Status Updates From کاوشی در خصوص فهم بشری

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Black-Scholes, pricing kernels, general equilibrium models ... these are just various examples of the 'relations of ideas'. In fact I am of the opinion that overenthusiasm for elegant 'relations of ideas' can have disastrous consequences for the real economy, for example the neoclassical ideologies that led to financial underregulation prior to the GFC.

Note 6/n:
a different critique - I wish to focus on the 'relations of ideas'. It is literally the case that knowledge of 'relations of ideas' do not require empirical experience, so, why does Hume say that all knowledge must come from experience?

In fact, there exist many 'relations of ideas' within MODERN economics that completely do not require empirical observation - we would call them 'theory papers' now.

Note 5/n:
observation cycle - but bits and pieces of observations (for example, maybe prior consistent examples of bullion inflows were followed by domestic inflation) allowed Hume to form his mosaic, to seemingly rationalise these meta-principles of both the mind and of economics.

I now might posit - all rationalisation is the reorganization within the mind of prior experience.

But I now direct my attention to...

Note 4/n:
have had an insight into these principles through prior experience themselves! The nature of 'prior experience' is scattered - it is of course extremely unlikely, to the point of being impossible, that one would directly experience the modes of thought of the mind, or directly experience Hume's price-specie-flow mechanism unfold in real time, or the quantity theory of money over a fully contiguous ...

Note 3/n:
indignation of Hume's 'Of miracles', which I read some months ago in 2025. In my review of 'Of miracles', I raised the objection that - did Hume not RATIONALISE (in the vein of Descartes) the workings of the mind? Of economics? This rationalisation seemed a direct contradiction to me back then. I am now able to respond to my own objection: Hume APPEARED to rationalise these principles, but he could only ...

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in fact, gives me much practical solace: I now understand more vividly my disorientation during the SS2 months - many times did I doubt the rigour of my faculties of reason themselves. I operated under the vague assumption that a mind with refined intellect could somehow infer the cause and effects of LOS and AS400 via pure reason - I now commit those thoughts to the flames.

I am now able to revisit my...

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More and more familiar ideas from the Treatise are unfolding themselves as gracefully as a dramatic opera - this time, it's the doctrine that all human insight into cause and effect MUST come from experience. A human mind, equipped with all the faculties of reason of an Einstein, could never infer the nature of an object's causes and the mechanics of its effects, without prior experience. This doctrine, ...

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Such a metaphysically naturalistic conception of the world is quite unsettling, however, and my unscientific intuition is that it requires deeper philosophical defense beyond 'every idea must correspond to an impression'.

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chances are, the Republic would pay more.

Given that we accept that cause and effect is the lynchpin of all a posteriori reasoning, we now turn our attention to one of the central questions of Hume's epistemology: why do we accept that every object in existence MUST have a cause?

Note 5/n:
where I recall other modes like space and time were included and developed.

In fact, cause and effect really are the groundwork of all practical reasoning, and smarter people (both book-smart and street-smart) really seem to be foundationally better at causal reasoning. For example, Hondo Ohnaka's superior causal reasoning that if the Separatists would be willing to pay a fine ransom for Count Dooku, ...

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the length of its hypotenuse is the sum of the squares of its 2 lengths.

But this leaves us with a puzzle: if all matter-of-fact judgments must be empirically verified, then how does man form judgments (as he often does) beyond his (immediate) senses or his memory? Hume posits here that all matters-of-fact reasoning are grounded on cause and effect, which is a significant reduction from the Treatise, ...

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... usually tyrants, in history, have tried to pursue this reality in vain) ... whatever is conceivable is not logically impossible. If it were logically impossible, the mind would not even be able to conceive the thought in the first place - which is an idea that I'm still trying to put my finger on. It seems that it is impossible for any mind, even God's mind, to conceive a right-angled triangle where ...

Note 2/n:
... humans will die': because the definition of 'sun' does NOT contain the predicate of 'will rise'. The only thing we can ever do is look to the billions of times in the past where the sun HAS risen: but this induction is far from being CERTAIN! As Hume articulates it clearly, we can always conceive a reality where the sun does NOT rise, or humans do not die (in fact, countless quixotic dreamers, ...

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Reading the Treatise beforehand has given me a solid gateway to internalizing the Enquiry. I am also now armed with Millican's notes: for example, I am now given a great way to formalize Hume's thought on metaphysical conception - the conceivability principle.

All matters of fact can only ever be empirically verified - even seeming ordinary-language 'certainties' like 'The sun will rise tomorrow', 'All ...

Note 3/3:
... Hume especially focuses on, 'causation', one must ask: 'From which impression is this idea derived from?'

If one cannot provide a satisfactory answer, then such ideas are meaningless.

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ii) It had only occurred to me the genius precursor to logical positivism Hume's copy principle is (and thus reinforced to me the true implications of empiricism) - if every idea must correspond to an impression, then Hume says: if one encounters words loaded with philosophical vagueness but no true meaning, as Hume rightfully suspects so, e.g. 'being', 'nothingness', 'meaning of life', 'God', or as ...

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i) I cannot help but disagree with Hume on the significance of the 'missing shades of blue' - Hume, of course, sees it as a small, singular counterexample that does not affect the GENERAL doctrine of the copy principle; but I on the other hand, see this as Popper's black swan. Hume's entire system would crumble if the 'missing shades of blue' is truly a black swan that disproves the doctrine.

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v) I am plagued with a new, troubling thought: that if all ideas must be an imprint of a corresponding impression, that means that all the ideas that I accumulate through my learning can never replicate an impression. One must expose one's self as much as possible in the real world to create a rich reservoir of ideas.

Note 5/n:
... undeniably, adherents of the 'easy philosophy') who still believe that it was Hume's own voice, because they never even bothered to read the Enquiry.

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... balanced attitude towards the 'easy' philosophy (one borne less out of the heat of youth and invention)

iv) It is shocking to me to uncover that the famous maxim by Hume, 'be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man' was not even uttered by Hume's own voice, but rather, NATURE's voice! I must thank Millican for pointing this out to me, and I lament the masses (who are, ...

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... context of the 17th-century scientific revolution, the resistance against religious dogma, and traces a clear influence from Newton. This was not my personal interpretation when I read the Treatise

iii) As always, the sharp distinction between the 'easy' and the 'abstruse' philosophy is as inspiring when I first learnt about it in 2024 through Sadler's lectures, though I perhaps now have a much more...

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... in contrast to perhaps the consensus, that the Enquiry is merely a watered-down version of the Treatise. Personally, as of now, I don't see much utility in quabbling over which is the superior work - but I must say that I even enjoyed the 'Abstract' over the Treatise's epistemology, purely by virtue of how clear and concise the 'Abstract' is.

ii) Millican firmly situates Hume's philosophy in the ...

Note 1/n:
Finally gotten around to reading the Enquiry, after around a year of trying to buy this book! I am doubly pleased to find that Peter Millican, my favourite Hume scholar, has written an introduction and added incredibly helpful notes to this Oxford World's Classics edition.

Some preliminary thoughts thus far:
i) Millican maintains that Hume's Enquiry is the definitive statement of his mature philosophy, ...