Search Results

▻ THE BACKGROUND PICTURE Hume is an empiricist - let's state the obvious. This means in his case that the basis of all knowledge is perception - not just visual perception but sense-based experience. …

ROLE OF EXPLANATION IN PHILOSOPHY : THE PLACE OF MODELS In everyday life, including moral situations, we need to be able to influence or control others' actions. We may do this by persuasion, pleadin …

I can't see that the hammer is the cause of anything here. This is not merely because it is an inert object; an inert object can be part of a causal chain of objects and events. Rather, it is not here …

No event has a necessary effect : after any event, X, the universe might vanish into nothingness, and so X would have no effect. In other words, no event, Y, is 'doomed' to follow another, X, as its e …

This extract from Treatise, I.iii.9, is not Hume's most lucid passage but let's get the whole of it in view before trying to work out what he intended to convey: TEXT It is evident, that whateve …

Let's start with a reference, then think things through indepenently: Leibniz presents the Principle of Sufficient Reason as holding universally within the created world. He gives us various …

Freedom for Spinoza is not exemption from causality. We are free when we understand - have 'adequate ideas' about - the causes of our actions. …

If everything were objectively random then everything would denotable in a language, L1; but the meta-language L2 statement about all denotations in L1, 'Everything is objectively random', would true. …

It depends on how far randomness goes. You could still make choices/ decisions and form intentions in a world in which everything else but yourself were random but any free will you had would be nugat …

Jaegwon Kim, 'Noncausal Connections', Noûs, Vol. 8, No. 1, Symposia Papers to be Read at the Meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association in St. Louis, Missouri, April 27- …

Aristotle's ideas about final causation apply to all organisms. The basic notions are those of a nature (phusis) and a potential for change (dunamis). For instance, an acorn has a nature (phusis), …

If the world were without causality then it need not change in any way. It might fortuitously behave exactly as it does now. This is certainly a logical possibility. … If the world were without causality but none the less followed probabilistic laws - exhibited probabilistic regularities - then we could easily get by counting on such regularities if their probabilities …

Confused and welcome to PSE. Aristotelian aitiai and Hindu causes It is traditional to refer to Aristotle's 'four causes' but 'cause' isn't the best translation of Aristotle's term, aition, except …