Abstract
The infinite regress in some infinite regress arguments is presented or described in terms of recurring questions and answers. There are a few reasons why I want to examine the role of such recurring questions. First, they are sometimes used to capture the gist of an infinite regress argument. A case in point is Bradley's famous infinite regress argument against the reality of relations: Stout (1902) summarizes the argument's complex regress-generating component in the following way: “In its simple form the whole point of the argument is contained in the reiterated question - What connects the relation and its terms?”. (My italics.)
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Notes
- 1.
There is a second edition (1984) of Rosenberg’s book, The Practice of Philosophy, a Handbook for Beginners, but I will refer only to the first edition because his arguments are more developed in that edition.
- 2.
This analysis is confirmed by John Locke’s (1959: 326) discussion of the same regress, for he derives the same regress formula without making use of any recurring questions. “[T]o …make a man free […] by making the action of willing depend on his will, there must be another antecedent will, to determine the acts of this will, and another to determine that, and so on in infinitum: for wherever one stops, the actions of the last will cannot be free”.
Of course, as pointed out by one of the reviewers, the volitionist theory would not entail the regress if it were formulated as: For any overt voluntary act, there is an internal voluntary act of will, and the overt voluntary act is caused by the internal voluntary act. For nothing in the first output would satisfy the sufficient condition in the universal formula.
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Gratton, C. (2009). Infinite Regresses and Recurring Questions. In: Infinite Regress Arguments. Argumentation Library, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3341-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3341-3_5
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