The issue is perhaps whether modus ponens - and hence necessity - is the correct way of understanding, say, physics — Banno
SO it should not be a surprise that the logic and maths we choose is effective. — Banno
I believe Descartes was one of the first to employ it. — Agent Smith
It's one aspect of it, but I feel there's a lot more to be said. — Wayfarer
more broadly, the link between logical necessity and physical causation seems fundamental to science generally, and even to navigating everday life — Wayfarer
But the necessity in question is not the same necessity as the necessity of logical inference. — Cuthbert
The deeper question is - what, if anything, is causal 'necessity'? — Cuthbert
Wittgenstein famously states that (Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, proposition 5.1361) : "The events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present." and "Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus."
What am I missing coming late to this discussion? — I like sushi
But there is nothing logically contradictory in the kettle not heating up. — Banno
The apple can fall to the right or to the left. But it can also stay in balance at the apex of Norton's dome. — Haglund
That being said, a gas in vacuum expands (forward causation, forward time) or it implodes (reversed causation, backward time). — Haglund
But if it were quite so simple as this, then why does it have so many entries in philosophical textbooks, and why did Kant say that it was Hume's attack on causality that woke him from his dogmatic slumbers? — Wayfarer
I believe Descartes was one of the first to employ it.
— Agent Smith
Descartes was nevertheless solidly located in the Western philosophical tradition. It was Platonic epistemology which accorded a high status to dianoia and mathematical analysis. — Wayfarer
Hume started from a single but important concept in Metaphysics, viz., that of Cause and Effect (including its derivatives force and action, etc.). He challenges reason, which pretends to have given birth to this idea from herself, to answer him by what right she thinks anything to be so constituted, that if that thing be posited, something else also must necessarily be posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause. He demonstrated irrefutably that it was perfectly impossible for reason to think a priori and by means of concepts a combination involving necessity. We cannot at all see why, in consequence of the existence of one thing, another must necessarily exist, or how the concept of such a combination can arise a priori. Hence he inferred, that reason was altogether deluded with reference to this concept, which she erroneously considered as one of her children, whereas in reality it was nothing but a bastard of imagination, impregnated by experience, which subsumed certain representations under the Law of Association, and mistook the subjective necessity of habit for an objective necessity arising from insight. Hence he inferred that reason had no power to think such combinations, even generally, because her concepts would then be purely fictitious, and all her pretended a priori cognitions nothing but common experiences marked with a false stamp. — Kant, Prolegomena
The question was not whether the concept of cause was right, useful, and even indispensable for our knowledge of nature, for this Hume had never doubted; but whether that concept could be thought by reason a priori, and consequently whether it possessed an inner truth, independent of all experience, implying a wider application than merely to the objects of experience. This was Hume's problem. It was a question concerning the origin, not concerning the indispensable need of the concept. — Kant, Prolegomena
Mayhaps, the multiverse is important to the question — Agent Smith
The Norton dome shows there is no cause of the rolling down. — Haglund
The gas example shows that cause and effect are dependent on the direction of time. It either runs forward or backwards. It's either cause preceding effect or effect preceding cause. — Haglund
That doesn’t exist. It is an abstraction. — I like sushi
The object is a point particle laying at rest in a vacuum on the apex. What thermal jitter? — Haglund
Let's fill the kettle and put it over the flame. Physical cause says that the water will heat. But there is nothing logically contradictory in the water not heating up. — Banno
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