A little bit of Philosophy: Lesson 1: Hume's take on Causality

This time, dear readers, it is about me. For once.

We have discussed moral philosophy. It really is all a little grim when one thinks about it. We have delved a little into metaphysics. But what can be said about such stuff? Meaningless- most of it. What's next?

Once Hume had decided that there were only two types of truth, necessary and contingent, and that there were some serious problems with the notion of 'causality' he cast a spell so deep upon the foundations of philosophy itself, that there really has never been a full recovery from this event. And a good thing too. Best philosophy hobbles along in the right direction than elegantly runs towards and leaps from the edge of a cliff to its eventual death. (Actually, I think I prefer the elegant leap- so this was not at all a good illustration.)

Hume suggested that we never have observational evidence to support any judgement that one event has caused another to happen. In other words, the only thing that pure unadulterated observation can give us, is that one event happened and that immediately afterwards another happened. But, according to Hume, this is not evidence for a causal relationship. Why?

Maybe a story here: If, every morning when I wake up, the milk man comes to my door at 7:15 and delivers milk to me and then at exactly 7:16 the newspaper man comes and delivers my news paper, most of us will agree that the only information we really have is that the one event always succeeds the other, in a particular order and without fail (if this is indeed the case). Not many of us will want to add to this that that the milkman has caused the newspaper man to arrive. Most of us accept that these two events have two external causes of their own, entirely seperate from each other.

Now, this seems intuitively true because we happen to know something about how these systems work. But what if we are looking through a microscope and see two organisms, both unknown to us, repeatedly performing some sort of action wherein the one turns red and then the other turns blue immediately afterwards when they come into contact with each other. Every time. We have observational evidence of the proximity, we have observational evidence of the change of colours. We have no evidence that the one causes the other to happen.

For Hume it is necessary to show a logical connection between two events, in other words, when this event happens that one must follow, and it must be for that reason only (the first must be a necessary and sufficient condition for the next event to happen) before any causal links can be assumed. A high bar to set for causality. And such a wet blanket, because we do so love to think that we know what caused what to happen.

OK. This is enough for today. One lesson at a time. This will need to happen in incremental steps, for my sake.

Next lesson: Two types of truth and what this leaves us with.

A large bit of philosophy: Metaphysics this time

Reality.

More than likely the most pervasive theme running through metaphysics within academic philosophy. What could be so controversial about reality, you ask. Why should it be necessary to look at ‘reality’? Surely it is simply the case that the world is what it is and there is not much we can do about this? Some really silly questions, I would say. Unforgivable.

Firstly, no questions in philosophy are necessary. Only definitions are necessary in philosophy. So there is no reason why anyone ‘should’ look at finding answers to questions of any kind. Even most philosophers have accepted this. Such questions are, at the very least, somewhat interesting and, at the very most, tremendously interesting. And that is that. There is just one axis for questions such as these. Because they are fundamentally useless.

And then, one does not study things necessarily with the desired outcome being any sort of manipulation. Sometimes we just study things to know about them. So be it. What then are these questions about reality?

We’ll start with one: Does something (chair, table, cat or plate of cauliflower soup, God and angels) have to be able to exist without my existence in order for their existence to be considered real? In other words, must they have independent existence, for them to be considered actual things? Or is it good enough, in order to earn the label of “real object”, that someone out there is conscious of it? In fact, some would say that it is necessary to have awareness of an object for that thing to exist. This, of course implies that nothing exists that we are not aware of.

Here are your options. You can let me know if you know of any more:

If things must have independent existence for them to be considered real then you are a realist of about objects. (It is possible to be a realist about some objects such as chairs and tables and not about others such as gods and fairies.) The important question a realist faces is one regarding knowledge: Say I believe that God exists independently of me- so he is not a figment of my imagination- then how do I know this? Plato ran up against this problem when he spoke of the Essential Qualities of things in the world having separate existence to the things they are qualities of. No one has been able to rescue him yet.

If you take reality to be a product of our consciousness or awareness you may consider yourself as some sort of constructivist about reality. In this case you will not have a problem regarding knowledge of the thing, because the thing itself is an extension of you thoughts. So no little epistemological problems arising from the gap between our minds and the world out there. The problem for this view, of course, is that this must mean that there are as many realities as there are minds. If this is the view you take you must also be able to accept that in the same place at the exactly the same moment someone’s bed can be burning and not burning, depending on who is observing. So, is the bed burning or not? And it does not solve the problem to say that for someone it might be. We all accept this to be so. But, the controversial question must surely be, if they think their bed is burning (while lying in it), then why is the flesh not falling from their bones? It seems, therefore, a little wishful to think that reality can be reduced to subjectivity.

Let me know what you think. I am really interested.

A little bit of philosophy: Beyond Good and Evil

“This need” (here Nietzsche speaks of the need to unconditionally obey commands i.e. ‘thou shalt’) “seeks to be satisfied and to fill out its form with content; in doing so it grasps about wildly, according to the degree of its strength, impatience and tension, with little discrimination, as a crude appetite, and accepts whatever any commander- parent, teacher, law, class, prejudice, public opinion- shouts in its ear. The strange narrowness of human evolution, its hesitations, its delays, its frequent retrogressions and rotations, are due to the fact that the herd instinct of obedience has been inherited best and at cost of the art of commanding”.

Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil).

When Nietzsche so quickly dismisses the constraints of social norms and standards as something which is practiced by “the herd” (no doubt intended as a derogatory label) does he take into account the behaviour of those who he takes to be free from this sort of mindless commandeering? You know, the Übermensch. The ones who are exempt from having to comply. Does he consider that the freedom, which he only attributes to special minority, from narrow moral constraints, if extrapolated to general society, would lead to complete anarchy? The world would be filled with danger and hurt. He does, of course, consider this. This is precisely the crux of his theory.

In other words, there can only be an Übermensch if there is a herd, like there can only be a master if there is a slave. Does this seem fair or even rational? It would not seem fair to Marx and would not seem rational to Kant, but we all do know that hierarchy is an essential quality of human society. It is the way nature has deemed things to be.

Time, you hideous fiend

Time

You sit there arguing so that no one will see

How you abandon the fearful and smother the free

You make beautiful things happen too fast

And you make times of aching last and last

Who are you? You beast!

You animal, you thing!

I hate you with all of my being.

C G

Into the desert

Into the desert

Into the desert, Miss Overmuch marched.
Her hair pinned back, her uniform starched.
She turned to the girl in line with her step
And noticed that not one, save Miss Overmuch, wept.

What makes a grown girl cry, Karenina asked.
When setting upon a journey so fine and so basked
in the glory of man at her best?
But for Overmuch it was now a meaningless quest.

It was meaningless because she would leave behind
The foolish raptures and love that is blind.
The things which would make her heart reach her brain
And there merge in the most wonderful pain.

So, while no one looked, she took one clip from her hair.
A strand came loose and floated freely on air
around her face, which looked about her at the beauty
of a landscape, free of shallow sentiments and narrow cruelty.

So, into the desert did Miss Overmuch march.
But, for her, to lay down arms, at the arch
of the gate to the enemy state,
to then turn and run back- before it's too late.


Carin Goodwin

A little bit of philosophy: A tribute to David Hume

"There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning, that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night in the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty." David Hume

The curse of human investigation is that we invent the subjects we think need to be thought about. Once these have been invented it requires the same drive or passion to make a study of this supposed subject matter- as if this has pre-existed our need to study it. This strange self-gratificatory predisposition results in a frenzy of analysis and desperate quest for evidence, resulting, oh! sad sad day, in the most lavishly obtained conclusions vanishing before our eyes as we enter the domain of the real world.

Here is one worth having: If she shows obeisance to proof, whether of the rational or empirical kind (which she does), then stepping out of the closet must start, as soon as possible, looking the same as inside the closet. He is done with such a dual existence. It is a lie that eats away at his integrity.