You are a blessing ... I was completely lost when trying to figure out some key philosophy concepts without any formal philosophy education but ever since you started cranking these out, you have been more than I could hope for in a teacher ... Thank you and greetings from Kenya ♥️
Hi Daniel, Side note about the raven paradox: The resolution that makes sense to me is that seeing a nonblack nonraven is actually evidence that all ravens are black, it's just that it's much much weaker evidence than seeing a black raven. Seeing a black raven is seeing 0.00001% of all ravens (assuming the global raven population is around 10 million). Very small, but tangible progress towards the claim "all ravens are black". Seeing a red chair (nonblack, nonraven) is seeing an infinitesimal percentage (if nonzero) of all nonblack objects. Unimaginably small (if any) progress towards the claim "all nonblack objects are nonravens". I do agree that this form of inductive "reasoning" is based on habit/custom/feeling, but I think our brains also has a habit/custom/feeling of proportions/probability, hence why we process seeing a black raven differently than seeing a nonblack nonraven. Like Hume, I'm not saying that this feeling of proportions/probability is based on reason, I'm just saying that I think we have it. For example, assume I have 100 shapes of various colours. Assume that 10% of the shapes are circles, the other 90% are not circles. Also assume that 90% of the shapes are red, the other 10% are not red. If my claim is "All circles are red", then seeing a red circle has as much weight as seeing a blue squares. I'd guess people would intuitively consider seeing a blue square as some evidence that all circles are red, at least more than they consider seeing a nonblack non raven as some evidence that all ravens are black. I'd also like to mention that I really enjoy your videos! I discovered your channel earlier this year and have been watching a random video every couple day. I really like the variety and how most videos are self contained (sure, many are related, but I still understood this video even if I haven't watched your "Hume on Empiricism" yet). Thanks!
@@PhiloofAlexandria isn't it also something Al-Ghazali refers to in the Divine causality, which both theologians and philosophers accept, albeit in widely divergent ways, is not at issue, but what is usually termed “secondary causality” (that is, those sequences of effects which seem to ripple from one cause to the next: when I move my hand, the ring on my finger moves too, and so on). For the philosophers, a cosmos not bound together by interlocking chains of secondary causality represented an absurdity; nature as well as reason were at stake. (Ibn Rushd - and later, Maimonides, following in his footsteps - argued that if you remove causality from the scheme of things, you also remove rationality, for the very processes of the mind depend upon cause and effect, as in argument itself.) But for the theologians, especially those of the Ash‘arite persuasion, such a cosmos suggested a dangerous autonomy a world in which necessity inheres in the nature of things infringes divine agency and compromises omnipotence.For Ash‘arites, God is the sole agent whose will determines and effects every action. What we think of as causality is nothing but “God’s habit” (or “custom”). The world functions as it does, with apparent cause and effect, only because it is God’s habit for it to do so. Miracles are nothing more than “breaches of habit.” There are neither “laws of nature” nor natures intrinsic to things. God can alter His custom whenever He will; no reality exists in things themselves, despite appearances. All ultimately are fictive; subject to alteration or annihilation from moment to moment, and in the twinkling of an eye. Things as they are exist as they do only because God creates them, atom by atom, instant by instant, in continual pulsations of His will. If He were to decide that the rain should fall upward, it would instantly do so; this would represent a “breach of God’s habit,” a miracle, not a reversal of “nature.” What we call nature is itself nothing more than God’s habit.
Isn’t the problem with this argument that it ignores probability? I may see a black raven and I may ask myself, are all ravens black? I can look at the probability of them being either black or any other colour. When I see 2 ravens consecutively and they are both black, there is at best only a 1in 3 chance that the ravens I have seen are black rather than any other colour. That might suggest that many ravens are black but it isn’t very persuasive about the totality. As I see more black ravens, and no ravens of any other colour, it becomes progressively less likely that there are ravens that are not black. For this reason, additional instances do convey additional information. Eventually you end up with the perfectly reasonable statement that in my current circumstances, whilst it is not impossible that a Raven may not be black, it is very unlikely. My point here is that additional instances do convey information and provide a reasoned basis for making predictions about the nature of reality. Where an instance then confounds the prediction, it allows an expansion of the theoretical model. This is how the standard model in particle physics has been developed. Theory, experiment to test the theory, observation of probability, deviation from probability, new theory. It doesn’t seem correct to dismiss this as custom. Probability in observed data is a method of reason and has brought much progress.
What you're dscribing is known as abduction, but it doesn't actually solve anything. (if what you want in true universability) In order to calculate the probability of something, you need to know the demoninator, and the problem of induction shows us that we can't know it. Suppose I wanted to say something about the probability of a star being the same size as our sun. I might start by counting 10 stars, finding only one of them is the same size as our sun, and conclude it's 10%. I observe some more, and the probability drops to 8%. Then I discover an error in one of my observations, and it goes up to 9% again. Eventually I have observed all the stars in the observable universe, and come to a probability of 5%. But then what about all the stars *outside* the observable universe? How many are there? We don't know, so you can't actually extrapolate the 5% number out to the rest of the universe. The same thing applies for ravens or anything else. We don't know how much we don't know, by the definition of it being unknown, and thus we can't, strictly speaking, put a probability on it. You would have to assume you have the full data set at some point, in order to put a probability on it. But *if* you choose to do that, the utility of your supposed probability, goes out the window. It no longer has any predictive power, for you've assumed to have observed the full data set. But the bigger problem is much deeper, for the point you stop and assume the full data set is arbitrary - why not stop after counting after 2 ravens?
It's not that Newton's laws are wrong. They still work very well in all the circumstnaces we experience in faily life. Einstein's theory encompasses Newton's laws. Einstein's theories just apply to a wider part of the universe. Which is no small feat.
saying we use induction out of habit as Hume suggested -because the past has been stable or regular enough for the habit of induction to produce good results - is a descriptive solution - it's tantamount to saying a particular tribe engages in cannibalism because that is part of their culture. 'habit' isn't a justification for inductive inference, i.e. why are we justified to think we have reliable knowledge about the future based on the past.
You are mistaking an evaluation with a solution, Hume isn't trying to solve the problem of Induction but clarify it's faults.You just restated Hume's whole criticism of why we trust the inductive method. Hume's whole point is we trust it because of habit, but that means induction isn't logically or reasonably trust worthy, it's faith based. We trust that the future will be like the past because that's what we are accustomed to, there is no logical way to prove this will always be the case, therefore just like Pompeii didn't think mount Vesuvius would erupt and destroy them, we can never be 100% sure induction is reasonable.
Again your omission of the terms belief or trust or faith reveals your confirmation bias: delusion. Custom? Habit? Are they operations of irrational mind or imperfect memory? Memory is the bridge between human awareness and human desires:will. Reason is a type of will: it is a particular use of memory to accomplish our will. Faith is also a type of will. Both use memory to evolutionary advantage. The memory of reason belongs to the linguistic mind; it is everything you learned in school: language, math, science, etcetera. The memory of faith belongs to religion: morality. The claims of religion boils down to this: man had better be prepared, nature is not always the puppet and tool of man; man is the puppet of nature and its god.
@@kallianpublico7517 truth, without a doubt, obviously. I don't go around raping every woman I see to spread my genes for evolutionary advantage either. Evolution is purely descriptive, it cannot tell you what is true, nor what is good.
@@kallianpublico7517 My measure of usefulness is defined as what's true. So definitionally, that can't work for me. What's yours? Whatever arbitrarily has happened to work for you on a given day? Oh wow, how grand. A bridge won't hold if newton's laws aren't approximately true. Medicine won't cure you if the germ theory of disease isn't approximately true. Even non-physical things, like the observations psychologists have made about trends in human brain development and the mind, have truths to them. What fucking usefulness could there be, for modern humans, to be ignorant of the truth? I get it. If I'm a caveman trying to get by, believing there's a snake in the bushes every time I hear it rustle, even though what's true is it's caused by the wind, will make me more likely to survive, since I don't wander into bushes where predators might be lurking as often. If I believed in a God that most likely isn't true, but it's the only way my caveman brain can motive itself, that's gonna ba useful too. But it ain't useful in the modern age, dude. Grow up.
You are a blessing ... I was completely lost when trying to figure out some key philosophy concepts without any formal philosophy education but ever since you started cranking these out, you have been more than I could hope for in a teacher ... Thank you and greetings from Kenya ♥️
😅i😊u
Jimmy 9⁹9opmnbb
Cranking out the videos! Great content! Still watching every day I can!
Thank you Professor.
Excellent video
Hi Daniel,
Side note about the raven paradox: The resolution that makes sense to me is that seeing a nonblack nonraven is actually evidence that all ravens are black, it's just that it's much much weaker evidence than seeing a black raven.
Seeing a black raven is seeing 0.00001% of all ravens (assuming the global raven population is around 10 million). Very small, but tangible progress towards the claim "all ravens are black".
Seeing a red chair (nonblack, nonraven) is seeing an infinitesimal percentage (if nonzero) of all nonblack objects. Unimaginably small (if any) progress towards the claim "all nonblack objects are nonravens".
I do agree that this form of inductive "reasoning" is based on habit/custom/feeling, but I think our brains also has a habit/custom/feeling of proportions/probability, hence why we process seeing a black raven differently than seeing a nonblack nonraven. Like Hume, I'm not saying that this feeling of proportions/probability is based on reason, I'm just saying that I think we have it.
For example, assume I have 100 shapes of various colours. Assume that 10% of the shapes are circles, the other 90% are not circles. Also assume that 90% of the shapes are red, the other 10% are not red. If my claim is "All circles are red", then seeing a red circle has as much weight as seeing a blue squares. I'd guess people would intuitively consider seeing a blue square as some evidence that all circles are red, at least more than they consider seeing a nonblack non raven as some evidence that all ravens are black.
I'd also like to mention that I really enjoy your videos! I discovered your channel earlier this year and have been watching a random video every couple day. I really like the variety and how most videos are self contained (sure, many are related, but I still understood this video even if I haven't watched your "Hume on Empiricism" yet). Thanks!
Great point!
@@PhiloofAlexandria isn't it also something Al-Ghazali refers to in the Divine causality, which both theologians and philosophers accept, albeit in widely divergent ways, is not at issue, but what is usually termed “secondary causality” (that is, those sequences of effects which seem to ripple from one cause to the next: when I move my hand, the ring on my finger moves too, and so on). For the philosophers, a cosmos not bound together by interlocking chains of secondary causality represented an absurdity; nature as well as reason were at stake. (Ibn Rushd - and later, Maimonides, following in his footsteps - argued that if you remove causality from the scheme of things, you also remove rationality, for the very processes of the mind depend upon cause and effect, as in argument itself.) But for the theologians, especially those of the Ash‘arite persuasion, such a cosmos suggested a dangerous autonomy a world in which necessity inheres in the nature of things infringes divine agency and compromises omnipotence.For Ash‘arites, God is the sole agent whose will determines and effects every action. What we think of as causality is nothing but “God’s habit” (or “custom”). The world functions as it does, with apparent cause and effect, only because it is God’s habit for it to do so. Miracles are nothing more than “breaches of habit.” There are neither “laws of nature” nor natures intrinsic to things. God can alter His custom whenever He will; no reality exists in things themselves, despite appearances. All ultimately are fictive; subject to alteration or annihilation from moment to moment, and in the twinkling of an eye. Things as they are exist as they do only because God creates them, atom by atom, instant by instant, in continual pulsations of His will. If He were to decide that the rain should fall upward, it would instantly do so; this would represent a “breach of God’s habit,” a miracle, not a reversal of “nature.” What we call nature is itself nothing more than God’s habit.
Best channel for philosophy
Great
Thanks! Please can you add a talk on comparison between the truths of Hume and Pierce. Both talk of habit of mind.
Good idea!
Isn’t the problem with this argument that it ignores probability?
I may see a black raven and I may ask myself, are all ravens black? I can look at the probability of them being either black or any other colour. When I see 2 ravens consecutively and they are both black, there is at best only a 1in 3 chance that the ravens I have seen are black rather than any other colour. That might suggest that many ravens are black but it isn’t very persuasive about the totality. As I see more black ravens, and no ravens of any other colour, it becomes progressively less likely that there are ravens that are not black. For this reason, additional instances do convey additional information. Eventually you end up with the perfectly reasonable statement that in my current circumstances, whilst it is not impossible that a Raven may not be black, it is very unlikely.
My point here is that additional instances do convey information and provide a reasoned basis for making predictions about the nature of reality. Where an instance then confounds the prediction, it allows an expansion of the theoretical model. This is how the standard model in particle physics has been developed. Theory, experiment to test the theory, observation of probability, deviation from probability, new theory.
It doesn’t seem correct to dismiss this as custom. Probability in observed data is a method of reason and has brought much progress.
What you're dscribing is known as abduction, but it doesn't actually solve anything. (if what you want in true universability) In order to calculate the probability of something, you need to know the demoninator, and the problem of induction shows us that we can't know it.
Suppose I wanted to say something about the probability of a star being the same size as our sun. I might start by counting 10 stars, finding only one of them is the same size as our sun, and conclude it's 10%. I observe some more, and the probability drops to 8%. Then I discover an error in one of my observations, and it goes up to 9% again.
Eventually I have observed all the stars in the observable universe, and come to a probability of 5%. But then what about all the stars *outside* the observable universe? How many are there? We don't know, so you can't actually extrapolate the 5% number out to the rest of the universe. The same thing applies for ravens or anything else. We don't know how much we don't know, by the definition of it being unknown, and thus we can't, strictly speaking, put a probability on it. You would have to assume you have the full data set at some point, in order to put a probability on it. But *if* you choose to do that, the utility of your supposed probability, goes out the window. It no longer has any predictive power, for you've assumed to have observed the full data set. But the bigger problem is much deeper, for the point you stop and assume the full data set is arbitrary - why not stop after counting after 2 ravens?
Is that correct to say that to justify UP (“Future will resemble the past”) we need to presuppose UP, and that’s why induction is circular?
It's not that Newton's laws are wrong. They still work very well in all the circumstnaces we experience in faily life. Einstein's theory encompasses Newton's laws. Einstein's theories just apply to a wider part of the universe. Which is no small feat.
saying we use induction out of habit as Hume suggested -because the past has been stable or regular enough for the habit of induction to produce good results - is a descriptive solution - it's tantamount to saying a particular tribe engages in cannibalism because that is part of their culture. 'habit' isn't a justification for inductive inference, i.e. why are we justified to think we have reliable knowledge about the future based on the past.
You are mistaking an evaluation with a solution, Hume isn't trying to solve the problem of Induction but clarify it's faults.You just restated Hume's whole criticism of why we trust the inductive method. Hume's whole point is we trust it because of habit, but that means induction isn't logically or reasonably trust worthy, it's faith based. We trust that the future will be like the past because that's what we are accustomed to, there is no logical way to prove this will always be the case, therefore just like Pompeii didn't think mount Vesuvius would erupt and destroy them, we can never be 100% sure induction is reasonable.
stop 14:35 - i am going to solve this problem of induction.
Ok, this is the solution... just have to collect my thoughts.
I am really sorry that I can upvote only once
For your algorithm
The missing aspect is The Creator.
Yes. TAG says so and Hume being an atheist concludes skepticism
@@delgandeit shows many are irrationally committed to atheism.
Black swan
Hume has done worst sophistry on causation.
Again your omission of the terms belief or trust or faith reveals your confirmation bias: delusion. Custom? Habit? Are they operations of irrational mind or imperfect memory?
Memory is the bridge between human awareness and human desires:will. Reason is a type of will: it is a particular use of memory to accomplish our will. Faith is also a type of will. Both use memory to evolutionary advantage. The memory of reason belongs to the linguistic mind; it is everything you learned in school: language, math, science, etcetera. The memory of faith belongs to religion: morality. The claims of religion boils down to this: man had better be prepared, nature is not always the puppet and tool of man; man is the puppet of nature and its god.
evolutionary advantage doesn't equal truth, or usefulness in the current world.
@@Google_Censored_Commenter which is more useful truth or evolutionary advantage?
@@kallianpublico7517 truth, without a doubt, obviously. I don't go around raping every woman I see to spread my genes for evolutionary advantage either. Evolution is purely descriptive, it cannot tell you what is true, nor what is good.
@@Google_Censored_Commenter truth without context doesn't exist. Ignorance of the truth maybe more useful than you know.
@@kallianpublico7517 My measure of usefulness is defined as what's true. So definitionally, that can't work for me. What's yours? Whatever arbitrarily has happened to work for you on a given day? Oh wow, how grand. A bridge won't hold if newton's laws aren't approximately true. Medicine won't cure you if the germ theory of disease isn't approximately true. Even non-physical things, like the observations psychologists have made about trends in human brain development and the mind, have truths to them. What fucking usefulness could there be, for modern humans, to be ignorant of the truth?
I get it. If I'm a caveman trying to get by, believing there's a snake in the bushes every time I hear it rustle, even though what's true is it's caused by the wind, will make me more likely to survive, since I don't wander into bushes where predators might be lurking as often. If I believed in a God that most likely isn't true, but it's the only way my caveman brain can motive itself, that's gonna ba useful too. But it ain't useful in the modern age, dude. Grow up.
luke, i'm your father