iwpoe wrote:

One of the usual analytic accounts of causation I hear is one event causes another event: the event of the ball hitting the window, causes the event of the window shattering, or something like that. This usually rides off the back of some kind of commitment to the idea that what we have is events and their relations, which is the core of any given event ontology. The usual idea is to deny that we know anything about substances and their powers.

It occurred to me that if that's what you think about the world, then you are either necessarily going to think that causation is temporal relations of proximity, or else you're going to strongly be led to think that. But I hadn't considered it before just now.

Yeah, I think you have it quite right; given that sort of event ontology, one is definitely going to at least tend towards a Humean stance on causation.

I wonder if we might need to distinguish though between an indirect event ontology (which would really be an event epistemology, but I digress) and a event ontology proper, the difference of course being that the indirect form would allow one to infer from events/relations to substances/powers, whereas the later would not.

The reason I bring this up is because the best contemporary critique of Hume, in my humble view at least, and probably the best ever, again my view, was penned by Lady Mary Shepherd, and she seemed to have held to a form of what I have entitled a indirect event ontology,

Thus, on her view, all that we directly know about is events and relations; we infer from causal reasoning to the existence of a cause, which would give us knowledge of substances and of the hidden powers of nature. To defend this view, she gives a really strong argument for the Principle of Causality, which Brandon over at Siris helpfully summarized here: http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2012/03/this-isnt-really-meant-to-stand-alone.html

Once she has the Principle of Causality, she uses it to infer the Princip

iwpoe wrote:

Re maths aren't they merely using a very narrow sense of causation? No one thinks numbers are *proximate* causes: they don't bump into each other. When I had to write a paper on Parfit (I think?) I was basically unable to proceed without introducing a classical account of causation, since I took him to be trivially correct on the point on his own terms.

They're probably using "cause" is a quasi-Humean sense, which would trivally make their account true (causation is a temporal relation of cause to effect in proximity of location, abstract object are outside space-time, therefore, etc)

Yeah, I don't know what the attraction to Trump is either.

I suspect a lot of it is artificially inflated media propaganda; they pretty much want to coronate Trump, so that Hillary can be ensured of a victory come election time. And if they lose then, hey, they've still got Trump; who is basically an off-blue Democrat that they could easily manipulate...

Despite what the media insists though, Trump is about as far from a southern mindset you can find.

I mean, he's a greedy New York big business-man who is well known for pushing people out of their homes, who says "zingers" that are not even close to funny, who has the moral and political convictions a bowl of Jello, who belongs to a liberal Presbyterian church that he rarely, if ever, attends, who has been divorced numerous times for obviously "trophy wife" reasons, and who looks, talks, smells, acts, and obviously is a Yankee***.

Here in Texas at least, these are the sorts of things we despise; I'm sure there are Texans out there who you might find support Trump, but they're are definitely not all that common in either rural or suburban Texas, and they're going against all their principles by doing so.

*** by Yankee of course I mean it in the Texan (non-international) sense; i.e. anyone who is from the North, is foul-mouthed and mean-spirited, and is almost always a moral liberal.

So to mix things up here a little bit on the forum, I decided to share with all of you my own recipe for chili that I have developed (for a lot of reasons, I don’t believe in the magic of secret recipes, so I’m more than happy to share). Being from and living in the Great State of Texas, and being quite a great chef if I do say so myself, you can take my word that this is a really authentic recipe and will allow one to be able to get a taste of the real thing if you were wondering what it might be like.

It also tastes really good as well.

Also, let me know if you enjoy this post; I’ve also got great recipes for taco meat and chocolate chip cookies if y’all are interested, among many other things (had to throw one y’all in there somewhere…).
Hope you enjoy!

Timotheos’s Chili recipe
3 lb. Ground Sirloin
1T Olive/Vegetable oil (for browning the meat)
1T salt (also for browning the meat)
1-28 oz can of Crushed Tomateos
2-15 oz can of Tomato Sauce
1-10oz can of Rotel
1/2 cup chili powder (yes, you read that right, cup!)
2T Ground Cumin
1T Paprika
1T Dehydrated onion/onion powder
1 cup (about 2 handfuls) pickled jalapeños (make sure to mince these up before putting them into the chili)
1/4 cup of said jalapenos’ pickling juice
Red Pepper Flakes (to taste on this; I know my Texas sense of spicy is a pretty high standard)
Salt and pepper to taste
*Note* in cooking abbreviations, ‘T’ stands for tablespoon and ‘t‘ stands for teaspoon.
 
Some caveats about the ingredient list:
First off, ground sirloin beef is by far the best cut of meat for this, so use that if at all possible. Also, the coarser the grind you can get on the sirloin the better; if you’ve got a butcher handy, ask him to grind some beef sirloin cuts with a chili grind. If beef is not your thing, then you should be fine using either bison or venison for this recipe; you might be able to get away with lamb as well, in a pinch. Whatever meat/cut you use,

Mark wrote:

You seemed genuinely astounded by my unbelief  To answer your question though: What do these theologians have to do with me? I'm sure they did accept it, but that doesn't make it any more understandable to me.

 

I'm a little surprised, although my tone might have over-emphasized my astonishment. I’m surprised not so much because I necessarily find it hard for someone to reach your conclusions, but because I've never actually seen a case like you in the wild; I've considered it as a hypothetical position that someone might hold, but I never really expected to ever see anyone hold it.

My point about the theologians is that these guys can be taken as representative of their respective theological schools, which aggregately easily accounts for somewhere around 90-95% of all Christians. The upshot of this is that if tradition means anything to you at all, then you need to really take this seriously; you would have a much harder time grounding, say, the Canon of Scriptures in tradition than MPV.

Is it not also good evidence to make oneself take a moral self-evaluation? Would God have allowed this many brilliant and committed Christians to be deceived on such a basic point as this? Perhaps this is evidence enough for one to hold faith, and patiently await the proper raison d'etre for later?