Rebel - I think it’s a matter of limits - descriptions have useful limits - explanations are endless. They beget other explanations. Eventually, you’re explaining how pies got into skies.
Between any cause and effect, there are an infinte number of other causes and effects. We simply choose the ones we wish to use, to explain the world around us. It is a convenience, and a necessity for our sanity, and survival. But, it is a fallacious weltanschauung.
And that’s the nub, I think, FW. I think Hume is correct in his conclusions, but that his argument is no longer relevant.
He did, in the end, destroy epistemology, but no one seemed to noticed until Nietzsche did. He is still one of the few.
I still find it very interesting that there is a distinction between no possible cause but still a reason or why after the fact. 
I’m not sure I get you. Aren’t “reason” and “cause” the ame thing in this context?
Your statement reads, to me, as if it contradicts itself. Can you restate?
You have to really really think about this one Faust! Yes reason/why and cause are usually the same thing and it does sound like I am contradicting myself here but I am not in this particular context and that is the very interesting mystery here! No before first existence equals no possible cause but there still must be a reason or why at least…in…retrospect…or after the fact that existence began. I have to go to work again and I will try and explain this later if anyone is still interested.
Well, this is nit directly what I am proposing. Which is okay.
I am not claiming either that there is no cause to any sequence of events or that there is a cause to that sequence. I am saying that even if, for instance, the Big Bang caused certain conditions, it may not have caused all conditions. That the chain may be broken.
Now, you can draw from this that the Big Bang (if we wish to begin there) caused the condition that some events have causes and some do not. But this still makes causality local as an ongoing condition.
What I am speculating against is that physical causality may not be a universal condition.
Let’s say this - which is a slightly different example than I was going for: That causality, as we know it, obtains on Earth, but that Earth was an accident. That’s just one scenario. My point is that Hume was working with only two scenarios - that causation is a law of the universe, or that randomness obtains. I am claiming that it’s not necessarily a zero-sum situation.
Earth is an accident because it has no reason?
By accident I mean that it might have come about by random chance.
Here’s the problem - if we completely discount causation, we are left with randomness - which doesn’t seem to match our experience. If we completely discount randomness, we are left with determinism.
What if every cause is a mixture of the determined and the random?
What if quantum mechanics is an example of the way things really work? Even on larger scales - even if not on every scale?
What if at least part of every cause is random - there is no inexorable, unbroken chain of causality - what if some element of every cause is pure chance.
What if genetic mutation is not the exception, but part of the rule?
That cause cannot even exist without randomness?
(I am not speaking linearly, here, but throwing possibly different scenarios into one big pile.)
Don’t we already think that some of this is true?
Okay, if we posit the notion that consciousness is a functional byproduct of local/physical processes, then it seems to me we’re essentially likening the human brain to a classical computer; and further, if we conceive of this process as a local phenomenon, originating and operating entirely within the confines of a human skull, then we liken the brain to a computer without internet – that is, a computer incapable of ‘downloading’ or otherwise accessing data/information external to it. Thus, the human brain uses sense perception to digest information brought to it by its agent (books, lectures, etc), just as a computer without internet can use a variety of data mediums (cdrom, usb jump drive, etc) to digest information brought to it by its user.
Prima facie, this picture sounds plausible, but let us try and figure in some sort of networking into both the computer and the human brain.
In the case of the computer, if we simply plug a computer into an active ethernet jack, or give it a wireless card and an access point, it now has access to a world of information it didn’t previously. However, this is useless if the user either 1) isn’t aware of the internet or 2) lacks an understanding necessary to navigate it for its purposes.
In the case of the brain – indeed the most complex apparatus in the known universe – it isn’t so clear how we might incorporate ‘internet’ or networking, at least in the standard computer paradigm. For non-local data streams, we have no plug for cosmic internet, nor do we have in any obvious sense a ‘wireless’ function. So we’re left to conclude either 1) consciousness operates locally like an isolated classical computer, and everything is as it seems or 2) we’re jumping the gun by likening the human brain to a type of machine it invented and created.
Well, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer
Perhaps the computer that invented the classical computer, and is currently theorizing about the quantum computer actually is a quantum computer, perhaps even its very quintessence? It seems to me the human brain must be at least as complex as that which it creates, so I guess I’m inclined to scrap the classical framework as fundamentally inadequate. Also, I am skeptical about the ‘reality’ of locality, even temporality for that matter, and I find the crazy world of probability distributions seems to loosen such artificial constraints – I know where files and data originate on my computer, but I can’t say the same even about my ordinary thoughts, let alone those often called ‘inspired’ that seemingly come from out of nowhere and tickle the soul into sublimity.
consciousness has local and non-local elements fused and operating together; bona fide genius contains spiritual insight, and spiritual insight is spontaneous and timeless – the genius is one who learns to use his brain’s quantum internet.
Nietzsche was intensely spiritual, and it is in this sense I find him metaphysical; and truly, without seeing and understanding this, I’m not sure how some of his most profoundly beautiful insights could resonate with you. 
I could see how randomness might enter the mix, if it already isn’t. I’m not read on the correct literature here. But if I were to speculate about how Earth got to where it is, I could imagine that the Earth we know now was only one of many possibilities. If I picture the concept of Cause and Effect, say a ball pushed down a hill, then this ball could have been simultaneously changing colours, and whatever colour it happened to land at when the ball reached the end of its rolling was the colour we came to know it as. And then the chain starts again starting with a blue ball. Maybe. Where’s the shrug smiley…
There is no “randomness” or “chance” in the universe. Everything is planned; everything has a reason. Earth was no accident.
Bold statements!
Who planned everything?
The problem then, lies is the perception.
amor - I am likening the brain to what current science tells us it is. No more or no less. The internet is our senses. Don’t confuse hardware with software. Or data entry. Consciousness is not “everything we know” - it’s a quality of humans.
Rebel - I like that metaphor.
More or less - the problem is that we can’t know everything.
Some-thing, but not necessarily some-body, planned everything.
Why do you assume that?
becuase we live for a hundred years on a tiny planet in the middle of nowhere.
And what if light is absolutely universal and can be seen from every point in space?