PHIL 2025 Lecture Notes - Causal Inference, Scientific Method
Document Summary
April 2: review, varieties of sceptical arguments, scepticism with regard to the senses, scepticism with regard to reason, scepticism with regard to probabilistic inference, hume"s conclusions-mitigated scepticism. Review: by this point in the book, hume has developed an account of the possibility of knowledge and belief formation. Instrumental in this is causality, which hume conceives as a function of constant conjunctions that have been observed. Had similar sort of conception, miracle if it breaks the laws of nature. Taken by some (locke) as evidence of the existence of god. Types of scepticism: antecedent (to doing philosophy, extreme: doubt everything you know and distrust your cognitive powers until you have established something firm; then build on that. Impossible: there is no absolutely certain first principles and even if there were, it could not be identified if we begin by doubting our cognitive powers.
