But Hume says we don't see causality — Janus
and Hume's observation that causality isn't an empirical thing in front of us. — TheWillowOfDarkness
The answer to that seems quite simple; we feel forces, but we do not see them — Janus
You feel the actual electromagnetic force itself, rather than its effects on you? — Srap Tasmaner
The question and proposed answers can be boiled down to this observation:
We perceive a world of individuals, yet our language is full of universal categories of properties and relations. So how do we reconcile the two? — Marchesk
How our language comes to have universal concepts when the world is full of individuals. What is it about the individual things that leads us to form universal properties and relations such that we can group them into categories?
One possible answer is that universal properties and relations exist in the world in some manner. — Marchesk
See, right away you show me right. What you came up with is a pseudo-question: although it has the grammatical form of a question, it is actually quite senseless. — SophistiCat
I think it's misleading to say they "transcend" any such attempt, rather, they bypass it; because such an attempt is not required, the question has no sense. — Janus
We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not ‘whiteness’ that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality . One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Betrand Russell
Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. ‘Triangularity’ as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.
Well, I explained why your question makes no sense — SophistiCat
See, right away you show me right. What you came up with is a pseudo-question: although it has the grammatical form of a question, it is actually quite senseless — SophistiCat
(1) It is not clear what motivates the questioning, (2) what it is that you actually want explained, and (3) what kind of an explanation you require. (4) And of course there is no answer either, despite your insistence otherwise - and (5) how could there be when there is no real question? — SophistiCat
We "see" the casualty of a ball breaking a window because the causality of interested is of those things-- the causality of a ball braking a window (if someone is present), involves the sight of the ball and window in a certain reaction/relationship. — TheWillowOfDarkness
The question of whether there can be meaningful metaphysical statements is essentially a debate over meaning. — Marchesk
. What's the difference between "universal talk of something" and just regular talk of something? — TheWillowOfDarkness
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