Q&A: The Point of Disagreement in the Debate
The Point of Disagreement in the Debate
Question
It seems to me that the point of disagreement between you and Aviv is whether, in the absence of evidence, we should rely on our natural intuition or on the principle of causality, which applies to everything. You said very briefly in the debate that intuition is the only thing we truly encounter. Seemingly, we also encounter the principle of causality all the time, so why do you think intuition is stronger?
Answer
David Hume already showed that we do not encounter causality at all. It is a form of our thinking, and as an empiricist he indeed rejected it. No one has ever seen that event A was the cause of event B. You can see temporal succession and that it always happens. But a causal connection includes something more: causing. No one has ever seen that.
Discussion on Answer
My view is that there is no doubt that Hume is right. Kant’s critique is not really a critique, but a (failed) proposal of an alternative.
Have you written about Kant’s proposal? I’d be glad for a reference.
See, for example, columns 494–496.
Hello Rabbi. A few times I’ve seen you say that David Hume showed that causality is a form of our thinking and not something we actually see. I asked a philosopher friend about this, and he told me that Hume argued this, but that both in his own lifetime and down to our day there has been no agreement among philosophers that he really proved it. My friend claims that most of them think his argument is incorrect. For example, he referred me to Kant’s critique of Hume. What do you think about that?