**ASSIGNMENT FOR 3/10

Read Hume, ENQUIRY, SECTION IV

Write 2 paragraphs that engage with one or more of the following sets of terms. Note that NOT ALL the terms below are oppositions:

Relations of Ideas/Matters of Fact

Intuitive relations/Cause and Effect

A priori/A posteriori (this might take a bit of research)

Reason/Experience

Demonstrative Reasoning/Moral Reasoning

Intuitive Inference/Demonstrative Inference

Past Experience/Future Judgment

Bonus Question: Sec.4, Paragraph 19 – What is “going in a circle”?

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Sara Sol

Hume looks for the reasoning behind moral reasoning- that is, reasoning based on “matters of fact”- which he defines as facts based on the experience of things which cannot be formed in the mind on its own .They are not demonstrative but somehow intuitive. His inability to provide reasoning other than intuition spurs on an investigation of what those matters of fact are. What is so great about his argument is that he has to apply demonstrative reasoning, or logic, to discover what moral reasoning is, i.e. he has to apply its opposite to discover what the reasoning behind it is. But of course, within demonstrative reasoning, no sound reasons can be found, and we see that matters of fact are supposed by an intuitive belief in cause and effect, even though effect really shouldn’t, according to demonstrative reasoning, always and forever correspond to one cause. It is only through assumption that we know one from the other. By looking for the reasons for matters of fact and employing its opposite – relation of ideas- he doesn’t find any reasons, but I wonder if this is only because he uses its opposite, isn’t there any intermediary reasoning? Is reason only truly reason when it is demonstrative? Then why call moral reasoning reasoning?

The circle thing deepens this inability to define moral reasoning.  He begins by asking what our basis for arguments on matter of fact are and shows them to be cause and effect which are in turn based on experience. He then asks what the reasoning behind experience is.  In attempting to answer this question he employs all types of reasoning, i.e. moral and demonstrative, but concludes that he can’t use moral reasoning because he’d be using the very method in question. The whole purpose of finding reason in experience is to find the reasoning in moral reasoning- so he can’t use this reasoning which is in doubt to prove that its own surety, it would be like using a word to define itself- it would be a circular argument, with no reason- no beginning or end. This makes it impossible to find the reason for moral reasoning because 1) it’s impossible to define it with itself and 2) it’s impossible to define it employing its opposite.

Moral reasoningà cause and effectà experience à moral reasoning

Circle !  

Jack Gedney

Relations of Ideas/Matters of Fact…and the two Intuitions

            Well, it’s kind of nice to have “ideas” mean “ideas” again, more or less. Ideas are the domain of purely deductive reasoning and certainty; experience and the mere practical probability it brings with it Matters of Fact. A whole bunch of facts, of data points, do not conclusively prove any larger generalizations or theories regarding future events. I don’t think it is a particularly difficult distinction; I’m not sure what to write about this set of terms. They overlap closely with several of the other sets: ideas-intuitive relations-a priori-reason-demonstrative reasoning are all on one side.

            Ah, here’s a potential unclear spot: the word “intuition.” In Section 4, Paragraph 1, intuitive certainty is grouped with demonstrative certainty as connected with Relations of Ideas. So that is Davey’s “Intuitive relations/Cause and Effect” antithesis. In regards to the “Intuitive Inference/Demonstrative Inference” borderline, the introduction explains this clearer than I can find Hume doing: “Relations of ideas, as the name implies, can be known…using either immediate ‘intuition’ (e.g. our direct intellectual grasp that one plus one equals two, or that a square has four sides) or ‘demonstration’ (i.e. a sequence of ‘intuitive’ steps, as for example in the proof of Pythagoras’ Theorem)” (xxxvi). Since they both are in Idea Land and not the Republic of Experience, it doesn’t seem like a terribly major distinction at this point. But I guess we should be careful about using the word “intuitive” around Hume, since it is tempting to apply our more accustomed meaning (of instinct, rather than reason) to our process of inferring causal relations from our knowledge of experiences.

And yes, although Sara has already said it, the circle at Sec. 4, Paragraph 19 is Hume’s demonstration that nothing in experience can be used to prove the validity of experience as grounds for certainty.

Stacy Perez

True. It IS nice to have ideas mean ideas once more.

Anyway, I found it interesting that Hume argues that we cannot simply infer cause and effect. He says we must experience it. He goes on to give the example of the billiard ball and its effect on another if it is put in motion in one straight line. I agree with him that if we had no prior experience with billiard balls we would not know the effect. If you have no prior knowledge of something, you cannot possibly know its effect though you may know it is the cause of something. Before experiencing the effect of the billiard, you could have predicted that it was going to swerve to another side or go over the second billiard so that it would not hit it.

            After experiencing something, intuition kicks in. I take intuition to be somewhat like a posteriori. You know things because you experience them. You need to experience cause and effect. Otherwise, assuming that you have had no previous knowledge of fire, how would you know that it will burn you? Or how would you know that letting go of a rock in mid air will cause it to fall down. Prior to experiencing it, one might have guessed that the rock was going to float mid-air.

Ana Corral

     According to Hume, "a priori" knowledge is knowledge that can be found/gotten separate from experience. "A Posteriori" knowledge is knowledge that that is dependent on experience. In section 4, Hume writes that relations of ideas are based on logical statements and certainty and are based on "a priori" knowledge. Relations of ideas can't be disproved without fear of contradiction. On the other hand, matter of facts deal with experience and can be proven wrong by appealing to logic and reason. Matters of facts are based on "a posteriori" knowledge.

Mazzin Chaudhari

It seems Hume has a different set of objectives than the previous philosophers. He is very focused in what knowledge he wants to obtain. He is essentially trying to understand the sub-conscious behaviors of the human brain. He makes it clear that the future effects of objects are inferred by experience. For example, the only reason we know that our car will stop when we apply the breaks is because we experienced that outcome in the past. We know what breaks look like, we know how they feel and what they do, all based on prior experience. However, why do we infer that our new car which has a totally new brake will work the same way the last one did. It seems obvious, our memory reminds us of what it will do, but this is a function which is unique to certain species only. For example, a fly may run into a window 9 times in a row and be stopped 9 times, it will run into the window the 10th time as well because it lacks the function to make the inference that what is true for the past is probably true for the future. The functions of our brain go further than just the inferences we make. We have many unexplained intelligent functions that help us operate in this world. Another example, is our ability to categorize like objects systematically and unconsciously in a matter of milliseconds. It appears to me that Hume is taking the role of a neuroscience psychologist and trying to figure the human brain. There is a very interesting condition of the brain caused by brain damage which would have been an enormous break through for people like Berkeley, and Hume. The condition is called cerebral akinetopsia or motion blindness. Victims of this condition cannot perceive motion, when looking at a large moving crowd the people appear to jump from one stationary position to the next. When cerebral akinetopsia patients are trying to pour a cup of coffee it often overflows because they cant see the liquid filling the cup. There is also another condition which I dont know the name of, but its victims lack the ability to perceive idividual identities. In their eyes people all appear the same, blurry faces. These conditions offer huge support to Berkeley's claims. If everyone human in the world had the condition of cerebral akinetopsia or motion blindness, would that prove that motion doesn't exist corporeally?

This is an abstract from a study on brain functions which I think takes a scientific approach to answering questions Hume and other Philosophers have. It main seem like a bunch of psychological jargon, sorry

The human brain is a bizarre device, set in place through natural selection for one main purpose—to make decisions that enhance reproductive success. That simple fact has many consequences and is at the heart of evolutionary biology. Once grasped, it helps the brain scientist to understand a major phenomenon of human brain function—its ubiquitous lateral cerebral specialization. Nowhere in the animal kingdom is there such rampant specialization of function. Why is this, and how did it come about?

The surgical disconnection of the cerebral hemispheres creates an extraordinary opportunity to study basic neurological mechanisms: the organization of the sensory and motors systems, the cortical representation of the perceptual and cognitive processes, the lateralization of function, and, perhaps most importantly, how the divided brain yields clues to the nature of conscious experience. Studies of split-brain patients over the last 40 years have resulted in numerous insights into the processes of perception, attention, memory, language and reasoning abilities. When the constellation of findings is considered as a whole, one sees the cortical arena as a patchwork of specialized processes. When this is considered in the light of new studies on the lateralization of functions, it becomes reasonable to suppose that the corpus callosum has enabled the development of the many specialized systems by allowing the reworking of existing cortical areas while preserving existing functions. Thus, while language emerged in the left hemisphere at the cost of pre-existing perceptualsystems, the critical features of the bilaterally present perceptual system were spared in the opposite half-brain. By having the callosum serve as the great communication link between redundant systems, a pre-existing system could be jettisoned as new functions developed in one hemisphere, while the other hemisphere could continue to perform the previous functions for both half-brains. Split-brain studies have also revealed the complex mosaic of mental processes that participate in human cognition. And yet, even though each cerebral hemisphere has its own set of capacities, with the left hemisphere specialized for language and speech and major problem-solving capacities and the right hemisphere specialized for tasks such as facial recognition and attentional monitoring, we all have the subjective experience of feeling totally integrated. Indeed, even though many of these functions have an automatic quality to them and are carried out by the brain prior to our conscious awareness of them, our subjective belief and feeling is that we are in charge of our actions. These phenomena appear to be related to our left hemisphere'sinterpreter, a device that allows us to construct theories about the relationship between perceived events, actions and feelings.

By:

Michael S. Gazzaniga

Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA

Karena Ajamian

Hume addresses the issue of cause and effect in reference to our supposed knowledge of things as they exist today.  We’d like to imagine that we have a priori knowledge of the outcome of an event without having any past observation(s) which we could refer to.  The presupposition would be that we would know that a Billiard-ball would provoke motion in another upon impulse whether or not we’ve actually ever witnessed such an instance of that condition.  Hume rejects that on account of the premise that an effect is totally distinct from its supposed “cause.”  He claims, “For the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it” (Hume, 21).  As his explanation, Hume continues, “Motion in the second Billiard-ball is quite distinct from the motion in the first” (Hume, 21).  We cannot suppose that the Billiard-ball will strike motion in the another because the motion in the first ball does not necessarily relate to the motion in the other.  We connect the two events as cause and effect because it just so happens that one ball moved after the first.  There is a chronology that supports the case which Hume wholly rejects.

For Hume, it isn’t good enough to say that we know something will happen based on our experience of cause and effect (a posteriori).  On this point, Michael said something pithy and helpful that caught my attention.  “Just because in the past the future has been like the past doesn’t mean that the future is going to be like the past.”  The idea is that certainty certainly doesn’t exist.  Considering this point, I wonder what Hume would have to say about the status of the galaxies and stars relative to humans.  It is all the more frightening to believe Hume’s argument (that we just cannot infinitely know) and simultaneously recognize that when we look at stars that are, say, 1000 light years away, we are seeing what they looked like 1000 years ago.  They may not even be there right now anymore.  There is even a galaxy which exists 10 billion light years away, but Hume won’t toss us any bones of relief to even say that we can conceive tomorrow’s sunrise.  Good night, all.

Matters of Fact

KJA

Founded on neither intuitive nor demonstrative inference, Matters of Fact face an abyss of knowledge. Conjectured to be founded on two (2) things, one radically distinct from the other.

The first- Truth of falsity of Matters of Fact are known only by experience- experience encompassing an 'event'. Matters of Fact, being distinct events cannot be spoken of as if occurring continuously (this breaks from Berkeley who maintained that perception constituted a process of becoming willed by minds) in an unbroken chain of past, present, and future. Events are miniature totalities or wholes. They give up their truths but not the whole of their Truth. Though we may receive the same, more or less, results from a memory of more or less similar events, these can constitute no proof or law of relation.

The second dubious platform upon which rest Matters of Fact and which attends to the memories of past events and present experiences, is called Cause-and-Effect. Cause-and-Effect is familiar to anyone reading this- its tenets, I should say, are familiar. So familiar as to conceal the implicit deferral to this notion attending Matters of Fact. Basically, cause-and-effect can cull no better argument to its defense than experience and cause-and-effect itself, which, as Hume notes, is begging the question. Just because I can knock on a wooden table a thousand times and receive a sound does not grant me or the present the uncertain and essentially precarious knowledge of the future- or to brush aside ideas of the past and future- we still can't claim with total assurance, the assurance that attends 1+1=2, that on the one thousand and first knock I don't suddenly find that the wooden table has not made a sound but has turned into a cat, or shouted “Ow!”, or revealed a hidden passage into the mind of God.

Where's the reasoning behind cause-and-effect? We don't know. And what comes first? cause-and-effect or time? Which begets which> Dispensing with C&E would create a world perceived without time. Dispensing with time makes C&E unnecessary. Does belief in the goal of discovering clear and certain knowledge require a suspension of C&E and elicit an obfuscation of time/ or create the need for a grammatical pretense of time?Conversely, is a disregard of C&E (of the past's relation to the present) a necessary condition for the acquisition of all real knowledge of events? And what is the relationship of “the sun will not rise”-type utterances to truth? Are they somehow within certain limits of what is knowable while beyond what is true? Is truth to the human reason ultimately a circumscribed truth bracketed off from what we cannot know?