ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’, in Mind pp. 317–46, p. 341. Θαυμάζειν, thaumazein, Greek, to wonder.

[3] Wittgenstein, L. (1953/2009) Philosophical Investigations, 4th edition, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. Hacker and J. Schulte (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell), §1.

[4] Strawson, G. (1994) Mental Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2nd edition 2010).