"People can be tricked into seeing causes where none where none exist,". Certainly. In fact, it doesn't take a trick. That doesn't change the fact that there is cause and effect. In fact, causality is required by the basic fact that everything in reality has an identity. If you dispute this last premise, you're dismissing not only causality and induction, but deductive logic as well. How are you to judge anything, if everything is random?
If we deny that things have specific identities and specific ways of acting, we have no ability to use science, logic or philosophy in any effective manner.

Now, I think Hume was right in a sense. He criticized someone for assuming that just because the sun rises everyday, doesn't necessitate that it will rise everyday at around the same time (I realize the sun doesn't rise). However, that seems to be rather weak inductive inference, to claim that because something happened, it will always happen. It takes science, physics, math to explain why things act certain ways. Watching the sun come up is simply perceptual. This is actually quite a good example, since as I already said, the sun doesn't actually rise at all. We wouldn't have been able to figure that out, however, without induction. But the fact that the Earth is spinning and will continue to, uninterrupted, is as true as the mathematical proposition that 2 + 2 = 4.

Lets take a simpler example. Someone, a fellow Objectivist actually, was arguing for induction and was saying that the fact the ball he would throw against the wall kept bouncing back would keep doing that given he keep throwing it at the right angle and with the right amount of force. I think this is false. You have to discover more about the nature of the objects of the ball and the wall and WHY it does something. The ball bounces back, because it is inflated with the right amount of air. The wall doesn't give way cause it's reinforced, etc. Hume, I think, was in some way criticizing a very weak view of induction. I know you don't consider Rand or those intellectuals who followed her to be real philosophers, but I would suggest Leonard Peikoff's book "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand", and more specifically the first four or five chapters that deal specifically with metaphysics and epistemology. Like myself, I'm sure you've got an extensive reading list.
It would also behoove me at the end here to remind you deductive arguments are only as good as the premises they rely upon. You need induction in order to form any certain statement.

Socrates is a man. Inductive truth
All men are mortal. Inductive
Therefore Socrates is mortal. Deductive conclusion.

Hume's problem is his high levels of empiricism, and rejection of any conceptual, generalized knowledge. It's funny that "radical" empiricism leads one to reject the evidence of the senses.

I might respond later to your claim that emotion makes ethical reasoning impossible, but I coincidentally have some Logic homework. I'll just ask for that paper and add that I agree ethics is largely dominated by emotion since it affects people most directly, but this is no reason to reject it. I'd consider it an attack on my integrity for someone to say I am sure of my moral convictions because I am emotional about them. I AM emotional about them, and about philosophy in general. It doesn't invalidate any conclusions.

This post was a bit rushed.

I think your claim about quantum physics is correct, at least from certain perspectives on the matter. I think it is pointless to argue over science when you're a philosophy major, unless you have some formal schooling in it (And hardly anyone, even with a degree in physics, sounds competent talking about QM).
However, lets say this ball disappears. It would not be without cause. I stick to my metaphysical guns in saying that even something that may seem random actually is not. And since QM, and that idea in particular, are just untested theories and based only on speculation, it's kind of hard to swallow. I know a few people who agree with me in general on the matter who actually are physicists, but they are certainly the minority.

I'd say it is a bit intuitive to jump to the conclusion that murder is wrong (Intuitive in that most humans do it, not that it's a genetic trait) without considering the morality of it to begin with. However, I think someone competent enough can see past these emotional biases.

What is identity? Identity itself is the nature of a thing, the physical laws that govern it in this instance. It is in the identity of x ball to bounce. What is the identity of any specific thing is more complicated, of course. And of course, what is a human being and an individual human being like Jason Orr is more complicated still. I am not making any assertions to the identity of certain things but merely stating that all things have identities.
I wasn't saying without causality, reality doesn't make any sense. Without identity it doesn't, though, and causality is a direct result of identity. And all human minds are open to understand reality. Would we be having this discussion if that were not the case? There are certain things, like QM, that seem to be beyond our grasp at this moment now. Molecular biology isn't unknown to us now but imagine how someone might react 2000 years ago to ideas of modern biology? Genetics and the human genome? Cloning? Cloning is something that was only satired in science fiction films 30 years ago. Now it seems inevitable that there will be human clones, creation of organs and all that. We shouldn't claim that human knowledge is impotent because within the context of our knowledge, certain things seem insane. QM IS nuts. Hell, I hardly even know what it is. But we are learning. What proves that human beings are capable of understanding reality? At this point in human history, I'd say mere experience. I'd say this very conversation.

I think you're acting as if knowledge takes a god-like omnipotence status. It doesn't. The world isn't split into the knowable and unknowable but the known and unknown. History continues to prove skeptics wrong.

Using scientific theories to prove a point is hardly irrelevant to a philosopher. To make an argument, to conclude anything, you need premises. I think it is perfectly valid to take those premises from observations of nature, and thus from science.

Cloning may have seemed "like science fiction" mere decades ago, but it was always something that in principle can be done. However, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, if valid (and it seems like it is), shows that some knowledge is in principle unattainable.

Because all thought is a product of our brain, I think it is entirely reasonable to think that there are some things are brains cannot apprehend, either because our cognitive systems are constructed such that they would obscure such knowledge, or because we lack the relevant senses to even perceive the relevant phenomena that would lead to understanding. What is irrational, what is bold and daring and naive, what is an overconfident and unfounded assertion, is to claim that human beings, because we can think, can think anything, can know anything.

Actually, yes. Based on what I have learned about modern science, we never know anything about the universe; we can only have varying degrees of confidence about virtually any such claim. This does not apply to basic mathematical statements like 2+2=4 (at least as far as I can reason), but ask anyone who has studied mathematics long enough and they will tell you that math is a guessing game, too. There are certain theorems that are believed to be in principle unprovable.

I find that there is an intellectual humility in acknowledging these ideas. Humans are not omniscient; our thinking mechanisms are flawed and finite. How amazing is it, however, to see all that we can accomplish with our crude brains? Evolution is clumsy and inefficient; how could it produce the perfect mind?

As an aside, any interpretation of the uncertainty principle concedes limits to measurement and consequently to human knowledge. To do otherwise would be simply to deny the principle, which is well-established.

I think I've posted something like 1500 words in this thread....You've taken half a research paper's worth of words away from me and I want them baaaaaaaaaaack

No one denies human cognition has limits. Human beings cannot hold an infinite amount of information. Inefficiencies of cognitive ability, specifically of holding so much information, does not mean that science itself is limited. There is no noumenal reality that human beings can't discover. This is a proposition that has never, ever been justified with anything except fallacious philosophic arguments. The argument you most likely have in mind, viewing the sub-atomic level of matter, seems a bit hasty given the infancy of a brand new science.

On a related note, I am quite sick of any philosopher without extensive knowledge of physics commenting on quantum theory at all. I hear it all the time, almost everyday, almost every conversation on epistemology or metaphysics. And nonetheless, here is what I think is still more philosophically pleasing than the Copenhagen interpretation of QM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation

Yes, as long as they are correctly understanding them. Find me someone who correctly understands everything about quantum theory and I'll listen.

I was saaying there is no such thing as noumenal reality, reality beyond human perception. I don't know enough about Kant to say I hate him, I certainly do not like him at all. I don't see much positive he did or who he is so revered.

I'm not well-acquainted with the visibility of ultraviolet in particular. Is it that we, human beings with our eyes, cannot see it? Or that it just is not visible? I really don't get the problem.

DEATHPIGGIE wrote:

---

I'm not well-acquainted with the visibility of ultraviolet in particular. Is it that we, human beings with our eyes, cannot see it? Or that it just is not visible? I really don't get the problem.

---

Human eyes can only see a very limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Actually, I think flies and/or other insects can see in the ultraviolet.  Maybe it was a bad example since theoretically, one could make an artificial eye that responds to the ultraviolet range, then plug that right into the brain.  Ta-da!  Humans seeing ultraviolet.