/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14766341]

>Philosopher David Hume argued against the plausibility of miracles:[128]
>1) A miracle is a violation of the known laws of nature;
>2) We know these laws through repeated and constant experience;
>3) The testimony of those who report miracles contradicts the operation of known scientific laws;
>4) Consequently no one can rationally believe in miracles.

[Anonymous No.14766354]

>Consequently no one can rationally believe in miracles.
No shit, why are anglos so dumb?

[Anonymous No.14766357]

We can't really fully know the laws of nature. Our understanding of them constantly changes. Quantum mechanics are a good example.

[Anonymous No.14766360]

>>14766341
Kind of a strange and contrived arguments. We don't know the laws of nature, we make hypotheses about them grounded on our observations.
The issue is precisely that because the laws of nature are not fully known, any observation of a breach in the law might simply be an indication that the law has been misunderstood. This is why the notion of miracle makes no sense in a scientific framework, but that doesn't mean outlandish observations should be brushed aside as "contradicting the operation of known scientific laws", they should be an occasion to test the validity of our knowledge about natural laws.

If I note that the orbit of Mercure doesn't follow the path prescribed by Newton mechanics, I am to be considered a miracle witness, or have I simply witnessed evidence that Newton's laws might not be a complete description of gravity?

[Anonymous No.14766363]

Hume doesn't reify the laws, he just says that we know nature's regularities by majority testimony repeated over time, and miracles obviously are defined as exceptions to regularity. In any given instance of someone reporting something that defies usual experience, it's a safer bet that the person is mistaken, crazy, or lying. How do you ever establish the reliability of a witness to a miracle? By definition it can't be explained naturally, because then it would simply be a law, regularly observed ("sometimes people do return from the dead"). If you justify believing one guy's testimony of one miracle as an exception to the normal non-miraculous rules, how do you exclude another guy's?

[Anonymous No.14766397]

lmao look at these losers making good posts on /lit/

But seriously, Wittgenstein made a similar point in a lecture, namely that if a miracle had occurred today people would attempt to study and explain it scientifically, basically they would attempt to make it non-miraculous.

[Anonymous No.14766447]

>>14766341
Not that I believe in miracles but isn't a miracle being a violation of the laws of nature necessary for it to be one in the first place? How could that be used as a viable argument against miracles then?

[Anonymous No.14766480]

>>14766341
Doesn't that presuppose the validity of inductive reasoning and causality -- things Hume specifically argues cannot be rationally justified?

[Anonymous No.14766505]

Hume spells the doom for religious buffoons, right now and not soon.

With that out of the way the exact nature of miracle is that it is a singularity . Emphasis also on "known" scientific laws. Science is incomplete. Some observations in quantum mechanics appear miraculous. Particle entanglement for example, where action at a distance conducts between two particles that could be located at opposite ends of the universe such that changes undergoing one affect the other symmetrically. Without the requisite explanatory constructs, this phenomenon might as well be miraculous.

[Anonymous No.14766522]

>>14766357
>the laws of nature that we know are a good example of how we can’t know the laws of nature

[Anonymous No.14766525]

>>14766447
That's precisely what Hume is saying. He's saying that under an epistemic regime of (empirically observed, never universally and necessarily posited) rules, miracles don't even exist. He's targeting the very idea of "miracle" to say it's effectively nonsensical, at least under that regime of knowledge.

This is what becomes the dilemma of natural religion, that is, religion arrived at through reason. Nothing can be miraculous under it. Kant is a big proponent of natural religion, and pretty much says that Christian morality combined with Enlightenment virtues = simply human reason functioning at a high level, which works for a lot of Christians who want to be good Enlighteners and moralists while also keeping their faith. But it introduces the fundamental problem of revelation, since revelation is a miracle - it's a rupture in the immanently rational system. Whether the rupture occurs individually (you personally have supra-rational experience of God or his will) or historically (Jesus was God's will made manifest), or miraculously (God's will manifested in something that defies the laws of reason), it's still a rupture in the lawlike procession of reasonable reality.

The whole 19th century is fucked by this problem of how to square Jesus/revelation with Kant. What they really want is for everything to be Kantian-ly progressive, so that the job of Enlightenment and rational-moral "maturity" was always already possible (and simply needed to be carried out). But this just can't be reconciled with humans being fallen, and needing God to actually interrupt the "normal" process of history by sending a saviour, bringing knowledge and grace that would not have been possible without his specific advent.

Hume is just an earlier phase of this crisis.

[Anonymous No.14766531]

>>14766505
>muh quantum woo is a miracle
“No”

[Anonymous No.14766633]

>>14766480
this. fuck christcucks tho

[Anonymous No.14766641]

>>14766480
>empiricucks
>being consistent

[Anonymous No.14766647]

>>14766522
That's not really what I meant. I refered to quantum mechanics to exemplify the constant change of scientific paradigms

[Anonymous No.14766680]

>>14766633
>>14766641
What I meant is that the author of the summary in the OP mischaracterized Hume's position.

[Anonymous No.14766700]

>>14766531
Not him, but that's not what he said. He said in the absence of an explanation (i.e., a physical mechanism) the nonlocal correlations we see in quantum entanglement experiments *may as well be* miraculous. Obviously, entanglement isn't literally a "miracle" in the sense of violating the known laws of physics.

[Anonymous No.14766918]

>>14766341
We can't 'known' the 'laws' as they are, so they can always break our expectations. Observation 1000x more advanced than our best science today might be able to adequately model the universe but there's no reason this model couldn't be violated, statistical drift alone could do it actually as modelling is the systematisation of something essentially formless and mechanicless. On the macro you could say it's all consistent and obvious but compounding minutiae (which cannot be fully eliminated only roughly corrected) can and does break models. This is on the level of science too, never mind how unconvincing plain senses and intuition are.

[Anonymous No.14766936]

>>14766525
>tfw Catholic and I can just ignore Kant
>and Hume

[Anonymous No.14766944]

>>14766341
Well yeah, we irrationally believe in miracles

[Anonymous No.14766948]

>>14766341
>this passes for philosophy in angloland
fucking kek

[Anonymous No.14766950]

>>14766525
Good post and analysis. Ive also felt this general sensation reading through the 1800's and I think this greatly impacted the romanticism movement.

[Anonymous No.14767142]

>>14766341
The entire point of a miracle is that it violates Human conceptions of the world to happen; it is a showing of God’s infinite strength and grace.

[Anonymous No.14767218]

OH GOD
IM HOOOOOOMING
*burns in hell*

[Anonymous No.14767328]

>>14766647
Nothing changed. It just got more detailed.

[Anonymous No.14767358]

>>14767142
Nope. Read Hume.

[Anonymous No.14767401]

>>14766363
This.
Brainlets can't understand Hume's conception of scientific law.

>>14766480
No. It assumes regularity in some sequences of events.
Hume doesn't even reject causality. He just says our intuition of it is confirmed by circular reasoning.

[Anonymous No.14767405]

>>14767401
>It assumes regularity in some sequences of events.
That's the same as assuming the validity of induction.

[Anonymous No.14767409]

>>14766397
Miracle is a discontinuity between a cause and effect. If it happens it could never be scientifically studied.

[Anonymous No.14768492]

>>14766341

According to Hume, "knowing the laws" by repeated and constant experience is precisely what one CANNOT do. He rebukes himself when taken for his word, like all empirishitters. Regardless, even if one could "know a law", there is nothing to say that said law was THE law, not even when appealing to the Ideal, but when one is truly Empirical. Imagine a check valve with the "known law" and the Phenomena is pertains to in the receiving side, and laws and Phenomena unknown and unknowable in the giving side. Claiming the latter can be known through the former is anathema to Hume, as is claiming the former is sufficient to make such statements on the "plausibility of miracles". As retarded as he is conceited. I hate Anglos.

[Anonymous No.14768509]

>>14766341
>Our best guide to an estimate of the belief in miracles, will be the demand addressed to natural man that he should change his previous mode of viewing the world and its appearances as the most absolute of realities; for he now was to know this world as null, an optical delusion, and to seek the only Truth beyond it. If by a miracle we mean an incident that sets aside the laws of Nature; and if, after ripe deliberation, we recognise these laws as founded on our own power of perception, and bound inextricably with the functions of our brain: then belief in miracles must be comprehensible to us as an almost necessary consequence of the reversal of the "will to live," in defiance of all Nature. To the natural man this reversal of the Will is certainly itself the greatest miracle, for it implies an abrogation of the laws of Nature; that which has effected it must consequently be far above Nature, and of superhuman power, since he finds that union with It is longed for as the only object worth endeavour.
Retroactively refuted by Richard Wagner(pbuh).

[Anonymous No.14768581]

>>14766341
>people took this brainlet seriously at some point
Lmfao

[Anonymous No.14769110]

>his ENTIRE philosophy consists of “bro we should be more feeling led than rationally led all our beliefs are irrational!!”
>NOOOOOO MIRACLES ARE IRRATIONAL
was he a hack?

[Anonymous No.14769165]

>>14766341
>Thinks we can know the laws of nature a priori

[Anonymous No.14769228]

>>14767328
No.

[Anonymous No.14769232]

Typical English mong.
The English cannot produce good philosopher.;

[Anonymous No.14769344]

>>14766341
Is that really his argument? holy fuck Hume was a mental midget

[Anonymous No.14769362]

>>14766341
>we know these laws
faith in repetition lmao

[Anonymous No.14770660]

>>14769232
You cannot produce a post with proper grammar and punctuation.

[Anonymous No.14770955]

>>14766341
>2) We know these laws through repeated and constant experience
doesn't he argue against this in his essay concerning human understanding?

[Anonymous No.14771032]

>>14766360
'The laws of nature' are our understanding of how reality seems to function. We cannot get any other natural laws than that.