dhw@itivax.iti.org (David H. West) (12/21/89)
In article <5610@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu> miken@rice-chex.WISC.EDU (Michael N. Nitabach) writes: >metaphysical tradition, beginning with the British Empiricists, e.g. Locke >and Hume. This is the view that causation is not an aspect of the world >which our mentality can recognize, but rather a schema which our mind imposes ^^^^^^^^^ >on events with appropriate spatiotemporal relations. A conceptually >opposite--Realist--stance would be that causation exists as an actual >attribute of certain pairs of physical events. What, in this view, is "recognition"? Is it fallible? If so, how is it different from imposing (perhaps unconsciously) a schema which may need to be revised to accommodate later sense-data? If it is not fallible, why are we still doing science? [hint: this is a rhetorical question :-) ] -David West dhw@iti.org