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Your thoughts on Hume's case against induction?

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Guest jrshep
jrshep has been warned.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Given that you apparently have concluded that my posts in response to Eddie sanction his evasions, I think it is important that you remove them. Or are you willing to let sanctions of Eddies evasions remain, thereby sanctioning his evasions as well?

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Guest jrshep
Beat me to it.  :confused:

jrshep--if you want to keep talking to eddie, be my guest, but don't throw ad homs at RadCap for trying to warn you about him.  In fact, no more ad homs, period.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Remove (unregister) me from this forum.

I won't be back again; I wouldn't want to taint this forum with my sanctions of others evasions.

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RadCap,

I do not read the context for hints of evasion. If it is a fairly long discussion I go back far enough to determine where the subject is at the time. What do I care if he evades? I don't mind slapping around a monkey for awhile to hear his squeals.

That is all I have to say, I consider the subject (though not slapping around Eddie) to be over.

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jrshep: “I'm not saying that one thinks to oneself, "That something exists." "That is what it is." Those are explicit thoughts, but they are implicit in perception, in every perception we ever had, have or will have.”

I agree that “something exists” would not be explicitly expressed. But there’s a problem for Objectivism here in claiming that these statements or propositions are implicit in perception, and that problem is Rand’s own theory of perception.

As far as I can see, Rand draws a Lockean distinction between the passive, automatic nature of perception and the active, volitional nature of conceptualisation. For her, perception is a mechanical, non-conceptual process, akin to a camera. The mind then works on these perceptions to produce concepts.

One can of course make a case for this view of perception, but in claiming that concepts have no place in perception, Rand has ruled out the possibility of some other options. One of these is the notion that axioms, or “axiomatic concepts”, can be somehow given in perception.

Jrshep: “When you look at your computer monitor, you are aware of the fact that it IS, that IT is, and that you are CONSCIOUS of it, but you don't explicitly think such thoughts. They're implicit.”

Once again, you have brought reason into perception. If thoughts are implicit in perception, it cannot be merely an automatic process. But leaving that aside, and focusing on “the fact that it is”, you have not shown how this proposition translates into “existence exists”, in a way that retains its axiomatic, undeniable status.

Some major hurdles are:

1) Showing how the axioms can be given in perception, consistent with Rand’s theory.

2) Arriving at “existence exists” without appealing to any other thought. I’m not sure whether Rand views her axioms in this way, but that would be required for EE to merit being regarded as axiomatic.

3) Establishing EE as a self-evident, undeniable truth. To do that, one would have to show that the terms “existence and “exists” function in the same way in all minds, that is, that their meaning is in fact self-evident.

The latter is by no means a minor point. “All bachelors are unmarried men” is self-evidently true, because the terms are not in dispute. The same cannot be said for “existence”. So far we have seen several meanings: “all that exists”; “something exists”; existence as a “fact”; existence as a quality or property of objects. If it is necessary to explicate “existence” in this way, it cannot be said to be self-evident or undeniable, and therefore not, on Rand’s terms, axiomatic.

jrshep: “I said what Miss Rand said, "It may be said that existence can be differentiated from non-existence; but non-existence is not a fact..." (No, not verbatim, but that was the idea.)”

What you actually said was: “What are the axiomatic concepts differentiated from? From non-existence, non-identity, and non-consciousness….” I don’t want to belabour the point, but when Rand says “It may be said that existence can be differentiated from non-existence…” is she saying it can be, or is she saying it can’t be?

E

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  • 6 months later...

I was debating somebody about the idea of causality. And the person I was debating responded with Humes attack on causality.

Who says there is such a thing as causality? Science? yeah, and they've never been wrong.

Humans cannot say that there is such a thing as cause and effect, because there are too many confounding variables. I can say that there is a high probability that if i water a plant and give it sunlight, then it will grow. But I cannot say that sunlight and water make a plant grown. I can only say there is a probability that sunlight and water can make a plant grow. There are too many things that might stop the plant from growing. There are too many things that might need to be added for the plant to grow.

There does not have to be a single first cause, since causality is merely a probability.

Shot down. Someone should tell this guy to read hume.

It could be that a plant would grown without any of the "ideal factors" you describe, and just because it has never happened does not mean that it can't. If that's possible, and it is, then you cannot say that those "ideal factors" cause a plant to grow.

It's literally impossible to prove that any course of events or factos will CAUSE something else to happen. Just like if I say that the sun will rise tomorrow, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will rise. But if it does rise, did my words CAUSE it to rise? Of course not.

That's being said, you're still missing the point. Nothing is certain is a very good way of putting it, but it doesn't quite capture the meaning. You're getting too caught up in the details and missing the forest for the trees. The analogy doesn't have to be perfect and all encompassing of every plant.

Everything we know to be indubitable is from experience, but we're not capable of knowing much. experience is derived from impressions and ideas. Impressions are the result of a direct encounter, but ideas are the copies of direct encounters (for example, if i describe to you what is was like to meet senator rick santorum). What you refer to as causality is actually inductive inference. You use the ideas of the impressions you have to inductively infer things, and refer to it as causality. For example, if every piece of ice you have heated has melted into a liquid, you inductively infer that on all future occasions a heated piece of ice will melt into a liquid. If you heated something up that you thought was a piece of ice, but it didn't melt, you'd likely say, "Shit, this must actually be a piece of glass that just looks like ice," or something like that. You are inferring from "some" to "all". That's inductive inference.

Right now, you're telling me that every even that occurs has some cause that produces it. The problem is that you're assuming a necessary connection between two events. If i water a plant, it will grow. You assume that there is a necessary connection between watering a plant, and it growing. There is no such connection. Granted that the foundation of modern science rests on the assumption of necessary connection, it still is no guarantee.

Think about it like this: If you water a plant, then you see it grow, you have two impressions (or direct experiences). The first is the watering, the second is the growing. Every impression is a distinct item of our experience and completely separate from every other experience. As such, these two impressions are completely separate from each other. As such, there can be no necessary connection between the two experiences, no matter how closely juxtaposed they originally seemed.

Don't feel bad. We all mistake a need for necessary connection. Let's say that every time you wrote the word "necessary" a car backfired in the street outside your house. After the first time, it wouldn't occur to you that there was any connection between the two. But after a long post such as this, which frequently uses the word "necessary", you would start listening for the backfire of the car every time you typed the word. It is human nature to have a feeling of expectation every time a sequence of events is frequently repeated, which is why most people assume necessary connection between two events such as watering a plant and its growth. The two events, however, cannot be shown to have a necessary connection.

So, cause and effect is merely the misperceptions of 1) repeated sequences of impressions and 2) the expectation that on its next occurrence, the first impression of the sequence will again be followed by the second. In other words, what you perceive as cause and effect is merely a repeated occurrence of two completely unconnected events in a row.

There is no reason in the nature of things that any event should follow another, but it happens that some events consistently follow other events and, when the have done so often enough, we expect them to continue to do so. This is your notion of causality. Thus, there is no more reason that watering a plant will make it grow, or that the sun will rise tomorrow, than there is that a car should backfire when i write the word "necessary."

So, because necessary connection is necessary for causality, and because necessary connection arises from a psychological reaction within the mind, and does not actually exist in reality, causality cannot be proven.

Yes, we see that if a car has a working engine it starts every time, but that doesn't mean it will next time. The idea is very similar to Schrödinger's cat. Are you familiar with that one? Put a cat in a box that has a radiometer. If it senses even one atom of a radioactive element, a noxious gas is released into the box thus killing the cat. We cannot know if the cat is dead or alive until we open the box and see. it's a little different, because Schrödinger was actually trying to explain why the cat is both dead and alive at the same time when in such a state of uncertainty, but that's beside the point.

The point is that there is no necessary connection between any two events, and as such one cannot truthfully be said to have caused another. It may be true that one did cause the other, and that there is a necessary connection between the two events, but that connection, and thus that causality, cannot be proven.

My question is, how would you respond to Hume's argument against causality and

How would you defend causality? and How do you prove causality?

Is this a good response?

"The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act" -Ayn Rand

If I heat something that I think is "ice" and it doesn't melt. Then the "ice" isn't really ice because since it didn't melt its identity is different.

Am I misunderstanding Ayn Rand here?

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Causality is a direct corollary of the three inarguable axioms of Objectivism; there is simply no grounds to argue against it, as any alternative to causality is fundamentally impossible. Let me walk you through my understanding of how this is validated:

All things that exist have a single, finite identity.

That is, all things that exist have a finite set of characteristics that describe them. This is not to say that humans will ever know this exhaustive list, but it is a fundamental necessity -- an inarguable fact -- that every single existent possesses a single, finite identity, composed of everything that it is, and lacking everything that it is not. If an existent had no identity, then it wouldn't exist -- there wouldn't be a single thing that it is. If an existent had an infinite identity, then it would possess the characteristic 'visibly impaled through my right hand at this very moment,' which nothing possesses. Multiple identities ascribed to an existent would either combine to form one identity, or would contradict each other. A contradiction is impossible, because all contradictions can be reduced to claiming that something both exists and does not exist at the same time, which is likewise impossible. To see how this reduction works, take the example "this ball is all red and all green." Implicit to the concept 'red' is 'not green,' and so this example can be rephrased as "this ball is all not green and all green;" the characteristic 'green' is both existing and not existing. Assuming you can get your opponent to agree that something cannot both exist and not exist at the same time, this proves that contradictions are impossible (and that multiple identities are either impossible, or become one identity). So, an entity cannot possess no identity, infinite identity or multiple identities: All entities possess a single, finite identity.

Actions are actions of entities.

Actions don't exist separate from the entities that act. There is no 'walking' separate from the entity that walks. All actions are performed by entities.

Entities must act in accordance with their identities.

This follows from the above point. If actions are actions of entities, then the action must adhere to the single, finite identity of the entity acting. The only alternative is for an entity to act in contradiction to its identity, which is impossible -- contradictions cannot exist. The only possibility is that entities act in accordance with their identity.

Causality

This leads to causality. Given any set of circumstances, there is only one course of action available to an existent (well, aside from the choices made by a volitional consciousness, but that's a unique instance of causality and should be tackled separately): The course of action that is in accordance with its identity. If a billiard ball is smacked by another billiard ball, the identities of all of the circumstances involved (forces, motion, the balls themselves) permit only a single course of action for each existent -- the action that is in accordance with its single, finite identity.

At the heart of cause-and-effect is the assertion that any given cause can only have a single given effect -- and that's exactly what is being said above. Multiple possible effects would absolutely necessitate multiple identities, or contradicting identities, which simply cannot be. The opposite, that effects cannot happen without causes, is implicit as well -- a billiard ball with no forces acting on it is has only one action available to it, as with any other cause: Its only possible action is to remain still, which is in accordance with its identity and the identities of everything around it.

Now, the problem you're experiencing is that these people are linking our scientific understanding of physical causality (mechanical cause-and-effect) to the fundamental absolute of philosophical causality (action applied to identity). The former is based on induction and is a matter of science (and a matter of the philosophical defense of induction); causality is absolutely necessitated, but our understanding of the nature of this causality is limited by the context of our knowledge. The latter, philosophical causality, is rooted in fundamental axioms and is utterly inarguable. Your opponents are not supporting an argument against causality (no one can). They are claiming to do so, while actually formulating an argument against the validity of scientific induction -- and you should treat their argument in that way.

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That is, all things that exist have a finite set of characteristics that describe them.
I would not put it this way, because it doesn't make the metaphysical aspect of that fact sharp enough. "Descriptions" are epistemological, and you don't want to imply that there is only one way to describe an aspect of reality. Characteristisations and lists are also the product of a conceptual consciousness, and when you say "characteristic", you could be misunderstood as talking about a mental unit. I don't think you mean that, but I want to point out that the bad guys typically equate the product of a consciousness operating on reality with the thing itself, so it is very important to cautious, and not accidentally slip into Platonist metaphors.
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I was debating somebody about the idea of causality. And the person I was debating responded with Humes attack on causality. [...]

I would suggest another possible approach. Your Humean opponent said, in part:

Humans cannot say that there is such a thing as cause and effect, because there are too many confounding variables.

This statement reveals the fallacy of the stolen concept. (See: "'Stolen Concept', Fallacy of," The Ayn Rand Lexicon, pp. 478-479.)

Because (an epistemological term) has no meaning if there is no cause in the world. What is because in epistemology is cause in metaphysics. The cause is the fact, and the because is the explanation. That is what explanations are: identifications of cause and effect relationships.

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I would suggest another possible approach. Your Humean opponent said, in part:

"Humans cannot say that there is such a thing as cause and effect, because there are too many confounding variables."

This statement reveals the fallacy of the stolen concept. (See: "'Stolen Concept', Fallacy of," The Ayn Rand Lexicon, pp. 478-479.)

Because (an epistemological term) has no meaning if there is no cause in the world. What is because in epistemology is cause in metaphysics. The cause is the fact, and the because is the explanation. That is what explanations are: identifications of cause and effect relationships.

Wow, what an insight. Burgess, that was brilliant. Out of all that Humean drivel, you found the flaw that brings down the entire thing.
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I would suggest another possible approach. Your Humean opponent said, in part:

This statement reveals the fallacy of the stolen concept. (See: "'Stolen Concept', Fallacy of," The Ayn Rand Lexicon, pp. 478-479.)

Because (an epistemological term) has no meaning if there is no cause in the world. What is because in epistemology is cause in metaphysics. The cause is the fact, and the because is the explanation. That is what explanations are: identifications of cause and effect relationships.

I was thinking of the exact same approach;however, not put in such technical terms. <_<

But I also wanted to explain Ayn Rands argument for causality, but I'm not sure if I am misinterpreting it.

This was originally a debate about God that somehow turned into a debate about causality. Oy Vey.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I was debating somebody about the idea of causality. And the person I was debating responded with Humes attack on causality.

When it's all boiled down, your Humean conversation partner is saying, "I choose

to regard effects as causeless. That there seem to be consistent causes for effects

if we look hard enough, is irrelevant."

To which I'd reply, "I'm happy you've made such a courageous choice explicitly!

And don't worry about falling through the planet on your way to the bathroom. My

reality will protect you, if your 'reality' won't."

Said with a smile, of course.

What I'm actually saying is that such nonsense as "just because I can't measure

some (or any) aspect of reality to a perfect accuracy in units, reality is not real",

should be laughed at, on it's face, as an excuse not to take responsibility for

effectively dealing with reality.

The machinations of logic to "convince" people who state such nonsense that they

are wrong is wonderful and nesessary, as it MIGHT actually convince them, though

it never seems to, but convincing the audience of such an exchange of the

underlying reason of the moron who proposes that "all is unreal because I am

unworthy to know reality" in priceless.

OK,.. I'm starting to sound like a MasterCard commercial.

-Iakeo

Edited by Iakeo
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Hume's scepticism was purely academic; he was concerned with the logical nature of justification rather than with what a person should believe - he even explictly stated that his views would be impossible to believe, yet alone practice. The distinction between 'academic' and 'useful' philosophy was a fairly important part of Hume's position and he discussed it in detail before presenting his own ideas (which fell into the former camp).

Edited by Hal
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Hume's scepticism was purely academic; he was concerned with the logical nature of justification rather than with what a person should believe - he even explictly stated that his views would be impossible to believe, yet alone practice. The distinction between 'academic' and 'useful' philosophy was a fairly important part of Hume's position and he discussed it in detail before presenting his own ideas (which fell into the former camp).

That's pretty funny. Argument for arguments sake.

Explicit pathological thinking. To investigate the pathology.

Seems sensible.

And what have these investigations discovered?

That the pathology, exemplified by the thinking investigating the pathology, can

produce pathological results.

Wow. What an incredible accomplishment!

-Iakeo

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I'm not sure what you mean; some people simply enjoy thinking about intellectual puzzles for their own sake. It's no different from pure mathematics or doing crossword puzzles really.

Life i.e. the purpose of philosophy is not a throw-away puzzle.

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I would suggest another possible approach. Your Humean opponent said, in part:

This statement reveals the fallacy of the stolen concept. (See: "'Stolen Concept', Fallacy of," The Ayn Rand Lexicon, pp. 478-479.)

Because (an epistemological term) has no meaning if there is no cause in the world. What is because in epistemology is cause in metaphysics. The cause is the fact, and the because is the explanation. That is what explanations are: identifications of cause and effect relationships.

No, an explanation is the application of a model to the description of some situation.

There should be some 1-1 relation between objects in the model and observables in the situation. Cause and effect relationships only exist in the model. If people have differing models for the same situation, they can identify different cause and effect relationships.

As an example, imagine you are watching a animated film. In the film someone kicks a ball. One model might be that this all really happened and that the animated character kicks the ball (cause and effect). Another model is that it is an animated film so the character never kicked the ball, but the motion was created by an unseen film crew (cause and effect).

If you don't like that we can imagine a magician who wants to present an illusion of one thing leading to another (say waving a wand and someone appearing in a box). If he is good then it looks like waving the wand causes the person to appear (cause and effect). But clearly other things happened behind the scenes.

Or we can go to physics and physical situations and trying to identify the real cause and effect. Of course in physics it is much clearer that cause and effect only exists within a model. It is only in reality in as much as we assume the model describes reality.

Hume is trying to point out that our observations of cause and effect are frequently wrong, so how can we be sure they are ever really right?

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Hume is trying to point out that our observations of cause and effect are frequently wrong, so how can we be sure they are ever really right?

You are equivocating "observation" with "conclusion". Error!

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I'm not sure what you mean; some people simply enjoy thinking about intellectual puzzles for their own sake. It's no different from pure mathematics or doing crossword puzzles really.

Hae ae ae... :)

I might, maybe, agree with the crossword puzzle analogy (they're both

"garbage-in/garbage-out" timewasters), but I don't think I'd agree with the pure

mathematics analogy.

The purpose of a puzzle is as an object lesson to solve.

The only possible purpose (other than timewasting [evading, ie EVIL]) for using

pathological processes to solve pathological puzzles is to prove that doing so is

pathological.

But we already KNEW that, didn't we. Though,.. it's nice of some brave soul to

check to make sure. And they've done that quite well, thank you very much.

-Iakeo

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No, an explanation is the application of a model to the description of some situation.

There should be some 1-1 relation between objects in the model and observables in the situation.  Cause and effect relationships only exist in the model.  If people have differing models for the same situation, they can identify different cause and effect relationships.

As an example, imagine you are watching a animated film.  In the film someone kicks a ball.  One model might be that this all really happened and that the animated character kicks the ball (cause and effect).  Another model is that it is an animated film so the character never kicked the ball, but the motion was created by an unseen film crew (cause and effect).

If you don't like that we can imagine a magician who wants to present an illusion of one thing leading to another (say waving a wand and someone appearing in a box).  If he is good then it looks like waving the wand causes the person to appear (cause and effect).  But clearly other things happened behind the scenes.

Or we can go to physics and physical situations and trying to identify the real cause and effect.  Of course in physics it is much clearer that cause and effect only exists within a model.  It is only in reality in as much as we assume the model describes reality.

Hume is trying to point out that our observations of cause and effect are frequently wrong, so how can we be sure they are ever really right?

GO GET HIM GANG..!!!! :)

Hae ae ae ae ae ae...!

-Iakeo

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  • 3 months later...

Hume says that induction isn't sound, which is true. When inducing things you can always be mistaken, but when you find out the correct belief you alter your ways.

Hume went on to say that all knowledge is inductive, and I would agree, except for axioms which have no deductive or inductive reasoning behind them.

But where I disagree is that he claims that you can know nothing because all knowledge is inductive and induction always has the possibility to be wrong. This in essense is claiming that you need to know that you know, in order to possess knowledge. If this is true, then you would need to know that you know that you know, in order to possess knowledge and so on, ad infinitum. That means that in order to hold any one belief you would need to have an infinite amount of beliefs about that belief, and that is just silly. What he describes as knowledge is not what any person would consider as knowledge.

Do you think that you need to have an infinite amount of beliefs in order to hold one peice of knowledge?

And axioms are self-evident truths (cannot be proved), thus neither induction or deduction are needed in order to claim an axiom. You only need some sort of inductive verification (not proof), to beleive that the axiom is a good one.

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