Every time i think about this I always wonder what Hume would say to Newton, who has no trouble concluding that there are universal laws like cause and effect that we are justified in making as a result of our experience of the physical world. Newton’s laws show that the properties of physics are inherent in the world itself, and not contingent upon the inner workings of the mind. Can you give me some help here? Thanks!
Hume knew of Newton's work, he was born roughly 70 years after him you know. You're misunderstanding Hume. He's not an idealist who thinks the world is dependent on the mind. He will grant you that it does indeed appear that the properties of physics exists in the world. But how is Newton's claim justified? That is what is of question here. You said Newton's laws show that they are inherent to the world, but that's not in fact what they "show", strictly speaking. All they show is that every time in the past where event A has happened, event B occured afterwards. When you really strip down Newton's justification for his laws, this is it. We never actually see A *cause* B. Maybe B is caused by something we didn't see, C, and the two are entirely unrelated. Or maybe A did cause B, but only because something else that we didn't observe, influenced A first. So you see, this causal linking we're doing, is really a guess, speculation on our part. It is not justified. The causal link between A and B is never observed empirically. So that is why Hume says that the causal link between A and B is something added by our mind. Notice that he isn't saying causality doesn't exist out there in the world, it might. But for us to claim we *know* causality exists in the world, we must observe it, like we observe events A and B, but we never do. Our mind however adds it in anyway, makes us think we are justified in making this step. There's no guarantee that a similar event B+ will follow A+ in the future, but the pattern seeking nature of our mind demands we make the assumption.
According to Hume we infer patterns by the caused mental operations. We _are caused to_ project necessities. That last sentence in the video needs to be criticised. Cause you cannot exempt the mind from causality.
@@Google_Censored_Commenter of course I understand that. I’m not misunderstanding Hume when I point out that he differs from Newton in the sense that Newton believes physics is a property of reality, whereas Hume emphasizes the properties of the mind that cause us to make patterns wherever that appears logical. Those are distinct approaches!
Bertrand Russell said that it the final analysis nothing could be confirmed absolutely and everything could be doubted. We ultimately have to “put our faith” arbitrarily in one thing or another. Still, he said, I clearly prefer putting my faith in some things rather than others. (I’m the guy that asked if you lived in Mexico (San Miguel). I studied at UCLA and Harvard so I know your state quite well. Thank you for another interesting video.
Russell could not have been more wrong. There are many truths which are knowable, that there cannot be motion without an object is an absolute truth of materiality is one. ready my post above and let me know what you think.
I’m interested in seeing how this idea of Hume’s will be critiqued. My guess would be something pragmatic. Something along the lines of if we can predict an outcome and use it in our daily lives with good success then it doesn’t matter if we really understand the fundamental. Thanks professor.
Ethics of Hume based on pasions drive towards other kind of ethics;those of Bentham pleasure and pain as the account of existence. I think that ethics of good or middle path aka Aristotle or Buddha are kinda wiser, i reccomend the Alasdair Macentyre's book onhistory of ethics, where he is arguing going back to Aristotle as a common ground reference. Reason is important to figurate a construction of bad and evil. Hume however has been important for me to produce this healthy skeptical doubt over reason.
Heidegger says Hume and Descartes notion of causation is different then Aristotles. Descartes and Hume reduced causation to a conjunction (cause and effect). But Heidegger says this is incomplete. Heidegger does an etymology on causality and finds that it means care. Not just an observation of being but an understanding of being there (dasein). Heidegger complains that Descartes (and Hume) in his reducing of causation and reason fundamentally alienated us from being (the world). He removes the aspect of care from causality which has no explanation for why things even exist in the first place.
@@impermanencecharms3319 reason is there to constraint the passions, and allowed it a healthy outlet. Know thyself. An ethical man, is a man who has overcome his base desires in pursuit of virtue.
Another way of putting it Daniel is by keeping to ask why successively. “Antiinflamatorio reduces pain. Why? Because inflammation causes pain. Why? Because it creates pressure on the nerves and that hurts. Why? Why pressure on the nerves doesn’t have the effect of a massage? Because it is just so. “. You always come to something like that.
but i mean, we DO see the connection between the ball and the stick if we strike one with the other, they dO come in contact. i don't understand why this is not a direct causation-
Thanks! Lost power and heat for a day, but it’s back on now. My daughters lost power for two days, and one still has no water-day 4 and counting. I was lucky. Some in my neighborhood have had no power for 5 days; it’s 35 degrees inside their houses. Mine never got below 54.
Hi, this may sound a bit crazy but I can offer you the answer how, we can conclude that based on the same cause we will get the same consequence. This is possible if we make a deduction from the induction, that is, if we understand why it happened for the first time. Then we will understand why this will happen every time it is repeated. And why in these circumstances nothing else can happen. Take for example that you walk towards a wall and your body stops when you are in contact with a wall. The first question is why did that happen? And not something else ... When we divide the whole case into "all" factors that make it up, we will get: you who move, the floor, the space you pass through, the wall ... What we must understand is that every factor that exists has its own identity and cannot be different at the same time. So, just as in the identity of the body as well as in the identity of that wall there is no transience through each other due to the structure of those identities, it is not possible for those identities. That is why it happened, what is only possible, which can only happen through the contact of these identities. Therefore, in each repeated case, the same consequence will occur, stopping the body in contact with the wall. And for the first time, what was only possible in the contact of these identities happened. It is impossible for nothing to happen, and the only thing that can happen depends on the identities involved in the process. Every identity can react only according to what it is and in no other way. This limits the consequence and therefore only what each identity brings to the process for itself can always happen. Now try to imagine any other possible consequence, without having to change the identities we had in the first case, any different consequence will require some change of some identity in the process, and that implies a change of what Hume call the cause. Each repeated case will end the same if the same identities are present because each factor from that process has its own identity which at the same time cannot be different and therefore cannot react differently. A wall cannot have the identity of transience and non-transience for the body at the same time, the same goes for the space you walk through ... An identity is one that limits the possibility of a consequence to the identity it possesses. This is a simplified example of necessity in causality and I don’t think it provides a deeper understanding of necessity in causality but it is a powerful example that points to necessity that is indisputable without changing any identity in the process itself, and if we do, change something in the process itself, then we have changed the cause itself, so we should not expect the same consequence. I apologize if the translation is not perfect everywhere, I am dyslexic. That’s part of my charm.
Assuming that each object is an "identity" (or has properties as it's known in philosophy) doesn't solve the issue. Because now you have to justify how you know the identities or properties are fixed. Not just why they are what they are, (why the wall's identity is to remain still, while yours is to move) but also why they are *fixed* in their identities. We certainly could imagine them being otherwise, and have in lots and lots of fiction. Regardless, you cannot deductively come to these conclusions, you have to inductively verify it by obsersving the world, and so we're back at square one.
Helio, if identity changes then it changes consequence. That is not questionable. David hume in his book “An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding” establishes the thesis that based on the same cause (and this includes no change of identity) we cannot conclude that we will get the same consequence. Imagine moving a string in the direction in which one knot was made before. Moving the string in the same direction will always give the same knot. If the identity of the string changes and it becomes inflexible, then we will no longer be able to tie knots with it, but this change in its identity will necessarily imply other consequences that are now in its identity, such as cracking when trying to bend or something else. Something that is in the identity of the string and its interaction with other identities.@@Google_Censored_Commenter
@@gorazdcosic I don't see how you're solving anything. No matter how many times I move a string a certain way to tie a knot, I can never know it will tie a knot again, the next time I do it. At least not with certainty. And it's certainly not a necessity. Maybe next time I do it, it becomes inflexible, and changes identity as you suggest. But why would I even grant that identities are a thing to begin with? Just because all things with same identity have behaved similarly in the past? That doesn't rule out things with the same identity may behave differently in the future, regardless of how unintuitive or illogical it sounds.
@@gorazdcosic Suppose that God gave you a magical bag with two balls in it. He tasks you with finding out with absolute certainty the true nature of the balls' color. Its color identity if you will. If you succeed, you will go to heaven. You have as much time if you want. God will even extend your life for as many years as you need. But there are a few restrictions. You cannot look inside the bag to see the color of all the balls at once. The only thing the bag allows you to do, is pull out one ball at a time *at random* and observe it. Once you're done observing it, the ball magically returns to the magical bag, and you get to pull out another one. Suppose you have pulled out a ball 20 times. And each time it was red. It was never any other color. Does this mean you can conclude there must be two red balls in the bag? Unfortunately not. It could very well be, that you've been unlucky enough to pull the same red ball 20 times, while a ball of unknown color still remains in the bag. It's unlikely, but possible, so you continue drawing balls from the bag, you want to be certain you go to heaven. A thousand years pass, you grow impatient, your eyes start to grow dry, and you are perhaps even losing the ability to see color at all. You can't tell. But then, miraculously, you pull out a green ball! Unmistakenly, this ball is green, you think to yourself. This must be the second ball you somehow avoided pulling for a thousand years, you think to yourself. This must have been God's way of testing your perserverance and faith. But now you know the truth. You are about to tell God that you have finished your task, but then, you grow weary. Uncertainty creeps in yet again. Could this be right? What if your eyes have decieved you all this time, or you've grown ill, starting to see green instead of red? To confirm your suspicion, you decide to continue drawing balls. To your surprise, the next ball from the bag is green as well! A thousand years have passed and you've only seen the one, and now you see two in a row? This cannot be a coincidence you tell yourself. Something is going on here. So you continue drawing balls, every time it is green, and never another color. A thousand years pass, and yet still, you've only seen a green ball. Another thousand years pass, and still only green balls. You start questioning if you ever saw any red balls at all to begin with. Was it all just a delusion? Or was it another of God's tests? You decide to wait another thousand years, but you can wait no longer. You grow impatient, and angry. You decide enough is enough, and you tell God with hubris in your voice that you have finished your task, that you are absolutely certain the two balls in the bag are both green! And that God is cruel for playing a trick on your eyes the first thousand years.... But God then looks at you with sorrow in his eyes, and tells you that you've failed, that he cannot grant you access to heaven. "Why God why!? I did as you asked, I solved the mystery of the magic bag, didn't I?" you plead, but God simply responds, "No, my child, you did not. You were too arrogant in your judgement. The balls don't have an intrinsic color, at least, not while in the magical bag. All this time you've been picking up the same ball over and over. The first thousand years, the ball was designed to turn red as it exited the bag, the next ten thousand years, green, and the next after that, should you have continued, blue, until you would have seen all the colors of the rainbow. "But what of the second ball? What color is *that* ?" You ask God in a whimpering, pleading voice. The second ball? He repeats. Why, that's a good question. This bag has existed in a time before your universe's existence, child. It has existed before time, and after eternity. I have pulled balls from it infinitely many times, but only ever gotten the one. Even I, your lord, has never seen the second ball. But I have faith that the second ball exists, and that it is truly colorless, even outside the bag, the same way you had faith the first was truly colorful. And with that, God sends you to hell for your arrogance, thinking you were wiser than He.
So Hume thinks that necessity and causation are feelings, derived from experiential or conscious expectations. That modern man has honed his feelings into a body of meaning that he calls Reason. But that in reality this meaning, Reason, is really belief: faith? Why didn't he say so? Why leave out the word belief? Secondly why didn't he address creation? Causation is not creation. Babies are a feeling? I think not. Death is a feeling? What about a shoe that I create? A belief? One needs a self, with a mind, to believe. What is the source of self and mind? Consciousness? Is it a belief that one thing is associated or identified with another 🤔 or is it a faculty of mind? What about memory and will? Are they beliefs as well or faculties of mind? Can any belief become a faculty of mind or are all beliefs a property of the three faculties of memory, will and intimacy? What does Hume have to say about atheists, for whom belief is irrational? Skeptics?
The tendency to believe that the future will be like the past appears to be innate in the human mind. Yudkowski pointed out that a mind could exist with the opposite prejudice: this entails no logical contradiction, so logic cannot overturn it. Almost all of this being's predictions turn out to be wrong, and when you ask it "why do you think your way of thinking will work next time?", it replies _"because it's never worked before!"_ Yudkowski's solution to this trap is "don't be born with bad priors".
5:32 What was hume expecting to see? I eat something and my hunger goes away...i strike football it moves.What else Hume was expecting to see? How he would affirm relation? What is his criteria?
He wanted to see the infinity of links! It's just like: how are you justified to infer that two is the next natural number after 1 without going through all rational and irraltional values in between.
I'm sorry but we do draw inferences from single cases. When I was a young child I jabbed a knitting needle into a power outlet. Once was enough to teach me cause and effect.
A MORE SUCCINCT CRITIQUE..................ANY THOUGHTS?....................1. Hume surrenders to the understanding that entities are distinct in what they are and by that, that which they are not. A square is distinctively that which it is for its characteristics (squareness) and that which it is not, possessing no characteristics of a circle (circleness). 2. That an entity can be that which it is distinctively and not other things is due to its “distinctive” physical characteristics or physicality. E.g., the billiard ball in his analogous refutation of the deterministic nature of cause and effect is distinctively just that, a billiard ball and not an apple or beach ball or the like. 3. He thus, by definition, accepted that entities are that which they are by the assertion of their form and function (characteristics) into materiality (quantum mechanics validates this unequivocally). Were this not so, he could not have appealed to them that they would be employed in his propositions. 4. He also, by definition, accepted that entities are material, i.e., physical, defined by their physical characteristics (a ball is round and not square, etc.) or they could not be considered at all and could not be participants in his propositions. That he specifically chose billiard balls for the players in his analogy demonstrates his acceptance of this (above) as a recognition. 5. By this he submitted to the understanding that motion for being intangible, could NOT be a characteristic of the billiard ball which is moving but a phenomenon in the context of consideration, it moving toward a stationary billiard ball that it might cause it to move when struck. Motion of the billiard ball in this context is only a phenomenon of concern with the billiard balls physicality or characteristics. 6. Given the above, we know analytically that the motion of the billiard ball had to have been imparted to it by the force of another entity of which it was concerned when it struck the billiard ball. 7. Thus, by that same means by which the motion of the billiard ball was imparted to it by a prior entity also effected by motion, it would be imparted to the stationary billiard ball by the moving billiard ball. 8. We are able then to induce that the stationary billiard ball would in fact move if struck by the first because of the nature of motion as opposed to that of the physicality of the billiard balls for we know analytically that motion cannot be a part or characteristic of the physicality of the billiard balls but only an imparted phenomenon. So if it was imparted to the first billiard ball by it being struck, so too would it be imparted to the second when being struck.
I can live with that. But nothing, really, can be said about the nature of causation. It seems that the entire events in the whole universe are only events.
Thank you Professor for your succinct and easy-to-understand lecture on Hume's causality.
He has a good way of explaining this in a way that makes it easy to understand.
This man is a delight! I enjoy listening to him and participate in the joy he experiences while explaining it!
Fascinating !!. From inference and impression we can deduce it from experience. Thank you.
This was so helpful!
Beautiful lectures, professor. I am hoping for an in-depth lecture on Nietzsche's morality at some point :)
Spoiler: He doesn't have any. :P
Or on Schopenhauer inmanente idealism!
The comic at 9:09 is my favorite rebuttal to Hume
That helped me understand better than the book I just read! Thanks!
This helped me so much, thank you!
Every time i think about this I always wonder what Hume would say to Newton, who has no trouble concluding that there are universal laws like cause and effect that we are justified in making as a result of our experience of the physical world. Newton’s laws show that the properties of physics are inherent in the world itself, and not contingent upon the inner workings of the mind. Can you give me some help here? Thanks!
Hume knew of Newton's work, he was born roughly 70 years after him you know. You're misunderstanding Hume. He's not an idealist who thinks the world is dependent on the mind. He will grant you that it does indeed appear that the properties of physics exists in the world.
But how is Newton's claim justified? That is what is of question here. You said Newton's laws show that they are inherent to the world, but that's not in fact what they "show", strictly speaking. All they show is that every time in the past where event A has happened, event B occured afterwards. When you really strip down Newton's justification for his laws, this is it. We never actually see A *cause* B. Maybe B is caused by something we didn't see, C, and the two are entirely unrelated. Or maybe A did cause B, but only because something else that we didn't observe, influenced A first.
So you see, this causal linking we're doing, is really a guess, speculation on our part. It is not justified. The causal link between A and B is never observed empirically. So that is why Hume says that the causal link between A and B is something added by our mind. Notice that he isn't saying causality doesn't exist out there in the world, it might. But for us to claim we *know* causality exists in the world, we must observe it, like we observe events A and B, but we never do. Our mind however adds it in anyway, makes us think we are justified in making this step. There's no guarantee that a similar event B+ will follow A+ in the future, but the pattern seeking nature of our mind demands we make the assumption.
According to Hume we infer patterns by the caused mental operations. We _are caused to_ project necessities. That last sentence in the video needs to be criticised. Cause you cannot exempt the mind from causality.
@@Google_Censored_Commenter of course I understand that. I’m not misunderstanding Hume when I point out that he differs from Newton in the sense that Newton believes physics is a property of reality, whereas Hume emphasizes the properties of the mind that cause us to make patterns wherever that appears logical. Those are distinct approaches!
Bertrand Russell said that it the final analysis nothing could be confirmed absolutely and everything could be doubted. We ultimately have to “put our faith” arbitrarily in one thing or another. Still, he said, I clearly prefer putting my faith in some things rather than others. (I’m the guy that asked if you lived in Mexico (San Miguel). I studied at UCLA and Harvard so I know your state quite well. Thank you for another interesting video.
Russell could not have been more wrong. There are many truths which are knowable, that there cannot be motion without an object is an absolute truth of materiality is one. ready my post above and let me know what you think.
You killed that. Thank you!
Great lesson!
Thanks! 😃
This man just saved my degree ahahaha.
Do a course on Al Ghazali
Or Al Bundy.
@@isee7668 who is that?
@@ahmedsheriffdeen never mind
They don't even know who AL Ghazali is.
I’m interested in seeing how this idea of Hume’s will be critiqued. My guess would be something pragmatic. Something along the lines of if we can predict an outcome and use it in our daily lives with good success then it doesn’t matter if we really understand the fundamental. Thanks professor.
Hume was a naturist, not a believer in and is far from an ultra empirist as Noam Chomsky said.
Ethics of Hume based on pasions drive towards other kind of ethics;those of Bentham pleasure and pain as the account of existence. I think that ethics of good or middle path aka Aristotle or Buddha are kinda wiser, i reccomend the Alasdair Macentyre's book onhistory of ethics, where he is arguing going back to Aristotle as a common ground reference. Reason is important to figurate a construction of bad and evil. Hume however has been important for me to produce this healthy skeptical doubt over reason.
Kant has a response to hume on causation in the promeg something I can't recall the full name
Heidegger says Hume and Descartes notion of causation is different then Aristotles. Descartes and Hume reduced causation to a conjunction (cause and effect). But Heidegger says this is incomplete. Heidegger does an etymology on causality and finds that it means care. Not just an observation of being but an understanding of being there (dasein). Heidegger complains that Descartes (and Hume) in his reducing of causation and reason fundamentally alienated us from being (the world). He removes the aspect of care from causality which has no explanation for why things even exist in the first place.
@@impermanencecharms3319 reason is there to constraint the passions, and allowed it a healthy outlet. Know thyself. An ethical man, is a man who has overcome his base desires in pursuit of virtue.
Another way of putting it Daniel is by keeping to ask why successively. “Antiinflamatorio reduces pain. Why? Because inflammation causes pain. Why? Because it creates pressure on the nerves and that hurts. Why? Why pressure on the nerves doesn’t have the effect of a massage? Because it is just so. “. You always come to something like that.
but i mean, we DO see the connection between the ball and the stick if we strike one with the other, they dO come in contact. i don't understand why this is not a direct causation-
Hope you’re doing ok during this blizzard
Thanks! Lost power and heat for a day, but it’s back on now. My daughters lost power for two days, and one still has no water-day 4 and counting. I was lucky. Some in my neighborhood have had no power for 5 days; it’s 35 degrees inside their houses. Mine never got below 54.
Hi, this may sound a bit crazy but I can offer you the answer how, we can conclude that based on the same cause we will get the same consequence. This is possible if we make a deduction from the induction, that is, if we understand why it happened for the first time. Then we will understand why this will happen every time it is repeated. And why in these circumstances nothing else can happen. Take for example that you walk towards a wall and your body stops when you are in contact with a wall. The first question is why did that happen? And not something else ... When we divide the whole case into "all" factors that make it up, we will get: you who move, the floor, the space you pass through, the wall ... What we must understand is that every factor that exists has its own identity and cannot be different at the same time. So, just as in the identity of the body as well as in the identity of that wall there is no transience through each other due to the structure of those identities, it is not possible for those identities. That is why it happened, what is only possible, which can only happen through the contact of these identities. Therefore, in each repeated case, the same consequence will occur, stopping the body in contact with the wall. And for the first time, what was only possible in the contact of these identities happened. It is impossible for nothing to happen, and the only thing that can happen depends on the identities involved in the process. Every identity can react only according to what it is and in no other way. This limits the consequence and therefore only what each identity brings to the process for itself can always happen. Now try to imagine any other possible consequence, without having to change the identities we had in the first case, any different consequence will require some change of some identity in the process, and that implies a change of what Hume call the cause. Each repeated case will end the same if the same identities are present because each factor from that process has its own identity which at the same time cannot be different and therefore cannot react differently. A wall cannot have the identity of transience and non-transience for the body at the same time, the same goes for the space you walk through ... An identity is one that limits the possibility of a consequence to the identity it possesses. This is a simplified example of necessity in causality and I don’t think it provides a deeper understanding of necessity in causality but it is a powerful example that points to necessity that is indisputable without changing any identity in the process itself, and if we do, change something in the process itself, then we have changed the cause itself, so we should not expect the same consequence. I apologize if the translation is not perfect everywhere, I am dyslexic. That’s part of my charm.
Assuming that each object is an "identity" (or has properties as it's known in philosophy) doesn't solve the issue. Because now you have to justify how you know the identities or properties are fixed. Not just why they are what they are, (why the wall's identity is to remain still, while yours is to move) but also why they are *fixed* in their identities. We certainly could imagine them being otherwise, and have in lots and lots of fiction.
Regardless, you cannot deductively come to these conclusions, you have to inductively verify it by obsersving the world, and so we're back at square one.
Helio, if identity changes then it changes consequence. That is not questionable. David hume in his book “An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding” establishes the thesis that based on the same cause (and this includes no change of identity) we cannot conclude that we will get the same consequence. Imagine moving a string in the direction in which one knot was made before. Moving the string in the same direction will always give the same knot. If the identity of the string changes and it becomes inflexible, then we will no longer be able to tie knots with it, but this change in its identity will necessarily imply other consequences that are now in its identity, such as cracking when trying to bend or something else. Something that is in the identity of the string and its interaction with other identities.@@Google_Censored_Commenter
@@gorazdcosic I don't see how you're solving anything. No matter how many times I move a string a certain way to tie a knot, I can never know it will tie a knot again, the next time I do it. At least not with certainty. And it's certainly not a necessity. Maybe next time I do it, it becomes inflexible, and changes identity as you suggest. But why would I even grant that identities are a thing to begin with? Just because all things with same identity have behaved similarly in the past? That doesn't rule out things with the same identity may behave differently in the future, regardless of how unintuitive or illogical it sounds.
Can you give one example of what you are talking about?
@@Google_Censored_Commenter
@@gorazdcosic Suppose that God gave you a magical bag with two balls in it. He tasks you with finding out with absolute certainty the true nature of the balls' color. Its color identity if you will. If you succeed, you will go to heaven. You have as much time if you want. God will even extend your life for as many years as you need. But there are a few restrictions.
You cannot look inside the bag to see the color of all the balls at once. The only thing the bag allows you to do, is pull out one ball at a time *at random* and observe it. Once you're done observing it, the ball magically returns to the magical bag, and you get to pull out another one. Suppose you have pulled out a ball 20 times. And each time it was red. It was never any other color. Does this mean you can conclude there must be two red balls in the bag? Unfortunately not. It could very well be, that you've been unlucky enough to pull the same red ball 20 times, while a ball of unknown color still remains in the bag. It's unlikely, but possible, so you continue drawing balls from the bag, you want to be certain you go to heaven.
A thousand years pass, you grow impatient, your eyes start to grow dry, and you are perhaps even losing the ability to see color at all. You can't tell. But then, miraculously, you pull out a green ball! Unmistakenly, this ball is green, you think to yourself. This must be the second ball you somehow avoided pulling for a thousand years, you think to yourself. This must have been God's way of testing your perserverance and faith. But now you know the truth. You are about to tell God that you have finished your task, but then, you grow weary. Uncertainty creeps in yet again. Could this be right? What if your eyes have decieved you all this time, or you've grown ill, starting to see green instead of red? To confirm your suspicion, you decide to continue drawing balls. To your surprise, the next ball from the bag is green as well! A thousand years have passed and you've only seen the one, and now you see two in a row? This cannot be a coincidence you tell yourself. Something is going on here. So you continue drawing balls, every time it is green, and never another color. A thousand years pass, and yet still, you've only seen a green ball. Another thousand years pass, and still only green balls. You start questioning if you ever saw any red balls at all to begin with. Was it all just a delusion? Or was it another of God's tests? You decide to wait another thousand years, but you can wait no longer. You grow impatient, and angry. You decide enough is enough, and you tell God with hubris in your voice that you have finished your task, that you are absolutely certain the two balls in the bag are both green! And that God is cruel for playing a trick on your eyes the first thousand years.... But God then looks at you with sorrow in his eyes, and tells you that you've failed, that he cannot grant you access to heaven.
"Why God why!? I did as you asked, I solved the mystery of the magic bag, didn't I?" you plead, but God simply responds, "No, my child, you did not. You were too arrogant in your judgement. The balls don't have an intrinsic color, at least, not while in the magical bag. All this time you've been picking up the same ball over and over. The first thousand years, the ball was designed to turn red as it exited the bag, the next ten thousand years, green, and the next after that, should you have continued, blue, until you would have seen all the colors of the rainbow.
"But what of the second ball? What color is *that* ?" You ask God in a whimpering, pleading voice.
The second ball? He repeats. Why, that's a good question. This bag has existed in a time before your universe's existence, child. It has existed before time, and after eternity. I have pulled balls from it infinitely many times, but only ever gotten the one. Even I, your lord, has never seen the second ball. But I have faith that the second ball exists, and that it is truly colorless, even outside the bag, the same way you had faith the first was truly colorful.
And with that, God sends you to hell for your arrogance, thinking you were wiser than He.
So Hume thinks that necessity and causation are feelings, derived from experiential or conscious expectations. That modern man has honed his feelings into a body of meaning that he calls Reason. But that in reality this meaning, Reason, is really belief: faith? Why didn't he say so? Why leave out the word belief?
Secondly why didn't he address creation? Causation is not creation. Babies are a feeling? I think not. Death is a feeling? What about a shoe that I create? A belief? One needs a self, with a mind, to believe. What is the source of self and mind? Consciousness?
Is it a belief that one thing is associated or identified with another 🤔 or is it a faculty of mind? What about memory and will? Are they beliefs as well or faculties of mind? Can any belief become a faculty of mind or are all beliefs a property of the three faculties of memory, will and intimacy?
What does Hume have to say about atheists, for whom belief is irrational? Skeptics?
The tendency to believe that the future will be like the past appears to be innate in the human mind. Yudkowski pointed out that a mind could exist with the opposite prejudice: this entails no logical contradiction, so logic cannot overturn it. Almost all of this being's predictions turn out to be wrong, and when you ask it "why do you think your way of thinking will work next time?", it replies _"because it's never worked before!"_
Yudkowski's solution to this trap is "don't be born with bad priors".
5:32 What was hume expecting to see? I eat something and my hunger goes away...i strike football it moves.What else Hume was expecting to see? How he would affirm relation? What is his criteria?
He wanted to see the infinity of links! It's just like: how are you justified to infer that two is the next natural number after 1 without going through all rational and irraltional values in between.
I'm sorry but we do draw inferences from single cases. When I was a young child I jabbed a knitting needle into a power outlet. Once was enough to teach me cause and effect.
A MORE SUCCINCT CRITIQUE..................ANY THOUGHTS?....................1. Hume surrenders to the understanding that entities are distinct in what they are and by that, that which they are not. A square is distinctively that which it is for its characteristics (squareness) and that which it is not, possessing no characteristics of a circle (circleness).
2. That an entity can be that which it is distinctively and not other things is due to its “distinctive” physical characteristics or physicality. E.g., the billiard ball in his analogous refutation of the deterministic nature of cause and effect is distinctively just that, a billiard ball and not an apple or beach ball or the like.
3. He thus, by definition, accepted that entities are that which they are by the assertion of their form and function (characteristics) into materiality (quantum mechanics validates this unequivocally). Were this not so, he could not have appealed to them that they would be employed in his propositions.
4. He also, by definition, accepted that entities are material, i.e., physical, defined by their physical characteristics (a ball is round and not square, etc.) or they could not be considered at all and could not be participants in his propositions. That he specifically chose billiard balls for the players in his analogy demonstrates his acceptance of this (above) as a recognition.
5. By this he submitted to the understanding that motion for being intangible, could NOT be a characteristic of the billiard ball which is moving but a phenomenon in the context of consideration, it moving toward a stationary billiard ball that it might cause it to move when struck. Motion of the billiard ball in this context is only a phenomenon of concern with the billiard balls physicality or characteristics.
6. Given the above, we know analytically that the motion of the billiard ball had to have been imparted to it by the force of another entity of which it was concerned when it struck the billiard ball.
7. Thus, by that same means by which the motion of the billiard ball was imparted to it by a prior entity also effected by motion, it would be imparted to the stationary billiard ball by the moving billiard ball.
8. We are able then to induce that the stationary billiard ball would in fact move if struck by the first because of the nature of motion as opposed to that of the physicality of the billiard balls for we know analytically that motion cannot be a part or characteristic of the physicality of the billiard balls but only an imparted phenomenon. So if it was imparted to the first billiard ball by it being struck, so too would it be imparted to the second when being struck.
I can live with that. But nothing, really, can be said about the nature of causation. It seems that the entire events in the whole universe are only events.
First comment . Lol