Friday office hours, new location

  I just got here and saw that the cafeteria is closed. So I am moving my office hours to Gotham Cafe, which is on the NE corner of 68th and 2nd, right next to a salon.  I'll be there until 7.  Sorry for the last minute change.

Wednesday, Dec. 14th, Cafeteria hours change

FYI: I will be in the cafeteria from 5 until 7 and not 4 until 7, tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 14th.  Sorry for the change.  I will still be available on Friday from 4 to 7, in the cafeteria.

HUME COMPATIBILISM

The crucial question would be if everything that happens in the universe is the result of causal necessary relations like the laws of physics, then how one can have a “free” will in the sense of a decision. Hume states there’s a Compatibilism between human free will and determinism by attempting to explain the reason why humankind cannot escape the chain of cause and effect even explained by this idea of determinism understood as Law of nature by the physics; explained by Hume as “matter that is actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause.” (54p) On the other hand, the free will, which at first gaze seems the power people have to choose and make their own decisions, it’s for Hume “a power of acting or no acting according to the determination of the will, that our free will would be the ability to act according to our desires”… He would explain like so: “Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity… ; these passions, mixed in various degrees , and distributed through society, have been…the source of all the actions and enterprises, that have been observed in mankind. “ (55p) Based on this, Hume will later say that Liberty and necessity not only are the two compatible, but Liberty requires Necessity. Well, there’s his Compatibilism. But the question keeps still in effect to be solved. How we can reconcile, on one hand, that view of that all events are causally determinated, and the on the other hand, the view that in any given situation, a person could have behaved otherwise in free will.
Everyone always do what they are leaned to do in specific situations and these inclinations come from our cravings and desires. Would it mean we are actually slaves of our feelings?. But essentially, this makes us free because at the end we do what we want. However, if we are slaves to our feelings, and our feelings are results of things that have happened to us in the past, then doesn’t that eliminate the possibility of free will entirely?

Hume on Custom, Probability and the Reason of Animals

In section five, Skeptical Solutions to These Doubts, Hume describes the foundation of inference. “Custom ( habit), then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us…” (29) writes Hume. Reason and reflection are not enough to explain human understanding. I will reflect about a different example than used by Hume. Lets suppose I don’t know coffee is made with ground coffee beans and water. The question is: can I infer the mechanism of brewing if I see water and coffee brought inside a room, and coffee brought out? I would first have to know water can absorb molecules, I would also have to know that that ground coffee is penetrable, and water may travel through unlike rubber for example. It would also help if I knew what happened inside the kitchen, generally speaking. I can imagine water running through coffee and coming out clear. To answer the question I asked, no; I would not be able to infer that the pure water becomes coffee unless had certain experiences. I see why Hume explains custom is the great guide to human life.

In section six, Of Probability, Hume discusses probability and its influence on belief. Clear water will always boil at 100 degrees centigrade at sea level. As many times as I conduct this experiment, it ways be the case. I may not be educated in thermodynamics to be able to explain the phenomena, or even know water is composed of independent water molecules. But, I have a thermometer and the temperature never reaches above 100 degrees. Despite my ignorance of the phenomena, the fact that the water will boil at the same temperature every time will give me a strong confidence in understanding. Suppose a rascal contaminates my water supply with salt. The salt ions will dissolve and pull the water molecules towards them with a stronger force than the water molecules act on each other and thus raise the boiling point. My belief that the boiling temperature is 100 degrees now would be proportionate to the event.

In section nine, Hume extends cause and effect to all animals. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Pavlov’s Dog experiment where the he rings a bell preceding every meal and eventually the dog’s stomach begins releasing digestive juices after the sound of the bell. Furthermore, the intelligence of animals is rather well known today. Dogs can be trained to find bombs, drugs or help the disabled. This is not a surprise after all because animals need to utilize the principle of cause and effect for survival, something exploited in animal trainig. The mental faculties in animals are limited after all. Monkeys are caught by luring them with bananas in containers with opens small to retrieve a hand once it made a fist.