tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139380866860511018.post7676638943017506332..comments2024-03-28T15:25:37.037+00:00Comments on Improvisation Blog: Meillassoux's Challenge to Critical Realist Natural NecessityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139380866860511018.post-89245906335379694842014-08-19T17:10:52.348+01:002014-08-19T17:10:52.348+01:00Hi Dai,
Meillassoux's argument is that Hume&#...Hi Dai,<br /><br />Meillassoux's argument is that Hume's theory is implicitly probabilistic. I agree. Hume is actually very close to the idea of positing laws with explanatory power: he rejects natural necessity. Natural necessity is Kant's baby really (which is why Meillassoux labels him as 'correlationist').<br /><br />There is a fundamental question about probability: the quantification of totalities. Following Cantor, we know this is impossible - except to say that totalities exhibit an order (aleph null, etc). So how can we have probabilistic reasoning about regularities if we can't know totalities? But if we can't have this, and yet the world doesn't continually change around us (there appear to be regularities), and we reject natural necessity, what on earth is going on? Deep down, the problem is in the maths.<br /><br />It's really very good!Mark Johnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12438712149227569557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5139380866860511018.post-34581535812230410232014-08-18T15:54:10.085+01:002014-08-18T15:54:10.085+01:00Thanks, very interesting.
It's not obvious t...Thanks, very interesting. <br /><br />It's not obvious to me (on first and ill-informed reading) that explanations based on probability are incompatible with natural laws. Can't laws be seen as descriptions of probability? The law of Brownian motion provides a formula which makes it possible to make statistical predictions about probability. Quantum physics is famously about probability. Is this fundamentally different from what Meillassoux is asking for? <br /><br />Does it resolve Meillassoux's critique if we shift our position from claiming that we have found a law which is a discoverable and discrete entity in a realm beyond the human, and rather say that we have posited a mechanism which has predictive power in explaining what we observe? <br /><br />In other words, is it the idealisation of the laws which is the problem, so that the laws are seen to cause a phenomena rather than to describe it?Dai Griffithshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14835158720687144997noreply@blogger.com