We are designed to have explanations. When something happens, we say why. And when we do have an explanation, we say why we have that one. This can go on ad infinitum. Philosophers call this the problem of infinite regress, the idea that all explanation seems to need a prior explanation, and one needs to have another, and another, the cycle going on forever earlier in the past.
It’s conceptual to begin with. But consider the case of something as ordinary as a table. Why is it standing there? Because some carpenter built it. Why did the carpenter build it? Because they wanted to build a useful thing. Why did they want to build it? And so on. One after another, each response creates another question but more fiercely. Can this chain ever possibly terminate in a first cause, or is it merely an infinite continuation, making final beginnings unknowable?
This issue erodes our own concept of understanding. We like our explanations complete. We like definitive foundation answers, giving us certainty and closure. But infinite regress teaches us that we may not be able to have certainty. Each explanation only pushes the question one step back. Real “first causes” or ultimate reasons are perhaps beyond human capability.
The philosophers respond with suggestions of the grounding stopping points. Aristotle, for instance, suggested the concept of an “unmoved mover”, something that necessarily exists without cause. Nowadays, the same kinds of suggestions come up in mathematics or cosmology, where there are some posited axioms or underlying laws. But such resolutions are so flimsy, like putting one stone at the bottom of a bottomless pit.
Infinite regress also has a psychological dimension. We require beginnings because they provide a degree of meaning to life. Beginnings anchor histories, accounts, and identity. But the regress problem informs us that this search can be limitless. Life, knowledge, and existence might not possess some neat origin; maybe they are components of an endless web-like relation.
This is a humbling find. We are a causality age, narrative, science, history, individual choices all framed in the language of causes for the consequences. And if infinite regress is true, then final knowledge is a myth. We cannot know the first stone; we are only amazed at the train of causes vanishing into infinity, and yet somehow it holds together.
And yet, the question is freeing. If with every answer a new question is forged, then understanding is not about reaching an end, but about tracing connections. Meaning lies in the process of asking, not in its termination. Infinite regress inspires awe and fascination, not despair. It takes the practice of asking why and turns it into an admiration for complexity, not closure.
Lastly, the issue of infinite regress leads us to the edge of human reason. Do we ever actually know where anything begins? Maybe not. But in the cause-and-effect chain that has no terminus, in the never-ending pursuit of knowledge, we look at a reflection of life itself: a series of moments, experiences, and queries that never so much as provides an answer, but keeps expanding the mind and spirit.