Saturday, January 5, 2019

Past, Future, Transformal Causality

The common gloss of Hume's analysis of Necessity Connection as 'constant conjunction' abstracts from its decisive clause, 'observed in the past, and expected to continue in the future'.  Thus commonly overlooked is the fundamental lacuna in the purported connection: between Past and Future.  Now, if Kant had noticed that Temporal ordering, he might have applied it to his other main dispute with Hume.  For, as is plain in experience to even the non-Philosopher, there is a profound difference between an action prior to the initiation of it, and the observation of it after it becomes actual.  That difference is the ground of Kant's distinction between Freedom and Nature, and between Free Will and Necessity, in the traditional debate.  Likewise, Kant's contention that the Laws of Nature do not apply to the Laws of Freedom has as its ground the absolute incommensurability of Before and After in experience.  But, that incommensurability does not prevent systematizing the two dimensions; to the contrary, it illuminates not only how they might be combined, but, rather, how they are in fact combined in ordinary experience.  For, as is easy to observe, every new action modifies pre-conditions that necessarily constrain it, e. g. shooting a billiard ball at another modifies the pre-conditions of the spatial juxtaposition of the two balls, on the table, etc.  In other words, Hume's observation about the relation between Past and Future leads easily to the concept of Causality as Transformal, but, because of the baggage of the Rationalism vs. Empiricism debate and related issues, the connection has gotten almost completely obscured.

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