For Hume, all causes are the same, all necessities are the same, causation is a kind of necessity, and all necessity is, in the end, the necessity of inference.
Apr 22, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1/7 Hume on 'Natural'
Since we've been talking about naturalism, and Hume is a naturalist by many standards, it might be interesting to see what Hume says about the terms 'nature' and 'natural' which he claims are "ambiguous and equivocal" (T 3.1.2.7).
Hume discusses 3 senses.
2/7 For context, the following quotes are from book 3 of the Treatise, part 1, section 2 (aka T 3.1.2), entitled "Moral distinctions deriv’d from a moral sense." In the previous section, Hume argued that moral distinctions are not the product of demonstration or moral reasoning.
Jun 8, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Anyone know of any really good articles on the principle of sufficient reason? Something that might explain the different formulations of PSR, and how they relate to determinism?
My thought is some versions of PSR entail determinism (Leibniz), others don't (Clarke).
"... one might also object that the supposedly self-explanatory free-choice-reporting propositions, or else the necessary propositions that explain contingent ones, while giving causes or explanations, do not give "sufficient reasons" in the full sense of the PSR." Pruss, 142)
