 |
| "Perceiving Necessity". Legg, C & Franklin, J (2015). |
Background
So, what is my point in bringing up one of the most influential philosophers to write in English? Bear with me for a moment.
David Hume is famous for many contributions to philosophy (also to, for example, history and politics). Still, among philosophers and scientists, he is probably most known for his thoughts on causation and "the problem of induction." Hume´s thesis about knowledge and if we ever can justify something as certain knowledge made his contemporaries call his epistemological standpoint "radical scepticism."
Hume himself was quite shaken by his discovery and conclusions about the limits of our five senses and cognitive abilities to acquire certain knowledge about the world.
Some readers may by now have an idea about where I am going with this. Or not. Okay, so I better clarify the purpose of this text before I continue to describe Hume´s radical scepticism (which is debated if he actually was a "radical sceptic") and what it has to do with the UFO phenomenon.
What I am going to say about Hume´s thoughts about knowledge and truth has not so much to do with the UFO phenomenon per se, but rather the point of bringing up Hume´s scepticism has to do with everyone interested in the UFO phenomenon (both proponents and debunkers), and who would like to see the UFO subject getting more serious attention outside the UFO community.
We want to know the truth about the UFO phenomenon, right? Knowledge. Truth. Reasons and justification. Before we move on, let us do a thought experiment.
Ask yourself the following question: What do I know with certainty is true about the UFO phenomenon? Seriously, think about it for a moment before you continue reading. Be brutally honest in your answer.
Let me also clarify what I am not trying to do in this text. I am not discrediting experiencers (contactees, abductees, etc.). In fact, I am not trying to invalidate any kind of idea, perspective or opinion about the UFO phenomenon or about its related aspects (disclosure, consciousness, "deep state", and so on). Neither do I advocate an unsound scepticism that dismisses evidence without looking at it nor misrepresents facts to suit its own interests.
What I am trying to do, is to use David Hume´s "radical scepticism" as an inspiration for an honest, serious and nuanced dialogue about what we know and what we do not know about the UFO phenomenon. Why? I think about it as one of several ways to raise the status of the UFO subject or phenomenon. Why is it important? For several reasons:
That is, if some of the world´s governments and/or private industries knows more about UFOs than the general public. If not, then the whole of society should unite to explore the truth about the UFO phenomenon.
So, because of points 1 - 3 mentioned above and the social stigma, I think we must be aware of what kind of ideas about the UFO phenomenon/subject we are planting in other people and in the world. Both inside and outside the UFO community.
And here is where David Hume´s radical scepticism comes in. His thoughts about what we can know and say about the world with certainty and retained integrity can serve as an inspiration for how we all can contribute in making the UFO subject more legitimate to openly be curious about.
The point with all this, again, is to raise the status of the UFO subject, especially in the minds of people unfamiliar with the evidence of the physical aspect of UFOs and of the opportunities of the technology to solve some of the existential threats humanity are facing.
Now to David Hume and his thoughts about causation (cause and effect) and the problem of induction. He first wrote about those topics in his book "A Treatise of Human Nature" (book I and II published in 1739, and book III in 1740). The title is quite revealing of what Hume is trying to do in the "Treatise." He is more interested in human psychology than in "natural philosophy" (what we today call physics, chemistry, etc.).
Hume was a firm believer in empiricism, the standpoint that we can only acquire certain or meaningful knowledge about the world through observation and experience. But as we soon will see, he stumbled upon issues with the reliability of the empirical method, or maybe put more correctly, with the limits of human nature.
In the "Treatise", Hume deals with his questions about knowledge and causation in Book I, part 3, with the title "Of knowledge and probability." To make justice to Hume, and for you to appreciate his insights about causation, I first have to say something about Hume´s categories of "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact." Also, I should add that the following is my personal interpretation of reading Hume´s "Treatise", but I am not sure an authority on Hume´s philosophy would agree or not with my interpretation.
Relations of ideas are about a priori, or what we today call analytical truths, knowledge. It is the kind of knowledge and truths about the world we get in arithmetic, geometry, and formal logic. The good thing with this kind of knowledge and truth is that it is certain or reliable. 1 + 1 = 2, and "a bachelor is an unmarried male" are examples of analytical truths. If we understand the meaning of the terms involved, we know that the proposition is true or false. But, as you can see, the statement "a bachelor is an unmarried male" if you understand the meaning of the terms involved, do not add any new knowledge about the world. The conclusion ("unmarried male") is only making explicit what is already implicit in the premise ("a bachelor").
Matters of fact is about knowledge and truths that we only can get to know through observation and experience (a posteriori, or synthetic truths). It is knowledge and truths we have to go out in the world to discover, observe, measure, and so on. Or perhaps more correctly, if we want to justify our hypothesis with evidence so that other people can evaluate and replicate it, then it is not enough to sit in one´s armchair and think.
Now, in which category of knowledge do we find the idea of cause and effect? Is causation as certain as 1+1 = 2? I think most of us take cause and effect for granted. Of course, why not? When a billiard ball hits another billiard ball, I can see that the former causes the latter to move; the effect.
Here is where David Hume would ask us: Can you point out to me where you saw the link - or "necessary connexion", as Hume called it - between event A and event B? Hume argued that we can never observe a necessary connection between a cause and an effect. The only thing we can claim with certainty is that we experienced event A (the first billiard ball hits the second ball) and then event B (the second ball moves). But we can never observe or measure a necessary connection between event A and event B.
According to Hume, the "necessary connexion" only occurs in our minds. Or, as Hume expressed it, "we feel the determination." We are filling in the gap between event A and event B with a sensation or a feeling of a necessary link. You can think of it as we are conditioned, like Pavlovian dogs, to believe there is a "must happen" between event A and event B. But the only thing we do is to identify an event A and an event B.
In short, Hume pointed out that we cannot observe, experience, or measure any necessary connection in nature.
When we observe cause and effect, the only thing we can say is that event A preceded event B, but we can never say that event A must precede event B. Hence, "necessary", in necessary connexion.
Just be clear: Hume does not deny the existence of causation, but rather, he gives us a challenge to empirically prove that nature has some kind of "necessary connexion" built into her.
Imagine I am standing up and holding a pen in my right hand. If I say that I will drop the pen, what do you think will happen? Yes, both of us will assume or expect (Pavlovian conditioning) that the law of gravity is intact and that the pen will drop to the ground. But if I do not drop the pen? How can we know or prove that the pen would have dropped to the ground? How can we know with certainty?
This takes us to Hume´s second sceptical conclusion about knowledge and causation. His first sceptical conclusion was that we can not observe/experience a necessary connection in nature. His second conclusion is named "the problem of induction" and is probably more known among a broader audience than his view on causation. The problem of induction will also, I hope, clarify some aspects of Hume´s view on causation.
Hume´s problem of induction is meant to make us aware of two assumptions we make or two expectations we have about the world that underlies our reasoning about the regularity and uniformity of the world. The first assumption we make is that like causes have like effects (causality). We assume/expect that the world has a regular structure, which makes us expect that if I had dropped the pen, it would fall to the ground because that has happened every other time we or someone else have dropped a pen. The second assumption, or expectation, that Hume wants us to pay attention to is that we assume that every effect/event must have a cause (causation). Note the "must."
Hume is asking with his problem of induction: how can we prove that similar causes have similar effects and that every effect (or every event) must have a cause? Are they self-evident, that is, analytical truths? Or can we, through observation and experience, justify our beliefs about causation and causality?
According to Hume, the answer is no to any of the questions above. Why? Because to prove our assumptions about causation and causality to be true, we would, in our evidence/conclusion, end up with what we presuppose. In other words, we would end up with a circular argument. Thus, using inductive reasoning can never justify our assumptions or evidence. That is the core of the problem of induction. But let us look at it in more detail.
Recall the difference between "relations of ideas" (deduction) and "matters of facts" (induction). The former gives us certain knowledge but do not add any new knowledge about the world. The latter is how we do science; we make observations, form a question (hypothesis) about a phenomenon, and then set up an experiment, or a study, to find out the answer. Furthermore, we can demonstrate our results to other people to independently replicate our experiment or evaluate the merit of our study. Hopefully, the scientific method will produce new discoveries and knowledge about the world.
However, says Hume, we seem to be in a dilemma. It seems we have to choose between certain but obvious knowledge ("relations of ideas", deduction) or uncertain/unreliable but potentially new knowledge about the world.
Why is "matters of fact" or induction uncertain? According to Hume, we can never prove that the future will resemble the past or that the unobserved will follow from the observed or "all" will follow from "some." It gets circular; you can not justify induction with induction.
Again, think about the example of me holding a pen. You saw me drop the pen yesterday, and it fell to the ground. But how can you know with certainty that the pen will fall to the ground today? I think we have to agree with Hume; there is nothing in nature that says that just because the pen fell to the ground yesterday, it must - it will necessarily - fall to the ground today. Try to come up with proof.
As long as I have lived and can remember, the sun has risen the next morning. But from those past experiences and observations, it does not necessarily follow that the sun will rise tomorrow, that is, in the future. I expect that the sun will rise tomorrow, but, obviously, that is not knowing for a fact that the sun will rise tomorrow.
My expectation, or assumption, about a sunrise tomorrow is based on past experiences and observations that have shaped me into a "Pavlovian dog." In a way, I am basing my "knowing" of a sunrise tomorrow on (blind?) faith. It is more about my psychology than anything objective out there in the world. The "necessary connexion" is in my mind, and I project it onto the world.
Hume used the term "custom" instead of conditioning, but his description of how our past experiences and observations shape and determine our perception of the world as regular and uniform (what and how we expect and assume the world to be and work) is very modern from a psychological perspective.
The same "custom" is at work when we think we can justify, or infer, "all" from "some" and the "unobserved" from the "observed." Today we know that all swans are not white, but it took some time and some black swans to disprove our assumption about the colour of all swans. On the other hand, we discovered something new and unexpected about the world.
"Matters of fact" holds the promise of discovery, progression, utility, etc., but the knowledge is uncertain in the sense that it has to be considered as temporary. No matter how many times our observations have turned out to be accurate, we can never justify with certainty that our next observation ("the unobserved") will follow the past ones ("the observed").
But the positive side of that provisional nature of our knowledge is that it opens up possibilities of shifts and changes in our understanding that may benefit mankind in one way or another. Albert Einstein discovered and paid attention to anomalies in physics, and the rest is history.
Perhaps anomalies are the key to new discoveries and understanding about the world? There are, for example, "anomalous flying objects", or UFOs, or UAP. However, we do not know with certainty what those UFOs are.
My interpretation of Hume´s "radical scepticism" is not that he meant that we can never know things about the world or that we should stop trying to find out more about human nature and the world.
What he was trying to say with his scepticism was simply that we have to be aware of our assumptions and expectations about how the world works, what is true or false, possible or impossible.
I think he wanted to say that his view on causation and the problem of induction should not discourage people but rather encourage us to be more careful and humble in our search for answers and truth. Hume put us in a dilemma, not in a dead-end. So, in my view, Hume presents a sound, or a balanced, scepticism rather than an unsound scepticism.
I believe the way out of the dilemma, the choice we have to make, is to accept the uncertainty and provisional nature of our knowledge, perhaps even truth.
Both proponents and debunkers of the UFO phenomenon should be aware of and accept the limits of human nature to acquire knowledge and the limits of our abilities to justify what we think or believe we know about the world. In this case, about the origin, nature, and intent of the UFO phenomenon.
The uncertainty, the provisional nature of knowledge, are, perhaps, the (necessary?) conditions for new discoveries and knowledge about ourselves, the world, and our place in the bigger scheme of things.
So, whether you are a proponent or a debunker, ask yourself: What do I know with certainty about the UFO phenomenon?
Take care!
/Janne
What I am trying to do, is to use David Hume´s "radical scepticism" as an inspiration for an honest, serious and nuanced dialogue about what we know and what we do not know about the UFO phenomenon. Why? I think about it as one of several ways to raise the status of the UFO subject or phenomenon. Why is it important? For several reasons:
- The credible and reliable data on the UFO phenomenon - for instance, data and witnesses from USS Nimitz and USS Roosevelt - must be made known to a larger part of the general public than is the case today. The data has to reach outside the UFO community because the implications of the science and technology behind, for instance, the "Tic Tac" and "Gimbal", are potentially staggering for the future of humanity and Earth.
- When a larger part of the general public has accepted the reality of the physical and technological aspect of the UFO phenomenon and understood the implication of the technology, it may be easier for them to digest the experiencer aspect. That would pave the way for the experiencers to share their crucial knowledge and cases where it is needed to get the right kind of support to recover and make sense of their experiences.
- And, of course, if a larger portion of the general public is aware of and accepts the physical reality of UFOs, then the possibility of stronger pressure on governments for more openness and more information increases. After all, we are talking about the survival of Earth´s biosphere and potentially a revolution in the way we structure and organize human society.
That is, if some of the world´s governments and/or private industries knows more about UFOs than the general public. If not, then the whole of society should unite to explore the truth about the UFO phenomenon.
So, because of points 1 - 3 mentioned above and the social stigma, I think we must be aware of what kind of ideas about the UFO phenomenon/subject we are planting in other people and in the world. Both inside and outside the UFO community.
And here is where David Hume´s radical scepticism comes in. His thoughts about what we can know and say about the world with certainty and retained integrity can serve as an inspiration for how we all can contribute in making the UFO subject more legitimate to openly be curious about.
The point with all this, again, is to raise the status of the UFO subject, especially in the minds of people unfamiliar with the evidence of the physical aspect of UFOs and of the opportunities of the technology to solve some of the existential threats humanity are facing.
Hume´s "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact"
Now to David Hume and his thoughts about causation (cause and effect) and the problem of induction. He first wrote about those topics in his book "A Treatise of Human Nature" (book I and II published in 1739, and book III in 1740). The title is quite revealing of what Hume is trying to do in the "Treatise." He is more interested in human psychology than in "natural philosophy" (what we today call physics, chemistry, etc.).
Hume was a firm believer in empiricism, the standpoint that we can only acquire certain or meaningful knowledge about the world through observation and experience. But as we soon will see, he stumbled upon issues with the reliability of the empirical method, or maybe put more correctly, with the limits of human nature.
In the "Treatise", Hume deals with his questions about knowledge and causation in Book I, part 3, with the title "Of knowledge and probability." To make justice to Hume, and for you to appreciate his insights about causation, I first have to say something about Hume´s categories of "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact." Also, I should add that the following is my personal interpretation of reading Hume´s "Treatise", but I am not sure an authority on Hume´s philosophy would agree or not with my interpretation.
Relations of ideas are about a priori, or what we today call analytical truths, knowledge. It is the kind of knowledge and truths about the world we get in arithmetic, geometry, and formal logic. The good thing with this kind of knowledge and truth is that it is certain or reliable. 1 + 1 = 2, and "a bachelor is an unmarried male" are examples of analytical truths. If we understand the meaning of the terms involved, we know that the proposition is true or false. But, as you can see, the statement "a bachelor is an unmarried male" if you understand the meaning of the terms involved, do not add any new knowledge about the world. The conclusion ("unmarried male") is only making explicit what is already implicit in the premise ("a bachelor").
Matters of fact is about knowledge and truths that we only can get to know through observation and experience (a posteriori, or synthetic truths). It is knowledge and truths we have to go out in the world to discover, observe, measure, and so on. Or perhaps more correctly, if we want to justify our hypothesis with evidence so that other people can evaluate and replicate it, then it is not enough to sit in one´s armchair and think.
Now, in which category of knowledge do we find the idea of cause and effect? Is causation as certain as 1+1 = 2? I think most of us take cause and effect for granted. Of course, why not? When a billiard ball hits another billiard ball, I can see that the former causes the latter to move; the effect.
Here is where David Hume would ask us: Can you point out to me where you saw the link - or "necessary connexion", as Hume called it - between event A and event B? Hume argued that we can never observe a necessary connection between a cause and an effect. The only thing we can claim with certainty is that we experienced event A (the first billiard ball hits the second ball) and then event B (the second ball moves). But we can never observe or measure a necessary connection between event A and event B.
According to Hume, the "necessary connexion" only occurs in our minds. Or, as Hume expressed it, "we feel the determination." We are filling in the gap between event A and event B with a sensation or a feeling of a necessary link. You can think of it as we are conditioned, like Pavlovian dogs, to believe there is a "must happen" between event A and event B. But the only thing we do is to identify an event A and an event B.
In short, Hume pointed out that we cannot observe, experience, or measure any necessary connection in nature.
When we observe cause and effect, the only thing we can say is that event A preceded event B, but we can never say that event A must precede event B. Hence, "necessary", in necessary connexion.
Just be clear: Hume does not deny the existence of causation, but rather, he gives us a challenge to empirically prove that nature has some kind of "necessary connexion" built into her.
Imagine I am standing up and holding a pen in my right hand. If I say that I will drop the pen, what do you think will happen? Yes, both of us will assume or expect (Pavlovian conditioning) that the law of gravity is intact and that the pen will drop to the ground. But if I do not drop the pen? How can we know or prove that the pen would have dropped to the ground? How can we know with certainty?
This takes us to Hume´s second sceptical conclusion about knowledge and causation. His first sceptical conclusion was that we can not observe/experience a necessary connection in nature. His second conclusion is named "the problem of induction" and is probably more known among a broader audience than his view on causation. The problem of induction will also, I hope, clarify some aspects of Hume´s view on causation.
The problem of induction
Hume´s problem of induction is meant to make us aware of two assumptions we make or two expectations we have about the world that underlies our reasoning about the regularity and uniformity of the world. The first assumption we make is that like causes have like effects (causality). We assume/expect that the world has a regular structure, which makes us expect that if I had dropped the pen, it would fall to the ground because that has happened every other time we or someone else have dropped a pen. The second assumption, or expectation, that Hume wants us to pay attention to is that we assume that every effect/event must have a cause (causation). Note the "must."
Hume is asking with his problem of induction: how can we prove that similar causes have similar effects and that every effect (or every event) must have a cause? Are they self-evident, that is, analytical truths? Or can we, through observation and experience, justify our beliefs about causation and causality?
According to Hume, the answer is no to any of the questions above. Why? Because to prove our assumptions about causation and causality to be true, we would, in our evidence/conclusion, end up with what we presuppose. In other words, we would end up with a circular argument. Thus, using inductive reasoning can never justify our assumptions or evidence. That is the core of the problem of induction. But let us look at it in more detail.
Recall the difference between "relations of ideas" (deduction) and "matters of facts" (induction). The former gives us certain knowledge but do not add any new knowledge about the world. The latter is how we do science; we make observations, form a question (hypothesis) about a phenomenon, and then set up an experiment, or a study, to find out the answer. Furthermore, we can demonstrate our results to other people to independently replicate our experiment or evaluate the merit of our study. Hopefully, the scientific method will produce new discoveries and knowledge about the world.
However, says Hume, we seem to be in a dilemma. It seems we have to choose between certain but obvious knowledge ("relations of ideas", deduction) or uncertain/unreliable but potentially new knowledge about the world.
Why is "matters of fact" or induction uncertain? According to Hume, we can never prove that the future will resemble the past or that the unobserved will follow from the observed or "all" will follow from "some." It gets circular; you can not justify induction with induction.
Again, think about the example of me holding a pen. You saw me drop the pen yesterday, and it fell to the ground. But how can you know with certainty that the pen will fall to the ground today? I think we have to agree with Hume; there is nothing in nature that says that just because the pen fell to the ground yesterday, it must - it will necessarily - fall to the ground today. Try to come up with proof.
As long as I have lived and can remember, the sun has risen the next morning. But from those past experiences and observations, it does not necessarily follow that the sun will rise tomorrow, that is, in the future. I expect that the sun will rise tomorrow, but, obviously, that is not knowing for a fact that the sun will rise tomorrow.
My expectation, or assumption, about a sunrise tomorrow is based on past experiences and observations that have shaped me into a "Pavlovian dog." In a way, I am basing my "knowing" of a sunrise tomorrow on (blind?) faith. It is more about my psychology than anything objective out there in the world. The "necessary connexion" is in my mind, and I project it onto the world.
Hume used the term "custom" instead of conditioning, but his description of how our past experiences and observations shape and determine our perception of the world as regular and uniform (what and how we expect and assume the world to be and work) is very modern from a psychological perspective.
The same "custom" is at work when we think we can justify, or infer, "all" from "some" and the "unobserved" from the "observed." Today we know that all swans are not white, but it took some time and some black swans to disprove our assumption about the colour of all swans. On the other hand, we discovered something new and unexpected about the world.
"Matters of fact" holds the promise of discovery, progression, utility, etc., but the knowledge is uncertain in the sense that it has to be considered as temporary. No matter how many times our observations have turned out to be accurate, we can never justify with certainty that our next observation ("the unobserved") will follow the past ones ("the observed").
But the positive side of that provisional nature of our knowledge is that it opens up possibilities of shifts and changes in our understanding that may benefit mankind in one way or another. Albert Einstein discovered and paid attention to anomalies in physics, and the rest is history.
Perhaps anomalies are the key to new discoveries and understanding about the world? There are, for example, "anomalous flying objects", or UFOs, or UAP. However, we do not know with certainty what those UFOs are.
My interpretation of Hume´s scepticism
My interpretation of Hume´s "radical scepticism" is not that he meant that we can never know things about the world or that we should stop trying to find out more about human nature and the world.
What he was trying to say with his scepticism was simply that we have to be aware of our assumptions and expectations about how the world works, what is true or false, possible or impossible.
I think he wanted to say that his view on causation and the problem of induction should not discourage people but rather encourage us to be more careful and humble in our search for answers and truth. Hume put us in a dilemma, not in a dead-end. So, in my view, Hume presents a sound, or a balanced, scepticism rather than an unsound scepticism.
I believe the way out of the dilemma, the choice we have to make, is to accept the uncertainty and provisional nature of our knowledge, perhaps even truth.
Both proponents and debunkers of the UFO phenomenon should be aware of and accept the limits of human nature to acquire knowledge and the limits of our abilities to justify what we think or believe we know about the world. In this case, about the origin, nature, and intent of the UFO phenomenon.
The uncertainty, the provisional nature of knowledge, are, perhaps, the (necessary?) conditions for new discoveries and knowledge about ourselves, the world, and our place in the bigger scheme of things.
So, whether you are a proponent or a debunker, ask yourself: What do I know with certainty about the UFO phenomenon?
Take care!
/Janne
No comments:
Post a Comment