Status Updates From Untersuchung in Betreff des...

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It is obvious to me that God loves us and knows us so well as his people, that he granted us free will, but at the same time he already knows what choices we will freely make, like how a father knows his children will choose candy over plain bread.

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circumstances. That does not mean they were determined to make said choices! I also KNOW (in the common, natural language sense of the word) that my boss would be furious if I slapped him across the face, and I KNOW that I will get fired if I slapped GMD across the face, but that doesn't mean they are determined to happen.

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influenced Hume which influenced Smith.

And in response to ii), Hume says that it is a 'mystery', to evade accusations of heresy.

As a theist, I never really bought into the view that God having perfect foreknowledge means that all events must necessarily be determined. It is obvious to me, that if I know a person extremely well, let's say Joyce, I would know what they would choose to do in certain ...

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action is right or wrong, because pure reason seemingly only tells us that there is no moral responsibility due to the deterministic argument), we must adopt a sentimentalist moral philosophy, which Hume, of course, does, and which I am looking forward to reading in the 'Enquiry concerning the principle of morals'. To my knowledge, Hutcheson pioneered this sort of sentimentalist moral philosophy, which ...

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response to i) - this may be the conclusion from abstract philosophical reasoning, but our 'sublime reflections' crumble under the heated emotions of blame or a moral crisis. I can certainly attest to this - many times have all my profound reflections vanished when I am in a crisis or in great pain. Since, in practice, all moral reasoning are grounded in the passions (our emotions tell us whether an ...

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compatible with morality, but necessary for it: because we can only ascribe moral responsibility to a durable character. This hardly solves the problem of moral accountability, however, hence -

2 objections: i) There is NO moral responsibility because everything has already been predetermined, ii) The prime mover is the author of all sin (basically the problem of evil).

Hume raises a great point in ...

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I finally see now how Hume is a compatibilist - well first of all, he accepts/ borrows Aquinas's prime mover argument. It is clear that everything has a cause, and every cause has a cause ..... going down this infinite regress of causes we can deduce that there was a prime mover.

But how can there be moral responsibility if everything was predetermined?

Hume says that this determinism is not only ...

La raison, pierre angulaire de la méthode scientifique n’est pas fiable et ne permet pas de faire de lien cause-effet. En fait, il est impossible d’établir un lien de causation selon Hume.

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it feels like we can reach any radical philosophical conclusion of our fancy as long as we can think of sufficiently neat definitions.

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definitions. Wtf is the good in this form of linguistic wordplay?

It's like how he first defines an idea to be a copy of an impression, and then proceeds at breakneck speed to search for the corresponding impression of every single idea and discard ideas whose impressions cannot be readily identified as meaningless .....

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free will - do I even know how crushing it is to REALLY understand the implications of determinism? The only outcome can be a futile devastation like Sergeant Slick. I must be like Rex and Cody - ignorant of the truth (whatever it may be), but focused on worldly missions to achieve worldly success.

Also, much of Hume's arguments regarding liberty and necessity are obviously just playing around with ...

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discussions, I reflected on how the problem of free will has really never been a foremost philosophical interest of mine. It is also fitting that I watched Ep16 - Season 1 of 'The clone wars' yesterday, with the profound opening crawl 'Truth enlightens the mind, but won't always bring happiness to your heart'. I feel like there is really nothing much to gain with too much penetration into the problem of ...

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According to many sources, Hume is obviously a compatibilist, so idk why tf Millican notes here that Hume 'is showing that his determinist worldview is compatible with morality'. I read Hume's arguments until I fell asleep last night and I still don't know how this determinism is compatible with morality, if every action that a person will ever do is already predetermined before his birth.

Through these...

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other editors by miles. He put in the effort to guide the reader section by section, and his notes are self-referencing.

No wonder I couldn't understand 'On liberty' and the Nicomachean ethics.

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'Nicomachean ethics'. The explanatory notes and introduction by Millican are heads and shoulders above the Mill book. This is unacceptable - I would've thought OWC had a central editor committee that ensures consistent quality across all their books. The Enquiry is much shorter than the Mill and the Aristotle volumes which allows for more room for expert commentary, but still, Millican outshines the...

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attribute a breakdown in some expected factor return pattern (e.g. the value factor earning me a negative excess return in a given year) to a breakdown in the uniform rule, by chance - I don't usually assume a contrary cause, like value stocks suddenly becoming less risky than growth stocks.

Finally, I compared my copies of Oxford World's Classics 'Enquiry', 'On liberty and other essays' and ...

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objects) and thus the doctrine of necessity. I get it.

I'm not sure if I agree with Hume's argument that the vulgar commonly attribute uncertainty in events to contingency in the causes, whereas philosophers know that they are due to contrariety in the causes. When I see the clock stopping, yes I assume some defect (a contrary cause); but in the uncertain spheres like the financial markets, I commonly ...

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explain/ predict empirical phenomena, and not wasting our time with the futile endeavour of speculating about the underlying metaphysics of things.

Humorously, I am currently unsure why Hume has chosen to go into this multi-page ramble about the uniformity of human nature, just to argue that people indeed have become accustomed to human nature's uniformity (as they have to the uniformity of other ...

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I feel indignant at Hume now, as he labels the vulgar as 'those who take things at first appearances' (I recall this accusation of the vulgar in the Treatise as well) - because zooming out, I feel like there's no conceptual difference between the 'vulgar' and instrumentalists, of which Hume subscribed to. They are both about accepting events and phenomena as they ARE and as they pertain as tools to ...