And how does that quote address there being a link between mysticism and madness?

I said that I’m not getting it and that it’s OK by me, and I stand by that. But in speaking to someone aiming for the mental health professions, where choices are made in who is and is not insane:

If some set of cars are linked to some set of red things, there is an analyzable link between said set of cars and said set of red things. — ZzzoneiroCosm

The only link between cars and red things I can find is that some cars will be red things and vice versa - which of itself doesn’t say much regarding the link between cars and red things. One could abstract that both are objects but, again, can't find the importance to this in terms of links. What other significant “links” between these two categories can you think of?

Edit: "If there is a link, then there is a link," is a bit tautological, imo, and doesn't of itself evidence there being a link to begin with.

I think you're concocting difficulties where none are obvious. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Which I’m in obvious disagreement with.

At any rate, this thread isn't interrogating the existence of a link between mysticism and madness. I begin with the premise - the assumption, if you like - more accurately, the hypothesis, grounded in lifelong more or less scholarly interest in and research of both phenomena - that a link exists between mysticism and madness. — ZzzoneiroCosm

So, granting that the present Dalai Lama is sincere in his views and thereby a mystic, what would link the present Dalai Lama to madness? And, more concretely: in your view, ought the Dalai Lama be given medications till he holds no more belief in Nirvana and related and/or derivative Buddhist ideas - this on grounds that mysticism is linked to madness?

I appreciate your challenge, challenges are fun. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Consider me here to please.

This suggests shares trading affects investment but that's not how it works. — Benkei

I don't want to bicker on the details of how things work; it's not a field I deem myself to be sufficiently knowledgeable about.

But I am curious to know if you disagree with the overall conclusion that current markets by and large select for short-sighted / short-term interests at the expense of long-sighted / long-term interests.

The gas prices of tomorrow verses the global economic insecurity of global warming as one, granted simplistic, example.

If some Xs are linked to some Ys - but we grant that not all Xs are linked to all Ys - there is still a link, an analyzable link, between X and Y. — ZzzoneiroCosm

If some cars are linked to some red things - but we grant that not all cars are linked to all red things - there is still a link, an analyzable link, between car and red thing.

I'm not getting it, but OK.

I'd like to take a look at the link between madness and mysticism. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Since this is a philosophy forum, what I take to be commonsense reasoning: That some X’s are Y’s and some Y’s are X’s does not imply that all X’s are Y’s and vice versa, thereby requiring a linkage between the two.

Not all mystics are schizophrenics, and not all schizophrenics are mystics.

Treating the two as though they are linked is as irrational, to not say irresponsible, as would be the prejudicial conviction that there is a linkage between materialists and idiocy - to address an example that a materialist might better grasp.

The fact of life that some materialists are idiots, and that some idiots are materialists, does not then rationally imply that there is a linkage between idiocy and materialism. Same with any contrived linkage between madness and mysticism.

Unless, of course, one assumes that (intelligent?) materialist platform from which any spiritual insight or experience is indicative of unhealth - this by sheer fact of not being accordant to a materialistic world view of reality.

It wouldn’t be “profit over everything”, there would be less short term thinking, more investment in communities and general welfare. — Xtrix

I know you're using shorthand in the statement "profit over everything" but to try to spell out what I find to be pivotal to this: profit for whom?

I think most will agree that it ought to be “profit for those deserving of it”, harkening back to what initially was the satirical term “meritocracy”.

Current global economy works by selecting for, as you mention, short-sighted interests profiting over long-sighted interests. Pithily expressed in the dictum “greed is good”. So those who are most greedy then gain most profits and, in tandem, most power over the way things should and will be - selecting against most all non-greedy interests, this in the long term at least.

For instance, you have 10 corporations with stocks that compete. As it currently stands in the world we have, if one of these ten corporations desires to invest some of its profits in being non-toxic to the environment, it will make less profits in the short term. Stock owners will then tend to invest in any of the other 9 corporations, resulting in this one environmentally sound corporation loosing out and, quite possibly, going out of existence. The corporations with short-sighted interest profit at the expense of those with long-sighted interests, as so too profit those investors in stocks who don’t care about long-term consequences but about their short-term profits.

I find that governance - here tersely read as intent regarding future outcomes - of some kind is always in some way in control of economics - here tersely read as what resources are appropriated to whom. And never the other way around. As a more concrete example, the state always governs who has what in some way - taxation laws as one example - regardless of how de-regulative it claims to be. This in order for the state to maintain itself. Trouble is, there of as yet is no (one would hope democratic) global governance regarding things such as a globally uniform taxation policy, despite there being a quite global economy. Which results in those countries that are more long-sighted in their governance of economy tending to lose out economically to those countries that value short-sighted profits. Simplistically, any country that increases the taxes of ultra-rich corporations, for example, will have these same corporations migrating as best they can to countries where these taxations don’t occur (the same can be said of individual states in the USA), and so will lose out on profits from taxes - inevitably impoverishing its citizens. Globally, this general problem to me is most apparent in terms of corporations’ migration to countries with little to no labor rights, hence where corporations maximize their profits via exploitation of workers … leading to a global race toward minimizing labor rights.

At any rate, I tend to agree with you. But I don’t find the problem to be that of profit over everything per se (to the extent I'm interpreting you properly) but, again, that of the human-devised system we currently have (which will inevitably select for profit being realized for some human traits at the expense of some other human traits) such that what is selected for nowadays is short-sighted interests at the expense of long-sighted interests. Which those who seek to become wealthy must incorporate to so become.

For the record, I can’t discern any easy fix to the problem I see in current economics. Still mentioning it because I find there can be no resolutions if problems aren’t identified. Maybe tangential to OP, but still...

Hey, I agree with you. I'll be reading to see if others see it differently.

Computer processes things. If the universe is a process then where do its inputs come from. A difference machine which has randomness in it. — Jackson

(I should have articulated "an uncreated cosmic computer that feeds off itself" rather than simply say "computer ..."; it's what I intended at any rate.)

So, if the universe is an uncreated cosmic computer with randomness as inputs for its processes, would it then be properly conceived of as alive/animate/organic, dead, inanimate and perfectly fixed (as per the block cosmos), or something other? Can't figure out what the other could be in this scenario.

Cheers, mate.

Leibniz was to the first of think of the entire universe as a computer. Feeding off itself. — Jackson

Interesting: can a computer that feeds off itself - reminiscent to me of the Ouroboros symbol's significance - not be conceived of as organic? And, if organic, to what extent can it be conceived of as a computer?

... trying to work through some semantics.

Conclusion: The cosmos is not like a machine but like an uncreated being. Of course, this would welcome in concepts of pantheism and panentheism as God. Is the cosmos evil? “In part; in part not,” seems to be the most appropriate answer.

Or can one have a machine devoid of design?

Not that I find your reply addressed my questions in regard to truth, good, and beauty/fairness (I'm living with it just fine), but OK. Yup, monkeys (and other animals) - can not only communicate but also intentionally deceive - thereby evidencing innate awareness not only of what is true and what is false but of what is termed a theory of mind.

But then establishing the truth of it? Some of us are still trying to establish the truth of “I am”. — javra

Very sensible. First is it true? then, (if I am), am I good? and am i beautiful? can be considered. — unenlightened

I can work with your appraisal.

How would you respond to the claim that “even primordial sentience needs to be innately aware of truths (conformities to what is real) in order to survive; that only more developed sentience will become in any way aware of notions of ethical good; and that the awareness of beauty is relegated only to the most developed of sentience,” this as we know of sentience on planet Earth … say from monocellular organisms (granting their being sentient) to humans?

This addresses “awareness of”, be it consciously reasoned or not. But, then again, why care at all about truth (lower case “t”) if it is neither a good to be pursued nor something just and, thereby, an aspect of what is fair? This at least for us humans that can discern and contemplate all three.

(For instance, your reply to 180 Proof seems to indicate that truth is both good and fair (in the sense of just).)

the reality of X or any of its properties — javra

Properties and relations are where correspondence gets too grand for me. They are too much like verbs and adjectives to be plausible as contenders for ontological commitment along with X, Y and Z. And they aren't required for asserting truths about X, Y and Z. — bongo fury

I kind of want to ask, though a bit off topic: a property of liquid water (not ice or steam) is that it's wet. I can sort of see the argument that wetness is subjectivity dependent, hence mind-dependent, hence not "objective" in the sense of mind-independence. Still, would you be arguing that the wetness of water does not correspond to reality? If so, on the grounds that I've just mentioned? (Probably won't argue with your answer; just curious.)

:smile: :up:

This might help out:

Historically, fallibilism is most strongly associated with Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and other pragmatists. Global fallibilism (also called pragmatic fallibilism, contrite fallibilism, epistemic fallibilism, epistemological fallibilism or fallibilistic empiricism) implies that no beliefs can be conclusively justified,[3][5] or in other words, that knowledge does not require certainty.[6][7] Moreover, global fallibilists assert that because empirical knowledge can be revised by further observation, any of the things we take as empirical knowledge might turn out to be false.[4][8] The claim that all assertions are provisional and thus open to revision in light of new evidence is widely taken for granted in the natural sciences.[9] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism#Global_versus_local_fallibilism

the latter is Socratic knowledge (I know that I don't know). — Agent Smith

Why not? "I fallibly know that I infallibly know nothing."

There's another thread, by Jack Cummins, on human judgment & error. Can error ever get a handle on accuracy? — Agent Smith

I'll fallibly affirm "yes". I'm a fallibilist, after all.

Even so, we could set that aside and run with it. Where does the path of relativism lead before it bleeds to death from a self-inflicted gunshot? — Agent Smith

Ah. I'll leave that for the relativists to answer.

I see that as rephrasing of what I affirmed. Am I missing something?

No doubt. But here there is a logically invalid conflation of these concepts in their absolute form - Truth with a capital “T”, and so forth - with non-absolute, and hence imperfect, instantiations of these perfect ideals …. Or so the argument might go.

But yes: The rapist, for one example, rapes because the rapist’s desires are gratified by so doing and, so, the raping is good for the rapist, minimally, while the action takes place. Ever seen the movie Perfume; it illustrates how acts such as murder can be or become aesthetic for the murderer. So too I imagine can become most any commonly deemed wrong that is a personal good for the person engaging in it, like the act of manipulating others. Or, the reality that many truths can hurt, at least in the short-term, and are thereby often treated as bad, furthermore often deemed untrue on this count. Human caused global warming comes to mind.

Nothing new in all this, I would think.

Nevertheless, in any supposition of True = Good = Beauty these terms can only be interpreted in terms of absolute ideals, or universals, from which all imperfect variations which we deal with result. So, for one example, the doing of wrongs is good for the wrongdoer, otherwise they wouldn’t be done, but this instantiation of “good” would be so far removed from the “Good” so as to either be deemed a bad or an evil by most.

To not be addressing these perfect ideals is to instead be addressing the notion of “truths = goods = beauties”, but I’ve never read it expressed as such by any philosopher, and this expression would indeed at best be buffoonery I would think - as per above examples.

Then again, there’s always relativism to fall back on for some - such that there is no such thing as a universality shared by all truths, by all goods, and by all beauties.

Maybe, just maybe, Truth = Good = Beauty. They're the same thing?!

My analysis is incomplete. Maybe someone can help out. Establish the truth ( :chin: ) of the following equalities:

1. Truth = Good
2. Good = Beauty — Agent Smith

This might make a little more sense if interpreted along the lines of:

1. (Complete) Conformity to that which is real = (Complete) Gratification of life’s deepest ingrained desire (i.e., the deepest ingrained desire of each and every psyche)
2. (Complete) Gratification of life’s deepest ingrained desire = (Complete) Fairness, as a composite of both that which is (completely) just - correct, right - and that which is (completely) aesthetic

Since we are imperfect, we can’t have it (this equivalency) in its complete, absolute, form - this being instead the ideal - but can only appraise proximity or furtherance from this complete state of Truth/Good/Beauty as ideal, this being the pragmatics of life

And such means of interpreting would not necessarily be equivalent to:

What is = what ought to be = what is desirable? — unenlightened

But then establishing the truth of it? Some of us are still trying to establish the truth of “I am”.

As a psychotherapist in training — ZzzoneiroCosm

A psychotherapist ... Cool.

If the book's theme intrigues you, see is you can do anything with the musing that "depression is nature's way of telling there's something wrong". No references; kinda a personal partial takeaway from "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Basic point: figure out what's wrong, resolve it to a good enough extent, and you grow as a human being because of it, rather than being debilitated by the same states of mind. No problem if not interested. But it's helped me out in my life often enough.

Good luck in your endevors!

IOW, per SCOTUS, a woman doesn't have a right to choose, but the state does have the right to choose for her. — Relativist

How libertarian / laissez faire / anti-government control of our human liberties the current conservative SCOTUS is!!!*

* sarcasm, if I need to spell it out

I'll let others comment on this as they will.

There is no specific point: an individual human life gradually emerges during the development of that "bundle of human cells". — Relativist

No, there is no mathematically strict dichotomy to this transformation. Agreed. This can be likened to the questions such as that of "when does the color orange become the color yellow?": no strict dichotomy, but it yet happens all the same. This being in many ways very entwined with the paradox of the heap: roughly expressed, asking at which point does a heap take form. To me, Roe v Wade in its addressing the three trimesters of pregnancy and their significance gives a very good and informed overall answer to this question you've quoted.

As to my use of the term "point", it was not meant to be taken so literally. My bad, if required.

But how do you interpret this lack of a strict moment of dichotomy to weigh in on the issue? Are you one to rationally uphold because of it that Y’s potential to become X at some time in the future entails that Y = X in the present? This so as to justify that a human blastula = a human being? But then a seed would of itself be a tree. And so forth in innumerable directions.

Consider that there is no set of necessary and sufficient properties for "human personhood". We can identify traits that most humans have, ranges of DNA, and reference to parenthood,, but it's impossible to narrow any such properties into being necessary and sufficient. — Relativist

I've considered it. What conclusions are we to then draw from this: that no such thing as "human personhood" occurs?

Neglected the question of what our reason for trusting reason is, else what our logic for trusting logic is. Yes, reason is rationally baseless - founded on infinite regress, circularity, or ad hoc dictums - and so forth. But I’ll argue that, we are existentially determined to so trust reasoning on grounds that we have no other choice but to so trust. Even if the specific form our reason/logic takes is, for example, that of dialethism, it is yet there. As is also the case with our possible mistrust of reason/logic: we can only accomplish this mistrust via use of some reason/logic which we innately trust.

Or does it correspond to reality — Paulm12

Not on any grand scale, no. — bongo fury

Question: For the principle that “a claim about X cannot both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect” to hold (given that “true” is “conformant to that which is real”), how is it not inevitable that the principle “the reality of X or any of its properties cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect” must also hold?

This on the grandest of scales ... I'll add that the answer should preferably withhold from entering realms of Cartesian Skepticism.

The first principle pertains to what can result from psyches, the second to what is ontic; both, however, being covered by the Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction – which, tmk, is foundational to all consistent logic.

Hence, for one example: if a claim about X can both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect, then the reality of X or any of its properties must be able to both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. Yet this latter state of affairs doesn’t specify the world as we know it day to day.

I will update.
In order to use logic to understand our world, we in some way have to assume our world is logically intelligible and predictable. — Paulm12

Yes. I'm in agreement with this.

But instinct is sharply differentiated from reason by most. Describing reason as an instinct was highly controversial in its day and it's hardly elaborated at all by Hume. Animals perform extraordinary feats by dint of instinct, so it is said, but that does not amount to reasoning — Wayfarer

instinct: A natural or inherent impulse or behavior.

I think that, in a nutshell, what you say here conveys the pivotal issue. And I believe that it is hardly elaborated at all by Hume because it was - as it remains - highly controversial that humans are instinct driven, as is all other life, albeit to far lesser extents then lifeforms of lesser intelligence. The concept of religious heresy was, after all, not foreign in Hume's time, and the concept of biological evolution hadn't even entered the picture.

I'm however far more sympathetic to the idea. Yes, in part from a Darwinian point of view. Far more pertinently though, from a metaphysical one. The principles of thought are not of themselves thoughts nor conscious reasoning nor concepts (general ideas) we produce, hence bring about, by abstraction. We neither think, nor reason, nor abstract the principles of thought into being. Yet they facilitate all the thinking, reasoning, and abstracting we do, including that via which we discern them to be. And these same principles of thought are "natural or inherent impulses or behaviors" in us - which defines instincts.

And neither are instincts in the form of principles of thought thus conceived (for instance, but as can also be said of the instinct to discern causation) given in experience, while yet being necessary for experience.

This in my humble mini-defense of Hume. But I get how controversial it must be, even today.

(As to the maybe Peircean-like metaphysics that I'm contemplating, it's far more complex and probably idiosyncratic, so I won't get into it. But, in synopsis, the basic laws of thought are fully determinate aspects of the cosmos and thus necessarily pivotal to any lifeform's experience.)

But without those basic principles already in the mind, it would not be possible to make any inferences. — Wayfarer

Exactly, and Hume classifies these as instincts (as "instinct" was understood back in his times rather than our own, in our times being interpreted as genetically inherited predispositions of behavior ... different issues, though). Instincts being roughly interpreted as "basic principles already in the mind" not acquired via experience.

Nevertheless, we gain insight into these same basic principles, or at the very least justify their so being, via experience-filled reasoning - such as Kant is doing in the quote you reference. And such as Hume likewise did with the principle of association regarding causes and effects:

[...]

Since we’re determined—caused—to make causal inferences, then if they aren’t “determin’d by reason”, there must be “some principle of equal weight and authority” that leads us to make them. Hume maintains that this principle is custom or habit:

[...]

Custom and habit are general names for the principles of association.

Hume describes their operation as a causal process: custom or habit is the cause of the particular propensity you form after your repeated experiences of the constant conjunction of smoke and fire.

[...]

— https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CauInfConPha — javra

Instead of reading "habit" as that which is formed a posteriori, in the context of Hume's arguments regarding causation read it as that which is a priori to all experiences of cause and effect. As it being an/the a priori instinct which causes - or leads us to make - our causal inferences.

Having read Hume - albeit some time back - this so far is the only sensible way I can interpret what Hume said given his arguments. And to me it seems well enough supported by the SEP article just mentioned. Hence my intuition that Kant misinterprets Hume on this important point. To me, one says "instinct" the other "category of understanding" and both refer to the same basic thing: basic principles already in the mind prior to experience.

If I'm wrong, I haven't yet seen anything to evidence that I am.

You can "be" whatever you want to "be" on an anonymous forum. Even anxiety-free. :smile: — ZzzoneiroCosm

And I say: Not if one hangs around the forum for a long-enough period of time. :razz:

(The forum's mostly about philosophical bickering, where we think we're right but where each believes some other shmuck is wrong. Smug oversimplification, granted. And in no way demeaning the forum's good.)

Interested to look at your quotes when I can. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well, found them on goodreads; no reference to where they belong in the book was given. Like them all the same, though.

Anxiety only befalls the weak and the unworthy. — baker

:rofl: Oh, man, that gave me a good laugh. As a member of this category of weak and unworthy humans, can anyone provide me one example of someone who has not experienced anxiety at any point in their life?

It’s like claiming to learn in manners perpetually devoid of questioning, and hence in manners devoid of any uncertainty. Yea, I know, uncertainty being for unworthy weaklings as well - or so some will say - rather than being the driving force behind new insights, be these in the form of knowledge or wisdom. This latter take as the book "Meaning of Anxiety" might want us to believe.

… Like anxiety over global warming pertaining to those weak and unworthy that might lead to insights in how to satisfactorily resolve the matter sooner rather than later, this verses the robust confidence of those strong and worthy who don’t give a damn regardless of the existential risks right in front of their nose.

Two related quotes from the book I found online:

“Anxiety has a purpose. Originally the purpose was to protect the existence of the caveman from wild beasts and savage neighbors. Nowadays the occasions for anxiety are very different - we are afraid of losing out in the competition, feeling unwanted, isolated, and ostracized. But the purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence. This normal anxiety of life cannot be avoided except at the price of apathy or the numbing of one's sensibilities and imagination.”

and

“But attempts to evade anxiety are not only doomed to failure. In running from anxiety you lose your most precious opportunities for the emergence of yourself, and for your education as a human being.”

To whoever cares to read, some thoughts while passing through:

The meme that “life begins with conception” stands contra the most rudimentary of human reasoning. Zygotes are alive, yes, and so are all gametes. Pollen is alive, never mind eggs and sperm - not dead, nor inanimate, but living. Rebuttal: “But a human zygote is a human being because it holds the potential to so become a human being.” Leaving the logic of this aside for now, so too do human eggs and sperm “hold the potential to become human beings”. Most if not all contraception is enacted with the intention of killing gametes, hence, yes, life, which furthermore holds the very potential to “become a human being”. Hence why some hold contraception to be murder - this in the very human history we are now reenacting.

And the “potential to so become” argument is blatantly irrational. That which has the potential to so become X is not yet X. Moreover, we can clone humans from individual human cells' genome, granting the cells we defecate along all other excrements the “potential to become a human being”. Should those who go to the restroom be considered killers of human life?

“But a zygote left to its own devices …” … will often enough result in miscarriage anyway, likely much higher than the 10-20 percent reported (which most always do not account for miscarriages in the very early stages of the fetus).

The pivotal question to this issue remains: at which point does a bundle of human cells actually become a human being?

The intentional killing of a zygote or of a fetus is not the intentional killing of a human being unless one considers these to in fact be human beings. And then on what grounds other than that of “potential”, which, again, is not a rationally cogent argument.

-----

Aside from which, too many of the pro-lifers that talk of zygotes as being human beings pretty much shit on all unwanted human life once birthed: e.g., the intentional killing of a zygote verses the potentiality of 80-years or longer of misery and suffering of an unwanted member of society that society at large does not want to help out. You see plenty of these lives homeless on the streets most everywhere.

Finding the latter more moral than the former? I’d really like to understand why. Empathetic - hence non-sociopathic - humans that we all are.

-----

My two cents, at least. This, so as to express my own stance: that of pro-life-quality, which requires choice in regards to abortion so as the maximize the wanted human beings in this world.

I think Hume wants it understood that the generalized relation between cause and effect is always given by experience. The principle grounding the relation is constant conjunction, and constant conjunction is itself merely an instinctive condition of human nature. If so, then the particular concrete examples merely represent the general principle.

Kant denies that principles can be given from experience, but must be derived from reason and then applied to experience. — Mww

My readings of Hume have been I think more charitable - tending to view the Kantian interpretation of Hume as a misinterpretation of what Hume argued for. So, as I find Hume saying, the principle of constant conjunction is epistemically, not ontically, given by our experience only in the same sense that the basic principles of thought are given to us by experience: we infer them based on what we epistemically realize ourselves able to do and incapable of doing. Just as we learn of our existential limitations, or boundaries, of thought by our experiences wherein we take note of our thinking, so too we learn of our instinctive (unproduced and unchangeable) impetus to associate causes and effects via experiencing our comportments. Again, this innate, active principle of association is not, and cannot, be gained from experience - contra what Kant finds Hume to say. And the particular instantiations of this association between causes and effects are only facilitated, else enabled, by - rather than representations of - the very principle of association in question, which of itself holds no particular content. This just as all the particular instantiations of our thinking in the manners we do are only facilitated/enabled by - but not re-presentations of - our basic principles of thought, which again of themselves hold no specific content. And, in both cases, we infer, hence reason, from our experiences to general principles that facilitate our experiences.

Also related: I fail to understand how conscious reasoning devoid of any content can manifest, nor of how this content can obtain if not from either present or former experience in the broadest sense - to include not only perceptions of the external world but our experience of things such as thoughts, emotions, wants, states of being, and so forth.

Well, I know I’m against to populist flow of things with my belief that Kant misinterpreted Hume - in spite of my respect for Kant. And, though I don’t much want to bicker on the subject - unless there’s reason to - I’m so far not convinced to the contrary. Basically, just wanted to express this for what its worth.

But they're not strictly separate faculties, are they? — Wayfarer

:smile: Hard for me to conceive of any faculty of mind that isn’t in some way interconnected with some other. To take this into the left field a bit, as regards perception and abstraction/generalization, an ameba – being unicellular, having no nervous system to speak of – is known to be able to discern what is relative to it predator from prey. This ability to distinguish categories/generalities/types based on the functionality of that perceptually apprehended is - or at least so I argue - an aptitude of abstraction, however minuscule. I also cannot find how any lifeform can perceive anything in the complete absence of any and all abstraction regarding that apprehended. On the other hand, reasoning is wanting a universally acknowledged definition. But it's commonly understood to be required for forethought. The same lowly ameba, by sheer fact of finding optimal means to evade predators and consume evading prey, exhibits - again, minuscule but present - forethought. Hence some measure of reasoning.

Or so my thoughts go: reasoning and abstraction are very prevalent in life and can be very roughly measured in amplitude on a cline.

So, again, for me existential understanding is built in part upon abstraction and reasoning, yes, and so they are all interconnected - but it yet is miles apart from the mere presence of these latter faculties as a faculty of mind.

Ah. Thanks for that. Much to agree with.

Where I’m still iffy:

Having read Hume a long time ago, but as also affirmed in the SEP quote: Hume terms the principle which determines - hence, causes - us to make causal inference “custom”, or “habit”. This principle is not something that Hume, tmk, ever argues to be of itself acquired via experience but, instead, to be a requisite and innate aspect of our psyche - i.e., to be instinct - which, as an innate driving principle, facilitates our acquired experiential and inductive knowledge of connections between specific effects and causes.

Making use of what you've provided, first looking at this:

but Kant criticized him for leaving it at that, which is found in E.C.H.U. 1.5.1.36.....

“....By employing that word**, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity****. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects....”
**custom/habit
***constant conjunction

.....which he made worse by insisting....

“....All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent....” — Mww

and then this:

This is what woke Kant up: there’s got to be a way to show the relationship between cause and effect doesn’t have to come from experience, — Mww

To Hume natural instincts, such as that of making causal inferences, are by default not acquired via experience (nor can they be in any way prevented nor produced, but are an innate aspect of our psyche - whatever explanation for their so being there might be). Otherwise stated, the generalized relation between cause and effect is instinctive in us, and hence not acquired via experience; only the particular concrete relations between cause and effect are acquired via experience. And this to me stands in contradiction to what Kant suggests Hume to have affirmed in relation to the drive to make causal inferences.

That's the part that gets me.

Thanks again for the input.

:up:

Then you must have read this by now, although it’s in Sec II not III.

“.....David Hume perceived that, to render this possible, it was necessary that the conceptions should have an à priori origin. But as he could not explain how it was possible that conceptions which are not connected with each other in the understanding must nevertheless be thought as necessarily connected in the object—and it never occurred to him that the understanding itself might, perhaps, by means of these conceptions, be the author of the experience in which its objects were presented to it—he was forced to drive these conceptions from experience, that is, from a subjective necessity arising from repeated association of experiences erroneously considered to be objective—in one word, from habit....”

Have fun!! — Mww

I understand that's what Kant says. I'm probably missing something. How do you make sense of it in relation to this:

5.2 Causal Inference: Constructive Phase

Hume calls his constructive account of causal inference a “sceptical solution” to the “sceptical doubts” he raised in the critical phase of his argument.

Since we’re determined—caused—to make causal inferences, then if they aren’t “determin’d by reason”, there must be “some principle of equal weight and authority” that leads us to make them. Hume maintains that this principle is custom or habit:

whenever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation … we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom. (EHU 5.1.5/43)

It is therefore custom, not reason, which “determines the mind … to suppose the future conformable to the past” (Abstract 16). But even though we have located the principle, it is important to see that this isn’t a new principle by which our minds operate. Custom and habit are general names for the principles of association.

Hume describes their operation as a causal process: custom or habit is the cause of the particular propensity you form after your repeated experiences of the constant conjunction of smoke and fire. Causation is the operative associative principle here, since it is the only one of those principles that can take us beyond our senses and memories.

Hume concludes that custom alone “makes us expect for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past” (EHU 5.1.6/44). Custom thus turns out to be the source of the Uniformity Principle—the belief that the future will be like the past. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CauInfConPha

and

Ortega is just defending the elites. — javi2541997

This is the context in which I typically hear the book invoked. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Haven’t read Ortega, but the issue that I find is this: Is “immoralism” to be displaced by the whims of some authority that stands removed from the masses it commands - i.e. by autocratic authoritarianism, even if only oligarchic - or, else, by the principles which support earnest systems of democracy … principles such as what nowadays have often become deemed the bullshit of “liberty, equality, fraternity” and the like?

The fist defends rulership by some elite, the second rulership by the masses people themselves. And the two systems of rulership cannot coexist in any harmonious manner.

This is a hunch on my part, but rather than finding a sharp demarcation between humans and lesser animals in terms of reasoning and abstraction - both of which research evidences to be found on a cline - might not this sharp demarcation be more properly stipulated to be that of a consciously held existential understanding (here to include issues of ethics, if not meta-ethics, and the like)? We humans have semblances of it; lesser animals have none.

Since no one has yet commented on your post ...

It seems to me that the move Kant makes is correct, in essence. Nevertheless, causality is a bit harder that merely arguing that it must be an a-priori aspect of our cognition. It undoubtably is, but there is no guarantee that these apply in "ordinary experience", as a necessity, there are exceptions and illusions.

But, even granting that most of the time, we are roughly correct in our causal inferences in everyday life, the problem of causality in the objects outside ourselves remains entirely untouched. — Manuel

As is also the case for causality within us. Whether we as conscious agents actually cause anything (by which agency is here defined) - rather than our sensations of so doing being an illusion - is tmk yet an open question in philosophy.

And the concept is rather obscure, in as much as we can only perceive that it is a constant conjunction, though there has to be more than this to causality.

Of course, Kant would say, plausibly, that of these things in themselves we know nothing. Maybe we don't. But Hume's statement of the problem remains rather fierce, as I see it. — Manuel

I'm in agreement. Though to me Hume's statement on the matter is not the presentation of a "problem" so much as a lucid observation of the way things inherently are.

The lurking problem is, that we can't seem to able to concieve of anything like purpose or intention, without understanding it as conscious purpose or intention - just the kinds of purposes and intentions which we, as conscious agents, are able to entertain. — Wayfarer

Without denying the epistemic importance of egos in all of this, nations and cultures can be said to have differing agencies of behavior and different intelligences of comportment. For instance, “does a nation or culture that self-annihilates itself via shortsightedness exhibit intelligence?” makes sense as a question. Nonetheless, no nation or culture is endowed with a conscious agency - and no nation or culture of itself intends. Very roughly expressing at least my own take of it, in the Peircean view, the physical world as effete mind is in some ways akin to the global, or cosmic, manifest culture of all coexistent active minds. I grant that it’s a bit more than this, but still: its intelligence in terms of logos, reason, can well be conceived as present in manners devoid of a governing conscious agency. In parallel, the notion of dharma and karma also are conceived to occur universally - in a manner of speaking, with intelligence - in manners devoid of any cosmically governing ego. So I’m approaching the matter from the viewpoint that the universe - replete with its causal reasoning, i.e. logos - itself does not intend (intentions being something that individual minds/egos do), though the universe does hold global teloi as part of its logos, making it operate, in part, teleologically. Which I find in keeping with both quotes you mention.

As before, I’m shying away form the term “purpose” in all this due to its ambiguities.

The article you link to addresses the teleology of individual life-forms – rather than that of any global telos. Other than that, interesting.

Also, many animals are known to recognize types and categories, which are conceptual/abstract rather than concrete particulars. As one easy to digest mention: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-animals-can-think-abstractly/