I never say never, but that's not really my area. I can imagine doing a video on, say, Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics?" But I don't think I'll be doing Sein und Zeit, or one of the later books. There are others who would be much better at explaining the details of his theories.
A Humean line of response I'd imagine would be, because the knowledge about the trees is based on the past observations and the inductive reasoning by which we get the claim that "the trees usually don't flower in winter", we have no reason to suppose that this is true in general nor do we have any reason to think the trees flowering in winter is impossible. But since we a posterori discover the fact that the trees exhibit certain patterns of flowering in a certain causal network, the initial assumption must be that it is possible that the trees flower completely at random, or otherwise the argument would be circular.
I think we need to distinguish between epistemic and metaphysical (or real) possibility here. The Humean would be right if they claimed that the use of empirical methods presupposes that it is epistemically possible for the trees to flower whenever -- otherwise, observation is not needed. But of course this allows the Shepherdian to claim that through observation we find out what the real necessities are, and thus that it was never really possible for the trees to flower in winter. To be sure, nothing in this video proves that Hume's account of causation or necessity is wrong. I'm only following Shepherd in arguing that conceivability scenarios are not an argument in favour of Hume's account. (Shepherd has other arguments against other parts of Hume, but I'm not talking about them here.)
@@VictorGijsbers My understanding is that even if we grant that we discover the real necessities regarding the trees, there still are the problem of induction and skepticism about the uniformity of nature in the Humean toolbox to appeal to. Let's say we discover (part of) the real nature of the trees by means of induction, but there's still a metaphysical possibility (which has to be conceivable in the first place in order for us to come up with this idea) that it is in the trees' nature to start flowering in winter after a certain developmental stage, for example. And at that point we're still assuming the uniformity of nature; it might suddenly for no reason change its laws, thereby making the knowledge about the trees' nature obsolete. Though, I think the Shepherdian can take something like a causal externalist account of epistemic justification to make a rebuttal. And yes, I'm not a Humean myself so I think Hume's probably wrong on this one, but I felt as though there's plenty of room for a Humean to respond to Shepherd's argument as it was presented. Thank you for the response!
Would you ever do a series on Hermeneutics (or just Heidegger)?
I never say never, but that's not really my area. I can imagine doing a video on, say, Heidegger's "What is Metaphysics?" But I don't think I'll be doing Sein und Zeit, or one of the later books. There are others who would be much better at explaining the details of his theories.
A Humean line of response I'd imagine would be, because the knowledge about the trees is based on the past observations and the inductive reasoning by which we get the claim that "the trees usually don't flower in winter", we have no reason to suppose that this is true in general nor do we have any reason to think the trees flowering in winter is impossible. But since we a posterori discover the fact that the trees exhibit certain patterns of flowering in a certain causal network, the initial assumption must be that it is possible that the trees flower completely at random, or otherwise the argument would be circular.
I think we need to distinguish between epistemic and metaphysical (or real) possibility here. The Humean would be right if they claimed that the use of empirical methods presupposes that it is epistemically possible for the trees to flower whenever -- otherwise, observation is not needed. But of course this allows the Shepherdian to claim that through observation we find out what the real necessities are, and thus that it was never really possible for the trees to flower in winter.
To be sure, nothing in this video proves that Hume's account of causation or necessity is wrong. I'm only following Shepherd in arguing that conceivability scenarios are not an argument in favour of Hume's account. (Shepherd has other arguments against other parts of Hume, but I'm not talking about them here.)
@@VictorGijsbers My understanding is that even if we grant that we discover the real necessities regarding the trees, there still are the problem of induction and skepticism about the uniformity of nature in the Humean toolbox to appeal to. Let's say we discover (part of) the real nature of the trees by means of induction, but there's still a metaphysical possibility (which has to be conceivable in the first place in order for us to come up with this idea) that it is in the trees' nature to start flowering in winter after a certain developmental stage, for example. And at that point we're still assuming the uniformity of nature; it might suddenly for no reason change its laws, thereby making the knowledge about the trees' nature obsolete. Though, I think the Shepherdian can take something like a causal externalist account of epistemic justification to make a rebuttal.
And yes, I'm not a Humean myself so I think Hume's probably wrong on this one, but I felt as though there's plenty of room for a Humean to respond to Shepherd's argument as it was presented.
Thank you for the response!
Welcome back! Will you continue your tractatus series in the future?
@@noonecares9665 I'm planning to!
I think the Quinean approach to this is the correct take.
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