Philosophia

DOI 10.1007/s11406-016-9686-y

The Principle of Sufficient Reason Defended: There

Is No Conjunction of All Contingently True
Propositions

Christopher M. P. Tomaszewski1

Received: 23 September 2015 / Revised: 29 December 2015 / Accepted: 4 January 2016

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract Toward the end of his classic treatise An Essay on Free Will, Peter van
Inwagen offers a modal argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason which
he argues shows that the principle “collapses all modal distinctions.” In this paper, a
critical flaw in this argument is shown to lie in van Inwagen’s beginning assumption
that there is such a thing as the conjunction of all contingently true propositions. This
is shown to follow from Cantor’s theorem and a property of conjunction with respect
to contingent propositions. Given the failure of this assumption, van Inwagen’s argu-
ment against the Principle of Sufficient Reason cannot succeed, at least not without
the addition of some remarkable and previously unacknowledged qualifications.

Keywords Principle of sufficient reason · Free will · Cantor’s theorem ·

Propositions · Modality

Introduction

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is the thesis, commonly credited to Spinoza and
Leibniz but enjoying a long intellectual pedigree going back to the pre-Socratics,
that nothing may be the case without sufficient cause or reason for it being so. The
principle is often formulated in various forms, of which the ontological, causal and
explanatory are generally most popular. The ontological version states that no entity
may exist without sufficient cause or reason; the causal version, that no state of

 Christopher M. P. Tomaszewski
christopher tomaszewski@baylor.edu

1 Department of Philosophy, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

 Philosophia

affairs may obtain without sufficient cause or reason; and the explanatory version,
that no proposition may be true without sufficient reason. This third formulation, the
explanatory one, is the one which shall occupy our attention for the duration of this
paper, though it should ultimately be clear how all that will be said could be applied,
mutatis mutandis, to the other formulations.

The Principle

More formally, the explanatory version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason states
that for any true proposition P , there is a proposition Q, which we call the sufficient
reason for P , such that the following hold:
(1) Q is true.
(2) Q entails P . Symbolically: Q  P
(3) If P is a contingent proposition, then it is not the case that Q  P and P  Q.1
On page 203 of An Essay on Free Will, Peter van Inwagen gives a reductio ad absur-
dum against the Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafter, PSR) as specified above
which is meant to demonstrate the inconsistency of the PSR with the standard modal
distinction between contingent and necessary propositions.

Do Sufficient Reasons Entail Their Explananda?

But before looking at van Inwagen’s argument, it is worth noting here a weakness in
the way that van Inwagen has characterized the PSR, which heavily influences the
ultimate success of his argument against it. In particular, van Inwagen talks of the
relationship between true propositions and their sufficient reasons as one of entail-
ment. But there is very good reason to reject this stipulation, since “entailment” is
a term is usually reserved for consequence relations which hold purely in virtue of
the form of their premises and conclusions, in contrast to the kind of relation that
holds between a true proposition and its sufficient reason, which might be a matter
of metaphysical or even simply physical, rather than logical, necessity. To be sure,
some true propositions will be strictly entailed by their sufficient reasons (viz. all
of the necessarily true ones), but since this clearly won’t be the case for every true
proposition, it is quite arguable that van Inwagen’s first error lies in this character-
ization of the principle. One could imagine a formulation of the PSR, for example,
using strict implication instead, since this includes (by the deduction theorem) entail-
ments between necessary propositions, but also the cases of weaker necessity that it
seems PSR is really meant to capture, such as cause and effect relationships obtaining
between objects in our world.

1 Since van Inwagen takes mutually entailed propositions to be identical (“... if it both entailed and were
entailed by P , it would be P ...”), another way of stating this condition is to say that no contingent
proposition can be sufficient reason for itself.
Philosophia

Van Inwagen’s Argument

With this first weakness pointed out, I will grant van Inwagen’s characterization of
the principle and show that even under this characterization, his argument against it
fails. His argument can be written explicitly in the following form:
(1) Let P be the conjunction of all contingently true propositions. (Premise)
(2) P is itself a contingently true proposition. (From 1)
(3) There is a true proposition S which is a sufficient reason for P . (From 2 and
PSR)
(4) S is either necessarily true or contingently true. (Premise)
(5) If S is necessary, then P is necessary. (From PSR and the necessity of
entailment)
(6) S is not necessary. (From 2 and 5 by modus tollens)
(7) S is contingent. (From 4 and 6 by disjunctive syllogism)
(8) P  S (From 1 and 7)
(9) S  P (From 3 and PSR)
(10) P  S ∧ S  P (From 8 and 9)
(11) ¬(P  S ∧ S  P ) (From 3 and PSR) ⊥
From this contradiction, van Inwagen contends, we can conclude that the PSR is
false. And the argument he provides is quite strong. It is obviously valid, and there
is only one basic premise which does not follow from widely accepted principles of
modal logic, which is premise (1). This much van Inwagen himself recognises when
he says, after concluding the foregoing argument, “This result follows assuming there
is such a thing as P —that is, the conjunction of all contingently true propositions.”2
He continues, “And there is such a thing as this if there are any contingently true
propositions.”3 He says nothing more in defence of (1).

Too Many Contingently True Propositions

Diagonalisation on the Conjunction of All Contingently True Propositions

So is van Inwagen right to say that if there any contingently true propositions, there
must be a conjunction of them all? I aim to show that the answer is no, and the reason
why is not, as van Inwagen suggests, that perhaps there are too few contingently
true propositions, but rather that there are too many. I too will employ a reductio
ad absurdum as my argument, and use a standard tool in showing that there are too
many instances of something for them to be collected in a given way (in this case, as
a conjunction), namely Cantor’s theorem. The argument will bear some similarities

2 Van Inwagen (1983), p. 203

3 Van Inwagen (1983), p. 203-204
 Philosophia

to that used by Patrick Grim to show that there is no set of all truths.4 The argument
is as follows:
(1) There is a conjunction of all contingently true propositions, P . (Assumed)
(2) For each non-empty collection of propositions which are conjuncts of P , there
is a unique contingently true proposition to which it corresponds. (Premise)
(3) Every such contingently true proposition is a conjunct of P . (From 1)
(4) There are strictly more non-empty collections of propositions which are con-
juncts of P then there are propositions which are conjuncts of P . (From
Cantor’s theorem)
(5) There are strictly more propositions which are conjuncts of P then there are
propositions which are conjuncts of P . (From 2, 3 and 4). ⊥
(6) Therefore, there is no conjunction of all contingently true propositions.

Defence of the Premises

It should be apparent that premise (2) in my argument stands in need of support. To

see why it is true, begin by noting that if just one contingently true proposition is a
conjunct of another true proposition, then that latter proposition is also contingently
true. This is noted also by van Inwagen in his argument when he gives the reason
for the contingency of P : “It is evident that P itself is a contingent proposition, for a
necessary proposition may not have even a single contingent conjunct.”5 Now let X
be some such collection of conjuncts from P , and let CX be the conjunction of all
the propositions in this collection. Now consider CX ∧ N, where N is an arbitrary
necessary proposition.6 This conjunction will have the following form:
C1 ∧ C2 ∧ C3 ∧ C4 ... ∧ N
In this conjunction each Ci is a proposition belonging to the collection in question,
and N is any necessary proposition one might like (e.g. that 2 + 2 = 4 or the law of
non-contradiction). Now we can see that CX ∧ N is exactly the proposition which we
have been seeking: it is contingent and unique for each collection CX . Additionally,
the inclusion of N in the conjunction ensures that CX ∧ N is not logically equivalent
to any conjunction of atomic propositions in P , and therefore must be included in P
if it really is to be the conjunction of all contingently true propositions.
As spelled out in premise (4) of my argument, Cantor’s theorem implies that there
are strictly more such collections than propositions which are conjuncts of P . But
since for every such collection, we have a unique proposition which is a conjunct

4 Grim (1984), p. 207

5 Van Inwagen (1983), p. 203
6 It perhaps ought to be said that this N needn’t be the same proposition for every C . It is possible to get
X
a unique N for every collection CX , if desired. Simply draw such necessary propositions from the deep
well of mathematics, which will afford any cardinality of them one might need.
Philosophia

of P , we have the absurdity that P has more conjuncts than it has, whence our
conclusion that there is no such conjunction of all contingently true propositions.
One immediate way out of my argument for van Inwagen would be simply to deny
Cantor’s theorem (presumbly by rejecting the axiom of power set), and therefore to
deny my premise (4). But I think this carries far too high a cost to consider seri-
ously. Power set is an altogether uncontroversial axiom of set theory, and jettisoning
Cantor’s theorem would require also parting ways with many standard results of con-
temporary mathematics. At least, if van Inwagen’s argument implicitly depends on
rejecting Cantor’s theorem, this is a remarkable and previously unmentioned cost to
anybody disposed to accept his argument as sound.
My argument then, if successful, shows that the implicit premise that there is such
a thing as the conjunction of all contingently true propositions, which van Inwagen
took to rely only on the existence of at least one contingently true proposition, in fact
does not exist because there are too many contingently true propositions. Because the
rest of his argument depends crucially on this premise, the argument fails, and PSR
lives to see another day.

Some Objections Answered

Use Just the Atomic Propositions?

I will briefly anticipate a handful of objections to my argument against the existence

of the conjunction of all contingently true propositions, P . The first of these is that
there might be a premise in the dialectical neighborhood of “There is a conjunction
of all contingently true propositions” which I have overlooked, viz. that there is a
conjunction of all contingently true atomic propositions (let us call this PA ), which
would make van Inwagen’s argument sound if we substituted it as premise (1) in
that argument. This would block my application of Cantor’s theorem, since propo-
sitions of the form CX ∧ N are obviously not atomic and therefore not conjuncts
of PA .
But this wont work, since PA entails P and P entails PA . Therefore, by van Inwa-
gens own criterion for individuating propositions, P just is PA . But we have shown
that P does not exist, and thus neither does PA .

Can Necessarily True Propositions be Excluded?

A second objection might be leveled that all I have really shown not to exist is the
conjunction of all true propositions whatsoever, rather than the conjunction of all
contingently true propositions. What about the conjunction of just the contingently
true propositions? This seems plausible since I have built in a lot of (and possi-
bly all, depending on how one construes it) necessary propositions into P . But, as
the observant reader might have already recognised from the steps in my argument,
there really is no logical distinction between the conjunction of all contingently true
 Philosophia

propositions and the conjunction of all true propositions whatsoever.7 If P has as

conjuncts all contingently true propositions, then this simply has to include all the
necessary propositions too, just as the conjunction of all false propositions must
include all the true ones.
The only way out of this difficulty for proponents of van Inwagen’s argument
would be to block this feature of conjunction with respect to contingent proposi-
tions. And the only immediately evident way of doing so is to block conjunction
itself by moving from the premise that there is a conjunction of all contingently true
propositions to the premise that there is a conjunction of all contingently true atomic
propositions. But I have already answered the objection which urges this move.

Are Propositions Sets of Possible Worlds?

A final very important objection comes from Stalnaker’s definition of propositions

as sets of possible worlds, a definition adopted by van Inwagen in An Essay on Free
Will. According to this definition, propositions are simply the sets of possible worlds
at which they are true, and this method of individuating propositions differs from my
own in a way that makes a critical difference to the success of my diagonalisation
argument against the existence of P . The ingenuity of it rests primarily in that, by
defining propositions as sets of possible worlds and the conjunction of those proposi-
tions as the set intersection of those sets, van Inwagen succeeds in turning the power
of Cantor’s theorem and conjunction in my argument on its head.
Since propositions just are the sets of possible worlds at which they are true,
conjunction doesn’t create propositions more complex than its conjuncts, but rather
propositions that are simpler in virtue of being true at fewer worlds. And if we take
van Inwagen’s suggestion seriously about the definition of propositions, then con-
junction runs into a wall in creating new propositions: the actual world. Once we
reach the proposition which is the unit set of the actual world, {@}, conjunction with
any additional consistent propositions will just yield the same proposition, {@}. And
while Cantor’s theorem still delivers a power set of the conjuncts of P that is strictly
larger in cardinality than the number of conjuncts in P , conjunction fails to form
any new propositions from this power set which aren’t already in P . Conjunction
“collapses” rather than “connects” propositions on this view of propositional indi-
viduation, and it does indeed render my argument unsound (in particular, premise (2)
comes out false).
However, there are more than a few problems with this view of propositional indi-
viduation in its own right, and one might justifiably question not only whether this
view of propositions is right, but also whether it can make sense out of PSR. One
powerful objection to this definition of propositions that has been well-covered in

7 Oppy (2000) agrees with this assessment: “For example, despite the claims of Gale and Pruss to the
contrary, one might wonder whether the [conjunction of all contingently true propositions] for a world
can differ from the [conjunction of all true propositions] for that world: since a conjunction of a necessary
proposition and a contingent proposition is contingent, the conjunction of all contingent propositions will
‘include’ all of the necessary propositions.”
Philosophia

the literature is that it permits no more than one necessary proposition, and I think
this objection is quite right. It can’t, for example, be the case that there is only one
mathematical truth, or only one law of logic.
But to see the most relevant and important difficulty for this definition, recall that
van Inwagen is attempting to refute PSR. A natural question to ask would be what the
explanatory version of PSR that van Inwagen’s argument is targeting looks like under
this definition of propositions and truth. PSR is supposed to deliver for every true
proposition another true proposition which entails the first, and gives in some sense
or another the explanation for it. But explaining the truth of a proposition reduces
under van Inwagen’s definitions to explaining the set membership of the actual world
in a set of given possible worlds (viz. the proposition in question). Fortunately, logic
delivers a schema of axioms which explains set membership for any well-defined set,
namely the restricted comprehension schema. But unfortunately for van Inwagen’s
definition, this schema delivers this explanation in the form of another proposition.
And since this proposition too is just a set of possible worlds, we are left with the
conclusion that the explanation for the set membership of the actual world in a given
set of possible world is... just another set of possible worlds. But how can sets of
possible worlds really do any explanatory work? What sense can be made of PSR on
this definition of propositions and truth?
The apparent answer to this question is “none”, and the fundamental reason for this
is that van Inwagen’s Stalnakerian definition of propositions inverts the explanatory
relationship between propositions and truth. PSR is meant to apply to propositions
defined in such a way that the truth of one proposition can be explained by another.
But propositions don’t explain truth on van Inwagen’s definition of them; instead,
truth (in the form of the set membership relation between possible worlds and propo-
sitions) explains propositions: as soon as we know what a proposition is (that is, at
what possible worlds it is true), there is no further question of truth, since the content
of a proposition explains its truth on this view.
But suppose that you find my response to this objection lacking, and insist that
van Inwagen’s view of propositions is correct. Then I would urge that the conclusion
of the foregoing argument is still a very strong and surprising one, for van Inwagen
intended and expressed his arugment against the PSR in An Essay on Free Will to
be conclusive and irrefutable. Indeed, a great deal of the reason for the argument’s
fame in the literature is due to its being a paradigmatically knock-down technical
argument. But the very least I have shown is that van Inwagen’s conclusion obtains
only if one accepts a highly controversial account of propositions with unintuitive
implications, and the cost of this controversy leaves more than ample room for the
supporter of the PSR to continue rationally supporting the principle in the face of the
argument presented in An Essay on Free Will.

Conclusion

I have put forward an argument which shows why van Inwagen’s argument against
PSR cannot work as construed in An Essay on Free Will, at least not without
 Philosophia

embracing some very controversial additional premises, such as the denial of stan-
dard axioms of set theory or the assertion of a puzzling account of the nature
of propositions. Absent these additional assumptions, the existence of a conjunc-
tion of all contingently true propositions cannot be defended. Perhaps some further
ingenious argument like van Inwagen’s could show why the Principle of Sufficient
Reason still cannot be coherently believed. But it is far from obvious what such an
argument would look like.8

References

Gale, R., & Pruss, A. (1999). A New Cosmological Argument. Religious Studies, 35(4), 461–476.
Grim, P. (1984). There Is No Set of All Truths. Analysis, 44(4), 206–208.
Grim, P. (1986). On Sets and Worlds: A Reply to Menzel. Analysis, 46(4), 186–191.
Oppy, G. (2000). On A New Cosmological Argument. Religious Studies, 36(3), 345–353.
Pruss, A. (2006). The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Van Inwagen, P. (1983). An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Claredon Press.

8 Many kind thanks to Michael Lynch, Peter van Inwagen, Chad Marxen, Christopher Menzel, Josh Ras-
mussen, two anonymous referees for Philosophia, and audiences at 2014 Meeting of the North Carolina
Philosophical Association, the IX Annual Mark L. Shapiro Graduate Philosophy Conference at Brown
University, and the 2014 Eastern Division Meeting of the APA for their supportive yet challenging
comments on earlier drafts of this paper.