How long is it?

I'd like to hear the argument in no more than seven sentences for each point. I don't have patience to read an entire book that has only two or three points. Not your fault, please don't take it personally. It is my fault, and I take full blame for it that I have no patience for long stuff that can be said on a single page... and most things that have only a point or two can be said on a single page.

Might be worth mentioning Ron Cram's previous posts on this topic.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6872/humes-failed-attack-on-newtons-law-of-cause-and-effect/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6682/what-advance-in-epistemological-or-metaphysical-knowledge-did-david-hume-bring-us/p1

It's long. Just over 50 pages double spaced.

I'm sorry. It's a long paper.

Yes, my thoughts on that earlier thread grew into this paper.

As a matter of interest, what do you consider to be a 'high impact philosophy journal'? I'm vaguely familiar with some of them, mainly because their names come up in Google searches on topics, but philosophy journals, as distinct from popular magazines like Philosophy Now, are mainly read in philosophy departments. I would have thought that getting something published in them, if you have no history of publication or academic affiliation, would be quite a challenge.

//oh, and you might find this Stanford article relevant (although plainly you’re past the research stage) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-newton/

Thank you for the reference. Yes, I cite Schliesser's work. I noticed Hume's anti-newtonian outlook before I knew of Schliesser's work. I had just read the Principia and then read Hume's Treatise. I was shocked at how much Hume was going after Newton without ever naming him. And all I had seen up to that point were papers by philosophers saying that Hume was a great Newtonian. Then I found Schliesser. He said many good things in this paper but also left things unsaid. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/5382/

Regarding the journal, the real challenge is the length of the paper. I plan to write a total of three papers contra Hume. I have completed the first draft of the first two. Both are very long. Possible journals include Philosophical Review, Synthese or Philosophers' Imprint because these accept long articles. Many of the other high impact journals have a max word length of 10,000 words and that would be very difficult.

Well, good luck with it. I don't think I'll offer to be a reviewer, as although I did a semester on Hume, it was a long time ago and I don't know if I want to re-visit it and I have a number of projects of my own to work on. I must admit, I was always a bit leery of Hume, but not for the same reasons as yourself. If it is published however please do update us with a reference.

Why not post the abstract?

Have you published before in a high impact journal? Good luck.

. . . but philosophy journals, as distinct from popular magazines like Philosophy Now, are mainly read in philosophy departments. I would have thought that getting something published in them, if you have no history of publication or academic affiliation, would be quite a challenge. — Wayfarer

Yes, I'm curious about this. In mathematics, academic institutions have a very powerful influence of what gets published in important journals. The reviewers are mostly faculty members or work in jobs that are roughly equivalent.

Yes, I'm curious about this. In mathematics, academic institutions have a very powerful influence of what gets published in important journals. The reviewers are mostly faculty members or work in jobs that are roughly equivalent. — jgill

In principle it shouldn't matter, but I have often wondered how hard it is to publish without having some publication history with some affiliation, either academic or industrial, first.

I did raise the question of affiliation in an earlier thread:

So are you developing your paper in a philosophy department?
— Wayfarer

No, usually at home or a Starbucks. I'm not an academic.
— Ron Cram

Submission guidelines for all three of the journals mentioned can be viewed online, they first request a blind copy of a manuscript (i.e. from which author ID is removed), which is assessed by two or three referees prior to acceptance. But I imagine it's a pretty tough row to hoe!

Might be worth mentioning Ron Cram's previous posts on this topic. — Wayfarer

I read through the entire Newton thread, really enjoyed myself. Thanks for posting those links. Before this I knew nothing of Hume, but it turns out I've been making versions of his arguments for years. From his Wiki entry, it says that

Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience the "constant conjunction" of events.

If I'm understanding his intent, he's saying that physical law is imposed on the world by us, but it's not an intrinsic or actual part of the world. I believe in the Newton thread @Ron Cram referenced a paper noting that Hume said physical law was extrinsic, not intrinsic, to the world. If I'm understanding these philosophical terms correctly, this is also what I believe. The universe does its thing and we build contingent mathematical models of whatever aspects of it we're able to observe and measure; but we're never getting at any kind of ultimate truth. Or is that too much of a distortion or simplification of what's being said?

I had one question for Ron from that thread.

My first paper on Hume is not published yet, but it is not possible that the world is a consistent illusion. — Ron Cram

Are you saying that you can prove, absolutely, the falsity of Berkeley's subjective idealism, modern simulation theory, brain in a vat, and Boltzmann brains? If I read your first paper and repeated its argument to myself while I'm dreaming, could I prove that I'm not actually dreaming when I am?

How long is it? — counterpunch

And will this be on the test?? :-)

Submission guidelines for all three of the journals mentioned can be viewed online, they first request a blind copy of a manuscript (i.e. from which author ID is removed), which is assessed by two or three referees prior to acceptance. But I imagine it's a pretty tough row to hoe! — Wayfarer

Oh, that's good. Physics journals take the full pre-print. I have often wondered how important the final author's name has been to my publication success record ;) A blind pre-print is an excellent idea.

Regarding your question on Berkeley, I have not really looked at his work. But I can disprove Hume's view of the external world when he is in his more skeptical moods. One of my papers does refute dream skepticism.

Before this I knew nothing of Hume, but it turns out I've been making versions of his arguments for years. From his Wiki entry -
— fishfry

Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience the "constant conjunction" of events.

Actually, that ought to read ‘cannot be justified empirically’ in my opinion. This is because his argument is that we cannot see the conjunction of cause and effect, only infer it - and inference is, after all, the fundamental activity of reason. But Hume, being a committed empiricist - ‘all knowledge is acquired through sensory experience’ - argued against inductive reason because such conjunction was not perceptible by the senses.

Kant’s response:

“Every event must have a cause” cannot be proven by experience, but experience is impossible without it because it describes the way the mind must necessarily order its representations. ... According to the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions, the mind is passive either because it finds itself possessing innate, well-formed ideas ready for analysis, or because it receives ideas of objects into a kind of empty theater, or blank slate [Hume’s view]. Kant’s crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world as we have it is only possible if the mind provides a systematic structuring of its representations. This structuring is below the level of, or logically prior to, the mental representations that the Empiricists and Rationalists analyzed. — Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy, Kant’s Metaphysics

(In modern parlance, subconscious - in fact I read somewhere how Kant and Schopenhauer laid the groundwork for Freud’s later ‘discovery’ of the subconscious.)

And I still think Kant is right!

The fun part is pretty Hume much agrees with Kant here: that causality is not manfest in empirical appearance (i.e. it must be a priori relation which is not granted by empirical appearance). Hume just understands the relation to be formed by existence of states, rather than being a conceptually sourced.

The blank slate is neither here nor there here because any investigation of things is occuring after the blank slate has passed. If I'm thinking about things and causes, my mind is not a blank slate. It has been filled with ideas.