Belief in God

Faust · Post by **Faust** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 12:12 pm

ExpectantlyIronic wrote:As an unashamed Humeian I'll go ahead and take a stab at defending him. First off, he was a skeptic (as all good philosophers tend to be), but not a complete skeptic. If we're stuck in Cartesian thinking, where the world can supposedly be understood in terms of logic, then I can see where his views could seem shocking and crushing. The simple fact of the matter is that we depend upon inductive inferences to support a vast chunk of that which we believe, and there can never be a logically sound method of induction. Oh well. The truths of logic tend to be unfailingly obvious, as sound logic never tells us anything new. It's sound by virtue of rephrasing what has already been said and necessarily implied. An exception can be made for abductive logic (where one accepts the theory that best explains the data), but such "logic" isn't even sound by logical standards.

Compatibilism is--insofar as I'm concerned--the best possible approach to freewill. The simple fact of the matter is that freewill isn't the opposite of determinism. Freewill, when thought of in a way where it can make any sense at all, is simply the idea that the physical processes involved in what we might consider a morally responsible being have a role in determining action. If Larry drops the ball, then Larry dropped the ball. More then just what I'd call "Larry" was involved in the causative chain that ultimately lead to the dropping of the ball, but what I call "Larry" had something to do with it, so he is responsible for his actions.

Hume simply can't be blamed for the fact we can't find a logical basis for the vast majority of truths about the world (the world of sensible facts mind you). The problem is self-evident for anyone who studies logic with any degree of depth. Only by construing causation into a worthless tautology that tells us nothing (and defining it in a way that Hume wouldn't have recognized it as causality), can we prove it with sound logic. I'd love to say that his views are self-evident to anyone who puts any degree of thought into matters, but they obviously aren't, given that he played a major role in destroying the dogmas of philosophy up until his time.

One is a bad philosopher if they assume that philosophy must have a solid foundation or method, and then dismiss whatever demonstrates otherwise based upon their passions and dogmatic assumptions to the contrary. It isn't damning on Hume that he cut the legs out from under the general trends of his time, but rather a demonstration of his freethinking tendencies and bravery in taking the trends of his time to their logical conclusion. When someone finds a way to convincingly refute Hume, without redefining the terms he used (as folks have a tendency to do), then they can freely dis him. Until then it's all whining about the fact he made us smell our own shit. Hume may have said that "reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions", but in acknowledging this, he broke from the chains that held back so many thinkers who came before him.

I'm not completely dismissing Hume, but his compatibalism is totally incoherent. If I didn't choose to forget, or to drop something, I cannot be blamed for it. For remembering things and paying attention is a matter of conditioning and genetics. Your ego is getting in the way because you want to praise or blame yourself.

I've gone over his problem of causation and it also is incoherent. When I see and do things that are caused, I know it exists. Give me some real examples where the problem of causation shows itself.

ExpectantlyIronic · Post by **ExpectantlyIronic** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 2:07 pm

Faust13,

I'm not completely dismissing Hume, but his compatibalism is totally incoherent. If I didn't choose to forget, or to drop something, I cannot be blamed for it.

Although if you put a few shells into the 7-11 guy, you pretty much can be. By the common social conventions of just about every human society in history, you're your physical presence and what you do. You have freewill insofar as it matters. You can take a third-person outlook all you want, and see yourself as a victim of circumstances beyond your control, but nobody else will really look at you or treat you that way, and nor should they ought to. Why deny that the causative chain in your head is you? Whatever it does is what you think and do. The term "moral responsibility" has a use, and meaning is use. When you understand how it's used in this our secular world, and what function it serves, you'll realize that you can't deny it meaning through any metaphysic. Affirming or denying the existence of the imagined referent of this or that term misses the point. The trick, as so many philosophers tend to ignore, is simply to look and report that which it really does mean.

For remembering things and paying attention is a matter of conditioning and genetics. Your ego is getting in the way because you want to praise or blame yourself.

I can count the number of times I can remember feeling guilt on one hand. I'm a fatalist by nature, and have always said that I wish hard determinism were true, and that one could give no proper account for freewill. Nevertheless, I'm not a slave to circumstance, but a part of the not-so-grand and utterly aimless scheme of it. I am in the world. I could go about redefining the term "self" on the grounds that I imagine it to have some odd metaphysical consequences, but that strikes me a pure absurdity. We can use the term "self" and it isn't difficult to see how it is used, so what's the point in denying that the fleshy mass and odd sensations that it refers to aren't worthy of the term?

I've gone over his problem of causation and it also is incoherent. When I see and do things that are caused, I know it exists. Give me some real examples where the problem of causation shows itself.

If I strike a match and throw it into a pile of branches it may or may not catch them on fire. Should we say then that the theory of causality doesn't apply to fire? No, because we don't see causality but infer it. If we had some special sense for causality, we should imagine that we'd always predict what would happen in such situations. Dice games like craps would be non-existent, as what would be the point when we can detect every minute circumstance that goes into the roll? We simply do not see causality, but rather we inductively infer it from that which we do see. Allow me to show you the logic involved:

P: Every time I've done p in q conditions it has resulted in c.
C: Thus, p will always result in c in q conditions.

We can't see that fact, and we can't say that the conclusion logically follows from the premise. Thus, causality can not be empirically proven without inductive inference, and it cannot be deductively proven in any case. You may think you have sufficient evidence to prove causality, but you aren't using sound logic. Rather, you're using what Locke called "common sense". Good for you. We need more of that. Nevertheless, common sense and sound logic are worlds apart.

brokenhead · Post by **brokenhead** » Mon Apr 02, 2007 4:36 am

Although if you put a few shells into the 7-11 guy, you pretty much can be.

Now he tells me...