Close enough.

Half the world thinks causality is a construct of pure reason, half the world thinks causality is an intrinsic property or attribute of Nature thus “existed long before we became aware of it”.

Chalk me up in Column 1.

Half the world thinks causality is a construct of pure reason, half the world thinks causality is an intrinsic property or attribute of Nature thus “existed long before we became aware of it”. — Mww

Don't forget that pure reason is a construct of Nature, and existed long before we became aware of it. :grin:

Aye. Methinks ‘tis a mighty fine line betwixt conditions for and causality of.

How can so many people even understand, or know about, the idea of causation, without causation?

How did you come to know about and understand causation - on your own by trying to integrate all of your experiences into a consistent and coherent whole, or by hearing others mention it? It seems that any refutation of causation refutes itself.

In logic, what is the relationship between some evidence, or some premise, and its conclusion, if not a causal relationship? Does not the conclusion follow from the premises? How can you even say you are being logical without causation? You must refer to reasons (causes) to support your conclusion (the effect). Logic is a causal process.

If causation "isn't" the case then solipsism necessarily is the case. And even then causation would exist if I (the solipsist) were to think of it and causation would still be the case because my thinking causes its existence. The solipsist would be the first cause.

Half the world thinks causality is a construct of pure reason, half the world thinks causality is an intrinsic property or attribute of Nature thus “existed long before we became aware of it”.

Chalk me up in Column 1. — Mww

The pre-linguistic child can learn that touching fire causes pain. It does not require repetitive behaviour. Hume was wrong. The child does not have pure reason but does attribute/recognize causality.

Of course this knowledge requires prior experience and phenomenological examination of that experience in order to discover what the general common attributes of all experiences are. — Janus

Yes knowledge of many sorts requires thinking about thought/belief... Language.

So, science makes predictions that work - no contest there. But that can be accomodated in terms of instrumentalism, without presuming anything about what 'actually exists in reality'. So, I'd just be mindful of the implications of presuming 'what exists' on that basis. There are still many open questions. — Wayfarer

Nicely put. :up:

And yet a human without language - and thus without reason - can and does learn that touching fire causes pain. [...] No language required. — creativesoul

But the learning you describe relies on memory, the memory that fire gave rise to pain in the past, and therefore might do so again, if we get close enough to the flames.So what is it that our memory stores, in this example? I suggest it is words, or some functional equivalent. Something that allows us to describe fire and the pain of burns, so that when we recall the memory, we can make sense of it. So I think language, in some sense, is required for memory to work. :chin:

The reverse is actually kind of true: his position on causality is metaphysical and has profound consequences for our accounts of how metaphysical principals relation to the world and our knowledable.

Hume account of causality more or less states our logic and ideas gave no power over the world. The world will do what it does no matter if we understand, it makes sense to us us or it breaks our beloved ideas if how the world must work.

In terms of our metaphysics this has severe consequences. Any form of essentialism is untenable. Possiblity must be taken to seperate from the actual, allowing basically anything to happen. We cannot pose any sort of eternal, omnipotent actor in tradition sense, since there might always be another who destroys them or could beat them.

I'm sure I could find a few more. In this respect, I would say Hume is absolutely a metaphysician because he's really dealing with logical relationships to our epistemology and the world.

So I think language, in some sense, is required for memory to work. :chin: — Pattern-chaser

It's the other wait around.

Language is composed of words and words are just sounds and scribbles - sensory impressions - empirical.

Hume is interested in the fallacy of induction that is to say that innumerable instances of b following a does not prove any causal link between the two. In that se nse he is perhaps sceptical about the possibilities of empiricism.

:cool:

Pre-linguistic children are not mentioned in my particular library. I doubt there’s anything I could learn from them. You know......they being not all that talkative.

Recognition of causality was never the issue.

words are just sounds and scribbles — Harry Hindu

Sounds and scribbles that carry meaning, and thus become able to be used as a communications tool. :chin:

all sounds and visuals carry meaning, which is what caused them. Words mean the idea the user intended to convey.