―――
James Kroeger
“David Hume sends his greetings from the past.
It may help to understand that causality is ultimately nothing more than a guess, but it happens to be a guess which we constantly get verification of in all of our present moments. So it seems to be a rather good guess thus far…
If our experience were to suddenly change, and we discovered we could no longer rely on the old assumption that worked so well for so long, we’d have to change our guesses.
Guesses are a good thing…”
This ignores what was written in order to make inapplicable general comments of a breezy kind. a. Hume didn’t make the argument made above. b. Causality is not a good “guess”, a guess is something made, not found in the general stock of human thoughts one grows into. c. Local and particular testing is not confirmation of causality simpliciter. d. Causality as such is more often simply found wrong; most predictions are false.
iambiguous
“It’s like intertwining “I” in the most comprehensive understanding of Einstein’s “space-time”. Or in the manner in which [so far] science has come to understand the quantum world.”
This takes place in the mind, unless applied. One hypostatizes the mathimatical rules and speaks as though they were external in the same way we call some wood chess pieces. If one has a detail of the application, say in the action of a quantum computer, then we come back to “folk” experience, or vague daily life.
“Something did or did not bring into existence the existence of existence itself? “
This question assumes the conception of causality.
“And human interactions are no exception? Mind is just more matter?”
The conclusions of reason don’t cause the things they infer. All books are made by humans, this is a book, therefore it is made by a human, doesn’t cause the book to be made by a human. So, one can say, reasons or judgments are a special kind of cause, cause as inference. They cause the inference machine to work. And yet, this all is founded in the conception of causality which is presupposed as meaningful in the ground of the inquiry.
“ connecting the dots here between the either/or world and the is/ought world.”
One can ask whether causality is beneficial (ignoring the genetic problem, set aside by Kant, who the logical positivists followed (ergo, in the specific sense of taking up the so-called genetic fallacy in defense of the conception of causality) in allowing causality to be founded in psychology and thereby logic), and if he affirms an ethic that says one ought to do what is beneficial. The “is” in Hume refers to opinion, or what in Plato is the result of pistis or the faculty of reliance (i.e., in the simplest sense: I see the ground, I rely on it being under foot when I step). Is and fact are not the same thing. Fact is established by the discussion between Hobbes and the Royal society, and refers to voluntary action of persons such as Boyle, who ran tests. The fact, properly, is a tested thing according to voluntary (i.e, rational) action of the trained observer.
Meno_
“A classic ideolog as response: as trite it is: If You don’t mind it don’t matter. & , of it don’t matter, ‘I’ don’t mind.”
This may be possible, however, my life wasn’t meant for complacency and cheap formulas. I do mind. Since I don’t want to live in a stupor of traditional limitations on my mode of existence.
“Hume’s old school pre-form was really in an age , where classical physics was still tied to ontology. - quite phenomenal. We are beginning to ramify ideas which are not consequential but indicate large shifts in apprehending varied possibilities.”
I think this is only half right. What is really the case is that everything is judged by the standard of practical result. Rules, math or chess, are not taken up ontologically. What is missing in this statement is that logic, i.e., mere rules, is founded in psychology, ergo, an ontological problem. And, on the other side, the practical results become mere facts, i.e., voluntarily testable results which become set off against radical subjectivity concerning their benefit to humans. The question about what the practical is (i.e, what do facts have to do with human beings who have become mere folk subjects), is no longer asked.
“Berkeley’s argument against Hume’s contention made a lot of sense then. but immaterialism is making the opposite claim ,from that everything consists of matter.”
Yes, this leads to the problem just stated. “Immiteralialsm” seems a synonym for Positivism, i.e., fact value.
iambiguous
“One more pedantic contribution to the staggering vastness that must be now? ”
So, you claim all philosophy is worthless… Your cheap goading doesn’t persuade me of that… however, let us attempt to decompose:
What’s the opposite of “pedantic”, loose and vague? Or, is it clear and obvious everyday gossip?
Urwrongx1000
Causality is not a ‘Guess’.
Logic is based on causal observations.
I think you illicitly fuse (ergo, thereby you confuse) psychology and logic. Reasoning and observation both stem from our psychology, but they are differentiable. And logic is not the result of observation, but stems directly from our psychology. It doesn’t become more internally coherent by virtue of working out in a application, even if that is what one aims at all the time. It’s a set of rules independently true; no observational data can make a logic false so far as logic names mathematical logic and not ancient Greek syllogistics or something else.