Heat and Hume

[thinkandmull]

Hume says in one of his favorite works that one cannot know that heat gets hotter as you get closer to the source of heat without learning it first from the senses. He also says one cannot know without sense experience that water can drown you. The second example I think he may be wrong about. Of course, maybe you learn it in the womb, but assuming that you didn’t, can’t one reason upon seeing water that its not like air and conclude that it would be dangerous to put ones head into it? As for heat, I think he may have a point, but if it is not learned from reason, than perhaps it is an innate idea?

 

[Beryllos]

I haven’t read Hume, but it sounds like he draws a distinction between knowing by direct sense experience and knowing indirectly of sense experience, for example by observation or communication. By experience you may come to know heat. By words or other arts you may gain partial or imperfect knowledge of other kinds of experience. By observation or communication you may know that others have died by drowning. You cannot know what it feels like to die by drowning, but you can know from experience that it hurts to be deprived of breathing for too long, and that it is painful to have water in your airways. Without any such information, could you reason that drowning is possible? I am not sure.

 

[thinkandmull]

This is a very interesting topic. Descartes claimed that we see objects with our eyes (senses), but judge further away objects as sometimes truly bigger than nearer ones (say a mountain) with our reason. He said if you put a stick in the water and it looks squiggly, it is reason than knows this is an illusion, and sense of touch after it is drawn out of the water is not necessary, but an added experience. What about animals though? He would have to allow a small amount of reason (or a sort) in the animals as well because they move in their environment so well. But he can get into the head of an animal

 

[Beryllos]

Animals certainly think, at least insofar as it is necessary for their survival. Some scientists hypothesize that intelligence is simply a brain function which evolved, even to the point of human intelligence, only because it improved the likelihood of survival of the species. Humans are, in some ways, better fit for survival than animals, by virtue of intelligence, although one may question our long-term fitness as we develop increasingly powerful weapons and ruin the planet, but that’s another thread. Anyway, in the evolutionary view, there is a spectrum of intelligence in the animal kingdom.

 

[thinkandmull]

Why would we develop consciousness though, if we are simply evolved?