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The Principle of Sufficient Reason: a Moral Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Mark T. Nelson
Mark T. Nelson
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT
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Abstract

The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other justifications of the Principle of Universalizability on offer, including Richard Hare's, are inadequate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 15 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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