FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

I see all things as mere bundles of particulars - events, or descriptive facts (like, the fact that "green circle at 8:00 when viewed from X", "green circle at 8:01 when viewed from X", and all alike make "green ball on the table") - and just as this. :/

This compels me to believe that PSR is false, as reality in this view is nothing but a giant block made up of countless 4D-points. I can't even make an argument for my mind, as I see it as the mere bundle of impressions...

What argument for this view do you find compelling? CI Lewis tried to defend a view like this, according to which statements about the objective world analytically imply (indeed, mean) counterfactuals about what will appear if certain actions are performed by the observer. But the view is a disaster; if you think about it briefly, you’ll see that such implications could not be analytic and could not generally hold. (If you’re in doubt about it, I could say more, or send you a critique by Chisholm.) Even less promising is the reduction of objectual statements to statements about sense data which you are proposing.

(What is the “at t when viewed from X” doing in your sense datum statements? On the face of it the contents of those expressions is objectual so the reduction of objectual statements to statements like those is circular.)

And whence your concepts of green, circle, balls, tables, times, places?

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

I see all things as mere bundles of particulars - events, or descriptive facts (like, the fact that "green circle at 8:00 when viewed from X", "green circle at 8:01 when viewed from X", and all alike make "green ball on the table") - and just as this. :/

Notably, if you are in a forest and think that those ever-closer howls are brute facts, you will be promptly eaten by the approaching wolfs that explain the howls. So, every atheist with a will to survive limits his denial of PSR to just the explanation of the existence of the universe, without affecting the explicability of contingent facts within the universe out of antecedent contingent facts.

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

This compels me to believe that PSR is false, as reality in this view is nothing but a giant block made up of countless 4D-points.

Actually, physical (*) reality is "a giant block made up of countless 4D-points", aka "spacetime". But notably, if you limit overall reality to just physical reality, even the explicability of contingent facts out of antecedent contingent facts breaks at a point, since empirical observations, interpreted in the framework of a theory that explains correctly countless other empirical observations, leads to the inference that spacetime started to exist 13.8 · 10^9 years ago.


(*) "Physical" in the contemporary sense of "material", not in the scholastic sense.
 

Last edited by Johannes (2/26/2018 12:58 pm)

Greg wrote:

How did reading Hume instigate it? If there are not considerations you think count in favor of this sort of view, then all you have to do is wait it out; it is not a rational attack.

Indeed, it's not a rational attack, it's more a "pre-rational attack". If I remember correctly, I started getting such a view by reading Hume's attacks on the PSR and on substance theory. Hume then shrugs at the consequences and goes play backgammon, which is something I can't even start to forgive him for, killing reason altogether. I hate Hume as much as it's possible.
When I noticed what bundle theory was, I started to look for counter arguments. The more I looked, the deeper the bundle view was. I then noticed that indeed, nothing Hume said implied a contradiction. It expanded in a Cratylus-like view, in which every event, every single bit of perception is the only real thing (like a huge atomism, but related to "atoms of perception"). It crushed reason the hard way, since reason is superfluous in such a view; and I can't find a way to bring it back. It does about the same with language, as it posits "well, since language is a way of speaking about the world, and it's deficient, you can't communicate ideas about it; worse, there's no idea about it to have". Fear-staggering view... ;v;

Greg wrote:

The same problem arises if one takes descriptions of the world to imply the occurrence of sense impressions. "There is a green ball on the table" implies absolutely nothing about sense impressions. (To get it to do so, you would need to specify a whole lot otherwise about location and other observation conditions. Still, it wouldn't imply anything about sense impressions. But even if it did, it would be the case that the implied prediction has a conditional form, with the antecedent containing mountains of expressions about the external world.)

I really liked this answer. It stroke a blow in my poor mind against that thing I have, which was deeply needed. Gave me a good breath of fresh (rational) air. Still not giving me back all what I needed (reason and God), but it's a good step in that direction. Thank you.

Greg wrote:

Now, you might worry that this argument only tells against attempts to reduce statements about the objective world to either these action/experience-relating counterfactuals or to predictions of sense data; it doesn't tell against an extreme phenomenalism which simply does without the world.

Exactly. Thanks for the word : phenomenalism. It appears to be the objection against God, and I can't focus on it correctly; but you're bringing ammo for me to fight back. Thanks a lot.
Phenomenalism appears to be packed with nihilism as well, which makes my mind going bananas even harder.

Greg wrote:

That is true. (On the one hand, that should be enough to satisfy your stated worry, if that was a worry that the world can be represented as a 4-dimensional block where everything just happens.) But the picture of our knowledge which makes the former views plausible is the same one which makes the latter plausible, and that picture is confused. The thought is that if we had knowledge of the world, then it would have to be inferentially mediated by prior knowledge of the "passing show" of sense data. But such is not the case. Your grip on the sense data available to you, to the extent that you have any grip on it, can only be spelled out in terms of concepts which depend for their intelligibility on the fact that their primary application is to things in the world. Your ability to say what is appearing to you is predicated on your familiarity with the stuff of the world.

Can you expand on this? Thank you for your valued insight.

Greg wrote:

Your problem is not with the PSR. As you acknowledge, your problem is not even a rational one. You are gripped by a tempting but ridiculous picture.

I think my problem is pre-rational, for it kicks reason out of the view. I wish I could dismiss it as ridiculous, but for some reason, I can. I can tell myself "well, it's not even rational", but the view doesn't bulge. It stays here. For no reason. :/
I'm actually impressed by how accurate and helpful your posts here were. Did you, by any chance, consider phenomenalism as a possible thought, which went inside your mind for a while?

And, how would you argue that it's ridiculous?

Last edited by FrenchySkepticalCatholic (2/27/2018 6:15 pm)

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

It's probably just you are coming under the influence of the general ambience and outlook of the book(s) you are reading. Some people can read books with philosophical or academic views and remain intellectually and emotionally distant, wherever others are more often pulled along by the books they read, emotionally and intellectually. That's not to say they are necessarily pulled along to the point of conversion to the author's positions (though some people are), but they strongly feel his ambience and outlook, even when part of them disagrees with it very strongly. This sometimes happens to me, though not usually as strongly as it seems to have happened to you here. The best idea is to now read other books, works with anti-Humean perspectives. If you're worried about this happening again, perhaps only read authors like Hume in-between and at the same time as contrary views. It won't be so much of an immersion then.

I wish I could. Most objections come out from my own head, due to my severe average anxiety. Now, I feel as if they've "won", for I can't see a rational escape route.
 

FrenchySkepticalCatholic wrote:

Indeed, it's not a rational attack, it's more a "pre-rational attack". If I remember correctly, I started getting such a view by reading Hume's attacks on the PSR and on substance theory. Hume then shrugs at the consequences and goes play backgammon, which is something I can't even start to forgive him for, killing reason altogether. I hate Hume as much as it's possible.
When I noticed what bundle theory was, I started to look for counter arguments. The more I looked, the deeper the bundle view was. I then noticed that indeed, nothing Hume said implied a contradiction. It expanded in a Cratylus-like view, in which every event, every single bit of perception is the only real thing (like a huge atomism, but related to "atoms of perception"). It crushed reason the hard way, since reason is superfluous in such a view; and I can't find a way to bring it back. It does about the same with language, as it posits "well, since language is a way of speaking about the world, and it's deficient, you can't communicate ideas about it; worse, there's no idea about it to have". Fear-staggering view... ;v;
...

Greg wrote:

That is true. (On the one hand, that should be enough to satisfy your stated worry, if that was a worry that the world can be represented as a 4-dimensional block where everything just happens.) But the picture of our knowledge which makes the former views plausible is the same one which makes the latter plausible, and that picture is confused. The thought is that if we had knowledge of the world, then it would have to be inferentially mediated by prior knowledge of the "passing show" of sense data. But such is not the case. Your grip on the sense data available to you, to the extent that you have any grip on it, can only be spelled out in terms of concepts which depend for their intelligibility on the fact that their primary application is to things in the world. Your ability to say what is appearing to you is predicated on your familiarity with the stuff of the world.

Can you expand on this? Thank you for your valued insight.
...
I'm actually impressed by how accurate and helpful your posts here were. Did you, by any chance, consider phenomenalism as a possible thought, which went inside your mind for a while?

And, how would you argue that it's ridiculous?

Happy to help. I would not say that I have ever found phenomenalism particularly tempting, though I might have if I had thought more about epistemology when I was a materialist.

My point is that phenomenalism requires that the phenomena or sense data be describable; the view cannot be stated or defended otherwise.* You would need language and reason to do that; you would need to possess the concepts which you apply to phenomena in describing them. But on phenomenalism that is impossible, for a variety of reasons. Even our color concepts are concepts which have their primary application to things in the world; the notion of something's being red is prior to the notion of something appearing red; you can only judge that you have a red sense datum if you have the concept of red, and you can only have the concept of red if you have a concept which can be applied to real things and not merely to phenomena. You are better acquainted with the things of the world than you are with your sense data, if there are sense data. (You could not define 'red' by pointing to a private mental particular, for reasons famously pressed by Wittgenstein.)

*And don't say it might be true even if it can't be stated. What might be true?

I do recommend that you forget Hume and read something else. He is mostly bluster and polemics. There is lots of other good philosophy out there, and Hume will strike you as far less daunting as you develop philosophically.