(god must be atheist:]Don't take this wrong, but you are a very odd person. — Ron Cram

Whether I took it wrongly as a compliment, I am honoured by the distinction. (NOT joking.)

You asked for some references. I will give you a few quotes. — Ron Cram

Many, many points for this, thank you!

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

I think it's pretty clear from Hume's language what he meant, and it was nothing mystical or mysterious. 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. The words, then - his words - matter. And it's not what you or I think he meant, but what he did mean. I have not read enough Hume to know where he went with this or what, exactly, he concluded or drew from it. Maybe @Ron Cram Mr. Cram knows and will tell.

It's worth noting as well that with Kant there was a change in some of the absolute presuppositions of the sciences, with resulting changes in how some things were viewed and understood. Roughly, with Newton, some events are caused, and some are the result of the operation of laws. With Kant, it's all causes, and these days, there are no causes. "Cause," itself, being a seeming simple concept that on close inspection is not-so-simple, and apparently not useful at the leading edges of modern science.

One billiard ball hits and moves another. That Hume saw and not for a single second lost sight of. He never denied the reality. His was concerns with accounts of the reality, and the error of confusing accounts with reality, in effect reifying the accounts.

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/

It sounds like the Spiritism movement is trying to re-define Newton's Law of Cause and Effect. Newton's third law of motion was given that name long before the arrival of the spiritists. The reason is clear. Let me give you a quote from Newton that introduces his laws of motion. Newton writes:

The causes by which true and relative motions are distinguished, one from the other, are the forces impressed upon bodies to generate motion. True motion is neither generated nor altered, but by some force impressed upon the body moved; but relative motion may be generated or altered without any force impressed on the body. For it is sufficient only to impress some force on other bodies with which the former is compared, that by their giving way, the relation may be changed, in which the relative rest or motion of this other body did consist. P16

...how from the motions, either true or apparent, we may come to the knowledge of their causes and effects, shall be explained more at large in the following tract. For to this end it was that I composed it. P18

End Quote

I love when authors tell us why they wrote a particular piece. Here Newton tells us that he wrote the next portion of Book I to explain how we can learn causes and effects by studying the motions of bodies. This is the reason philosophers began to call the third law Newton's Law of Cause and Effect in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

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

Hume says it is just our habit of seeing these two events happen close to each other that we begin to think that one causes the other. Hume thinks this connection arises in our minds due to our imagination. It is not our imagination. There is a third thing or quality which explains how one ball causes the other to move. It is the transfer of kinetic energy. Whenever you see an object in motion, you are looking at kinetic energy. 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.

By the way, I'm not the first person to point this out. Ducasse wrote a paper on it in 1930. See Ducasse, C. J. "Of the spurious mystery in causal connections." The Philosophical Review 39.4 (1930): 398-403.

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

No argument or arguing with science some 200 years after Hume. But the philosophy of the topic attends to the words and what they mean. I agree informally that C&E is observed all the time. But that is really just language for what we observe - a convenient description. But the convenient description won't do at all as a rigorous account. And even the rigorous account becomes - is - a description, just a not-so-convenient description that in some cases takes years of post-graduate specialty education to become fluent with.

You criticize both Hume and Kant:

Of course, they are both spouting nonsense. Causation is clearly observable. Physical necessity exists. — 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.

Causation and necessity are metaphysical concepts, and that is all they are. — tim wood

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. 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.

Causation can become more difficult in complex or chaotic system. For example, in medicine it is often difficult to know what caused a particular disease state. While we know that correlation is not causation, doctors will often treat patients as if it is because it provides the best possible guess.

I'm not really arguing these complex situations. Rather, I'm refuting Hume who tried to say that we could not see simple cause and effect such as one billiard ball causing another to move. Hume's claim is ridiculous on its face. It is an embarrassment to philosophy that Hume is considered a great philosopher.

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

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. In fact whenever we single out one specific factor as the cause - like the spark that lit the match, the brick that shattered the window etc., we are simplifying. This simplification is also the root of the saying "correlation does not imply causation", which is only partially true. Causation in the strictest sense only exists between the entirety of states of a system. One entire state causes another.

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.

I agree with Echarmion. Can anyone prove that after if 20 people die from a poison, everyone after that will? Can anyone provide the argument that shows that regularity PROVES law? Can anyone prove that laws can't change? Hume is not saying go eat poison. It's about a different way of looking at the world and interpreting date

You are arguing against a strawmen, Hume didn't deny the world can be split up into causes and effects for practical purposes,... he was after capital C Causality as a underlying metaphysical law. His motivation was to undercut the unbroken chain of Causality all the way back to an original creator, which gave theist an argument for God.

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AMCcYnAsdQ

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.

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

Yep. Just so. What you observe is what Hume says you observe. Then you attribute what you think necessary to make sense of what you observe. 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

. I see ChatteringMonkey has the rest of this already covered.

The Third Law of Motion is also known as Newton's Law of Cause and Effect. — Ron Cram

Maybe. That looks a stretch to me. Look beyond billiard balls and the metaphor of cause and effect breaks down. Given two equal and opossum forces, it need not be clear - indeed, in many cases it is not clear - which is to be considered the cause, and which the effect.

A quick scroll down the Google results of "Newton's Law of Cause and Effect" shows a bunch of fringe notions that look to be trying to blame Newton for stuff he didn't say.

And that's why I would probably not read your paper - it would seem to be arguing that Hume misunderstood something Newton did not say.

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

Yes, that would be weird and not what I'm doing at all. It is a logical fallacy to think that because separating a head from a living body would cause it to die that sewing the head back on would cause the body to come back to life. The weirdness of the idea isn't really relevant to the fact that physical necessity is present in these cases of cause and effect that I mention.

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

False. Cause and effect are directly observable. I've given a number of examples. 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. From the fact that we can observe cause and effect, we then inquire into the physical necessity that produces the effect. I've already named the physical necessities at work in my examples. Again, you have not attempted to refute these examples of physical necessity and so I am under the impression you agree that a physical necessity exists in each example. From the existence of physical necessity, we can then posit the existence of physical laws. The physical laws then allow us to make inductive inferences regarding future natural events. This allows us to plan for and control our environments, engineering bridges and skyscrapers and build smart phones. If Hume was right and cause and effect was only mental, then we would not be living in a technologically advanced society and we would be communicating using quill pens.

Can anyone prove that after if 20 people die from a poison, everyone after that will? — Gregory

It is not the poison that is toxic, but the quantity. Yes, it is possible to know that everyone who takes a certain quantity of a given poison will die. The way we know this is due to physical necessity.

All we sense is matter. Hume says we are so far from understanding matter that it get even in the way of understanding motion!

opossum forces — Banno

he he.

. 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 problem is that here you're begging the question. Hume's work is called 'a treatise concerning human understanding'. 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.

A comparable example. You might be familiar with Samuel Johnson's purported refutation of George Berkeley's philosophy, which is called argumentum ad lapidum, 'appeal to the stone'.

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.

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.

That's why I asked you if you were submitting your paper to a philosophy department, because if you did, I suspect it would't pass.

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

The words "fundamental level" refer to quantum scales. Hume was not aware of quantum mechanics so don't try to force him to take a position he never took. In the video you linked, Sean Carroll admits that causes and effects are known on the classical scale.

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

You are correct to a point. Newton did discover the law of gravity and he described it using an inverse square law and assigned the symbol g for his equations. Newton did not assign a cause for gravity, he simply described it as a centripetal force without being able to assign a cause for the attraction. Einstein came with a deeper and more precise theory which explained the cause of the attraction as the warping of the spacetime continuum. But Einstein still retained Newton's g in his equations and g retained the same value that Newton gave it. Someday we may have a deeper theory still which will explain why massive objects warp the fabric of spacetime. When we discover it, we will not make fun of Einstein because he didn't know the cause. And we don't mock Newton because he didn't know spacetime was warped. Einstein stood on the shoulders of Newton. The point of this thread is that Hume is attacking Newton's law of cause and effect. This is not something Einstein did or would have done.

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

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

I understand what Hume is saying. I'm simply pointing out that he's wrong. We have discovered the power behind the transfer of kinetic energy, we do know the connection between decapitation and death. Let's see you take one of my examples and argue that we are not observing cause and effect. Are you telling me that when people watch an execution by decapitation that they are NOT seeing cause and effect? Are you saying that removing the head from the body doesn't cause death?

And that's why I would probably not read your paper - it would seem to be arguing thatHume misunderstood something Newton did not say. — Banno

I've already quoted Newton's Principia. I've already proven what Newton said.

How many heads does a caveman have to cut off before he knows about this "law"?

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 says a lot of things, most of which is nonsense. If you wanted to know the nature or essence of a bar of metal, would you go to a philosopher or to a scientist? I would go to a condensed matter physicist who could tell me all about the bar of metal: the alloy, the tensile strength, the density, the melting point, relative strength compared to stainless steel or titanium. The scientist could tell me everything I could want to know. Hume can tell me nothing. Why do you have any faith in Hume's comments at all? Shouldn't you be a little more skeptical of him?

If you wanted to know the nature or essence of a bar of metal, would you go to a philosopher or to a scientist? — Ron Cram

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.

...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.

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

No, I'm not. The veracity of the senses can be tested. Testing is the whole point of experimental philosophy.

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

Hume's argument is based on his skeptical idealism and his skeptical materialism. The first paper I will submit for publication deals with Hume's skeptical idealism. It includes a proof of the external world which completes defeats skeptical idealism. This second paper will deal with Hume's skeptical materialism. In other words, once we know that objects external to our minds exist, how can we learn about them? The answer is that we can test our senses to gain confidence in their integrity. We learn that under certain circumstances our senses may deceive us, but we learn that through the use of other senses and reason. When our senses are in agreement, that increases our confidence in our senses. The great philosopher Dallas Willard liked to say "Reality is what you run into when you are wrong." Our senses have proven to be highly reliable.

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

I don't buy the yang and yin analogy. The two ideas are mutually exclusive. Newton is the most important philosopher in the history of philosophy. The Treatise is a frontal attack on Newton, his methods, natural philosophy, geometry, and Newton's Law of Cause and Effect. It springs out of Hume's ignorance of natural philosophy. He's just wrong.

How many heads does a caveman have to cut off before he knows about this "law"? — Gregory

One. However, we don't have any cavemen to test the question on. When I say that you can observe cause and effect in a decapitation, it assumes you know enough about biology and anatomy to know that the head and brain cannot be detached from the body without causing death. I would assume a caveman would know that. But the question is irrelevant. We certainly know it today.

...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

My first paper on Hume is not published yet, but it is not possible that the world is a consistent illusion. My paper demonstrates my point.

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

Not true. Hume is arguing against the possibility of science. He is saying that we cannot possibly learn the things about the essence and nature of matter that we have learned. Hume makes the claim that we will never learn the nature and essence of bread that makes it fit to nourish the body. That claim certainly has not aged well. We know all about calories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, antioxidants and more. We understand biology, anatomy, the digestive system and cell biology that tells how a bagel eaten in the morning can end up as part of your earlobe in the afternoon. Hume is anti-science. Philosophy will never progress out of its current state of darkness until Hume is seen as entirely refuted.

Science has worked so far, but so far we haven't seen the argument that it will continue too.