Descartes: wax argument & knowledge

Descartes uses his wax argument, as described in my previous post, to construct a system of knowledge. He considers his perceptions to be unreliable, as he discovered in his wax argument, and he discards them completely when determining what he should base his knowledge on. He decides that only deduction can be used as a method for obtaining knowledge. At this point, Descartes brings God into his argument and decides that he must trust his senses at least a little bit. After all, God provided him with a working mind and sensory system. And, since God is benevolent, he does not desire to deceive Descartes in any way. Further, he believes that there is an external world because perceptions come to him involuntarily, and the things that he perceives must be external to his senses. From this, he finally entertains the idea that it may be possible that he may acquire knowledge about the world through both deduction and perception. Descartes further argues that knowledge is represented in the form of ideas and that rational knowledge is incapable of being destroyed.

Descartes: wax argument

Descartes uses what is known as his wax argument to demonstrate the limitations of the senses. He considers a piece of wax, and notes that his sense inform him of certain characteristics about that piece of wax. These characteristics include things like its size, shape, color, odor, texture, and so on. When he brings this piece of wax to a flame, however, these characteristics are completely altered. Despite these different characteristics, Descartes notes that it is still the same piece of wax as beforehand. Whether it is solid or liquid, hard or soft, hot or cold, it is still the same exact item. So, Descartes determines that he cannot rely upon his senses to determine the true nature of the wax, but rather upon his mind. He writes, "Thus what I thought I had seen with my eyes, I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in my mind." I like Descartes' wax argument because it shows exactly what he wanted to prove--the limitations of the senses. Your senses can obviously provide you with a ton of information, but they are incapable of reasoning through that information. That is what makes the mind so important--it must make sense of everything that the senses bring in.

Kant: metaphysics

Kant says that metaphysics relies on the faculty of reason, and therefore is independent of experience. Reason, he says, aspires to know about things in themselves and may sometimes mistakenly apply concepts of understanding to matters outside of experience. Kant says that there are three ideas of reasoning: psychological, cosmological, and theological. Psychological deals with our ideas and concepts of substance and the soul. Cosmological gives rise to four sets of antinomies, and theological obviously deals with our ideas of God. Kant argues that reason oversteps its bounds in each of these cases and often makes claims that can be confusing with appearances. Metaphysics, unlike mathematics and natural science, can go farther than it is reasonably capable of going, and in that way it can explore the full extent and capabilities of human knowledge. I'm a bit confused by the way that Kant talks about metaphysics, but from what I do get, it seems like he accepts metaphysics as something complicated and something he doesn't fully understand. I like that he doesnt try to make too many assumptions about it, and the arguments that he does present seem to make sense to me... but like I said, I don't entirely get it.

Kant: natural science

Kant thinks the same thing about natural sciences that he thought about mathematics. He believed that synthetic a priori judgments form the foundation of natural science. Pure natural science is possible, according to Kant, because of the pure concepts of our faculty of understanding. These concepts give a law-like structure to our experiences (one, for example, is that every effect has a cause). Kant is sure to distinguish between judgments of perception and judgments of experience. A judgment of perception is based on a subjective sensation, while a judgment of experience attempts to draw objective, necessary truths from experience. Since science is an objective body of knowledge, it must rely upon objective laws (pure concepts of our faculty of understanding). These laws are just as much apart of our understanding as are the concepts of space and time. So pure natural science is possible for the same reasons that pure mathematics is possible--they rely on parts of our natural concepts.

Kant: mathematics

According to Kant, the truths of arithmetic and geometry are synthetic judgments because they contribute significantly to our knowledge of the world. But these judgments are also a priori because they universally apply to all objects of our experience, without having been taken from the experience itself. The question then becomes, how do we come to have such knowledge? One might think that we indeed come to know these things through experience, rather than a priori. After all, you need to be familiar with numbers to even understand what 2 + 5 = 7 means. Kant argues that we know these things a priori because of "pure forms of sensible intuition," and not experience. He believes that things in arithmetic are directly associated with things in time, and things in geometry are directly associated with things in space. Space and time are absolute and derived from our minds. So, our concepts of space and time allow for us to understand mathematical concepts without being exposed to those concepts.

Kant- The first and second antinomies

The first two antinomies, the first having to do with space and time, and the second having to do with the simple and composite, both have opposing propositions (the thesis and antithesis). Whereas in the 3rd and 4th antinomies Kant argues that both the thesis and the antithesis are both actually true (and only mistaken to be contradictory when one takes phenomena to be noumena), Kant argues that the thesis and antithesis of the 1st and 2nd are both false. One might wonder how to contradicting propositions can both be untrue. It seems to be like the law of non contradiction in logic: P v ~P (P or not P), i.e., either something is the case or it is not. Kant explains that it is possible for two ocntradicting statements to both be false when "the concept lying at the ground of both of them is self-contradictory". Kant gives the example of a square circle. Two contradictory statements about square circles can both be false because the concept of a square circle is inherently contradictory. Because of that, any proposition which asserts anything about square circles is false. In the same way, when it comes to the question of whether or not space and time are infinite, or whether the constituents of the world are simply or composite, making any assertion of either the thesis or antithesis of either antinomy is assuming that experience is fit to give an answer. Becausethe world given to us IS equivalent to our experience, to suppose that our experience has the property of being simple or composite or infinite or finite is a mistaken notion.

Kant- The fourth antinomy

The fourth antinomy has to do with the existence of a first cause. Thesis: "In the series of world causes there is some necessary being". Antithesis: "There is nothing necessary in the world, but in this series all is contingent." Kant recognizes the objections raised by Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, where it is pointed out that we can not attribute qualities to the Supreme Being (such as understanding or will) because we can only do so by attributing anthropomorphic qualities to a being whom we cannot assume has them. Since we have our idea of will or of understanding only by reference to ourselves, we are not justified in assuming that God is like man. Kant says that we can refrain from doing this by using analogies. For example, although we cannot assume God to have rationality in the same way that we do, we can say that there is a rational structure to the world, and that

"reason is attributed to the supreme Being so far as it contains the ground of this rational form in the world, but according to analogy only, i.e., so far as this expression shows merely the relation which the Supreme Cause, unknown to us, has to the world in order to determine everything in it conformably to reason in the highest degree."

So although we may not be able to attribute properties directly to God (or a supreme being), we can attribute properties indirectly by way of analogy- by attributing properties to the relation which God bears to the world.

Kant- The third antinomy of pure reason

As for the second two antinomies, Kant says that the dialectically opposed propositions of each contradict one another only if one takes appearances (phenomena) to be things in themselves(noumena). The thesis of the third antinomy is as follows: "There are in the world causes through freedom". The anthithesis: "There is no freedom, but all is nature". This is the same question that Hume took up when he considered liberty and necessity, except that Hume solved the problem by defining free will in a way that is compatible with determinism. Kant doesn't take that approach. Kant approaches the problem by asserting that one can actually be the first cause of a causal series, even if natural causal necessity exists. He does this by saying that the natural necessity of causality is part of the world of appearances, that is, the world of space, time, change, and natural law. While the phenomenal world requires there to be a cause for each event, the noumenal world can have what Kant calls 'spontaneity'. Spontaneous causes are uncaused causes. How is this possible? It is possible only through a will that acts according to rationality. Because the prescriptions of rationality are independent from time and change, acting according to rationality is acting according to something independent of the phenomenal world. The phenomenal world would still retain the appearance of a prior cause, while in the world of things in themselves an action can be spontaneous.

Kant: Pure mathematics

According to Kant's distinctions, one would think that a single proposition should fall into one of four categories: (1) a posteriori/synthetic, (2) a posteriori/analytic, (3) a priori/analytic, and (4) a priori/synthetic.

The first category contains propositions which we come to know through experience and provide us with new information (the predicate is not contained in the subject). They are usually uncontroversial, but can be subject to interpretation. This is a big category--it contains statements such as "all bachelors drink beer" and "the president is dishonest." Here, the predicates are not contained in the subjects, and you would not be able to determine them without experience. The second category is mostly empty because it implies that we come to know a proposition whose predicate is contained in its subject through experience. There would be no reason for one to appeal to the senses for an explanation of something that is self explanatory. The third category includes logical truths that are necessarily true. So, for example, A=A. The predicate is contained in the subject, and the proposition can easily be known before any sort of sensory experience. The fourth category is the complicated one. It suggests that we may come to know a proposition that provides us with new information through reasoning alone. Kant asserts that geometry and arithmetic fall under this category.

Kant: analytic vs synthetic

Kant's next distinction is between analytic and synthetic judgments. This distinction is determined by the information contained as their content. In analytic judgments, the predicate is wholly contained in the subject. Analytic judgments do not really provide us with any new information. Kant's example of an analytic judgment is "all bodies are extended." It is contained in the definition of a body that it is extended in space, so we really do not receive any new information from that statement. Analytic judgments, like a priori information, are universal tautologies. Synthetic judgments, on the other hand, do provide new information. The predicate in one of these judgments is not contained in the subject. Kant's example is "all bodies are heavy." The predicate of "heavy" is not implied by the subject of "bodies." So, if someone just started talking about bodies, you would not immediately associate the word "heavy" with those bodies. Any connection between the predicate and the subject in a synthetic judgment is distinctly external to both. Therefore, even though synthetic judgments turn out to be informative, they do require justification. For simple purposes, I think that Kant's distinction will come in handy, but I think that the classification of one proposition may vary from person to person.

Kant: a priori vs a posteriori

Kant devotes a lot of time to drawing distinctions between different kinds of judgments that we make. The first distinction that he makes is rather simple, and that is the distinction between a priori and a posteriori judgment. The distinction comes from the origin of the information that we obtain. A priori (literally "from what comes before") information is determined by reason alone and can be found out without any particular experience. This makes a priori information universal tautologies. A posteriori (literally "from what comes later") information, on the other hand, requires a certain experience in order to obtain that knowledge. The information obtained, therefore, is limited and subject to interpretation. Kant, who blends rationalist and empiricist theories, says "that all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt... But... it by no means follows that all arises out of experience." I agree with Kant on this point, because we are not born with knowledge about mathematics, colors, or really anything else. But, with simple lessons here and there through experience, we can learn how to rationalize and reason through problems we have never encountered. So, for example, I can figure out what 29381818291301 plus 3181029138104 equals, even though I have never experienced that problem before. However, I need the prerequisites of knowing how to count and add in order to reason myself through the problem.

Hume: Missing shade of blue

Hume, as an empiricist, believes that any idea in the mind is really just an impression of something that was experienced through the senses. His example of the missing shade of blue, then, bothers me because it exactly disproves that idea.. and he agrees that it is a counterexample to his theory, but he doesn't seem to care. Assume that a man has seen every shade of every color in the world, except for one particular shade of blue. Pretend that this man is shown a series of cards, each of which has a shade of blue that he has previously experienced, and the cards are presented in order from lightest to darkest, with the exception of a blank card representing the shade of blue he has never seen. Would the man be able to imagine what that shade of blue would look like? Hume says yes, and I would agree with him. The man could infer that the missing shade is just a bit lighter than the card to its right, and just a bit darker than the card to its left. What bugs me about this is that Hume admits that the man would be able to figure that out, but that's in direct opposition to his basic arguments as an empiricist. The excuse Hume gives is that the example is "so singular that it is scarcely worth our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we should alter our general maxim." I don't see why that is justified, because the missing shade of blue seems like a perfectly legitimate objection to his arguments. Hume kind of just dismisses it instead of tackling the problem.

Hume: Moral Responsibility

Part of Hume's version of compatiblism involves moral responsibility. Hume says that his compatibilism works with holding people morally responsible for their actions. He says human behavior falls in line with the natural chain of cause and effect. If this were not the case, then human behavior would be subject to randomness. Praise and blame are only justified, according to Hume, if actions are performed as a result of a person's character. I agree with Hume on this point, because if everything was random then we wouldn't be able to hold people responsible for their actions. If John murders his family, we cannot punish him because it was purely an act of randomness (this kind of reminds me of when people plead insanity and things like that--they couldn't help what they were doing or didn't understand the consequences of their actions). From here on out, however, I'm a little confused about Hume's argument. He goes on to say that we can justify praise and blame with determinism, and that in turn justifies freewill. That all seems a little out of order to me. First of all, Hume's earlier description of what justifies praise and blame sounded to me like freewill---if people can freely make the decision to murder their families, they should be blamed for it. If it was determined that an individual was going to murder his family, should he still be held responsible? Because if the act was determined, then he could not have done anything to stop it. So I don't think that determinism entails holding people morally responsible. I might agree that if determinism DID entail holding people morally responsible, then we could figure that we do have freewill. But Hume didn't argue for anything like that, so yet again, I disagree with him.

Hume: Compatibilism Pt 2

The only explanation that Hume gives for compatibilism is that both free will and determinism appear to be true. He defends determinism by saying that the chain of cause and effect in nature is inevitable, and everybody acknowledges that it is there--it is part of human psychology. He defends freewill by saying that we appear to freely do things that we are capable of doing. So, as long as you're not in chains or restricted by drugs or anything else, you have freewill. My problem with that, as I've stated in earlier posts, is that you can't really know that you're making those choices and doing those things freely. We can't prove that those things aren't part of the whole grand scheme of determinism. If we could go back in time, maybe we'd have a shot at proving or disproving that, but obviously we can't. But anyway, Hume does not address how determinism and freewill might work together. He just argues for determinism, and then argues for freewill. Since he has reasonable arguments for both, he decides that both are true and they work together. So if I'm going to agree with his theory of compatibilism, I would only have to agree that both determinism and freewill are true, without acknowledging how they might work together and all that. Obviously since I'm not convinced by his argument for freewill, I'm not convinced by his version of compatibilism. It seems to me like he kind of took the easy way out of this one because he liked the idea of compatibilism but didn't have any good arguments for it.

Cosmological Ideas 3 & 4

In in third part of Proglegomena, Kant discusses cosmological ideas, which he separates into four different arguments. The third and fourth are:

3. The claim that we can act in accordance with our own free will vs. the claim that everything we do is determined by nature.

4. The claim that there are necessary causes vs. the claim that nothing is necessary and everything is contingent.

Kant says that in 3, causal necessity and freedom are made to seem contradictory when in fact they are compatible. He says that the laws of nature are applicable only to appearances since they can only operate within the limits of space and time. He says that freedom is only applicable to things in themselves because it is the ability to exist outside the confines of experience. He says that we can be free and also be subject to the laws of nature because our faculty of reason does not deal with experience and so we are free in our capacity as rational beings. The freedom has to express itself in and only in general maxims that do not depend on causal influence or particular times and places, so we still follow the regular laws in the world of appearances.

In 4, the contradiction is resolved somewhat like 3 is. He says that half of the proposition talks about things in themselves and the other half talks about appearances. He says that every causal connection may be contingent in the world of appearances, meaning it could have happened otherwise, but these appearances might have a necessary connection to things in themselves.

Cosmological Ideas 1 & 2

In in third part of Proglegomena, Kant discusses cosmological ideas, which he separates into four different arguments. The first two are:

1. The claim that the world has a definite beginning and end vs. the claim that the world is infinite

2. The claim that all things are made up of simple, indestructible, indivisible parts vs. the claim that everything is composite and infinitely divisible

Since these claims cannot be proved with experience, we tend to think they deal with things in themselves rather than with appearances. Kant does not attack either side, instead he shows what mistakes come about in each one. He says that the mistake in the first one comes from treating space and time are features of our experience, and do not exist independently of experience. He says that it does not make sense to asked if the world has a limit in space and time since the limit would exist where we would not experience it.

The problem with the second argument, according to Kant, is that when we talk about the parts into which a composite thing can be divided, we are assuming that these parts already exists inside the composite thing, but they are only appearances, so they cannot have any existence until the are experienced.

Psychological Ideas

Kant says that psychological ideas attempt to identify some kind of substance or an ultimate subject that underlies all the predicates we can apply to a subject. He says that this is pointless because the understanding helps us make sense of experience by applying pure concepts to empirical intuitions and concepts take the form of predicates. So knowledge comes in the form of predicates attached to subjects. Kant says that we can consider the ego or soul as an ultimate subject because we refer to an "I" when we describe any internal state, but he says that we cannot have knowledge of this "I" in itself. The fact that we are capable of experience suggests that we have consciousness, but we refer to it without having any ample knowledge of it, we can know nothing about our consciousness, we can only know about appearances. All that we can say about our consciousness or "soul" is in reference to our own experience.

Kant- The Pure Intuitions of Space and Time Pt. II

Given the considerations in my last post, we can begin to understand why Kant believes that we can have a priori synthetic knowledge (that is, a priori knowledge that adds to our knowledge, ie. certainty of the necessary connections of cause and effect, etc.). Kant says that "Geometry is based upon the pure intuition of space. Arithmetic attains its concepts of numbers by the successive addition of units in time". (Prolegomena Part I) Kant says further that "Sensibility, the form of which is the basis of geometry, is that upon which the possibility of external appearance depends." There are grand implications which follow from this statement in Kant's metaphysics. The implications are basically that our experience of space must conform to the same rules of sensibility that geometry conforms to.

Lets take an example: Kant says that the reason that there are only three spatial dimensions is geometrically based. Kant says that this is because not more than three lines can intersect to form right angles at any one point. This can be illustrated( or maybe intuited) by using the Cartesian coordinate system. Imagine an x and y axis, one for length and one for width. They intersect to form right angles. Now you can probably imagine a third axis, the z axis, which would represent depth. This line also forms right angles with the first two (you can visualize this by drawing a cube). Now if you try to figure out how to add another line which forms right angles through the same point, you will see that you cannot. It is a geometrical rule that no more than three lines can intersect to form right angles at any one point, and it is this rule to which our experience conforms. In fact, the possibility of our experience rests on its conformity to the pure intuitions of sensibility.

Kant- The Pure Intuitions of Space and Time

Kant believes that our experience is first and foremost experience of appearances (those which he calls 'phenomena') rather than things in themselves (or 'noumena'). Kant explains that all of our experience requires space and time. This seems fairly intuitive. Kant goes further. He says that space and time is not a property of things in themselves but rather the pure forms of intuition that make possible the world of appearances. This is another way of saying that space and time are not given to us by experience but rather that they are a priori categories of pure understanding which exist in the mind. Being a priori, they are prior to any sense experience. Now, a hardcore empiricist might here object with the slogan "nothing is in the intellect which is not first in the senses." But Kant might have the empiricists beat here. If we require space and time in order to experience anything at all, then space and time must be prior to the experience of any objects which exist in it. This is not to say that space and time exist temporally before any objects do (this would seem strange because there would have to be space and time without objects, which is arguably absurd), but rather that space and time are ontologically ('ontological' here means 'concerning existence or Being') prior to the appearance of objects in that space and time are necessary conditions for the having of experience.

Hume’s mistake according to Kant

Kant talks about Hume’s mistake in not understanding the nature of experience. Like many before Kant including Hume, believed that experience is simply a set of impressions. Thus ideas and impressions are constructed by compounding simple impressions. Kant would say that these are sensations, things we take in by our senses. Kant then argues that experience is more than these simple impressions and it all happens in space and time. Kant says that space and time are not impressions or sensations because they are pure intuitions. Thus everything that happens in time and spare are bound by the laws of cause and effect. Cause and effect in this case are also not impressions but rather concepts of understanding. So intuitions and concepts combine to make an orderly experience for us to understand.

Descartes Cogito argument

In the second meditation Descartes starts out by doubting everything the world around him, his memories and perceptions and so forth. He even starts to wonder about his own existence until he come up with probably the most important and influential statement in philosophical writing the Cogito argument. Descartes starts to think about his existence and everything else’s existence and comes to one important conclusion. That if he is able to doubt his existence then he must exist in at least some for. Even if a demon or divine deceiver was tricking you with what you say, heard, tasted, touched and so on was fake he himself is some form had to exist to be able to think these thoughts. So out of this pondering of existence comes the famous line “I think, there for I am”.

Cause and Effect

In the second part of Kant’s book he talks about how can not know the concept of cause and effect either through experience or reason. Kant does not agree with Hume that this is considered habit or custom that rather it is a priori knowledge that we apply to appearances. We are not able to know things as for what they are; we are only able to understand them by the appearances that are given off by them. Kant says that cause and effect is not to found in the appearances but rather in the form of the object and the understanding given by it. Hume like Kant both agree that we con not derive concepts from experience but instead we derive experience from those concepts. Concepts of understanding allow for us to legitimize experience, though it still can not tell us anything about the objects or things themselves. This helps us make connections between appearances but they can not go any farther than those appearances given off.

Judgments of Perception vs. Judgments of Experience

In the second part of the book Kant talks about the distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience. Judgments of perception combine together all our empirical thoughts and are only subjectively valid. So take the example of how I might notice that the sun is shining and then realize how the rock is warm. I might come to the conclusion that because the sun is shining the rock is warm, though this is valid only for me at this specific time.

Then Kant goes into talking about judgments of experience, these apply “concepts of the understanding” to judgments of perception. This is taking the previous example and taking it one step further, by adding cause to the argument it allows for us to be able to understand natural laws. Like before the sun is warm which in turn causes the rock to heat up and feel warm. Kant then goes on to say that we use judgments of experience to structure how we understand experience. Kant goes into talking about how judgments of experience are a priori concepts we combine together to understand our judgments and that these a priori laws allow for natural science to exist.

A priori vs. A posteriori

In the first section of Proglegomena, Kant discusses the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge and how it shows the two possible sources of knowledge, the intellect and experience. He says that a priori means that we know something independently of observation and a posteriori means that we know something through observation. He claims that math is an excellent example of a priori knowledge since we can figure it out in our heads and nothing we experience can contradict this.

Understanding vs Reason

In the third part Kant talks about the difference between understanding and reason. He says that this is a big problem that arises in philosophical thinking. Hume says that any concept that can be associated with experience belongs under the category of understanding. While when we use reason we are striving not to use experience, experience only causes problems in reasoning. Kant comes up with three different ideas of reason, psychological ideas, cosmological ideas, and the theological ideas.

Looking at psychological ideas we are trying to find some sort of thing or subject that is underlying all the predicates we apply to the subject. For example when looking at a fish we may say the thing with scales that thing that lives in water and so on, but what is the thing. Kant says that this is worthless and just wasting time. These things help us understand things by allowing us to apply concepts to empirical intiotions and concepts take the style of predicates. The cosmological idea is simply an idea thats object can not be used in any experience. Basically that we use reason to prove four thesis and antithesis about the world and how it is. Lastly the third type is theological which unlike the other two do not start from experience. We start rather with the idea of pure completness of a thing (a perfect being) to determine the possibility and thus the actuality of all other things.

a prior and a posteriori cont...

In the book Kant goes a little further into the distinction between a priori and a posteriori and analytic and synthetic judgments. According to Kant All analytic judgments are a priori, this is because they are in the breakdown of the concept itself. While synthetic judgments can either be a priori or a posteriori. Kant then goes into classifying synthetic judgments into three types, judgments from experience, mathematical judgments, and metaphysical judgments.

Simply put judgments from experience are a posteriori because they are just the combining together objects of experience. This would be taking into effect what had happened in previous experiences to judge what is going to happen in this case. Mathematical judgments are a priori judgments. Kant says the concept of 7+5 contains the idea of the two numbers but does not contain the idea of 12. We have to think about it and associate the two numbers with the idea of 12. Lastly metaphysics also consists of synthetic a priori judgments since metaphysics is made up largely of analytic judgments since these are the only things that metaphysicians can agree upon. Though there are synthetics judgments that are built upon these analytic judgments.

a priori and a posteriori

In the summary of Kant's book he gives a description between the differences of a priori and a posteriori knowledge. A priori knowledge according to Kant is anything we derive from pure reason while a posteriori knowledge is things we derive from experience. He then goes on to draw a even more important destinction between analytic and synthetic judgment. According to Kant the predicate of the analytic statement is in the object itself. For example all bachelors are unmarried men. It contains in the word bachelor that they are unmarried men and does not add anything to the statement. While the predicate of the synthetic on the other hand adds something to the statement. For example all swans are white you may not know before hand that all swans are white. So by hearing this information you gain some information about the idea of swans.

Philosophical vocabulary

In the later part of section 2 Hume talks about the philosophical vocabulary between the term impression and the term idea. As he states earlier in the section for the use of the words an impression is are clear and exact, things that we percieve with our senses, taste, touch, and so on. Ideas are less vivid, faint and some times obscure and unlike impressions we are likely to suffer error in remembering them. So when talking about an idea in philosophical terms we may ask by what impression did this idea come from. If it were to not come from an impression it would then be useless and meaningless.

Shades of blue

In section 2 Hume talks about a contradiction between ideas and impressions. Earlier he talks about how impressions are the things we see, hear, smell and so on. Basically everything all things that we perceive through our senses. While ideas are the compounding of these impressions like remembering how and apple tasted or looked (remembering the color). In this contradiction Hume talks about how if he had seen a few shades of blue he believes he could imagine other shades of blue without ever seeing them.

I am not completely sure about this idea, maybe we could imagine some different shades in which we believe we have not seen. Though i would have to say that we probably did see those shades in some form someone else before and just did not remember it. So i would still have to say that we could not imagine something that we have not seen before.

Relation of Ideas vs Matter of Fact

In section four Hume talks about the distinction between "relations of ideas" and "matter of fact". According to Hume relations of ideas are a prior knowledge. These type of things would include all logical statments like all "men are batcholors" and 6+6=12. He then goes on to say that relation of ideas are certain and can't be thought of different, if you were to it would be a contradiction. It like saying 2+2=5 or 2+2=chair we know that is wrong just by the simple idea of relations of ideas thus we know 2+2=4.
Hume then moves on to talking about "matters of fact" which deal with experience. Matters of fact are things like the sun is shining, it is going to storm tommarrow, these are things we learn posteriori. These are also things in which we do not fear because of contradiction. So if i were to say there is a clown outside, it is pretty easy for someone to go outside and see if there is or not and prove me wrong. Hume also talks about how we know matters of facts about things in which we have not observed through a process of cause and effect. I know that my friend is in France though i have not seen it myself, through a letter i can draw that conclusion.

Causation

In the latter sections of the second part, Kant discusses Hume's ideas about causation. He says that Hume was right when he said that we cannot comprehend the possibility of causality by reason or experience, but he does not feel that this concept is the result of habit or custom. Kant says that maybe we can only know how things appear to us by the form that our senses give to those things and that we know nothing about these things in themselves. Kant is basically saying that experience is more than simple impressions and that everything we experience happens in space and time and they are not impressions or sensations; they are pure intuitions.He goes on to say that pure intuitions and concepts organize experience for us and give it form.

I like how Kant seems to find a middle ground between the empiricist and rationalist views by saying that we can have a priori knowledge relating to experience and that this knowledge does not tell us anything about things in themselves. He says that innate faculties give form to what we perceive and that even though they determine the patterns according to which the world appears to us, they do not tell us anything about what the world is really like.

Judgments: Perception vs. Experience

In the second part of Prolegomena, Kant discusses the difference between judgments of perception and judgments of experience. He says that judgments of perception are only "subjectively valid" and that they "only require the the logical connection of perception in a thinking subject." (sect. 18) He goes on to say that all of our judgments are "at first merely judgments of perception; they hold good only for us." (sect. 18) Kant then discusses judgments of experience and says that if they have objective validity, then they are empirical judgments. He says that those judgments always require special concepts originally generated in the understanding, which make the judgment of experience objectively valid.

Kant is basically showing the difference between things in themselves and our perceiving mind. Judgments of perception are joining and associating two or more intuitions with each other and making a connection between them. They deal with our senses. He says that we turn judgments of perception into judgments of experience by using concepts of pure understanding because empirical intuitions in themselves cannot be generalized.

Hume: Compatibilism

Hume believes that determinism and freewill are compatible. I have always had issues with compatibilists because determinism and freewill appear to contradict each other. Determinism implies that everything happens for a physical, statistical reason. All of the facts about one moment, when considered along with the laws of nature, determine all of the facts about the very next moment. Freewill does not seem to fit into this equation because there is no room human decision. Even if we think we are making decisions in a deterministic world, we are not because every decision is determined by facts about the past (like the person P choosing between actions A and B, which I talked about in my last post on liberty). I think that people are normally inclined to think that we have freewill because we are constantly making choices and we feel in control of those choices. When considered along with determinism, however, it seems possible that maybe we are not in control of the decisions we make. Perhaps we choose to do something because all of the facts about the world and the laws of nature in the very moment before we made the decision determined that we would make that decision. So, suppose there are two routes that I can take from campus to my house---one is faster, with lots of highways, and the other is longer, with back roads and a nice scenery--and I need to decide which route I'm going to take home today during rush hour. Although I may feel in control of my decision to take the scenic route to avoid traffic, the facts about the world and the laws of nature at that moment played a role in determining my decision. Fact #1, there is traffic on the highways because it's rush hour. Fact #2, I hate traffic. Fact #3, the scenic route will take less time today at this time. Fact #4, I enjoy the scenic route. All of these facts (and laws about nature, I suppose, because I cannot drive through the traffic and things like that) determined what decision I would make.

Hume: Liberty

Hume's discussion of liberty is not as detailed as his discussion of necessity. That bothers me because I agree with everything he says about necessity, but I'm unsure of some of the things he says about liberty. His general description of liberty is that person P is at liberty with respect to performing a certain act A if and only if, if P were to choose to do A then he would be able to do A. Although this seems to give a satisfactory explanation for freewill, I think that Hume is restricting himself. In this definition, he is not presenting P with a choice--there is only act A. What if P had to make a decision between A and B, and he can only choose one even though he wants to do both. If he chooses A, then how do we know that he was at liberty to choose and perform B (or even that he was at liberty to choose and perform A)? We cannot affirm that he chose A because he was at liberty to do so unless we send him back in time and see if he can choose B in the exact same moment and situation. Otherwise, it is just as possible that he chose A because all of the facts about the world and the laws of nature determined that he would choose A at that time and in that situation. Although liberty sounds like a nice thing to believe, I am always pushed towards thinking it isn't true for reasons like this.

Hume: True Doctrine of Necessity

Hume talks about the true doctrine of necessity to begin his argument for compatibilism. His definition of determinism (necessity) is: "It is universally allowed, that matter, in all its operations, is actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause, that no other effect, in such particular circumstances, could possibly have resulted from it." (54) In order to back this up, Hume proposes the idea of a world in which one event never resembled another. Every object and "scene of nature" is so entirely new to us that we cannot comprehend any connections between them. If this was the case, then we could say that events and objects followed each other, but we could never assert that one was produced by another. We would not have any knowledge of cause and effect. He concludes from this that our understanding of necessity and causation (and their existence in general) is evident from the uniformity of nature and the predictability of human actions. He asserts that if we are presented with an event or object for which we cannot understand a cause, then we must assume that we are simply incapable of understanding its cause. I'm inclined to agree with Hume on these points, as everything appears to have some physical or natural cause and we are not subject to randomness.

Of Miracles 2

Hume goes on in this section to discuss four reasons why he feels that there isn't or ever has been enough evidence to prove miracles to be true. He starts off by saying that there has never been a miracle that has had a large number of trustworthy people testify for it. In order for a miracle to be considered possible or true, there would have to be a decent number of sane people that agree on the same event occurring and can give the same details of the event. The second reason Hume gives is basically that our imagination runs wild and that although we should believe we should believe what we have known to be true in the past, we can't help but believe things that surprise us. The third reason Hume gives us against miracles is that a majority of reports of miracles occur amongst ignorant or uneducated people who do not have the sense to question the testimony of a fellow citizen. The final reason he gives to doubt miracles is that miracles from each religion differ and oppose each other and therefore could never be agreed upon by every religion in the world.

I definitely agree with Hume on this subject. Miracles have never had any evidence to support them and a majority of the time, when they are investigated, they are explained pretty quickly. I think he is right in assuming that people love the unknown and love to believe things that surprise them rather than use their common sense to reason that the experience could not be true.

Of Miracles 1

In section 10, Hume discusses miracles and says that we really have no reason to believe in miracles or to consider them foundational to religion. He says that all knowledge we have of miracle comes from the account of others and what they say they have seen, which should make us more skeptical of them. He goes on to say that there is no evidence that miracles exist and we should not believe something that we do not have evidence for. He says that the only evidence we have for miracles is the testimony of others, but the laws of nature show evidence of against miracles. Since we have observed and have evidence that the laws of nature are true and a miracle is, by definition, a violation of these laws, it leads us to believe that miracles cannot be true.

Probability

In section 6, Hume says that chance does not exist in the world, but "our imagination of the real cause of any event has the same influence on the understanding, and begets a like species of belief or opinion." (pg 37) He says that there is a probability that arises from a superiority of chances on any side. Hume uses an example of a die to demonstrate his point and says that if it was marked with a certain figure or number on 4 sides and marked with a different symbol on the other 2 sides, the symbol that is on 4 sides would be more likely to appear than the symbol on 2 sides. He goes on to say the if 1000 sides were marked with a different one, the probability would be even higher.
Later in this section, Hume says that the probability of the die is the same as probability of causes. Some of the effects from causes are relatively constant while others are more irregular. He says that when this happens, philosophers do not claim its due to an irregularity in nature, he says "but suppose that some secret causes, in the particular structure of parts, have prevented the operation."
I think Hume may be onto something here; He's right to assume that there is a kind of probability to every effect and that some effects are more probable than others. It is not simply due to chance that certain causes almost always have the same effect. Although there are some effects we may not know the probability of, this doesn't mean that the effects are chances.

Kant and The analytic synthetic distinction

There are two types of propositions, those that are analytic and those that are synthetic. An analytic proposition is constructed by analyzing a concept, while a synthetic proposition is constructed by synthesizing (or putting together) concepts. Analytic propositions do not add any new knowledge, that is, the predicate is contained conceptually in the subject. Synthetic propositions amplify knowledge, that is, the predicate contains something not thought of in the subject. Kant takes this distinction a step further. While it seems obvious that a posteriori knowledge (knowledge from sense experience) is synthetic, and that a priori knowledge (knowledge independent of experience) is analytic, Kant introduces the a priori synthetic. Here are some examples of the three types of propositions:

a priori analytic: "Triangles have three sides"
- Here the predicate " have three sides" is part of the definition of what a triangle is: a three angled, three sided, closed planar figure.

a priori synthetic: "The sum of the interior angles of a triangle is equal to 180 degrees"
- this fact concerning triangles can be proven apart from sense experience. We can derive this fact simply by what we know about a triangle by its definition.

a posteriori synthetic: "The sides of the pyramids at Giza are triangular"
- This is a contingent (as opposed to necessary, as all true a priori propositions are) fact about the world, and it requires sense experience in order to be discovered.

Locke's External World

One of Locke's main points is obviously that we only know things through experience. So, you can only know what a chair is if you have experienced a chair in the external world (or, perhaps, you perceived all the parts of the chair in the external world and thereby inferred what a chair is). What I'm interested in here is that Locke kind of just assumes that the external world exists, rather than making an argument for it. Descartes dabbled in the question, so I was surprised to find that Locke did not pay much attention to it. Certainly, according to Locke, since we do not have any innate ideas, we cannot just know that the external world exists. So, at one point, Locke talks about how it has to be true that the external world exists because it is the best explanation for the evidence at hand. This is not a solid explanation, but rather an assumption that fits nicely into his other arguments. Although I am not one to doubt the existence of the external world, I find it interesting that Locke didn't tackle the issue wholeheartedly.

Knowledge of Future Events

In section 4, Hume discusses our knowledge of future events and suggests that we base all of this knowledge on things we've already experienced. He gives 2 types of reasoning that may help us to determine if it is a good idea to base future knowledge on past events. The first type, "demonstrative reasoning" is based on relations of ideas. Hume says that since there is no contradiction in suggesting that the future will resemble the past, we cannot know that it will by means of demonstrative reasoning. The second type is moral reasoning, which is based on matters of fact. He says that since moral reasoning ends up going in circles, it also does not help us. Hume ends this section by saying that there is no form of reasoning that can show how we connect similarities between past and present. I think that there must be some type of reasoning that we use in order to connect past experience to future and learn from it. If there wasn't I would imagine we would never learn from our mistakes.

Laws of Association

Hume discusses the links between ideas in section 3. He says that all ideas are connected in some way and gives three ways that this is accomplished. The first is resemblance, where a picture of a thing will make us think of that thing. The second is contiguity in time or place. This is when a specific thing is discussed and that discussion leads to the discussion of similar things. The third way is cause and effect, which is when we think of one thing and it leads us to think of what follows from it. This seems to make a lot of sense to me. It seems like anytime we think of anything something else always seems to come from it and this is how we form new ideas.

Impressions and Ideas

In sections 2 & 3, Hume discusses impressions and ideas and distinguishes between the two. He says that impressions are "lively and vivid" and ideas deal with memory and imagination, therefore they are less "lively and vivid". Hume says that impressions are "all are more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or hate, or desire, or will". He continues to say that ideas are merely the memories of impressions. Since Hume is an empiricist, this means he feels all our knowledge must come from impressions.

Hume on Moral Responsibility

I spoke in earlier posts about Hume's compatibilism when it comes to the question of free will. Hume believes that it is possible for necessity and liberty to coexist, mainly, as I argued, because one is free to act according to one's own desires. I said that even if these desires are determined by previous states of the world as well as the laws according to which it works, liberty is not infringed upon. Here is another question: If even one's desires are determined (according to which one makes decisions and acts), can they be held morally responsible for their actions?

First of all, this enough is clear: man is not responsible for his existence. Man is a contingent being, that is, man is dependent upon external factors for his existence. I said in earlier posts that even if a person could not have acted otherwise, he may still be free, namely because he acted necessarily according to the components that make him who he is. But can we be resentful (or grateful) to someone even if they could not have done otherwise? This question is in contemporary philosophy referred to as the question of reactive attitudes. Hume has this to say:

"A man who is robbed of a considerable sum; does he find his vexation for the loss any wise diminished by these sublime reflections? Why then should his moral resentment against the crime be supposed incompatible with them? Or why should not the acknowledgment of a real distinction between vice and virtue be reconcilable to all speculative systems of philosophy, as well as that of a real distinction between personal beauty and deformity?"

So Hume has made a point. Just because the world may have not been able to be other than what it is doesn't mean we can't distinguish between what is desirable and undesirable in it. But Hume only half answers the question of reactive attitudes. The tough question is not whether or not we can justifiably resent the actions, but whether or not we can justifiably resent the person who acted in such and such a way. I agree that determinism should not give us reason to give up moral distinctions, but I am quite unsatisfied with Hume's answer in that he does not address the real difficulty. Should we punish an individual for an undesirable action or simply recognize that it was undesirable (and possible try to rehabilitate the person instead of punishing him or her)?

More about Locke's argument against innate ideas...

When I think about Locke's argument against innate ideas, Plato's story of the slave boy in the Meno comes to mind. In the Meno, Socrates takes a slave boy through a mathematical experiment. He tells the boy that the area of a square whose sides are each 2' long is 4' squared. He then asks what the area is of a square whose sides are each 4' long. The slave boy initially doubles the area of the square, since the length of the sides was doubled. Socrates asks the boy questions until he reveals the correct answer. My question then arises: does the slave boy really have some kind of innate notion about mathematics (or, further, that he had an innate notion about the area of a square with 4' sides)?

I don't think he does. I think Socrates' questions prompt the slave boy to recall little bits of information that he has learned about numbers, addition, shape, and size. I think the questions also prompted him to use this information in such a way that he could infer the answer by way of reasoning. I'm not sure what Locke says about innate abilities as opposed to innate ideas, but it does seem as though we are born with certain innate abilities--how to think, how to breath, how to rationalize, how to compare, etc... While sometimes we may be taught how to refine and improve these abilities, we certainly do not need to be taught how to breathe before doing so...

Locke: Against Descartes & innate ideas

As I spoke about in an earlier post, Locke does not believe in innate ideas. Descartes, on the other hand, loves innate ideas. The cogito rests on that principle, as you don't need any sensation or perception from the outside world in order to think and determine that you therefore exist. Descartes also uses "nature taught me so" as an explanation for various arguments that he tackles (one is what particularly makes humans more intelligent than animals; another is what accounts for the pairing of a particular mind with a particular body). "Nature taught me so" is obviously just another way of saying that he was born with that innate idea.

Locke argues against innate ideas and asserts that neither speculative (logical & metaphysical) nor practical (ethical) principles are known to us at birth. He argues that such principles are not universal among humans. He also claims that if they were universal, then they could easily be explained by way of self-evidence and/or shared experience. Another argument he uses is that children and the mentally handicapped are not familiar with these principles, and nothing could account for their sudden loss and eventual regain (in the case of children) of them. I'm inclined to believe Locke's argument because everything I know seems to come from outside sources--either someone told me, or I learned it by comparing it to something else. So, for example, I know that 2+2=4 because someone taught me how to count and add numbers. I know that I'm kind of short because I've seen a lot of other people who are taller than me.

Locke: Higher intelligence of humans

Something I found interesting about Locke was that his opinions on the difference between humans and other animals are similar to those of Descartes. They both believe that humans have the ability to use the information they receive through perception, sensation, and reflection, in order to expand their intelligence. They are capable of discerning and comparing, which Locke argues is the basis for human knowledge. Without being able to distinguish one object from another and compare facts about them, we would have little to no intelligence whatsoever.

Descartes would agree with this idea to a certain extent, since he would be inclined to say "nature taught me so" at some point. But I still think he would like Locke's explanation for the difference, despite the fact that Locke thinks all knowledge originates as a sensation that is reflected upon. Descartes never really committed to a solid explanation for what makes humans different (his argument seemed to boil down to "just 'cause"), but this seems to be the direction he was heading in--just that humans have the ability to rationalize, evaluate, etc ...

Hume- the harmony of liberty and necessity pt. II

My last post laid out a definition of liberty that was compatible with the necessity of causality. I said that since nothing prohibits us from acting according to our determinations, we are free. Here is a possible objection: "Okay, it may be that you have the freedom to act according to certain desires that you have, but those desires themselves are determined in such a way that you cannot act any other way than how you do. In short, for any action you make, you could not have done otherwise." Here is my response (and probably also Hume's): I grant that I can not act in any other way that I do. That would be absurd. My actions may be determined by my desires, and my desires may also be themselves determined by an endless causal chain preceding them, but my freedom of will is actually secured by determinism, not endangered by it. Let me explain. In order for me to be a self-determining being, that is, a being who determines my own actions, it must be the case that I can effectively translate my own desires into action. My actions follow from certain desires, dispositions, inclinations, and deliberations that I have. These are all part of who I am. It is the necessity of causality that makes it possible for me to act on these desires, deliberations, dispositions, and inclinations that I have, rather than on any other factors. Some think that I need to be the first cause of my actions in order to be free, but if this were the case, and my actions were not determined by anything, then it would not be possible to have any actions. It is universally accepted that everything owes its existence to a prior cause, so if there were no prior cause to my actions, then I could not have any actions at all. Either that, or my actions would be a product of chance. Chance, though, doesn't really exist. It is not a physical object, it has no measure of mass or energy, and has no power in producing any effect. The word chance is a word used to describe one's ignorance (that is, we say that something is left to chance when we do not understand or cannot calculate all of the factors involved in a causal relation). Even if there was such a thing as chance, and my actions were not preceded by anything that determined what they would be, it hardly seems that chance would grant me the kind of freedom that I am looking for, because in order for my actions to be free, they need to arise from my desires and other factors that I identify with.

To sum this all up, I am free enough because I have the freedom to act according to my own desires. There seems no rational reason for wanting any more freedom than this, nor does it seem possible that there could conceivably be any freedom greater than this.

Hume- The harmony of liberty and necessity

Hume says that it is universally accepted that there are such things as necessary connections between causes and effects, even if it is only via the experience of the constant conjunction of events that furnishes us with this understanding. Many are concerned, though, that this causal necessity gives rise to a determinism which inhibits our freedom of will. If every event is necessitated by a prior event, then how can our actions be free? If it is the case that there are necessary connections between events (which we call causes and effects), then we know that our actions can be traced back on a causal chain of events that well predates our own existence. Understanding, and even arguing for this, Hume says that we are nonetheless free. How? Hume is a compatibilist of sorts, which means that he thinks that determinism is compatible with free will (and moral responsibility for that matter). Hume says that it boils down to this: "By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we chose to move, we also may." Since nothing is prohibiting us from acting according to our own determinations, we can be said to be free.

Locke: Sensation and reflection

Locke, as an empiricist, obviously believes that we are all born with our minds as a blank slate (tabula rasa), and we learn ideas and concepts through experience. The two sources of our ideas are sensation and reflection. The argument for sensation is obvious--you must perceive via the senses in order to understand what it really is. This contributes to Locke's rainbow argument for definitions of complex ideas. Even if you described every little detail of a rainbow (order of the colors, size, brightness, etc) and individual who has never sensed color would not understand the concept. This person who was blind from birth has not had anything etched onto his blank slate in regards to vision. Therefore, he does not know what it's like to see color, nor does he truly understand the difference between red and blue. Locke describes the reflection part of his argument as "the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got." This accounts for our abilities to remember, discern, reason, judge, etc. I think that Locke's discussion of reflection gives his argument solid ground, as we all know that sensations can quickly fade away. Without the reflection part of his argument, we would be a blank slate after each passing moment. The ability to remember and analyze lets us retain past sensations via ideas and concepts.

Locke: Simple and complex words/ideas

Locke is not very impressed by language. He finds it an imperfect medium through which we attempt to express our ideas, but often fail to do so. He is most satisfied with simple words which reflect simple ideas. These unambiguous words, like "sweet" and "bitter," will not cause controversy in conversation. Simple words, then, do not require definitions as their meanings are universally understood. Moreover, it would be impossible to apply an accurate definition to a simple word because the definition would consist of various synonyms, creating a complex description of something that has no composition at all.

Complex words, on the other hand, are subject to interpretation, like "modesty." People will have different opinions on the word, and they will entertain different ideas when the word is mentioned. Therefore, Locke insists upon having strict definitions for complex words, as this is the only way to sustain a concrete language. Still, Locke says that one must have experienced all of the simple ideas that make up the complex idea in order to fully understand the complex idea. He uses the example of a rainbow: a person born blind would not understand what a rainbow really is, even if it is described to him in exact detail.

Connection of Ideas

In book three Hume talks a good deal about the connection that exists between all ideas. Hume talks about three principles by which ideas may be connected. The first principle he talks about is resemblance, this is where we see a picture of a tree and we then think about the tree. The second principle he talks about is contiguity of time and place, this is where if we are to mention one apartment we then get to discussing others. The last principle he talks about is cause and effect, where when we think of a cut or scrape and then we think about the pain that followed it. Hume then goes on to say that he has no reason to not put out more prinicples for the connection of ideas, expect for the fact that he can not come up with anymore. Though he does then say that even though he can't think of anymore no more are needed. For example, association by means of contrast or contrariety can be seen as a combination of resemblance and causation.

Imagination

In the second book Hume talks about imagination and how the human mind is an unlimited organ. Hume states that our imagination is merely the compounding of ideas. Hume comes up with two points to explain this idea. First he says that all complex ideas are merely compounded out of simple ideas and these simple ideas come from simple impressions (everyday things like human form and intelligence). Hume uses the example of God being a supremely good and intelligent being. We have the idea of goodness and intelligent and allowing them to have no limit allows us to imagine the being of God. Second Hume talks about how our imagination is limited to the impressions we are able to take in. So for example a person that is blind is not able to imagine color and a person that is deaf could not imagine sound.

Origin of Ideas

According to Hume thier is a distinction between impressions and ideas. Hume says that ideas are the weaker form of impressions. They are lacking something that impressions have, they are less vivacious. Impressions according to Hume are sensations and ideas are memories and ideas. Hume gives the example of a person eating an orange. The impressions of eating the orange, taste, feel and smell are stronger then some one imagining eating an orange. Hume then goes on to say that both the color red and anger are considerend impressions (everything we hear, see, touch, smell, feel and love) and ideas arise when we reflect back on those impressions.

Easy & Obvious Philosophy vs. Accurate & Abstract Philosophy

Hume begins the "Enquiry" by saying that there are two kinds of philosophical thinking. The first is "easy and obvious philosophy" and the second is "accurate and abstract philosophy". He describes the first as being written in a poetic style and that it uses examples from everyday life so we can see the difference between right and wrong.He says that this type of philosophy is popular and follows from common sense, therefore there are rarely errors in it.

The second philosophy, accurate and abstract philosophy, does not direct our behavior. Instead, it focuses on what causes that behavior and why we do the things we do and uses abstract reasoning to attempt to make sense of it. He says that since this area of philosophy does not use common sense, errors are made often and because of this, this area is sometimes rejected.

Hume goes on to say that the best objection against A&A philosophy is that it is a confused attempt to explain what we don't know by blind prejudice. Hume's reply to this is that this should be more reason for us to study it closely.

Hume on Causality Part III: Implications for Science

Given the considerations in my last two posts, we can ask questions of major consequence. The first is: what, then, given a new understanding of how we make inferences concerning causality, are the implications for science? What kind of certainty can we really furnish? Can we really say that we know that one event will follow another simply because it always has in the past? An this brings us back to one of Hume's initial questions: What reason (if we say that we indeed do know that one event will follow another because of past experiences) do we have for believing that the future will be like the past? It does not seem like we have any real reasons other than our deeply-implanted beliefs which are a result of custom and habit.

Here is the big question for science: What is a law?
A law is supposed to be a rule that dictates how nature behaves. A law is supposed to give us certainty in knowing how one body willact in a given situation. But given Hume's considerations, it seems like a law is more like a description of our past experience. Saying that something is a law of nature might be similar to saying "Well, physical bodies have behaved in such and such manner in the past without fail, so much so that we conclude that they will always behave in this way". Here is the killer for realists about scientific laws: Are the words "law" and "causality" really just useful fictions for describing our experience of the world? Maybe these words do not refer to anything that really exists out there in the physical world- maybe they are just useful terms to help us express what we are trying to say when it comes to explaining scientific theories.

Hume on Causality Pt. II: The Problem of Induction

Given the considerations in my last post, it seems evident that there must be something wrong with how we make inferences concerning cause and effect. If what we call 'cause' is really just "an object, followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second"(Hume, VII pt. II), then it seems that our idea of causality is not one produced by knowledge, but actually by habit or custom. What we really mean, then, when we say that something causes something else, is that in the past, it has always been the case that one event follows another. We do not actually have knowledge of what it is in the one event/object that "causes" the other event or object to happen. That is, we are ignorant of the force or power which compels one event to follow another. Our reasoning, if any, proceeds in this manner of induction:

Premise 1. At time q event A was accompanied by event B.
Premise 2. At time r event A was accompanied by event B.
Premise 3. At time s event A was accompanied by event B
Premise 4. At time t event A was accompanied by event B.

CONCLUSION: Event A causes event B.

Hume points out that we would never infer the conclusion after only one instance of the above happening. If we only observed it once, we would say only that events A and B were conjoined in our experience. But because we experience a constant conjunction of event A and B, we infer that there is some type of connection between them, which we call causality. We do not see this connection, nor do we know what it is.

Hume on Causality

Hume is concerned with the inferences we make concerning what we call "cause" and "effect". He asks what the basis is for one to see one event follow another and then to conclude that the first event caused the second. First of all, this inference is not made on the basis of a priori reasoning, that is, reasoning which precedes experience. Rather, the inference is based on what we experience. What reason do we have, Hume asks, for concluding that since one event was followed by another in the past, that this conjuction will hold for the future. Take bread, for example. Hume asks what justification we have for believing that since bread has nourished us in the past, that objects similar to the bread we have eaten in the past will also nourish us. In other words, what reason do we have for believing that the future will be like the past? But we almost never conclude that there is a causal relation between two events until we have experienced them cnjoined in many instances. For example, fire has never in the past failed to be accompanied by heat, nor snow by cold, so we naturally make the inference that fire causes heat and snow causes coldness. Since we have not discovered WHY the one event follows the other, but that we continue to make the inference that the two events are causally related anyway, Hume concludes that it is not because of any reasoning that we make the inference, but because of habit/custom.

Cause and Effect

Locke talks about how all reasoning concerning matter of fact are founded in the relation of cause and effect. What he is saying is that we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses. So if you were to ask a man why he may believe his friend is in another country, what would be his reasons for this if he did not know he really was or not in another country. He might answer with former knowledge he had of that friend talking about wanting to go to that country or promises. Again like before a man stranded on a desart island finds i watch. He did know see or know anyone else on this island but form cause and effect he knows that there must have been someone else there.

Imagination (perception)

Locke talks about perception or imagination in terms of them being confined to very narrow limits. He goes on to say that the creative power of the mind is no more than us combining, augmenting and transposing the senses and experiences we have gathered throughout life. Like the example about the gold mountain or the virtuous horse. Neither might not actually exist but in our imagination we can combine the idea of things we know. So we could imagine a gold mountain because we have the idea of gold and of mountain. Just like we have an idea of virtue and of a horse to imagine a virtuous horse. So all the materials that make up thinking are derived from our inward and outward perceptions of the world around us.

Thoughts and Perceptions

In section two Locke talks about distinguishing between the two classes of perception of the mind. The first class that Locke talks about is thoughts or ideas. He calls thoughts and ideas the less forcible and lively of the two classes. The other idea he talks about is impressions and by impressions, Locke is talking about our more lively perceptions what we see, we hear, feel and love. So thoughts and ideas are the incorporation of our perceptions. Locke goes on then to say that nothing is more unbound then the thought of man, not even nature and reality can contain our thoughts. People’s bodies might be confined to this planet and might not be able to leave physically but mentally with our thoughts we are able to go and see anything with our thoughts.

Knowledge

Unlike the rationalists, who think that knowledge is limitless, and the skeptics, who think we are incapable of knowing anything at all, Locke takes the middle ground and says that knowledge is possible, but it's limited. He says that a person can only be said to know something when they see why it is necessarily so. He says our minds are not capable of grasping every necessary connection there is. This is mainly because he is an empiricist and feels that all our knowledge comes from experience and we cannot experience neccessary connections. The natural world consists of observable;e properties and since he feels we cannot grasp the connections of these things we observe we can never truly know everything.

I definitely agree with Locke's position here. I think it's naive of the rationalists to believe that it is possible for anybody to ever know everything and obviously we have some knowledge of our world so we can't say that we cannot know anything. I think that Locke has the right idea that the capacity of our minds can hold an enormous amount of information, but there is a limit to everything.

Abuses of Language

Locke focuses on the problems with language in book 3. He says that words refer to ideas and that we shouldn't use a word if there is not a clear idea of what that word refers to. He says that the only way we can guarantee that language does not lead us astray is to define our terms and stick to strict policies of usage. I agree with Locke on this point about our language. There are so many different views of words with each area of the country and in different parts of the world.

Complex Ideas

In book 2, Locke discusses simple and complex ideas. He says that there are 4 types of complex ideas; modes, substances, relations and abstract generals. He says that modes are ideas without the notion of self-subsistence. Substances are self-subsisting things or collections of self-subsisting things. Relations are relational concepts.

He says that there are 3 methods that complex ideas are created by. In the first method, ideas are put together through combination, by taking simple ideas that come to the mind naturally through sensation or ideas from the imagination. In the second method, ideas come from a comparison of simple ideas. In this method, the similarities and differences of 2 or more simple ideas are observed and the complex ideas of relations results from it. The last method, abstraction, is when the ideas that have been joined by the mind are separated by the mind.

Is it possible to be both determined and free?

It is a common debate in philosophy over whether or not man is a free agent, that is, if he acts freely. Determinism is the proposition that everything is determined by prior states of the world and the laws of nature. If man is part of the physical world, including his brain (which would include his thoughts, desires, deliberations, emotions, etc.), then it seems that he is determined to be what he is and to do what he does. If man is determined, is it possible that he may still be able to have free will? At first glance one might think that the two, determinism and free will, are incompatible, that is, that it's either one way or the other. But this may not be the case, it may not be as simple as that. It depends how you define free will.

One formulation is that free will is the the power to do otherwise. Here's an example. I went to class today. If I really had free will, according to this definition, then I must have had the power to have not gone to class. But if I am determined to do what I do, then I could not have done anything other than what I did do, and then I cannot have free will according to this definition.
Try out this definition: Free will is the power to be able to do what you want to do. This definition is much less problematic. Take the example of me going to class today. I went to class because I want to get a good grade. No one prohibited me from going, I went because I wanted to go. It may be that I am determined to have the desires that I have (such as the desire to want to get good grades in school and the desire to go to class), but nevertheless I was free to do what I wanted to do. With this definition of free will, I can be both determined and free at the same time.

Locke gives a lot of his own thoughts on freedom and the will in Locke Bk. II, Chap. XXI.

Locke Bk II Ch. 9 pt .8- Molineux's Problem

Locke had a lawyer friend named Molineux who posed a very interesting and very relevant question for empiricism. Molineux says that suppose a man grew up blind from birth, and was taught to identify and to tell the difference between certain physical objects and shapes, such as a cube and a sphere, via touch. The man learns to identify figures like these by sliding his hands around the figure and feeling the shape of it. Here is the question: If someone placed a cube and a sphere on a table in front of this man, and if he was instantly endowed with the ability to see, would he be able to identify each object as a cube or a sphere? Molineux answers "no", because the man has yet to experience that what affects his touch in a certain way can affect his eyes correspondingly. This is something that no one could teach him while he was blind, he would have to learn it from experience. Locke agrees wholeheartedly with Molineux.

Simple Ideas

In Book II, Locke wishes to show where knowledge comes from, since he feels he has clearly shown where it does not come from. He basically says that all knowledge comes from simple ideas and simple ideas come from experience. Therefore implying that knowledge comes from experience. Locke says that the only 2 ways a mind can pick up simple ideas is through sensation or by reflection. Sensation deals with the senses, meaning we obtain information through sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Reflection deals with actions of the mind; such as thinking, doubting, etc.

I agree with Locke on this subject. I think that all knowledge we have must come from our senses and experience. It seems that there is no other way for us to obtain any information. As Locke pointed out in Book I, innate ideas are impossible since not everybody agrees on a single thing, so therefore there is no other way for us to obtain knowledge except through senses.

Locke Book II Ch. 8, 1-6:Positive & Privative Causes

In the beginning of chapter eight, Locke discusses an interesting approach to the concept of privation. Although a cause may be privative, the idea which it causes may nonetheless be positive. Take the example that Locke gives of the colors black and white. Although we know that our experience of blackness is caused by a privation (i.e., the lack of light), the idea of blackness is something positive. When we speak of darkness or blackness, we do not need to be thinking of it as the absence of light or white. This holds true for painters, for whom black is a positive color, even though the color black itself may simply be a privation of the color white. This seems problematic, though, and Locke would agree, because its not clear that black is caused by the lack of white as much as darkness is caused by the lack of light. another example would be a hole. A hole is caused by a lack of material substance in something physical. For example, a hole in a plastic bucket is a hole by virtue of it being a location without plastic. nevertheless, we can meaningfully speak of the shape of the hole in the bucket without having to first speak of the shape of the bucket around the hole. We could relate this same type of reasoning to shadows. A Shadow is caused by light being blocked by something, and the shadow takes the shape of that something which is blocking the light. So although the shadow is really just an absence of light, the shape of the shadow s a shape of something positive, namely the shape of whatever is causing the shadow.

Locke: Skepticism

In book four Locke outlines three plans for treating the problem of skepticism, about whether or not the world really exists outside of our mind. This idea comes from Locke's theory of knowledge. In other words if we only have the access to the ideas in our minds and which come from our minds, how do we know know thier is actually a real world outside of our minds. He uses three strategies to over come the skeptic viewpoint.

The first strategy he uses is a weak stategy to simply say can you really doubt that thier is an actual world out there. The second strategy is to simply put it, who really cares if thier is an actual world out there as long as we understand enough to get around in the world we are in. The third strategy he uses seven experiences to explain that thier is an actual world. 1. There is a realness to percieveing objects that we don't get from memories or imagination. 2. We cannot get ideas without using the sense organs. 3. We are able to only recieve ideas in certain situations so it cannot be the organs working by themselves. 4. We gain ideas passively. 5. Ideas are sometimes accompanied with pleasure and pain, though our dreams do not. 6. Senses ofter bear witness to other peoples reports. 7. Two people can share the same experience.

I agree with his third strategy againt skepticism, i think he does a good job using the senses to describe why thier has to be a real world beyond our mind. Though i think he does a very poor job with the first two strategies. In the first one it is basically a childish argument, thats just stupid so why believe it. The second one is more uplifting but does not really do anything against the skeptic viewpoint. Its just saying who cares if thier is no real world just know this world enough to get by.

Locke: Nature of Knowledge

In book four Locke talks about the nature of knowledge. According to Locke knowledge is what the mind is able to percieve with a connection or without a connection between two or more of our ideas that we have. So Locke goes on to say that since we are only relating ideas that we already have the knowledge that we have cannot be knowlege of the world around us. He then talks about four arguments and disagreements about how reason can bring fourth knowledge. The first argument he talks about is identity, blue is blue and blue is not yellow. In other words blue has its own idenity of blueness and thus blue can't be yellow cause it doesn't have the identity of yellowness. The second argument deals with relation, in the case of two triangles that have the equal sides are called equal triangles. The third argument is coexistence which is fire is always going to be put out by water, things react in harmony to thier counterpart. Finally the last category he talks about is the realization that existence belongs to the idea's themselves and not to the mind.

Locke then talks about how thier are three degrees of knowledge which are intuition, demonstration and sensitive knowledge. Intuition, this is when we see a agreement or disagreement right when the argument is understood. Demonstration is the idea that we need some sort of proof to be able to understand and know that it is right and finally. Sensitive knowledge which deals with existence of an external world, basically what we percieve is the external world as we know it.

Locke: Where knowledge comes from

In the second book, Locke talks about where knowledge comes from. Locke first starts out talking about how knowledge is a build-up of ideas (simple ideas and complex ideas). Simple ideas are then combined to create complex ideas, thus simple ideas are the single basic units of knowledge. He then talks about how thier are two types of experiences in which we gain simple ideas. The first one is through sensation or the body experiencing the world through senses, touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. The second type of experience is reflection or the mind turning in on itself and recongnizes on its own functions, thinking and so on.

Then Locke talks about how he breaks down simple ideas into four categories. The first is ideas we get from a single sense, such as hearing a car pass by outside. The second is ideas we get from combining two senses. The third is ideas that come out from relfection of the mind and the fourth and final category is ideas that come from the combination of senses and relfection.

Finally Locke breaks down complex ideas also into four categories. Modes, which are ideas that cannot exist in and of themselves like numbers. Substance , which are men or animals such as a single substaning thing or a army as in a collection of substaning things. Relations, which are father, sister and so on. Finally the last category is abstract generals, which are man or sheep, not talking about any particular man or sheep just the general idea of man or sheep.

Discourse 6

Earlier i talked about how Descarte gave a long and winded discussion about why he first shouldn't publish his works and then for why he should publish some of his works over other works he had produced. Though looking back at this i realized he had another important reason for why he didn't want to publish his works. This reason deals with persecution from other philosphers, scientists and religious authorities. His biggest worry was persecution from the Inquisition, after Galileo was condemded by them for his writtings, this was a real worry back then in the 1640's for philosphers, scientists and any one else talking about new ideas.

Locke: Innate Knowledge

In book 1, Locke attacks the theory of innate knowledge. He begins by criticizing the possibility of innate theoretical principles by basically saying that if there are any innate principles, then everyone would accept them. There are no principles that everybody accepts, therefore there are no innate principles. He later addresses the possibility of innate moral knowledge. He uses the same logical argument here, that there is no moral code agreed on by ever human, therefore there cannot be innate moral knowledge. He uses several examples to support his claim that innate knowledge is not possible. His strongest argument is his use of children for an example, saying that anything they know or any ideas they have come directly from things they have experienced. I think Locke is much more realistic than Descartes was. His arguments use more logic rather than relying on "God's power". Locke has claims with more reasonable backup and better conclusions than Descartes. I agree with Locke that innate knowledge is impossible and in order for it to be true, every person would have to have some moral code written to their brains or at least have one thing that everybody in the world agrees on, which clearly is not the case.

Discourse 5- Rationality

In part 5 of Discourse, D says that a majority of our biological processes can be explained by science, but our rationality cannot be explained by science. He says that since it cannot be explained, it must be a gift from God. He goes on to say that animals do not have intelligence and that animals do not use language to express themselves. I definitely disagree with D on this point. Given, in his defense, he wrote the Discourse years before any studies about animal behavior and language were done, but it has been prove many times that animals have their own language and use rationality for problem solving.

Meditations 4- Human Error

In part 4 of Meditations, D discusses the source of human error. He says that error depends on both intellect and the will. He says that intellect cannot be the source of error since it only allows us to perceive ideas, not make judgements on them. He says that the only property we have that is infinite and perfect is our will, everything else like our intellect, imagination, memory, etc is flawed. Since our will is perfect, it also cannot be the source of error. He decides that error occurs because the will is infinite and intellect is not, meaning that we judge things because of our will, but we do not fully understand the things we judge. I think this is one of D's better arguments, but I still do not agree with it. D seems to just aim at defending God's existence with every argument. I do understand his point about our intellect is true, it is limited and we can never know everything there is to know, but there is no way to prove that our will is infinite.

Meditation Six: imagination vs understanding

Descarte talks in the sixth meditation about how the imagination cannot be a essential property of the mind because the person (meditator) can still exist even if he was could not imagine. Thus the person must rely on something else than the mind for existence. There the person must think that the imagination then must be linked to the body and not the mind. Descarte goes on then to say that in understanding the mind turns in own itself to get the information while, when we imagine the mind turns outward toward the body for the information. He finished this thought with this is not a good argument for the existence of the body.

I do agree with Descarte that it is not a great distinction for seperation of the mind and body but i do disagree with his idea of imagination being seperate from the mind and says it comes from the body. He says that its seperate because he can exist without imagining. How does he come to this since everyone can imagine in some form. I think imagination is linked to the brain because we get the information to imagine from our knowledge and understanding of how things are.

Locke Book I Conclusion: No Innate Principles

After examining the various types of innate principles that men claim to have (speculative, practical, and the innate idea of God), Locke concludes that there simply are no innate principles. The test of universal consent has failed miserably in each case. If one argues that all rational men have these innate ideas, then that hardly suffices for universal consent. Locke challenges any proponent of innate ideas to list which ideas are innate and which aren't. Even among supporters of innate ideas there is disagreement over which ideas are innate and which aren't. Locke says that if there really were such a thing as innate ideas, they should be clear and distinct enough to tell them apart from ideas which are not innate. Lastly, he says that you won't be able to find any young child who is able to consent to any of these ideas (speculative principles of logic, practical principles of morality, or the idea of God) who hasn't been taught them yet. These ideas only seem innate for two main reasons: 1.) People are taught them at an early age and these basic ideas become foundational to everything else that people learn in their lives, so much so that they seem innate, and 2.) The ideas seem so self-evident that it seems that they could not be anything but innate. Locke says that the ideas only seem innate to those who have either been educated in them or have learned them from their own experience.

Locke Book I- No innate idea of God

In arguing against the innateness of an idea of God, Locke is not trying to disprove the existence of God. He is rather arguing that any knowledge or concept of God is derived from people who, using their reason correctly, "thought out the causes of things, and traced them to their original" (p.90) He says that the idea of God is clearly not innate for a few reasons. First, there are entire cultures of people around the world that do not have any clear concept of God. Second, there are cultures which are polytheistic and worship many Gods, and Locke says "What true and tolerable notion of a Diety, could they have, who acknowledged, and worshiped hundreds?"(p.93) The third reason given is that among peoples who do have a notion of God, the difference in these notion across various cultures (and within the same culture) is so great that they are clearly not the same notions of God. There are even those who have a notion of God but deliberately reject it- atheists. Locke believes that the idea of God is one that any rational person who gives time and thought to understanding the world would come to. For Locke, God chose to give us the faculties of understanding rather than an innate idea. To those who believe that since God is good he must have imprinted on the hearts of man an idea of himself, Locke says: "it seems to me a little to much confidence of our own wisdom, to say, I think it best, and therefore God hath made it so." (p.91)

Locke Book I- No Innate practical principles

Locke argues that there are also no innate practical principles (that is, princples concerning how men ought to act, either imperatively in a hypothetical sense or in a cetegorical sense, as Kant will later point out). If there were principles imprinted on the mind or soul of all men, then surely there would be much less confusion and dissent as to what is right and wrong. First, he points out that many different societies have drastically different idea of morality, where in one society (such as ours) infanticide would seem to be a clear case of immorality, other cultures hold that it is acceptable by moral standards. Because such differing extremes of moral stadards exist, it seems unlikely that there is one true moral law that men have imprinted on their minds or souls. A second argument that he uses is that if men had a clear and distinct moral law imprinted on their minds, then they would also have the conception of a moral lawgiver, namely a God, who had the power to punish those who broke the laws. Since plenty of individual men as well as whole societies act in morally contradictory ways, men must not have a clear and distinct idea of a lawgiver because they clearly don't fear him enough to act "morally". Locke holds that there is nonetheless a morality, but instead of it being innate it is discovered through reason. He argues that God has given us the faculty of reason so that we would use it rather than a ready-made set of true propositions. "God having endued man with those faculties of knowing which he hath, was no more abliged by his goodness, to implant those innate notions in his mind, than that having given him reason, hands, and materials, he should build him bridges, or houses. . ."