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/lit/ - Literature

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11196974 No.11196974 [Reply] [Original]

"Cognition of an effect depends on, and involves, cognition of its cause."

I think this is bullshit; we know plenty of things without knowing their causes. I've often seen two methods of getting around this axiom. One is to restrict the kinds of cognition, or to rephrase: perfect cognition of an effect depends on, and involves, cognition of its cause. Some modification on the type of cognition used to cognize the cause is also sometimes introduced.

The second method is to restrict the kinds of causes: Cognition of an effect depends on, and involves, cognition of its immanent cause. Here an immanent cause is a cause which both precedes its effect in the typical sense, and a cause which the effect essentially relies upon in order to be what it is. For instance, the taste of an apple is immanently caused by the essence of an apple. If you modify the apple, say by adding salt, the particular way the taste changes is caused by you adding salt and by the essence of the apple. The first cause is not immanent, the second cause is.

If the first method is the correct one, this undermines some of Spinoza's proofs. I remain unconvinced of the second method's truth. However, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on both of these methods, or any other related ideas.

>> No.11197134

>reading jews

>> No.11197143

>>11196974
>>11197134
/lit/ in a nutshell.

>> No.11197204
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11197204

>> No.11197212

>>11196974
>I think this is bullshit; we know plenty of things without knowing their causes.

like?

>> No.11197232

>>11196974
Readjust what might be said here.
"Cognition of an effect depends on cognition of its cause"
That is... what we see in the effect depends upon what we know of the cause. As you say, sometimes it isn't very much.

>> No.11197241

when will people stop talking about cause and effect?

>> No.11197272

you cant really know the cause of anything, you can only observe correlations.

>> No.11197296
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11197296

>>11197272

>> No.11197405

>>11196974
No, unless you know that lightning is static discharge being released your knowledge of lightning isn’t really knowledge. The Greeks thought they understood lightning in that it was from Zeus, but this wouldn’t satisfy Spinoza as true cognition because it doesn’t understand the true cause. You may think you understand something without understanding it’s cause, but that’s not true cognition for Spinoza, that’s just doxa.

>> No.11197416

>>11196974
Just read modern science you stupid fuck, you are literally reading authors that are full of wrong, dated information.

>> No.11197420

>>11197241
when we get rid of lamps, and a grue shows up, proving goodman right.

>> No.11197438

>>11197212
I don't know exactly how life came to exist on Earth. I do know that life exists.
>>11197405
So you're of the opinion that Spinoza intends for us to assume the first method I list
>>11197416
Spinoza's axioms and definitions are pretty broad, I'm not sure exactly how modern science is in contradiction with them. Unless you think Quantum Mechanics somehow gets rid of cause and effect. Pro tip, I don't believe you unless you can explain why a deterministic equation gives a probabilistic interpretation.

>> No.11197490

>>11196974
Bro just go clean some lents

>> No.11197661

>>11197241
When you can explain them sufficiently.

>> No.11197683

who the fuck actually thinks that advocating humean supervenience means they throw out causes? unless you think that causes are NECESSARY connections between distinct existents.

>> No.11197707
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11197707

>>11196974
I'm not much of a Spinoza reader (mostly Deleuze), but I do like him. Doesn't Spinoza talk about different types of knowledge? Afaik there are three of them and only the last one is knowledge of essences or whatever it's called. Maybe this involves knowledge of conatus and affectio/affectus for example so that you only truly understand something if you understand all its possible relations and their effects with every possible external factor (including non-liniar and catalytic causality in today's terms).