Do you live that way? i.e. Not acknowledging causes or effects?
Must be difficult.
See this is where I beg to differ. Impenitent is discussing Hume; you are simply running your mouth, and this won’t stop until you’ve (carefully) read Hume. I could give you my interpretation of Hume’s Enquiry…and let you try to interpret my interpretation, but if you won’t even read him begin with, that tells me you probably aren’t worth the trouble.
Perhaps I haven’t…but then you wouldn’t know would you, unless you yourself have read him.
Understood…but then we’re under no obligation to take you seriously.
Hume didn’t even live that way…
sure I expect effects to follow percieved causes… it is illogical to do so, but I never claimed to be completely logically driven…
one could never know logically that the bread that nourished us yesterday would nourish us today… one cannot be logically motivated to eat…
there are a great many things one takes on faith…
-Imp
mrn,
I don’t see how your argument is relevant. Regardless of what we take to be a cause…whether it is ourselves or other objects, we never perceive causal relationships–only constantly conjoined events.
Hume is not necessarily concerned with defining knowledge…he uses the term in several ways throughout his writings. His point is that induction is philosophically groundless because it relies on the principle of cause and effect. Whether or not that invalidates knowledge is another debate altogether.
The question is not about how we live but about what can be proven. Hume fully acknowledges that we live as though the universe operates according to cause and effect. In fact, he holds that we cannot imagine things operating differently…and this becomes particularly important to his discussion of free will. Induction may be philosophically groundless, but it is pragmatically necessary.
Logo
If you read my other posts, you’ll see that in virtually all my posts, I generously explain my mind to others. I discuss and explains the topic. You on the other hand may have read Hume, but you seem rather reluctant to share it with us because some of us haven’t read Hume. In your reply to MRN, you talked about “perceived causal relationships”, well, that’s exactly what I was discussing with Imp. If I haven’t explained to your satisfaction, let me know.
Imp
"but it isn’t the identical event… the second time is not identical with the first… (why is it the “second” if it is identical?)
to say the future will resemble the past because of the past begs the question… it is an error in reasoning… it is illogical…"
what do you mean by begging the question? I don’t see how it begs the question.
I am suggesting, the future can resemble the past identically.
A book resting on the desk will not suddenly float in the air because the environment in which the book is in is the same. What has changed?
The “perceived causal relationship” Logo talked about, is actual causal relationship. Logo, what do you mean by ‘cause’? Imp, when something is in a certain state, it will logically remain in that state when nothing is changed.
PoR
well handled.
fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/ph … ction.html
and you would be incorrect… space and time are not constant… anything appearing in space and time is measured according to spaciotemporal position and that judgment constantly is in flux…
not if the book is on a desk in the belly of a spaceshuttle…
time
“actual”? nice try to sneak “truth” in the back door… it is not “actual”
except time constantly marches on, the planet spins around a star which orbits another ect… nothing stays the same…
not even the atoms and molecules which make up the percieved thing remain constant… (no, monads do not exist)
-Imp
“A book resting on the desk will not suddenly float in the air because the environment in which the book is in is the same.”
You said time is the thing that has changed. But is time the only thing that has changed? Why does change in time change the circumstances?
Time is just a measure of change. The future contains a series of repeation from the past. We can be certain of the outcome of repetitions.
Uncertainty exists when there has not been precedent. i.e if you never sat in a particular chair, you have no good reason to believe it will hold your weight.
However, if you have sat in a chair, assuming the chair doesn’t change then it is logically for you to believe it will hold your weight.
Only experiments will put Hume’s uncertainty to rest.
Perceived cause and effect
If A hits B, and B moves. We say A caused B to move. Because if A had not hit B, B would not move.
We see “cause and effect” through our eyes. So all “cause and effect” are essentially perceived.
If Hume is saying that for things we haven’t tested, we can not say for certain that they will work. Or, if I have never sat in a chair, I can not know for certain the chair will hold my weight.
I think Hume should define “cause” and “effect”. Otherwise he’s playing a language game.
fine, you have thing a at time t… frozen in time… every molecule is in a certain specific place… when you get finished mapping their exact positions, you have thing a… (tell us when you get there) at time t+1 every electron in every atom of every molecule of thing a is in a totally completely different position… you no longer have a, you have something completely different…
only after the fact…
no that begs the question, a logical fallacy meaning you cannot logically /soundly believe it… it is illogical to make that assumption and your assumptions are not proof or truth or evidence… they are assumptions, nothing more…
nothing can put hume’s uncertainity to rest except illogical belief…
-Imp
no, there is no necessary connection that is percieved… without it there is no cause or effect only your expectations…
he did many times.
class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/t … atise1.htm
-Imp
Thank you Imp, I will spend a day if you really insist, skim read Hume this summer.
We are having a problem here, because you have just brought atoms, electrons into the discussion. I wonder if we could limit the discussion to our experience of the world only, because science is unreliable at best.
Now, if a book is on the desk at t = 1 will remain on the desk even if t approaches infinity. Why? Because nothing has changed. (ignoring atomic theory).
You are suggesting things are basically chaotic, so the future will never resemble the past. Therefore it would be silly to draw conclusions based on the past.
If the environment remains the same, the same action will lead to the same outcome will always be true. You disagree that the environment can ever be the same based on your understanding of science.
I think it is illogical to say the environment has changed when you do not perceive the change yourself. It is logical for the common man to walk down the street and believe (not expect) that the pavement will hold his weight because the common man can not perceive using his senses that his environment has changed.
Only the first action has uncertainty, so involves expectation, because a fact is a fact unless proven otherwise.
now science is unreliable? “Only experiments will put Hume’s uncertainty to rest.” unreliable experiments or non-scientific experiments?
BINGO! We have a winner!
“(ignoring atomic theory).” because otherwise you have to admit there is nothing static… nothing remains the same…
and you never percieve time or space? how can you say things do not change when all you have to do is look up at the constantly moving clouds and sun/stars/moon…
no, it is not logical… it is a matter of faith or habit…
a fact is a fact… but something that has not happened yet is never a fact.
-Imp
hahahahhaha. 
The uncertainty concept only works when in the absence of precedent.
Things that will happen in the future has happened in the past. Only things without precedent can be in doubt.
Science give us precedents. The harder one hits the ball until breaking point the faster the ball moves. Atomic theory tell us things are made of atoms. So when one atom collides with another. One moves. A star may have exploded, but the environment that is “in question” has not changed.
When one knows all the factors involved in inducing the movement of the ball. It would be silly and illogical to try to expect the unexpected. The environment “in question” contains all the factors involved. And all precedents for the environment “in question” have existed in the past and will exist in the future.
A ball drops on earth but floats in space because earth and space are two different environments “in question”.
The uncertainty only exist in the absence of precedents. I agree that we can only expect things that have no precedents in the environment in question. But I have complete logical confidence when they do have precedents in the environment in question.
no, you are begging the question
no, you are begging the question
no, you are begging the question
will exist in the future? thank you ms cleo. your job is finished.
the future can not be known… you are begging the question.
that is only because you do not understand logic.
your “confidence” is an error.
-Imp
groan. your are begging yourself.
If something has happened before, it will happen again given the same circumstances. How is that begging the question?
Also, when Hume said he does not know if ball A is caused by ball B in environment C. All he has to do is to do the experiment, to set a precedent which will tell him if ball A is caused by ball B.
Once again, I am losing respect for you because you are not talking philosophy. But once again accuse me ignorance of logic… when you make conclusions in the absence of evidence, you are being illogical.
Pinnacle,
Forgive me for jumping in. I think what Hume showed was that just because one event precedes another, there is no absolute logical connection between them. If the cuckoo clock goes off and the telephone rings and it’s your mother, there is no necessary connection between them. If the cuckoo clock goes off again, and it’s your mother again, you begin to imagine that something funny may be up. If every time the cuckoo clock goes off and your mother calls, we begin to say that the cuckoo clock “causes” your mother to phone you. And we then would build a model of the universe to “explain” this “cause”. Nothing in what has preceded guarantees what follows. It is the same thing with billiard balls, and all other sequential events. Nothing intrinsically in the one event is logically connected to the next event, even though our conception of the world is filled with such “connections”. In the realm of logic, no connections necessarily exist. All we can say is that with very, very, very great probability, probability so incredibly high it is negligible, a billiard ball once struck will move.
Dunamis
Kudos to you Imp for your enduring patience.
Thanks Dunamis,
Yes, in that case we can not say mother caused the clock to go off. Because mother is an unknown entity, and the clock is an unknown entity. I agree it is wrong to talk about ‘causes’ when the entity in question is unknown.
But when it comes to two blizzard balls. We have two known entities. When one ball hits another ball, the other other will move under certain or specific environment.
When the environment is the same, and the balls are the same. Which is 100% possible. (chaos works on the atomic level and is so far inconclusive). then you’d be confident of the same event repeating itself.
The first event is unknown, so we can’t draw causes. But the subsequent events, as long as they as the same will give identical results.
Humans do make errors associating non-relating events, because either the humans do not understand the subjects (blizzard balls) or/and the specific environment in which the subjects operate.
PoR
Pinnacle,
At least understand Hume’s reasoning. When you say:
“When one ball hits another ball, the other will move under certain or specific environment.”
this is a model of the universe that we have come up with to explain the infinite number of similarly arranged consecutive events. The ability of a model to predict future events has come, in many ways, to mean “knowledge”. History is filled with models that worked reasonably well for quite a while, only to be superceded by more accurate models, that is models better at predicting events. What Hume shows is that at the level of logic, there is no connective tissue between the events and the models. Only the growing percentage of accuracy gives us this sense. If for you there is no difference between 99.9999% and 100%, for Hume there was. In this way he was able to show that the logical difference between our world and superstition was nil, while the practical difference may be very great. What you are confusing is the model of the universe you have adopted, which is highly accurate, and the underlying logic, or the lack thereof, that has brought that model into being. That realty = reality is an insufficient proof is what makes philosophy, philosophy.
Dunamis