lpetrich

Actually, Aristotle believed in these four kinds of causes:

• the material cause is the stuff from which the thing is made;
• the formal cause is the pattern or structure it has;
• the efficient cause is the agent that imposed this form on that matter; and
• the final cause is the purpose for the thing.

Thus, if I make a chair from some wood, the material cause is that wood, the formal cause is the chair shape, the efficient cause is the tools I had used, and the final cause is my purpose for making that chair.

What we usually call causes are only the efficient and final causes.

From <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/c2.htm" target="_blank">http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/c2.htm</a>

GunnerJ

Hey, assborg, it took you six days to reply to him, and it was with your trademark weak, pithy bullshit one-liner assertions. So remember that people in glass houses...

Edited to add, from Ender:

Six acctually. From yours on Feb. 27 to his on March 3.

[ March 05, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

Ender

Thanks- what's the going rate on when Ed will reply this time? or is there a consistent interval?

~WiGGiN~

Datheron

Ender the Theothanatologist,

From my experience with the guy, the time it takes for Ed to respond is proportional to how long you talk with him (in the # of responses), and how challenging the questions are. For the most part, when I started to demonstrate Ed's incapabilities in physics, it was in the figure of weeks. If you start going after his one most cherished ideal, Aristotlian logic, methinks he won't be back for a while.

GunnerJ

However, there is a coralary to that theory which states that the more details your argument, the less substantial his reply. Don't excpect more than twenty-five words in his whole reply, usually clumped into unevidenced, bullshit, pithy one-liner assertions like: "No need for the ad hominem, god is a nessisary function." and "No, the law of causality states that a cause must share its properties with its effects, except where it make my position look aburd," and "I don't have time to reply" or "go read a book."

Ed

Sorry, its just that I have written long responses to some posts and then the person I am responding to disappears never to be seen.

Quote:

Ender, previously: But of course you can only speak for your own experience, which doesn’t quite translate to millennia. Feel free to correct me here. Why don’t you follow through your earlier assertion to ipetrich, that causality is the law of logic? Are you being disingenuous here? If experience supports the law, then it’s not a law of logic, or knowledge that is known a priori, or independent of experience. Ed: Well actually it is both though at the most fundamental level it is a priori. I wasnt sure how deep you wanted to go on this one. ender: Indulge me and explain how it is possible to derive causality from logic alone, a priori, and bereft of experience. Here’s a freebie: this is where Kant made his great “turn” in philosophy.

I don't know exactly how, but given that our minds naturally function according to the laws of logic, especially the law of non-contradiction and causality is a corrollary of that law, the derivation should not be too difficult and in fact may not even need to be derived.

Quote:

Ender, previously: Which doesn't support your assertion at all. Are you familiar with recent philosophers and their attempt at dealing with causality? Or do you put far too much stock in the ancient philosophers who were germane to medieval scholasticism? Does the name Hans Reichenbach mean anything ot you? Karl Popper? et. al. Ed: I have never heard of Reichenbach, but I know a little about Popper as a philosopher of science. ender: Study their treatment on causality before you swear allegiance to Aristotle’s view of causality. By the way, Aristotle’s view of causality is far different from the contemporary one, since the word ‘cause’ meant any legitimate explanation. Furthermore he split causality into four: the ‘why’ that seeks the ends, and the ‘why’ that seeks a justification, the ‘why’ that sought an explanation, and the ‘why’ that sought an ‘efficient cause.’

Well, I think I will stick with him since his basic principles have never been refuted. Actually he had six causes, you left out the formal cause and the sufficient cause.

Quote:

Ender, previously: Not necessarily WHAT? Please be specific in your next post, given that I had written a long paragraph or three on empirical analysis of causality in GOOD FAITH. Ed: Our understanding of causality must not necessarily be limited to our everday experience. ender: Must? How authoritative, and how groundless this assertion is! Until and unless you demonstrate why our understanding “ought” transcend experience, this remains a gratuitous statement.

I didnt say that it OUGHT to transcend experience only that you need to be open to the possibility, ie having an open mind.

Quote:

Ender, previously: Furthermore, before I bite your all-too-obvious bait, what do you mean, ‘non-physical?’ Ed: Something that is not made up of matter or energy. ender: Do you have any evidence of anything not made of matter/energy?

Yes, numbers, laws of nature, laws of logic, and mind.

Quote:

Ender, previously: *buzzer* that’s quite incorrect. I am operating with an empirical formula of impression – not the common sense layman term which you seem to be laboring with- that impressions are our immediate perceptions, sensations, passions, and emotions. where do you get the silly notion that I am “denying the existence of the mind?” what gave rise to this ludicrous inference? Ed: What is an "empirical formula of impression"? ender: for the short-term memory impaired: “that impressions are our immediate perceptions, sensations, passions, and emotions.

How do such things qualify as empirical?

Quote:

Ender, previously: A solipsist! You’re a brave lad. Are you familiar with Wittgenstein’s private language argument? Ed: Hardly, in fact just the oppposite. I believe we can know true things about objective reality. ender: A solipsist is exactly what you said was the “absolutely certain” proof is our own existence. By the way, Wittgenstein’s private language argument renders solipsism incoherent.

But I believe we can be certain about other things also, just not absolutely certain. Good to hear about Witts argument, I tire of solipsists very quickly.

Quote:

Ender, previously: By the way, how does that so-called “correct” formulation differ from that “everything has a cause?” please, no pithy one-liners you are notorious for. Ed: Because we can differentiate between causes and effects, therefore, logically something could be a cause without being an effect and vice versa. ender: That doesn’t follow. Just because we are able to identify causes and effect separately in time, that doesn’t mean that an effect could be uncaused or a cause would have no effect.

I didn't say that an effect could be uncaused, that would be a logical impossibility. What I said is that someTHING can be an effect without also being a cause and something can be cause without also being an effect. IOW, by just being a cause does not necessarily make something an effect also.

Quote:

Ender, previously: That doesn’t even begin to answer this section. Are you being intentionally lazy here? Ed: No, as I stated above, logically there could be something that is uncaused. ender: Not quite if you cannot formulate this assertion in symbolic logic form, or in predicate calculus. Despite our ability to use the law of non-contradiction in identifying temporal events in causality, there is no logic in inferring that something could be “uncaused” or “unaffected.”

Well I dont think I can put it in symbolic logic form, but please demonstrate what law of logic I violated in my above statement.

Quote:

Ender, previously: Explain, please. And do include your definition of reason. It had better not be some dictionary excerpt insertion. Ed: If reason cannot tell us about factual matters then how do you know all this about basketball and philosophy? Reason is the ability to use logic to obtain knowledge. ender: How does one gain factual matters about the world? Through the senses. Which isn’t logical because logic is a priori knowledge, whereas factual matters are known a posteriori. How does one develop logical knowledge? By definitions of the constituents employed in logic. Not by experience! Your definition doesn’t cover empirical data or sensory input, which isn’t privy to logic. Which is why I limit reason to strictly mathematics and logic and reasoning in matter of facts to causality- where we go beyond the evidence of memory or senses, we apply causality in making inferences about facts beyond experience.

But sensory input is meaningless and would hardly qualify as "factual matters" until we process it with logic.

Quote:

Ender, previously: yes, you cited sensory impressions. Where’s the “necessary connection?” Ed: What is your definition of "necessary connection"? ender: if I were as lazy as you I’d refer you to “scroll up” and locate the exhaustive and comprehensive explication I’ve laid out in my first post. Necessary connection is the belief that the cause must produce the effect.

Well then, the necessary connection is reasoning.


[b] Primarily the law of non-contradiction, but its corrollaries easily follow. Yes, they are primarily prescriptive.

Ender

How awfully nice of you to mistake me for a slacker where there is no evidence to substantiate that hasty generalization! I’ve been having just that exact problem lately, so I forge ahead and post the unanswered nuggets in similar threads at pro-theistic forums to generate feedback.

How is causality a corollary of the law of non-contradiction? That sounds like a unsupportable assertion from a novice in logic. If you don’t know exactly how it’s possible to derive causality from logic alone, then why are you wasting my time? Why don’t you do a little research? Or are you hellbent on defending dogmatism at all cost, including whatever intellectual honesty you have left?

Six? That’s a first. Care to cite a source backing up that dubious claim? Let me reiterate- Aristotle had four distinguished causes that answers ‘why’ differently.

• the why that seeks the end or sufficient cause as in “why did you do that? In order to write a vociferous response”
• and the why that seeks a justification “because it was the best course of action to take”
• or the why that sought an explanation, as in “because I wanted to”
• or the efficient cause, “because I received a response that needed to be addressed”

I know I’m being liberal with the reinterpretation of Aristotle’s 4 causal notions, and Ipetrich listed them in the modern analytic way.

Furthermore, your defense of Aristotle only demonstrates your ignorance of subsequent work on causality, which is appalling. Without the required knowledge, how would you know that they haven’t been refuted? Simply pathetic.

Open to the possibility that causality is not limited to experience? Sure, as long as you are capable of demonstrating how causality is derivable from the axioms of logic without referring to the empirical world once.

Haven’t you heard of the theory of semiotics? That language are nothing but symbols that refer to a “meaning?” Charles Sanders Pierce and Gotllob Frege are useful sources of information. As for the laws of nature, the laws of logic are nothing but customs created by humans that organize the world around them. They aren’t necessarily ‘made up’ of physical things but rather an interpretation of what passes for ‘physical.’ Mathematics, logic, and physics are at bottom human perspectives, or a way of perceiving or interpreting (as opposed to discovering or grasping) the build up and expulsion of force. Physics is but a creature of art, and is an expression of a very human will to domination. You could call it an exoteric expression for the random fluctuation of chaos. And as for the mind, I think it is but a nothingness, a lack that is always conscious of something other than itself. That said, numbers, laws of nature, laws of logic and the mind aren’t much more than symbols or referential indicators. Furthermore, since language or laws of physics do not fall within a priori knowledge, they are contingent or superfluous after all.

Are you this intentionally dense? ‘Things’ such as perceptions, sensations, passions and emotions qualify as empirical data by definition.

Actually Wittgenstein’s private language argument demolishes not only solipsism, but Descartes’ cogito, or Kant’s transcendental ego as well.

Thank you for clearing that up. While that is an insignificant point in which we are capable of identifying cause-and-effect relationship, thanks to the presupposition of temporality- how does this follow from your earlier and quite hasty dismissal of the rationalistic formulation of causality? Strangely enough, you assert it here that an uncaused effect would be a logical impossibility, which is in effect the principle of sufficient reason (everything has a cause).

why are you taking all the fun out of this discussion by contradicting yourself?

Again, unless you have an 11th hour surprise for all of us, there is no inference that is derivable from the laws of logic that explains causality.

False. Sensory input isn’t dependent of logic when information simply is, whereas logic only comes in play within the framework of language or specialized symbols. There is a huge difference between the instinctual belief that the future will resemble the past and a pure logical syllogism.

Ed! How did you come up with this brilliant winner? By not bothering to go in-depth only illustrates how much little time you put into making pithy remarks and how much time I’m wasting refuting them.

Don’t sell me short and be gunshy with the corollaries, chico.

The reason why i think you're wrong on that prescriptive part is i do not subscribe to idealism, that there is the mind and ideas, nothing else, because logic is only a tool expressed by the functions of language or symbols man created out of necessity- that he needed laws of logic such as the law of identity, of non-contradiction, and other axioms to survive. Taking them beyond descriptive status is to exaggerate or overreach the status of logic.

FWIW, the mind processes the impressions it receives by duplicating them as “ideas” that becomes symbols, language, mathematics and logic.

~eNDeR~

((edited to add emoticons and fix bad grammar))

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Ed

Well we have something in common then!

Quote:

Ed wrote: I don't know exactly how, but given that our minds naturally function according to the laws of logic, especially the law of non-contradiction and causality is a corrollary of that law, the derivation should not be too difficult and in fact may not even need to be derived. ender: How is causality a corollary of the law of non-contradiction? That sounds like a unsupportable assertion from a novice in logic. If you don’t know exactly how it’s possible to derive causality from logic alone, then why are you wasting my time? Why don’t you do a little research? Or are you hellbent on defending dogmatism at all cost, including whatever intellectual honesty you have left?

Because something cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship, it either has the power of being within itself ie self existent, or something caused it to come into being. This is how the law of non-contradiction is related to the law of causality.

Quote:

Ed wrote: Well, I think I will stick with him since his basic principles have never been refuted. Actually he had six causes, you left out the formal cause and the sufficient cause. ender: Six? That’s a first. Care to cite a source backing up that dubious claim? Let me reiterate- Aristotle had four distinguished causes that answers ‘why’ differently.

"Not a Chance" by philosopher R.C. Sproul.

[b] [quote]ender: the why that seeks the end or sufficient cause as in “why did you do that? In order to write a vociferous response”
and the why that seeks a justification “because it was the best course of action to take”
or the why that sought an explanation, as in “because I wanted to”
or the efficient cause, “because I received a response that needed to be addressed”
I know I’m being liberal with the reinterpretation of Aristotle’s 4 causal notions, and Ipetrich listed them in the modern analytic way.[b][quote]

He and you left out formal cause:The design or idea followed in the process of making something. And Sufficient Cause: A cause equal to the task of causing the thing to be made.

Quote:

ender: Furthermore, your defense of Aristotle only demonstrates your ignorance of subsequent work on causality, which is appalling. Without the required knowledge, how would you know that they haven’t been refuted? Simply pathetic.

Well go ahead and tell me how they have been refuted.


[b] [quote]
Ed wrote: I didnt say that it OUGHT to transcend experience only that you need to be open to the possibility, ie having an open mind.

ender: Open to the possibility that causality is not limited to experience? Sure, as long as you are capable of demonstrating how causality is derivable from the axioms of logic without referring to the empirical world once.[b][quote]

see above how it comes from the law of non contradiction.

Quote:

Ed wrote: Yes, numbers, laws of nature, laws of logic, and mind. ender: Haven’t you heard of the theory of semiotics? That language are nothing but symbols that refer to a “meaning?” Charles Sanders Pierce and Gotllob Frege are useful sources of information. As for the laws of nature, the laws of logic are nothing but customs created by humans that organize the world around them. They aren’t necessarily ‘made up’ of physical things but rather an interpretation of what passes for ‘physical.’ Mathematics, logic, and physics are at bottom human perspectives, or a way of perceiving or interpreting (as opposed to discovering or grasping) the build up and expulsion of force. Physics is but a creature of art, and is an expression of a very human will to domination. You could call it an exoteric expression for the random fluctuation of chaos.

No, two rocks under a tree will be under that tree, whether or not humans observe them or not. Also, the law of gravity would be in effect whether or not Newton had ever discovered it.

Quote:

ender: And as for the mind, I think it is but a nothingness, a lack that is always conscious of something other than itself. That said, numbers, laws of nature, laws of logic and the mind aren’t much more than symbols or referential indicators. Furthermore, since language or laws of physics do not fall within a priori knowledge, they are contingent or superfluous after all.

You just violated the law of noncontradiction. Nothingness cannot DO anything. How can nothingness communicate with me over the internet?

Quote:

Ed wrote: How do such things qualify as empirical? ender: Are you this intentionally dense? ‘Things’ such as perceptions, sensations, passions and emotions qualify as empirical data by definition.

Empirically demonstrate the existence of perceptions and emotions.

Quote:

Ed wrote: But I believe we can be certain about other things also, just not absolutely certain. Good to hear about Witts argument, I tire of solipsists very quickly. ender:Actually Wittgenstein’s private language argument demolishes not only solipsism, but Descartes’ cogito, or Kant’s transcendental ego as well.

I dont think Decartes has been demolished.

Quote:

Ed wrote: I didn't say that an effect could be uncaused, that would be a logical impossibility. What I said is that someTHING can be an effect without also being a cause and something can be cause without also being an effect. IOW, by just being a cause does not necessarily make something an effect also. ender:Thank you for clearing that up. While that is an insignificant point in which we are capable of identifying cause-and-effect relationship, thanks to the presupposition of temporality- how does this follow from your earlier and quite hasty dismissal of the rationalistic formulation of causality? Strangely enough, you assert it here that an uncaused effect would be a logical impossibility, which is in effect the principle of sufficient reason (everything has a cause).

No, everything does not have a cause only every effect.

Quote:

Ed wrote: Well I dont think I can put it in symbolic logic form, but please demonstrate what law of logic I violated in my above statement. ender:why are you taking all the fun out of this discussion by contradicting yourself?

How did I contradict myself?

Quote:

Ed, earlier: logically there could be something that is uncaused. ed, later: I didn't say that an effect could be uncaused, that would be a logical impossibility. ender: Again, unless you have an 11th hour surprise for all of us, there is no inference that is derivable from the laws of logic that explains causality.

See above about non-contradiction.

Quote:

Ed wrote: But sensory input is meaningless and would hardly qualify as "factual matters" until we process it with logic. ender:False. Sensory input isn’t dependent of logic when information simply is, whereas logic only comes in play within the framework of language or specialized symbols. There is a huge difference between the instinctual belief that the future will resemble the past and a pure logical syllogism.

Since generally human thought is linguistic in nature there is a logic built into all human knowledge, other than very simple instincts sensory input means nothing without processing by linguistic logic.

[b] [quote]
Ed wrote: Well then, the necessary connection is reasoning.

ender: Ed! How did you come up with this brilliant winner? By not bothering to go in-depth only illustrates how much little time you put into making pithy remarks and how much time I’m wasting refuting them.

Quote:

Ed wrote: Primarily the law of non-contradiction, but its corrollaries easily follow. Yes, they are primarily prescriptive. ender: Don’t sell me short and be gunshy with the corollaries, chico. The reason why i think you're wrong on that prescriptive part is i do not subscribe to idealism, that there is the mind and ideas, nothing else, because logic is only a tool expressed by the functions of language or symbols man created out of necessity- that he needed laws of logic such as the law of identity, of non-contradiction, and other axioms to survive. Taking them beyond descriptive status is to exaggerate or overreach the status of logic.

Man did not create the laws of logic they are built in as I stated above. The mind operates linguistically. Of course they did not become formalized until the Greeks.

[b] What does it process them with? And how can nothingness do any of this? That is a logical impossibility.

Ender

Excellent! Did you lift that phrase from a source or perhaps, paraphrase it? Ayn Rand, much like her sacred cow Aristotle, formulated the axiom of identity as a corollary of the law of non-contradiction, and the law of causality as the law of identity applied to action. In other words this identity of an object determines how it will act.

Something can be and not be at the same time – try learning about quantum mechanics sometime and discover how much observation plays a part in reality. Extra credit: Schrodigner became famous with an experiment with a certain cat and a randomly decaying radioactive element.

Have you ever experienced anything that was “self-existent?” are there any impressions this idea is legitimately derived from? If not then that idea is a paralogism, a result of human reason overstepping the principle of significance. Since it is bereft of empirical worth it belongs to the ashbin of bumpkins.

The problems with the law of causality is as outlined in my first post- that there is no such “necessary connection” to be had from experience alone- which reduces it from a rational principle of nature to a habitual one prescribed by the psychological nature of man. That an observed causal chain in no way guarantees that it will recur in the future, even under the same circumstances, precisely because projecting a belief based on past experience upon the future is merely faith, not logic. Furthermore, since man can never master all causes of all effects, logic can never reach absolutely correct results. The law of causality is not a necessary truth since the contingencies of laws of nature cannot be established a priori, but only through experience- which is a posteriori, after the fact. All we have inferred from such laws of nature are contingent truths.


Would you be so kind and post the exact excerpt?

Are you even reading the same thread as I am? Open a book on causality- preferably a modern one- and witness the historical progress from Aristotle, even though it might not be benign to your beliefs in a long-dead mythological figure.

Huh? How would you know two rocks will be under that tree w/o observing them? If a tree fell in a forest and there was nobody around to hear it, would it make a sound? A theistic philosopher once said “esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived) and Schopenhauer took that baton from Kant in effect too. Thank you for completely ignoring everything I said, which was a microcosm of my philosophy. Sheesh.


Don’t be too hasty in your quick dismissals just yet! You just expressed a fixed definition of “nothing.” With this loyalty to platonic forms, you have no chance in understanding my intentions or purposes in using the word “nothingness” at all. That’s understandable since you are encumbered with these particularly colored glasses.


What follows will be an expository on why I defined the consciousness as a “nothingness.” Man makes negative judgments, which exists only within man himself, not anywhere else. Existence, being, or reality (whatever you want to call it) is simply “IS” and any attempt to define this in a negatory way comes from man alone. The paralogical or ontic counterpoint of negative judgments is non-being. I want to illustrate 3 kinds of nothingness, how “non-being” manifests in a locality within the world or existence:

• the non-being in the questioner, that he cannot already know the answer to his question, and this implies negativity – “Do we have local DSL?”
• All questions implies that a negative answer is possible, that there is a “lack” in reality. “Where’s my last post?” a possible answer is “it’s not here.”
• Each question also presupposes a correct answer. “What discussion forum is this?” “an atheistic one, not a pro-theistic one.” Reality is demarcated, and broken up in segments.

Since “being” or existence is positive, affirmative and solid, it cannot produce these kinds of nothingness. Nonbeing or any form of lack has absolutely NO objective status in reality. You may cite that they are merely psychological states, but they are far more than that- a question begs an answer from reality. Statements of negation indicate that the objects exist within the mind, within consciousness but are missing a “reality” do pose a problem, philosophically.

Since I have no desire to suffer from transcendental idealism, ‘nothing’ is not transcendent, that ‘non-being’ cannot exist with reality, given the definition that existence is “filled within itself.”

I am observing a miasma of color through a thin translucent material. I surmise that these individual perceptions of shades of color are what constitute as empirical data.

Then read Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument or Hume’s analysis of the self or Kant’s Critique of Pure reason before mouthing off next time.

You really didn’t bother responding to what I wrote at all. It does take two to generate meaningful conversation, and I posited several questions in good faith that went ignored. What is the difference between “everything” and “effect”? In that matter, what about “effect” and “event”?

Sorry, this fails to cover your contradiction, so your pithy one-liners don’t count. The law of identity or non-contradiction does not entail causality without presupposing certain elements such as temporality or spatiality, which aren’t derivable from anything other than experience.

Thoughts are encapsulated in the symbols of language. If you concede that logic is an in-built tool of language, of understanding, then you lose the metaphysical significance of logic as a foundation of laws of reality, of nature, and a springboard of God. Logic as an formalized system of language merely paints how our instincts work at a fundamental level.

You presume they’re built in, since you operate in the subject-object dichotomy. By assuming everything has a cause (i.e. the laws of logic) the rational inference that a creator of logic is inevitable. Since this assumption rests on experience alone, you have no logical basis.

How the mind operates is a different story- and your picture isn’t too shabby.

This <a href="http://www.netsonic.fi/~jade6/empiric/logic.htm" target="_blank">link </a> illustrates how logic works – facts of the world must be established with regularity, and give rise to the belief in causality (or uniform theory of nature). Repeated perception helps forms a fact, and by a chain of reasoning we arrive at certain conclusions. A chain of reasoning combines facts in a logical way. Ergo, experience precedes logic in a certain model of epistemology.

Not if you presuppose that nothingness is a “logical impossibility” that doesn’t “do” anything. Once you get rid of that 2000 year old scholastic viewpoint, the realization that a distinctly Parmenidean view of nothing has no longer any currency in today’s intellectual circles will be all too readily apparent.

~WiGGiN~

((Edited for the "smart quotes"))

[ March 10, 2002: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Ed

It came from my readings on causality.

Quote:

Ed: Something can be and not be at the same time – try learning about quantum mechanics sometime and discover how much observation plays a part in reality. Extra credit: Schrodigner became famous with an experiment with a certain cat and a randomly decaying radioactive element. wig: Have you ever experienced anything that was “self-existent?” are there any impressions this idea is legitimately derived from? If not then that idea is a paralogism, a result of human reason overstepping the principle of significance. Since it is bereft of empirical worth it belongs to the ashbin of bumpkins.

Many things in science were first deduced from logic or mathmatics before they were discovered empirically or experientially.

Quote:

wig: The problems with the law of causality is as outlined in my first post- that there is no such “necessary connection” to be had from experience alone- which reduces it from a rational principle of nature to a habitual one prescribed by the psychological nature of man. That an observed causal chain in no way guarantees that it will recur in the future, even under the same circumstances, precisely because projecting a belief based on past experience upon the future is merely faith, not logic. Furthermore, since man can never master all causes of all effects, logic can never reach absolutely correct results. The law of causality is not a necessary truth since the contingencies of laws of nature cannot be established a priori, but only through experience- which is a posteriori, after the fact. All we have inferred from such laws of nature are contingent truths.

You have not demonstrated that there is no necessary connection, all the empirical and experiential evidence points to a necessary connection, but as I stated in my very first post none of this knowledge including the knowledge of the connection is absolute given human limitations. You are "correct" logic alone can never reach absolutely correct results but in combination with experience it can reach correct results. Just because the laws of nature are discovered after the fact doesnt take away their general accuracy. Of course we cannot know about them exhaustively though I think we can know about them.

Quote:

Ed: "Not a Chance" by philosopher R.C. Sproul. wig: Would you be so kind and post the exact excerpt?

It was just table showing Aristotle's six causes. The book is not on the internet.

Quote:

Ed: Well go ahead and tell me how they have been refuted. wig: Are you even reading the same thread as I am? Open a book on causality- preferably a modern one- and witness the historical progress from Aristotle, even though it might not be benign to your beliefs in a long-dead mythological figure.

I didn't come to this bulletin board to debate books and websites, I came to discuss things with real people. Why dont you do a quick summary? Don't worry I wont get bored and leave.

Quote:

Ed:No, two rocks under a tree will be under that tree, whether or not humans observe them or not. Also, the law of gravity would be in effect whether or not Newton had ever discovered it. wig: Huh? How would you know two rocks will be under that tree w/o observing them? If a tree fell in a forest and there was nobody around to hear it, would it make a sound? A theistic philosopher once said “esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived) and Schopenhauer took that baton from Kant in effect too. Thank you for completely ignoring everything I said, which was a microcosm of my philosophy. Sheesh.

Who sounds like a solipsist now? We can use a camera or recording device. Remember I didnt say we can know such things with absolute certainty only that we can be reasonably sure that there are two rocks under a tree after we stop observing them. My point is that this is a rational assumption.

This is the end of part I of my response.