Date/Time
14/05/2025 (Wednesday)
8.00 - 9.30 pm
Location
The Adelaide
Presented by Kieran Quill
Brute facts, if there are such facts, are facts that have no explanation, not even in principle. They are facts (if there are such facts) that are “brute” (or “bare”) per se: there is no explanation for them in virtue of the way reality is.
Brute facts are generally considered to be contingent facts (that is, it could have been otherwise). Some may, however, claim that neccessary facts are brute. But generally it might be claimed that if a fact were a necessity then it would not be a brute fact because there would be an explanation for its existence.
There are of course many facts whose explanations are not available to us for now. And, for some of them, explanation might elude us forever. But there are, nevertheless, explanations, we think, or assume, if only we could discover them. The “Principle of Sufficient Reason” (PSR) claims that every fact must have an explanation.
Some candidate brute facts might be: The existence of the universe. The fundamental laws of nature (which perhaps science has not yet discovered). The values of the physical constants (e.g., the speed of light, the elementary charge; the Planck constant – about 20 such constants are in play in modern physics). God. Consciousness. The laws of logic.
Some questions to be considered: Are there brute facts? And what counts as evidence for a fact being brute? Are there brute necessities? Is the Principle of Sufficent Reason a constitutive principle or merely a regulative principle? And even: what is explanation anyway?
Why might the debate about brute facts be of general interest? One answer is that this question concerns the intelligibility of reality. Is reality completely intelligible? Is there an adequate answer to every coherent question that can be asked?