(god must be atheist:]Don't take this wrong, but you are a very odd person. — Ron Cram
Many, many points for this, thank you!You asked for some references. I will give you a few quotes. — Ron Cram
we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause ... We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other. — Hume
Sir Isaac Newton published his work about the laws of motion in 1687. The concept of Law of Cause and Effect was introduced in the 19th century with the advent of Spiritism. — http://sirwilliam.org/en/the-law-cause-effect-reaction/
To account for the movement of two billiard balls - as his representing example - he could detect no third thing or quality to explain or mediate their movement. And I'm thinking that his observation holds today. That is, no third thing or quality. — tim wood
When you see one ball strike another and the second ball begins to move, there is at least a partial transfer of kinetic energy. Cause and effect is easily observable. — Ron Cram
But while you suppose motes in their eyes, you miss the faggot in your own. Causation and necessity are metaphysical concepts, and that is all they are. As ideas, sure, they exist. But not in the sense of a chair or a brick or any part of them. The scientist, if he's any good at all, operates with this understanding without having even to make it explicit. The rest of us sometimes need a Hume or a Kant to clarify distinctions between the "about" and the "about the about," or, science itself and understandings of science, which latter is partly and sometimes precisely philosophy's business.Of course, they are both spouting nonsense. Causation is clearly observable. Physical necessity exists. — Ron Cram
Causation and necessity are metaphysical concepts, and that is all they are. — tim wood
I have given several examples of causation being observed: a flame consumes the match, a brick shatters a window, a decapitation causes death. I've explained that causation exists and is observable in these situations because of the physical necessity. A flame must have fuel to burn, two solid objects cannot pass through each other, to be alive a person must have their head attached to their body. These examples are simple, observable and undeniable. — Ron Cram
I can agree that you can think of causation and necessity as metaphysical concepts, but they have value because they accurately describe the real world that is external to our minds. — Ron Cram
. I see ChatteringMonkey has the rest of this already covered.we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause ... We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other. — Hume
The Third Law of Motion is also known as Newton's Law of Cause and Effect. — Ron Cram
Yet it would be very weird to claim that a flame is caused by fuel, a window is caused by there not being a brick in the same space, and a person being alive because their head is attached to their body. — Echarmion
The crucial thing you seem to be missing is that the only justification we have for claiming that one state causes the other is that, to us, the states appear to follow each other in time. What you call physical necessity - the laws of physics, all depend on causation as an axiom. Therefore, they cannot prove causation. — Echarmion
Can anyone prove that after if 20 people die from a poison, everyone after that will? — Gregory
. You have not attempted to refute the examples and so I am under the impression that you agree that cause and effect are directly observable in these cases. — Ron Cram
The name of this fallacy is derived from a famous incident in which Dr. Samuel Johnson claimed to disprove Bishop Berkeley's immaterialist philosophy (that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those minds) by kicking a large stone and asserting, "I refute it thus." This action, which is said to fail to prove the existence of the stone outside the ideas formed by perception, is said to fail to contradict Berkeley's argument, and has been seen as merely dismissing it.
Also modern physics actually agree with Hume that causes and effects or Causality don't really exist at a fundamental level, things move according to a pattern, no causes and effects are necessary. Here's a vid where this is explained clearly and briefly: — ChatteringMonkey
And a final point, on could argue that even though on an everyday basis Newton's law of gravity holds as an accurate mathematical description, his picture of gravity is fundamentally wrong. There's no 'force of gravity' or "masses attracting eachother"... gravity is the curvature of space. — ChatteringMonkey
Read your citation more closely
we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause ... We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other.
— Hume — tim wood
All we sense is matter. Hume says we are so far from understanding matter that it get even in the way of understanding motion! — Gregory
Hume is questioning the nature of knowledge, the steps by which we arrive at understanding, whereas you're simply accepting the apparent veracity of the senses in the matter. — Wayfarer
All of what you say about Hume's argument about causation is directly comparable. You're simply appealing to common sense -saying, in effect, that 'obviously a causes b because we can see it'. Then you wonder how the subject of philosophy could be so daft as to fall for such an obvious fallacy. — Wayfarer
Newton is like yang and Hume is like yin. You need both in life. Hume is more mystical you might say, but it is pure rational argumentation. Those who dismiss Hume are like the Thomists who think they understand matter so well as to "know" that it needs a spiritual being to sustain it. As for Kant, Hegel said that he made the Enlightenment into philosophical methods — Gregory
How many heads does a caveman have to cut off before he knows about this "law"? — Gregory
...because it remains a possibility that the world, and all of what we know in it, remains a consistent illusion. There's nothing a scientist would be able to say about that, as science starts with the presumption that it is not. — Wayfarer
You'd go to a scientist. What Hume is saying is not relevant to science, per se, so to interpret him as a lousy scientist is to misunderstand the point. — Wayfarer
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