• god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Force is the product of mass and acceleration. Kinetic energy is, in contrast, half the square of the velocity, times the mass.Banno

    Energy (all kinds, not just kinetic) is equalivalent to potential to perform work. Therefore it can also be expressed as force acted over a distance, or the potential to carry out a force across a distance. Or the amount of heat produced or the potential to do so.

    Not arguin', just sayin'.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Ever heard of a brain in a vat?Echarmion

    Yeah, it is the moniker for the moderator of another philosophy online club who is an absolute ruler of that forum. He tramples over other people, he tells everyone what to do, and by george everyone does what he commands, because he is a big BULLY. Consequently his forum is almost entirely dead, since everyone with just a bit of spine has left it, only those who are his lieblings and his vassals remain there.
  • Hallucinogen
    250
    Science assumes the uniformity of nature in order to prove it. That's what Hume identified in the problem of induction and why science is flawed.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Science assumes the uniformity of nature in order to [summarize how things work]. That's what Hume identified in the problem of induction and why science is flawed.Hallucinogen

    This is true. Sorta. What you said can be a valid corollary of Hume's claim, although Hume came at it from a different angle.

    But Hume's rejection can be rejected, too... on a personal basis, not on a philosophical basis. A person may convince himself that it is seemingly advantageous to accept the assumption on which science is based, and he may convince himself that it is advantageous to suspend acting to the philosophical skepticism of Hume.

    This does not negate the validity of Hume's point; it just ignores it, and lo and behold, life is easier to live ignoring Hume's point than to live with it.
  • Gregory
    4.6k
    "nature is free" Hegel in his first book
  • ChatteringMonkey
    1.3k
    Hume believed in the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Constantly throughout the Treatise he is inquiring after the cause of certain mental events. It's funny that he doesn't like the principle of sufficient reason regarding the external material world, but he is a true believer regarding mental events. Hume believes our thoughts are caused by impressions, ideas, contiguity, resemblance, connection, imagination. He comes up with all kinds of causes for mental events, but he want to suspend judgment on material objects.Ron Cram

    Yes, this was Humes point, or one of his many points... that we want to see causes even if they are not necessarily there in world. That's a psychological truth, and not a metaphysical one like the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
  • Banno
    23.1k
    Or even, as in the case of potential energy, as a manifestation of good bookkeeping. Sure.
  • EricH
    578
    Every physicist in the world has been taught that Newton's third law of motion is also called Newton's Law of Cause and Effect. How can you verify my claim that Newton's third law is commonly called Newton's Law of Cause and Effect? Let me Google that for you.
    https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Newton%27s%20law%20of%20cause%20and%20effect%22
    Ron Cram
    I was a Physics major as an undergrad (albeit not a very good one). I can assure you that the expression "Cause and Effect" was never once mentioned in any of my classes. I checked out your link. My eyesight is not what it used to be, but I did not say a single textbook amongst them.

    "Cause and Effect" (AKA causality) is strictly a philosophical term that has no place in Physics.

    That said, Cause & Effect is a highly useful concept in our day to day lives - I rely on it to keep my pants from falling off.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    I googled it and posted it, too... in this thread, for Cram. It turns out that the name "law of cause and effect" was first coined and in use by some spiritualists 200 years after Newton died.
  • Deletedmemberzc
    2.5k
    "Hume challenges us to consider...a billiard ball striking another. He holds that no matter how clever we are, the only way we can infer if and how the second billiard ball will move is via past experience. There is nothing in the cause that will ever imply the effect in an experiential vacuum."

    https://www.iep.utm.edu/hume-cau/#H4
  • Gregory
    4.6k
    Hume followed Hobbes's mechanism, which is why motion was mysterious to Hume. Mechanism has the universe working like a clock, without forces. With General Relativity and Hawking's no boundary proposal, Hume's dream of a physics untouched by metaphysics was realized
  • aRealidealist
    125
    “No. I'm not saying anything close to that. I would be willing to say that Newtonian physics are a huge improvement over Cartesian physics and cosmology. Newtonian physics have been made more precise by Einstein's theory, but Einstein's equations still require Newton's g for gravitational constant and the value remains the same.”

    Cartesian physics, in its many errors, nonetheless, does still have one major advantage over that of Newton’s, in not positing any absolute nature of space & motion; so as to be able to understand these in only a relative sense, which can, then, be mathematically calculated & represented according a coordinate system, that Descartes himself created for this very purpose. Which is, ultimately, the foundation & precursor of relativity in German physics, first through Leibiniz (a well-known intellectual opponent of Newton), & then, eventually, through Mach, leading to Einstein’s view (a view that he didn’t make more precise from a previous Newtonian one but was altogether changed [mainly due to his roots in German physics, which stems back to Descartes as was just noted]).

    Plus, not to mention that Einstein didn’t merely work on or improve but completely changed the physical explanation of gravity itself, from Newton’s previous one; no longer viewing it as some occult quality, which magically pulls distant matter together (action-at-a-distance, in its own form), but as a warping or modification of the space-time manifold or substratum in which matter is suspended (there being understood direct action [not at a distance] between these [Einstein being entirely against the notion of action-at-a-distance]); despite if the gravitational constant for the “attraction” of matter remains.

    why would you accept it between objects?

    For, very strictly empirically speaking, in no relation between the states of any objects is there ever experienced one actually producing another (if we understand the effect to involve the cause, & vice versa); in as much as one is self-evidently insufficient to be explanation of the production of another, i.e., one doesn’t involve any other, & so it cannot be maintained as the cause of another (again, if we understand the effect to involve the cause, & vice versa).

    Let’s take Hume’s billiards example, in this case, no state of any of the experienced objects, for example, a state of contact between two observed billiard balls, i.e., state A, involves or requires another, such as a state of motion of the two observed billiard balls after contact, i.e., state B, for it to be; such that we cannot hold that state A caused or produced state B, since it’s possible for either one to actually be without the other (observation of their contact doesn’t absolutely involve the observation of their motion upon it, nor does the observation of their motion absolutely involve the observation of their contact); & therefore no state of any of the experienced objects are ever actually observed to produce another, but are only observed to precede or succeed another.
  • Gregory
    4.6k
    Compatibilism, when it says that free will is destined to act as it does by matter, makes us completely at the mercy of whatever matter wants to do
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