Part 1 M10. Assignment: Causation or the Problem of Induction
When we use sensory experience to create laws that govern nature, we accumulate enough evidence about some phenomena and then generalize it to say that these experiences are the cause of a certain effect. Hitting a billiard ball, for instance, in exactly the right way can lead to it going into one of the pockets in the billiard table. The entire game of billiards is based on this principle. David Hume argues against this saying we cannot show there is a cause to effect relationship in this instance, nor in any other like instance.
Playing pool or billiards. Source: Flickr. Creative Commons
At first glance, it may appear that Hume violates commonsense when we can see for ourselves that most often when the ball is struck in a certain way, it really does end up in one of the pockets. Hume would have seen that too. So it must be that he is not really discussing the physical experience of playing billiards. What he is discussing is the mental process of our judging the movement of the ball. There is no physical law of cause to effect observable by our senses. The process of cause to effect is a mental construct or addition to our consideration of what happens to the ball. In other words, there is a gap missing between the ball and the fact that it ends up in the pocket.
Your assignment is to use the information from our reading this week, to give a detailed explanation of what Hume says is wrong with the principle of causality. Explain what he means by association of habit.
Submission:
- Must be a minimum of 1 1/2 pages with standard 1-inch margins in Times New Roman or Garamond font.
- Must be double-spaced.
- Must address the topic of the paper with critical thought.
- Must include in-text citations and references in MLA style.
- Name, course, and assignment top left.
- Include a Title.
Part 2 M10. Discussion: Are we Brutes?
Topic
Are we poor, nasty, and brutish as Thomas Hobbes says we are?
Thomas Hobbes makes the case that we are and for that reason he champions the need for an absolute dictator with the power and means to keep us from killing each other. In order to respond to Hobbes claim, first detail his argument. It may be that a state of war existed in his life time, but he makes quite an assumption that all people in all times have the same brutish nature.
As a counter to Hobbes, review the findings from a recent discovery in a cave in Chauvet, France. The cave had been closed by a rock slide for over 35,000 years until it was rediscovered in the 1990s. What we witness in the video is masterful works of art, and musical instruments used by our very ancient ancestors. They were hardly brutes. Archeological evidence of surrounding encampments by these people, shows them to have been very healthy living as hunter gatherers. There is no evidence of weapons, only hunting instruments.
Our knowledge of human activity goes back further than most people suspect. The Borneo video below explains just how artistically accomplished humans were around 35,000 years ago. What impresses you about what you see in this film? What do you think of our human nature now? What should we tell Hobbes?
Oldest Known Firgurative Art Found in Borneo. YouTube. Griffith University. 7 November 2018.
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