ASSIGNMENT FOR WED, 3/17

--Read HUME 7

 --Read THE INVENTION OF MOREL (TO ABOUT PAGE 50) **the story is in two chunks, posted below.**

--Read the brief selection from Chapter 11 of Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN on p. 54 of our reader.

--Write two paragraphs of comments relating one of Hume's concepts to any of the literature we have read so far in this segment (Descartes, Berkeley, PK Dick, Borges, Shelley). Feel free to develop, or embellish upon ideas we've touched on in class conversations. Alternately, you can write about Hume's own use of examples and illustrations/thought experiements. I'll try to post some specific questions on this page, but if you think of some of your own, feel free to share your thoughts in the form of questions. All I ask is, if you use question form, suggest what direction you might go in to find the answers.

morel-p1.pdf

morel-p2.pdf

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Sara Sol 

Borges and Hume 

“as we can have no idea of any thing, which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusions seems to be, that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely  without any meaning” This conclusion is of course not the end of Hume’s concept, it is followed by the conclusion that the only reason we do have the ideas of power and connection is because of a feeling we get after having seen the same cause occur after the same effect, not because we actually understand this power at all. This seems to be the basis for the central characteristic of Borges’s alienish people, who not only don’t think that there is a legitimate connection between cause and effect, but that they literally can’t understand the concept of there being a connection. Borges illustrates (yes, this is a comic book)  a world in which no one has this “feeling” that Hume describes, he  creates a people that lack the only process by which we presume an inherent connection between cause and effect. He constructs a prototype of a world without connection, without a special quality of time.

                Uqbar is a hypothetical consequence of Hume’s philosophic conclusion: we as humans posses some intrinsic “feeling” that provides us with an our unfounded concept of power and connection, and neither of these have any pertinence, at least as far as we perceive, in the reality of the world. In Uqbar,”the perception of a cloud of smoke on the horizon and then of the burning field and then of the half-extinguished cigarette that produced the blaze is considered an example of association of ideas”, they only see this succession as a series of ideas, not in any way connected, only conjoined, to use Hume’s differentiation. Borges realizes all the implications of this, including a need for idealist mentality in which nouns cannot exist, because they assume that one thing produces another- i.e. the rock and the wall produce the sound of rock hitting a wall, but in a world with no cause and effect the one thing doesn’t come from another, the action alone exists. Nouns become a fallacy and verbs the only way of communicating: “there are no nouns in Tlons conjectural Ursprache, from which the “present” languages and the dialects derived: there are impersonal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value”

Jack 

Hume and Descartes: David refutes the Cogito

In VII 16-19, Hume explains how people who think we get an understanding of Power or Necessary Connexion from our “raising up” of new ideas are deluded. He has already explained how the ostensibly clear connection between our will and the movements of our body is far from humanely comprehensible: we don’t understand how it actually works, we can’t consciously control many parts of our body, and when I think I am controlling my arm I am really acting through all sorts of other muscles and stuff which I have no idea of. He takes a similar tricolon approach to refute the idea thing: we don’t understand the actual process of thought creation, we don’t have complete control over our ideas (we also don’t over our bodies or emotions), and our self-command is variable (due to sickness, for example). This seems to contain inherently one refutation of the Cogito which we have discussed a bit before: it is not “I” who thinks. Although Hume doesn’t directly deny the existence of an “I” or that it may play some role in thought creation, he clearly believes that it does not have complete control over ideas. “I do not have complete control over my thoughts” seems to inevitably open the door to “There is some other force which shapes my ideas—it is not self evident that “I” exists merely on the basis of thoughts existing.”

Hume and Berkeley: Who loves God more contest

Soon after this, Hume moves on to refuting the notion that apparent causal sequences of matters of fact can be explained as sequences put into our minds by God. Essentially, he says it is a crazy idea; specifically, he says its adherents are in “fairy land” (paragraph 24). Yes he puts them in their place. I found one of the more interesting aspects of his (nicely personality-revealing) refutation of those philosophic fairies was contained in paragraph 22. There Hume claims that letting the objects do the causal work, rather than leaving it to the constant intercession of God, is evidence of the greater wisdom of God; delegation of powers and perfect foresight are more impressive than constant direct involvement. This is opposed to Berkeley’s view that the belief in matter involved a needless intermediary between God and human ideas. Although Berkeley kind of distanced himself from Occasionalism (which he also seemed to think was a province of fairy land), both he and the more strict Occasionalists seem to fall under Hume’s censure. (Note that everything I know about the term Occasionalism I learned from our Oxford notes.) God needs no musical score, Berkeley claimed; Hume claims that writing a musical score (which is subsequently proven to self-execute in perfect harmony) is in fact a great and beautiful achievement.

Stacy

Section [7] “From the first appearance of an object, we never can conjecture what effect will result from it.”

Basically, Hume is saying that when we first see an object, we only get impressions. We cannot know its effect. In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Frankenstein discovers fire left behind by some beggars. His first impression was the fire itself. Then, he moved on to a second impression, which was the warmth that emanated from the fire. His third impression is that fire causes pain. Frankenstein only learns this as he puts his hand directly in the fire and he even wonders how something that can comfort him from the cold can also hurt him. And on he goes formulating more impressions of fire. These impressions lead the way to ideas. As Hume would say, Frankenstein reflects on the impressions that he has gathered and he forms his ideas based on those impressions.

I agree with Sara that Hume concludes that we have ideas of power and connection because we see them but that we do not understand them. It goes back to the example of the billiard balls. We know that if we put the fist ball in motion straight toward the second with enough force that the second will move. This will happen over and over and we can see this goes back to the idea of cause and effect. In the story, we can see that Frankenstein is becoming aware of this cause and effect.

Ana Corral

 Hume’s “relations of ideas and matters of fact” with PKD’s “Small Town”

            Hume writes that relations of ideas can’t be disproved without fear of contradiction, they are logical statements; the example that he uses is “all bachelors are married” meaning that if you are married it is impossible for you to be a bachelor because that defies the definition of being a bachelor. Matters of fact are based on experience and can be proven wrong by appeal to logic and reasoning. The example that Hume uses is the sun; that just because it rose yesterday and all the days before that does not guarantee it will rise again tomorrow.

            I think it would be interesting to apply Hume’s concept to PKD’s story “Small Town” even though I feel Berkeley is more relevant to this story and that the story goes deeper than this, but I would like to give it a try. If you apply the concept of relations of ideas and matters of fact to the ending of the story, when Verne’s small town model some how alters the “real” town that he was living in, you can sort of see what his wife Madge and therapist Tyler were thinking about. First I think that they were thinking about matters of facts as if they were relation of ideas. Madge and Tyler both thought of Woodland as if it was relation of idea; a town that was defined as certain and can’t be disproven without changing Woodland’s definition. However, Woodland, the way it was seen by Madge, Verne and Tyler did change and was altered and was therefore contradicted. The idea of the town of Woodland was instead a matter of fact because there never was any guarantee that Woodland would stay the same. All that they had know about that town was based on experience and there never was any guarantee that just because Madge and Tyler woke up in the same town with the same people, same buildings the same way they were the day before, wasn’t and isn't sufficient to guarantee that the next day, Woodland would be the same town.

Karena

When Frankenstein makes a discovery, it is of a nature he’s not accustomed to.  For example, when he finds fire, he enjoys the benefit of it without yet realizing its potential danger.  At this, he unknowingly embraces the fire.  There is thus an apparent ineptitude on the part of his knowledge of fire.  “One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it.  In my joy, I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain.  How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!” (Shelley, 74).  There are several things going on in this passage that relate to Hume’s conceptions.  We’ll begin first with Frankenstein's assumption.  He observes that the fire must have been left by some “wandering beggars.”  How he figures this, he doesn’t say.  This is similar to Hume’s example of the man who concludes that because he finds a watch on a desert island, there must have once been men on that island.  The leftover trace is immediately supposed to be an index of a possible connection.  Frankenstein exemplifies Hume’s avowal of the human’s (erroneous) will to make a connection.

Frankenstein also exemplifies Hume’s conception of cause and effect.  For example, he expresses a confusion in his will to connect when he recognizes that the fire is simultaneously delightful and painful.  It doesn’t make sense to him that one cause should produce two entirely different effects.  He supposes from his experience of the fire as warm that it should remain to produce the same feelings, no matter the circumstance.  In this, Frankenstein expresses an ignorance and yet a will to assign causation to what Hume would call two entirely separate occasions (conjoined and not connected).