Isaac Chan’s Reviews > An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding > Status Update
Isaac Chan
is on page 44 of 304
Note 2/n:
speculations and dogma; but now, the word 'empirical' in modern econ is all about sophisticated yet ultimately abstract and far-fetched techniques to study economic phenomena, the predictive power of which remains highly debatable and even scoffed upon by practitioners and operators of markets. I highly respect modern empiricists' (I can only speak for economics) commitment to only follow the data (which...
— Feb 07, 2026 11:40PM
speculations and dogma; but now, the word 'empirical' in modern econ is all about sophisticated yet ultimately abstract and far-fetched techniques to study economic phenomena, the predictive power of which remains highly debatable and even scoffed upon by practitioners and operators of markets. I highly respect modern empiricists' (I can only speak for economics) commitment to only follow the data (which...
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Isaac’s Previous Updates
Isaac Chan
is on page 47 of 304
Note 2/2:
certainly doesn't state clearly anywhere in the Treatise or the Enquiry, whether he thinks i) or ii), and idk why. I would've thought it a tremendously important point to make clear.
— 4 hours, 8 min ago
certainly doesn't state clearly anywhere in the Treatise or the Enquiry, whether he thinks i) or ii), and idk why. I would've thought it a tremendously important point to make clear.
Isaac Chan
is on page 47 of 304
Note 1/2:
As of now, I still don't know whether Hume thought: i) that necessary connexion does NOT exist AT ALL, ii) he allowed for the existence of necessary connexion, it's just that we can never know the necessary connexion of a cause and its effects, because we never directly observe necessary connexion. Due to the copy principle, whatever we never experience, we never have an idea of.
To my knowledge, he ...
— 4 hours, 8 min ago
As of now, I still don't know whether Hume thought: i) that necessary connexion does NOT exist AT ALL, ii) he allowed for the existence of necessary connexion, it's just that we can never know the necessary connexion of a cause and its effects, because we never directly observe necessary connexion. Due to the copy principle, whatever we never experience, we never have an idea of.
To my knowledge, he ...
Isaac Chan
is on page 45 of 304
Note n/n:
rigorous work that WAS available in the 18th century, namely, the labourious, borderline autistic analysis of corn prices that Smith later did. All of Hume's economics was just a priori reasoning.
— Feb 07, 2026 11:42PM
rigorous work that WAS available in the 18th century, namely, the labourious, borderline autistic analysis of corn prices that Smith later did. All of Hume's economics was just a priori reasoning.
Isaac Chan
is on page 45 of 304
Note 5/n:
I also find it unpalatable that Hume, the great empiricist, devoted no empirical evidence to support his economic essays. No signs of even basic empirical economic analysis were present, e.g. simple observations of the inflation rate, the unemployment rate, or the size of the money supply. These aggregate statistics did not exist in Hume's time, to be fair, but he did not even take the effort to do the ...
— Feb 07, 2026 11:42PM
I also find it unpalatable that Hume, the great empiricist, devoted no empirical evidence to support his economic essays. No signs of even basic empirical economic analysis were present, e.g. simple observations of the inflation rate, the unemployment rate, or the size of the money supply. These aggregate statistics did not exist in Hume's time, to be fair, but he did not even take the effort to do the ...
Isaac Chan
is on page 45 of 304
Note 4/n:
buttons' (i.e., common sense) to save them from drawing downright erroneous conclusions, and they push on their subtile reasonings.
So! I guess all is fair. Since Hume himself, being an empiricist trying to save human thought from sophistry and illusion, clearly committed to the abstruse philosophy! Modern empiricists are clearly a hundred times more abstruse than Hume.
— Feb 07, 2026 11:41PM
buttons' (i.e., common sense) to save them from drawing downright erroneous conclusions, and they push on their subtile reasonings.
So! I guess all is fair. Since Hume himself, being an empiricist trying to save human thought from sophistry and illusion, clearly committed to the abstruse philosophy! Modern empiricists are clearly a hundred times more abstruse than Hume.
Isaac Chan
is on page 44 of 304
Note 3/n:
I genuinely believe they do for the most part, save when they be swayed by inevitable personal biases, which happens to the best of us) - but it is folk wisdom now among practitioners that the highly advanced econometric techniques of today are dubious in predictive power. Hume himself addresses this in Section 1: that the real practical dangers of the abstruse philosophers is that they have no 'safety ...
— Feb 07, 2026 11:40PM
I genuinely believe they do for the most part, save when they be swayed by inevitable personal biases, which happens to the best of us) - but it is folk wisdom now among practitioners that the highly advanced econometric techniques of today are dubious in predictive power. Hume himself addresses this in Section 1: that the real practical dangers of the abstruse philosophers is that they have no 'safety ...
Isaac Chan
is on page 44 of 304
Note 1/n:
Some meta thoughts:
It is ironic that the great philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume being arguably the spearhead of this movement, advocated for empiricism as a grounded scaffolding to study the natural world, drawing conclusions only from data, evidence and observed experience, which fundamentally shifts us away from 'sophistry and illusion' - i.e. rationalistic, abstract, unfalsifiable ...
— Feb 07, 2026 11:39PM
Some meta thoughts:
It is ironic that the great philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume being arguably the spearhead of this movement, advocated for empiricism as a grounded scaffolding to study the natural world, drawing conclusions only from data, evidence and observed experience, which fundamentally shifts us away from 'sophistry and illusion' - i.e. rationalistic, abstract, unfalsifiable ...
Isaac Chan
is on page 34 of 304
Note n/n:
But then, what is the foundation of why we identified custom itself that led Hume to causally infer custom? It is now obvious that this is a painful ad infinitum chain of probing that must eventually lead to a BELIEF - that 'custom connects all our causal reasonings'. This belief is but a leap of faith. I have no reason to particularly favour Hume's belief over, say, a rationalist philosopher's belief.
— Jan 28, 2026 04:35AM
But then, what is the foundation of why we identified custom itself that led Hume to causally infer custom? It is now obvious that this is a painful ad infinitum chain of probing that must eventually lead to a BELIEF - that 'custom connects all our causal reasonings'. This belief is but a leap of faith. I have no reason to particularly favour Hume's belief over, say, a rationalist philosopher's belief.
Isaac Chan
is on page 34 of 304
Note 4/n:
itself? Hume observes a phenomenon of the human mind (that we constantly ascribe causes and effects) and he labels a cause to this phenomenon - custom! Why should I hold much faith for Hume's causal identification? I am now very much sceptical of judgments of cause and effect.
We could say that it was custom itself that led Hume to causally infer custom as the driving force of our causal reasonings.
— Jan 28, 2026 04:34AM
itself? Hume observes a phenomenon of the human mind (that we constantly ascribe causes and effects) and he labels a cause to this phenomenon - custom! Why should I hold much faith for Hume's causal identification? I am now very much sceptical of judgments of cause and effect.
We could say that it was custom itself that led Hume to causally infer custom as the driving force of our causal reasonings.
Isaac Chan
is on page 34 of 304
Note 3/n:
cause and effect. Well, Hume comments that our reasonings of effects don't flow logically from observations of causes - they are just connected by custom. And he says that he posits no underlying cause as to why custom operates the way it does in the human mind - this is just a factual observation of human nature. I agree with this, of course.
But is this identification of *custom* not causal reasoning ...
— Jan 28, 2026 04:34AM
cause and effect. Well, Hume comments that our reasonings of effects don't flow logically from observations of causes - they are just connected by custom. And he says that he posits no underlying cause as to why custom operates the way it does in the human mind - this is just a factual observation of human nature. I agree with this, of course.
But is this identification of *custom* not causal reasoning ...
