scholarly journals Hume’s understanding of causal explanation

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
Igor Stefanovic
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Causal Explanation ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Intimate Connection ◽  
Future Events ◽  
To Come

This article deals with actuality of Hume?s positive thesis about causality, specifically in modern science. According to Dauer, Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature does not deal with scientific theory which allows us, in modern times, to come to the truth, and then necessity. Also, he claims that observation alone, without theory is useless, which is the reason why we need science to predict future events. I intend to show that all three claims are incorrect, and to show an intimate connection of causality and our intuitions.

scholarly journals Towards a Humean epistemic ideal: Contested alternatives and the ideology of modern science

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (34) ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
Tamás Demeter
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Medical Theory

I suggest that it is fruitful to read Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding as a concise exposition of an epistemic ideal whose complex philosophical background is laid down in A Treatise of Human Nature. Accordingly, the Treatise offers a theory of cognitive and affective capacities, which serves in the Enquiry as the foundation for a critique of chimerical epistemic ideals, and the development of an alternative ideal. Taking the "mental geography" of the Treatise as his starting point, this is the project Hume pursues in the Enquiry. The epistemic ideal Hume spells out in the Enquiry is an alternative to competing ideals: the Aristotelian, the Cartesian, and the Newtonian, and can be read as an exposition of the epistemic ideal of modern science. Although the spell of the Aristotelian and the Cartesian ideals had been in decline for several decades by the 1740s, they had not fully lost their grip on the philosophical imagination. Yet, it was the Newtonian epistemic ideal that became dominant in Scotland and Britain by then, guiding inquiry in moral and natural philosophy, as well as in medical theory. Hume offers a critique of these ideals. He shows that Aristotelian and Cartesian epistemic aspirations rest on mistaken views on human cognitive capacities. And albeit the Newtonian ideal is not prone to this mistake by Hume's standards, its epistemic expectations extend far beyond the limits of those capacities. Hume's epistemic ideal can be read as a correction, limitation and refinement of the Newtonian ideal: it sets epistemic aims and propagates methods for the production of fallible, limited and potentially useful knowledge that falls short of the great epistemic expectations of Newton and many Newtonians - but it conforms to what we expect from modern science.

Parsing the Frost

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Levinson ◽  
Marjorie Levinson
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Frost Formation ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Sensory Register

The reading of Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight” at the center of this chapter opens up the cognitive and aesthetic stakes of seeing writing. It does so by analyzing the encounter with visible script, an experience that can be understood as a reworking of a previously unrecognized source, the scene of writing in David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 4. Just such an encounter is the activity in play with the figure of the window frost and with the entire poem. Broadly speaking, sentence formation is seen as analogous to frost formation. In this way, the discussion seeks to shift the sensory register of criticism of the poem from its traditional emphasis on the acoustic to a new appreciation of the visible.

Church Time and Astrological Time in the Waning Middle Ages

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Hilary M. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Scientific Claims ◽  
To Come

Time, according to medieval theologians and philosophers, was experienced in radically different ways by God and by his creation. Indeed, the obligation to dwell in time, and therefore to have no sure knowledge of what was to come, was seen as one of the primary qualities which marked the post-lapsarian state. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of delights, they entered a world afflicted with the changing of the seasons, in which they were obliged to work and consume themselves with the needs of the present day and the still unknown dangers of the next. Medieval concerns about the use and abuse of time were not merely confined to anxiety about the present, or awareness of seized or missed opportunities in the past. The future was equally worrying, in particular the extent to which this part of time was set aside for God alone, or whether it was permissible to seek to know the future, either through revelation and prophecy, or through science. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scientific claims of astrology to provide a means to explain the outcome of past and future events, circumventing God’s distant authority, became more and more insistent. This paper begins by examining one skirmish in this larger battle over the control of the future.

Hume's Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature.

1988 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 263
Author(s):  
Michael Williams ◽  
Robert J. Fogelin
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature

scholarly journals Scientia est potentia

2009 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Ülo Kaevats
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
Deductive Method ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
Object Of Study

Oma algses mitmetähenduslikkuses on see F. Baconi aforism kõige tihendatum tõdemus, mis tõmbab olemusliku eraldusjoone ühelt poolt antiikse ja keskaegse ning teisalt uusaegse arusaama vahele teadusest ja teadusteadmisest. Artiklis püüab autor anda võimaluste piires tervikpildi uusaja teaduse industriaalselt (tehnoloogiliselt) orienteeritud teadmistüübi tekkimisest. Uusaja teaduse kujunemiseks vajaliku pöörde maailmavaateliste eeldustena tuleb käsitleda: (1) põhimõtteliselt uut subjekti ja objekti käsitust; (2) täiesti uut väärtusruumi, uut teaduse ideoloogiat (ilmalikkus, kriitiline vaim, tõesus ja praktiline kasulikkus); (3) tunnetuslaadi muutust — kontemplatsioonilt interventsioonile, kvaliteedi kirjeldamiselt kvantiteedi uurimisele; (4) looduse käsitlemist Kosmose asemel seaduspäraselt korrastatud objektide “väljana”. Uue tunnetusstiili — empiirilise ja teoreetilise tunnetuse kokkuviimine, hüpoteetilis-deduktiivse metodoloogia kujundamine Galilei poolt, abstraktse ja sünteetilis-tekstilise loomuga spekulatsiooni asendumine uurimisobjekti ehituse, korrapära ja põhjuslikkuse objektiivse analüüsiga, universaalsete loodusseaduste doktriini kujunemine jms—kujunemine konstitueeris uut tüüpi teadmise. Teadmise kui nähtava maailma piltkoopia asemele luuakse teadmine kui loodusobjektide seaduspära analüütiline rekonstruktsioon. See on vormiltmatemaatiline, päritolult eksperimentaalne ning loodusobjektide kontrollimisele ja ümbertegemisele suunatud nn valdamisteadmine.This F. Bacon's aphorism in its original ambiguity is the most condensed belief that draws a distinctive essential line between ancient and medieval understanding of science and scientific knowledge on one hand and modern understanding on the other. The author aims at providing, as far as possible, an integral overview of emerging of the industrially (technologically) orientated type of knowledge of modern times. Ideological/philosophical preconditions of the change necessary for emerging of modern science are: (1) a fundamentally new approach to the subject and object; (2) a completely new system of values, a new ideology of science (secularity, critical spirit, trueness and utilitarianism); (3) a change in manner of cognizance - from contemplation to intervention, from describing quality to studying quantity; (4) treating nature as a naturally organised "field" of objects instead of the Cosmos. Emerging of a new style of cognizance - bringing together of empirical and theoretical cognition, the devise of the hypothetical-deductive method by Galilei, replacement of speculations abstract and synthetic-textual in nature with objective study of the structure, regularity and causality of the object of study, establishment of the doctrine of universal natural laws etc - constituted a new type of knowledge. Knowledge as a copy of the visible world is replaced by knowledge as an analytical reconstruction of the regularity of natural objects. It is so-called dispositive knowledge, morphologically mathematical, originally experimental and aimed at control and alteration of natural objects.

The Gravity Funnels, formed by the longitudinal vortices, according to the new Axioms and Laws

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Waves ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Transverse Direction ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Longitudinal Direction ◽  
Space Time ◽  
The Other ◽  
Longitudinal Vortices ◽  
New Space ◽  
The One

In the age of information, it is no secret that the modern science is in a very difficult position. On the one hand, it has high hopes for solving the problems of modern humanity and very practical tasks. On the other hand, science shows limited potential and difficulty in carrying out the tasks. Beyond scientific theory remain such phenomena as gravity and gravitational waves and other unexplored and very useful phenomena. Obviously, the reason for these limited capabilities of modern science is its limited foundation. The foundation of science is determined by its basic axioms. If we expand the foundation of science, we will be able to build a more comprehensive, perfect and voluminous theory. In two monographs and a series of articles the author offers a system of extended axioms (with two new axioms) and a more extended theory (with eight new laws). To the great surprise of even the author, this new theory turned out to be extensive enough to cover and explain and the gravity. Moreover, the extended axioms and theory directly and naturally outlined the algorithm in the explanation of the so-called Gravity Funnels. According to the new axioms and laws, Gravity Funnels are both for suction (accelerating) and for expansion (decelerating). Expansion Gravity Funnel decelerates along its longitudinal direction as emits the matter in the transverse direction. In this way it consumes energy and generates matter. Suction Gravity Funnel accelerates along its longitudinal direction as sucks the matter in transverse direction. In this way it consumes matter and generates energy. The both of Funnels are situated in a new Space-time. The Space-time of decelerating and accelerating Funnels is packed by longitudinal vortices, in which the Space (S) is constant. It is radically different of the Space-Time where we live now. The Space-time where we live now is packed by cross vortices, where the time (T) is constant. According the new Axioms and Laws the two described Space- times are mutually orthogonal.

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