PHIL 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Microstructure, Compatibilism, John Locke
4 May 2018
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History of Modern Philosophy
4.11.18 Lecture Notes – Hume, Necessary Connections
- In the realm of matters of fact, cause and effect must ground our knowledge
o What grounds our reasoning about cause and effect
▪ Experience
▪ What grounds our conclusions about experience?
• The assumption that unobserved cases of things will resemble
observed cases of things
o What’s the justificatio for that assuptio?
▪ The justification for that assumption seems to be
that assumption itself!
▪ Problem of induction
- Relations of ideas, unlike matters of facts, do not tell us about the world
- Power: ability for one thing to influence another things
o Whatever drives a cause and effect relation
o Something like a Lockean real essence – the actual microstructure that gives the
thing the ability to influence some other thing
- Force
o Remember this concept is fundamental to Newtonian physics
o Hume says there are no ideas more obscure than force
- Necessary connection – connections between causes and effects
- Hume is a compatibilist who believes in causal determinism and also that we have free
will
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