Thanks for drawing my attention to this; that was an interesting article. It definitely presents a more forceful case than Hume does, but I still give Hume extra points given the time he was writing!
11:54 While I find arguments about action persuasive, I think there's an issue with confusing the existence of beliefs and how well those beliefs are considered. The completely secular belief "smoking causes cancer" doesn't prevent every smoker from smoking though it prevents some. It's a belief about chance just as is the relationship between sin and damnation. It's a lot easier to take risks when the effects are only felt after a significant period. Conversely when the effects of action become more immediate, behaviour changes. There are many famous stories of atheists converting on their deathbeds. While most are in all likelihood apocryphal the plausibility of these stories speaks to something we know intuitively. Man seems to be one of only a few creatures whose fears may extend decades into the future and that's for good reason. Survival is often dependant on the here-and-now. You think more about tomorrow than today and you die. It's a little ironic then that deathbed conversions are evidence in favour of evolution rather than a benevolent creator who wishes not for his children to be damned. But my argument falls short. People _do_ consider the far future, including periods after their own death. My intuition is that the impulse is a redirected impulse to procreate. My argument also uses smoking as an example and smoking is an addictive behaviour. The nature of addiction changes preference. I am reminded of an economics lecture discussing the law of diminishing marginal utility. In order for addiction to make sense in regard to his conception of the law, they had to model addiction as changing the underlying utility function. (A more Austrian approach of ordinal preferences in place of cardinal utility seems to have less of a conflict.) Addiction however only seems to change preferences so much. Those addicted so smoking, onanism etc will be able to resist if the result was to be immediately shot in the head. I'm not so sure about other substances such as crack cocaine and empirically people do drink themselves to death (though I think that's a little different and I've written too much already).
It's also worth keeping in mind that for Hume, reason is slave of the passions. Beliefs in themselves never motivate anybody to do anything; actions only follow from beliefs in conjunction with desires, and our desires can be anything imaginable (as Hume says, it's not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of my finger). I can believe that smoking causes cancer, and I can desire not to have cancer... but if I desire the minor rush provided by the cigarette more strongly than I desire to live as long as possible, then I'll choose to smoke, and as far as Hume is concerned there's nothing irrational about this. I assume that Hume would say that the problem in the case of the afterlife is that religious people profess that the afterlife is what actually matters to them. However, I do think that one obvious response to Hume is that, with respect to the point about action, it's not that religious people fail to believe in the afterlife, but that they are mistaken about what their desires are. If I have the desire for short-term pleasure, and I don't care at all about eternal damnation, then my beliefs about the afterlife will not motivate me. It also seems plausible that if people can engage in self-deception with respect to belief, they can engage in self-deception with respect to desire. Perhaps I want to be the kind of person whose goals are oriented towards the next world, but the carnal pleasures are just too tempting. I think Hume overlooks this possibility.
@@KaneB Mate I'm religious but i love this sort of thinking, where do i go to absorb these different points of views so i can break my brain. Is this philosophy? metaphysics? Epistemology? I haven't a clue
I haven't spoken to him in some time, but my father literally argued that smoking does *not* cause cancer. The only way deathbed conversions are "plausible" is that some people lose their mental faculties as they approach death, and are thus easily conned/coerced into "conversion". Antony Flew is a perfect example of such elder abuse.
Interesting. Thanks. It does make sense that if Hume didn't [take himself to] detect himself (his self) enduring, then he would need to analyze personal identity in other terms.
@@KaneB Not sure about the app, but a lot of times if you're viewing in a browser, the comments default to sort by "Most Popular" but if you change it to "Newest First" more comments will show up.
See it would be nice to have some of these great Hume vocab words on the top of my head when we chatted. Cause my claim about the mystical state is a claim about vivacity. Meaning if imagining has weaker vivacity and a normal belief stronger vivacity and the mystical state even stronger vivacity still. That is the perfect word for it really, the undeniability of it comes from the vivacity being uncannily stronger than what we call "a belief" in the same way beliefs have force beyond imagination. Hume just has this way of getting straight to the heart of things.
@@Barklord the common anti social behaviours which come from belief in an after life all involve believing that God is evil. Of course, they won't admit that their world view holds that God is evil but that's what it amounts too. If you believe God is motivated by love then you would never harm anyone else in the name of helping them.
@@Barklord From my experience, most people would consider non-existence to be a bad consequence. I suppose that is what you mean by "non-belief in negative afterlife"?
Certainly Plato expressed belief in the imortality of the soul, or spirit, as is evidenced in his Phaedo. That he should believe in the persistent reality of things immaterial, or at least not dependent on material manifestation, is of course the essense of Platonism. As for the question of belief, I think belief is a somewhat subtle thing, akin to a kind of attitude or psychological embrace. Imagine, for example, a man who has been presented with a great deal of evidence towards a belief he doesn't want to admit, or, in otherwords, towards a proposition he does not want to believe. He might begin to suspect the thing is true, or perhaps even fully "believe" (or even "know") it to be true on a subconscious or non-verbal level, on some level of his mind where that "belief" is beyond his will and ability to control, and yet, through the power of his will and through his control over his own rational faculty, he might stubbornly refuse to admit the thing as a reasonable possibility. Consider for example the psychological journey of a man who is thoroughly unwilling to admit the possible existence of God, who, through divine intervention, is ultimately forced to recognize God's reality (and also the reality of spirit, or form separated from substance). In such a scenario, it is distinctly possible that such an overwhelming degree of "persuation" as might have been required for belief, where here by belief I mean a kind of psychological admission and acceptance, that by the time that this admission is finally made and the man finally believes, that belief comes with overwhelming certainty and conviction. The kind of certainty and conviction that, for example, might arise after understanding a mathametical proof for a mathematical proposition. The kind of situation where one is no longer capable of entertaining doubt, and where the kind of certainty or knowledge one posesses seems at least a compelling, certain and undeniable as that derived from the physical senses informing one of the reality of an physical object in the physical world.
Just gonna post some thoughts on why I don't find his argument persuasive. (might not reply if this gets interaction) 1. On beliefs. I don't see how a dispositional account really explains the nature of belief. Dispositions are certainly associated with beliefs and their actions, but dispositions are not sufficient to distinguish what is believed from what is not believed. "Belief in a proposition is distinguished from the other ways of thinking about the proposition by the force and vivacity with which the proposition is held." I think a better way of distinguishing beliefs is that beliefs are ways of thinking of propositions such that they are seen as true by the subject. That is the will of a subject judges a proposition to be be true in some way, thus causing them to believe it in their mind. This belief will influence their actions and disposition, but not in an entailing relation. Other conflicts will likely arise that influence the subject to make judgements of choice contrary to that belief. Vivacity and disposition then isn't an explanation of belief itself, but rather of the modality of belief. This also means that while belief is not explained by action, actions are still in part explained by beliefs. (ex. my belief that there is food in the fridge is in part necessary for my action to get food from the fridge, but it does not entail that action.) 2. On resemblance, cognitive apprehension of an after life What I'll say with this one is that the principle of sameness before and after death is that one think about things, that is intentionality(and thus intelligibility). The content and modality of my intentional awareness in an absolute sense is unknown, but I don't really think about that when I consider an afterlife in the basic sense. I'd also state that the mind is the same mind before and after death because it's individuating characteristic of the time it came into existence, and other inseparable accidents that individuate it, are the same before and after death. (Also as another note, all inference is fundamentally based on unity/sameness. To imply that resemblance does not have a basic intelligible principle of similarity behind it and instead is arbitrary seems to have serious consequences for the act of inference in general.) 3. Actions see 1). proximate fallible judgements of the will contrary to more general beliefs is not inconceivable. It may indicate that a belief is more weakly held, but that's just the modality of a belief. 4. Inconsistency Cutting off someone else from possible repentance(by which otherwise they might be saved) by certainly killing them and the seen intrinsic evil of murder which injures one's own soul with mortal sin seems to be completely consistent with people repudiating said massacre and a belief in the serious consequences of an afterlife. 5. Painful Emotions I don't really know what to say, still kind of based on my earlier point about what belief is I think. On the whole I think the main point of contention was on the nature of belief, which I don't think Hume explains sufficiently. Thank you.
>> I think a better way of distinguishing beliefs is that beliefs are ways of thinking of propositions such that they are seen as true by the subject. I think Hume would agree with this, but he would probably respond that it just pushes the problem back. What exactly is it to see a proposition as true? How do I distinguish between seeing a proposition as true, and merely imagining that it's true, or wondering if it's true, etc.? And here he would appeal to the force/vivacity with which the proposition is held in the mind. >> This belief will influence their actions and disposition, but not in an entailing relation Hume would definitely agree with this. In Hume's view, beliefs in themselves are inert with respect to action. We also need desires. If believe that my house is burning down, and I believe that fire can kill me, I won't make any attempt to escape unless I also have the desire to remain alive. Of course, this point does raise a serious problem for Hume's argument concerning action: we could account for the behaviour of religious people by arguing that they are deceived about their own desires, not about their beliefs. Perhaps they genuinely believe in the afterlife, but it's that their desires are oriented towards this world (even if they would prefer their desires to be otherwise).
The notion of a belief driving certain behaviors seems oversimplified. People buy lottery tickets, yet I doubt more than an extremely small number actually believe they will win. I suspect that if you did Hume's test on a large number of beliefs, you would find a disappointing correlation between belief and behavior with regard to beliefs that we consider interesting, as opposed to the mundane refrigerator belief. Also, the question whether there is some particular way that it feels to believe something or a way that it feels to mean something is perhaps not so easily answered. Although Hume's ideas are interesting, I think the most important reason by far that people may not believe in an afterlife is very simple: lack of evidence. Observation and induction tell us all men are mortal. The identity through time problem probably has little to do with it, and in fact probably becomes an issue only if you do believe that a person survives in some sense or other but are unsure just what form this survival takes, or what such survival is like.
I think for the lottery example, Hume might respond that while people don't believe that they will win the lottery, they do believe that playing the lottery is a possible means for acquiring a large amount of money. This is confirmed by the many cases of people who have in fact won the lottery. Since the cost of entry is small and the potential benefits enormous, it's understandable that people do it. I would add that I suspect that the vast majority who play the lottery significantly overestimate their chance of winning. If people realized that they're more likely to die while buying the ticket than winning with the ticket, I'd bet that far fewer of them would bother. No doubt some would -- but again, the cost of entry is so low, and people are easily reminded of past winners and of the potential rewards, so it's natural that they would take a shot with it. I actually think that lottery playing fits quite naturally with Hume's view of the mind. You're at a the shop, you see the lottery tickets, which you are told have a 1 in 40,000,000 chance of winning. This perception prompts memories of reports of people winning the lottery. Due to the enormous rewards, this possible outcome imposes itself on your mind with a great force/vivacity. By contrast, because we are bad at reasoning with probability and because we cannot comprehend large numbers, the extremely small probability of actually winning is not felt so strongly. "1 in 40,000,000" is just not something we have any intuitive grasp of, and when we try to conceive it, the mind runs into a fog. You do not really believe that you have a 1 in 40,000,000 chance of winning -- that's not an idea that your mind can hold -- so of course, it does not motivate you as we would expect such a belief to do! >> I think the most important reason by far that people may not believe in an afterlife is very simple: lack of evidence. Observation and induction tell us all men are mortal But there are plenty of religious people who will claim that they do have evidence and argument for the proposition that there is an afterlife. Of course, I don't find their case convincing, and neither did Hume, but are there good reasons to think that the people offering such arguments are not really convinced by them? Hume provides some independent reasons for thinking so. Putting those reasons to one side, all we have is that we judge the religious arguments to fail. But we know that people can genuinely disagree in their assessment of the strength of arguments. So I don't think lack of evidence in itself is a good case for Hume's conclusion.
Part of the argument seems to use a dispositional account of belief, that's interesting! I'd seen that in the pragmatist tradition, but I didn't know Hume used it
I assume that from our point of view, Hume's account would be an inchoate mixture of views. He treats beliefs as mental entities -- ideas held with a particular force or vivacity -- but yes, he does sometimes hint at a dispositional account. However, I think Hume would probably say that patterns of behaviour indicate belief rather than constitute it. Ultimately, what really matters is what's going on in the head. We believe a proposition when it feels forceful or vivid or solid.
You'd be surprised how Islam explains in detail the significant changes in the human condition in the afterlife. There are also many realms before entering heaven in Islamic religion. However, the problem lies in the lack of coherent explanations. If you ask them, they're told to say only Allah knows the truth. Although I'm not religious anymore, it's true that even Islamic people rarely ponder these things or have knowledge about them. I believe religion is a form of self-deception, although that isn't necessarily bad for normal people. I'm not against religion or anything. But I will worry if highly influential people being too religious
I think Hume's core argument feels very ego centric. How can he actually claim with certainty that he knows what others believe? From this I also find that most of his other arguments aren't convincing. They all leave the impression that he assumes everyone else would think like him. A good example is his fear argument. Some people do actually enjoy fear in their real lives (sky diving is a good example). A second point is that I also don't really see how his arguments follow out of his conclusions.
If I tell you I believe there is a solid wall right here, but I persistently walk thru that area, I'm demonstrating that I don't in fact believe in the wall. That's what Hume is saying: people demonstrate their beliefs by what they do. As for sky-diving, it is the adrenaline rush people enjoy, not the fear. To the degree there is any fear at all, it is the fear talked about in the video: autonomic fear, neutered by being logically convinced that there is no real danger.
@@jursamaj Your example isn't really equivalent to what is actually happening. Faith and religion is a large personal but very nebulous thing, where as the wall is incredibly concrete. I don't see why a person cannot truly believe in a religion but not act like it. I don't even really see what the problem is with that. You can call them poor followers of their religion, but you cannot claim that they actually don't believe it at all. You don't know the inside of someone's mind better than they do.
"Negative emotions become enjoyable when they are not prompted by genuine belief" Could we apply this to the sensational style of political commentary? You could make an argument analogous to Hume's about a lot of idividuals enjoying political controversies and the like a bit too much for matters of serious concern. And the most popular political content creators on YT are very much of the doom and gloom variety.
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Einstein Personal Identity is recorded (saved) AS spactime geometry. We are not losing states. They are all preserved.
@Oners82 If I don't, then neither does Tegmark. Perhaps you don't understand and I do? (Max Tegmark discussing Life and Death according to Space-time) “In the end, all the information is of course encoded just in the geometry of these patterns in space-time. So in that sense, if you know what’s in space-time, it’s like you have the whole video tape of the Universe. It’s all in there. If we take Einstein seriously about space-time, I THINK IT ALSO FORCES US TO RETHINK DEATH in the sense that when I was a little kid I THOUGHT IT WAS SO HORRIBLE WHEN I DIE I’M GOING TO DISAPPEAR SOMEHOW AND THERE’S NOTHING LEFT. WHEREAS, OF COURSE, IF I THINK OF MYSELF AS JUST THIS PATTERN IN SPACE-TIME, THAT’S NEVER GOING TO GO AWAY. MY DEATH IS JUST THE END OF THE LITTLE SPAGHETTI STRAND AND MY BIRTH WAS THE OTHER END. IT’S ALL THERE. Personally this sort of works for me, this way of life thinking about life. It re-emphasizes to me that the important thing is the journey itself, not the end points of the spaghetti. I know what I’m going to be doing 100 years from now. It’s going to be very boring. Bu that doesn’t in any way take away from the fact that this is a fascinating life here. AND MOREOVER, IT’S NOT THIS IS EVER GOING TO GO AWAY. Space-time is the fundamental thing. I THINK THIS WHOLE FEELING THAT THE PAST JUST DISAPPEARS IS JUST AN ILLUSION. BECAUSE EVERY LITTLE PIECE OF OUR CONSCIENCE AS WE MOVE ALONG OUR WORLDLINE WILL ONLY REMEMBER ITS PAST AND NOT ITS FUTURE. BUT THE PAST IS NO LESS IMPORTANT THAN OUR FUTURE. AND I THINK THAT GIVES A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF CONSOLATION.” Max Tegmark
@@eenkjet I'm Catholic but that quote does not mean what you think it means. He's specifically talking about physical (and nearly imperceptable) local perturbations in space-time caused by your body, not anything about your spirit.
@@brendanfay5140 How do you read that into this condolence? His statement is consistent with the notion that space-time presents a quasi-substance dualism that is common among physicists.
So the dogmatic beliefs of at least the Catholic church are well defined with regards to the after life. If we are going to argue that people do not believe in the afterlife as proposed by for instance the catholic church we should at least regard what the church says. In this case the church says you will be revived in the body you had upon death but this body will have been transformed by resurrection into a perfected state free of illness and the like. A body similar to the resurrected body of Christ. Now I should mention that these statements have a contradiction namely Jesus body famously had the signs of crucifixion after his resurrection. Meaning that the perfected body may retain signs of the cause of death. Then again it may simply be the case that Jesus allowed his wounds to be physical when he had to prove his resurrection. In any case, if your argument hinges on having a radically different perception that is not how pretty much any afterlife has been percieved.
Christianity actually gives strong hints about metaphysical existence after death if you read the scriptures: "So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. - 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 " " Who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. - Philippians 3:20-21 " It basically says that you get a new and better body in a "higher state" of existence; the best way to metaphysically conceptualize this state would be to imagine if your physical state and environment were somehow free of entropy In Vedic philosophy, it's pretty simple, your pure consciousness (Ātman) gets thrown into another human body repeatedly. The ancient Greek case was interesting; according to them, you roamed around as a shade/fraction of your former self in Hades. It was admittedly quite a crappy existence, according to the Iliad. I cannot think of a religion that proposes an entirely disembodied existence in the afterlife, except maybe early Gnosticism? Hume's argument is ultimately a Strawman Otherwise, great channel; you cover philosophy with good clarity and neutrality.
@Oners82 The brain runs on electrical signals. That requires energy. Everybody has a special energy signature that makes them who they are. And when one dies the energy returns to the source And that source is God. Consciousness can never die remember that.
@Oners82 I know you know and I know. Video not important enough. Too cliche you see. Just a sequence of unfalsifiables. Lot of what would be true if religion was x, but not what if true entails religion is x. So weak. This is just a long gaslighting fallacy. Pretty obvious. Regardless the articulation is not very on par either.
@Oners82 1:12 Belief in a proposition is not a way of thinking about a proposition. “Force and vivacity” are merely metaphorical here. Okay, one is a possible world and one is the actual world. They could be phenomenologically equivalent depending on how well someone is able to convince themselves of it, otherwise it wouldn’t be imagining. Unless you mean imagine as in make a purely representational construction in your mind. Him saying that the content of the proposition is the same is an assumption actually. Also representationally, when you consider “God”, it is redundant with respect to the truth of the proposition “God exists”. They are the same. Regardless of this it is an assumption that one is actually able to represent God’s existence only as a possibility while not holding it as an actuality and have as much phenomenological access to the implications of the actuality of God’s existence. This is just an assumption of Hume. “The force of the proposition in the mind” is vague. Obviously if something is true v. untrue, in it being true I’d have to act on the basis that it is true, but if false I can ignore it. It is not “the force of the proposition on the mind” in any direct sense, rather it is actually the truth of the proposition. If I imagine a Tiger exists v. belief a Tiger exists, firstly it is not actually obvious that the content of the propositions in my mind would be the same, because imagining is something abstractly represented while knowing can be something more directly phenomenologized depending on how exactly it is known. Secondly, obviously I need to react to a Tiger in real life and not in my abstract representation so it has a greater impact insofar as it actually matters in the real world of the proposition is true. 3:49 Also it is obvious that what moves you is belief insofar as ethical criteria are predicated on states of the real world as best judged by some agent. Beliefs don’t “govern” actions, they form the basis on which choices to act are made based on ethical criteria. Hume’s Identity over Time Thesis. We consider two things identical over time if any change in the objects is gradual, if the change is dramatic then we consider the object to be two separate objects. No one believes in the after life because no one can phenomenologies the Afterlife in any way that is concrete relative to our local experience. Hume’s notion of identity over time is by time continguity. Hume makes all sorts of assumptions about how we naturally intuit objects as though in some uniform empirical way. As though the afterlife is something which we must compare to a walk on the park. Instead of say, something like dreaming. Very very weak. The whole sudden radical change thesis makes no sense because he assumes that under some uniform notion of experience we will have some dramatically different experience. This is just an assumption. 10:31 now comes a lot of weak vagueness. When we go out into the world Hime claims we assume that other toro ole actually exist. But what is the difference between assuming people actually exist and people actually don’t beyond an artificial mental projection? There isn’t one. This is a vacuous point. Unfalsifiable either way. “Ordinary resemblance”? What does that mean? Why not just any resemblance? Why not in ordinary resemblance? What is the difference between these? Now do you get what weak means? I could go on and on. Hume has in the end essentially just defined “belief in the afterlife” in a trivial way, in a way no one uses it or very much cares to use it. When we say that we believe in the afterlife, we are not saying we can actually phenomenologize it in some sense because obviously we know it is unlike our local experience. All you need to know is that paradise is bliss, fire is painful, and belief in God and good work in this world leads to the former, sin to the latter. We analogize from our local experience to how pleasure and pain feel, and have been told what is right and wrong. Nothing else is necessary. Where is Hume’s evidence that all people or even most people are actually motivated by this world? Then his entire case is actually equivalent to this assertion. What about the people who die in war believing they will go to paradise? There were very many people in the Medieval period. Very ignorant sentiment of Hume. Hume fails to see this, so his entire writing is a irrelevant waste of time.
Hume on personal identity:
ruclips.net/video/_S7zoPZdk9M/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/wKwVxI9F_Ig/видео.html
I love when people read passages, especially the moving ones, from Hume.
A modern take on similar lines: "Meta-atheism:
Religious Avowal as Self-Deception" by Georges Rey
Thanks for drawing my attention to this; that was an interesting article. It definitely presents a more forceful case than Hume does, but I still give Hume extra points given the time he was writing!
Thanks for mentioning this!
Really interesting take on religious belief - thanks for this
11:54 While I find arguments about action persuasive, I think there's an issue with confusing the existence of beliefs and how well those beliefs are considered. The completely secular belief "smoking causes cancer" doesn't prevent every smoker from smoking though it prevents some. It's a belief about chance just as is the relationship between sin and damnation. It's a lot easier to take risks when the effects are only felt after a significant period.
Conversely when the effects of action become more immediate, behaviour changes. There are many famous stories of atheists converting on their deathbeds. While most are in all likelihood apocryphal the plausibility of these stories speaks to something we know intuitively. Man seems to be one of only a few creatures whose fears may extend decades into the future and that's for good reason. Survival is often dependant on the here-and-now. You think more about tomorrow than today and you die. It's a little ironic then that deathbed conversions are evidence in favour of evolution rather than a benevolent creator who wishes not for his children to be damned.
But my argument falls short. People _do_ consider the far future, including periods after their own death. My intuition is that the impulse is a redirected impulse to procreate.
My argument also uses smoking as an example and smoking is an addictive behaviour. The nature of addiction changes preference. I am reminded of an economics lecture discussing the law of diminishing marginal utility. In order for addiction to make sense in regard to his conception of the law, they had to model addiction as changing the underlying utility function. (A more Austrian approach of ordinal preferences in place of cardinal utility seems to have less of a conflict.)
Addiction however only seems to change preferences so much. Those addicted so smoking, onanism etc will be able to resist if the result was to be immediately shot in the head. I'm not so sure about other substances such as crack cocaine and empirically people do drink themselves to death (though I think that's a little different and I've written too much already).
It's also worth keeping in mind that for Hume, reason is slave of the passions. Beliefs in themselves never motivate anybody to do anything; actions only follow from beliefs in conjunction with desires, and our desires can be anything imaginable (as Hume says, it's not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of my finger). I can believe that smoking causes cancer, and I can desire not to have cancer... but if I desire the minor rush provided by the cigarette more strongly than I desire to live as long as possible, then I'll choose to smoke, and as far as Hume is concerned there's nothing irrational about this. I assume that Hume would say that the problem in the case of the afterlife is that religious people profess that the afterlife is what actually matters to them. However, I do think that one obvious response to Hume is that, with respect to the point about action, it's not that religious people fail to believe in the afterlife, but that they are mistaken about what their desires are. If I have the desire for short-term pleasure, and I don't care at all about eternal damnation, then my beliefs about the afterlife will not motivate me. It also seems plausible that if people can engage in self-deception with respect to belief, they can engage in self-deception with respect to desire. Perhaps I want to be the kind of person whose goals are oriented towards the next world, but the carnal pleasures are just too tempting. I think Hume overlooks this possibility.
@@KaneB Mate I'm religious but i love this sort of thinking, where do i go to absorb these different points of views so i can break my brain. Is this philosophy? metaphysics? Epistemology? I haven't a clue
I haven't spoken to him in some time, but my father literally argued that smoking does *not* cause cancer.
The only way deathbed conversions are "plausible" is that some people lose their mental faculties as they approach death, and are thus easily conned/coerced into "conversion". Antony Flew is a perfect example of such elder abuse.
Interesting. Thanks. It does make sense that if Hume didn't [take himself to] detect himself (his self) enduring, then he would need to analyze personal identity in other terms.
What's going on in this comment section? It says there are 14 comments at the moment, but I can only see two of them!
No clue! I can also only see two
Nonzero chance that RUclips started automatically blocking the spam bots that are going around.
@@jolssoni2499 That makes sense, though in that case there must be way more spambots on this video than usual, for some reason.
@@KaneB Not sure about the app, but a lot of times if you're viewing in a browser, the comments default to sort by "Most Popular" but if you change it to "Newest First" more comments will show up.
See it would be nice to have some of these great Hume vocab words on the top of my head when we chatted. Cause my claim about the mystical state is a claim about vivacity. Meaning if imagining has weaker vivacity and a normal belief stronger vivacity and the mystical state even stronger vivacity still. That is the perfect word for it really, the undeniability of it comes from the vivacity being uncannily stronger than what we call "a belief" in the same way beliefs have force beyond imagination. Hume just has this way of getting straight to the heart of things.
Socrates and many other people are exceptions to this point. Socrates definitely behaved like he believed in an after life.
@@Barklord the common anti social behaviours which come from belief in an after life all involve believing that God is evil. Of course, they won't admit that their world view holds that God is evil but that's what it amounts too. If you believe God is motivated by love then you would never harm anyone else in the name of helping them.
@@Barklord From my experience, most people would consider non-existence to be a bad consequence. I suppose that is what you mean by "non-belief in negative afterlife"?
He seems agnostic about it in the Apology, saying death might just be like a dreamless sleep (if I remember correctly)
Certainly Plato expressed belief in the imortality of the soul, or spirit, as is evidenced in his Phaedo. That he should believe in the persistent reality of things immaterial, or at least not dependent on material manifestation, is of course the essense of Platonism.
As for the question of belief, I think belief is a somewhat subtle thing, akin to a kind of attitude or psychological embrace. Imagine, for example, a man who has been presented with a great deal of evidence towards a belief he doesn't want to admit, or, in otherwords, towards a proposition he does not want to believe. He might begin to suspect the thing is true, or perhaps even fully "believe" (or even "know") it to be true on a subconscious or non-verbal level, on some level of his mind where that "belief" is beyond his will and ability to control, and yet, through the power of his will and through his control over his own rational faculty, he might stubbornly refuse to admit the thing as a reasonable possibility.
Consider for example the psychological journey of a man who is thoroughly unwilling to admit the possible existence of God, who, through divine intervention, is ultimately forced to recognize God's reality (and also the reality of spirit, or form separated from substance).
In such a scenario, it is distinctly possible that such an overwhelming degree of "persuation" as might have been required for belief, where here by belief I mean a kind of psychological admission and acceptance, that by the time that this admission is finally made and the man finally believes, that belief comes with overwhelming certainty and conviction. The kind of certainty and conviction that, for example, might arise after understanding a mathametical proof for a mathematical proposition. The kind of situation where one is no longer capable of entertaining doubt, and where the kind of certainty or knowledge one posesses seems at least a compelling, certain and undeniable as that derived from the physical senses informing one of the reality of an physical object in the physical world.
Great video
Just gonna post some thoughts on why I don't find his argument persuasive. (might not reply if this gets interaction)
1. On beliefs.
I don't see how a dispositional account really explains the nature of belief. Dispositions are certainly associated with beliefs and their actions, but dispositions are not sufficient to distinguish what is believed from what is not believed.
"Belief in a proposition is distinguished from the other ways of thinking about the proposition by the force and vivacity with which the proposition is held."
I think a better way of distinguishing beliefs is that beliefs are ways of thinking of propositions such that they are seen as true by the subject. That is the will of a subject judges a proposition to be be true in some way, thus causing them to believe it in their mind.
This belief will influence their actions and disposition, but not in an entailing relation. Other conflicts will likely arise that influence the subject to make judgements of choice contrary to that belief.
Vivacity and disposition then isn't an explanation of belief itself, but rather of the modality of belief. This also means that while belief is not explained by action, actions are still in part explained by beliefs. (ex. my belief that there is food in the fridge is in part necessary for my action to get food from the fridge, but it does not entail that action.)
2. On resemblance, cognitive apprehension of an after life
What I'll say with this one is that the principle of sameness before and after death is that one think about things, that is intentionality(and thus intelligibility). The content and modality of my intentional awareness in an absolute sense is unknown, but I don't really think about that when I consider an afterlife in the basic sense. I'd also state that the mind is the same mind before and after death because it's individuating characteristic of the time it came into existence, and other inseparable accidents that individuate it, are the same before and after death.
(Also as another note, all inference is fundamentally based on unity/sameness. To imply that resemblance does not have a basic intelligible principle of similarity behind it and instead is arbitrary seems to have serious consequences for the act of inference in general.)
3. Actions
see 1). proximate fallible judgements of the will contrary to more general beliefs is not inconceivable. It may indicate that a belief is more weakly held, but that's just the modality of a belief.
4. Inconsistency
Cutting off someone else from possible repentance(by which otherwise they might be saved) by certainly killing them and the seen intrinsic evil of murder which injures one's own soul with mortal sin seems to be completely consistent with people repudiating said massacre and a belief in the serious consequences of an afterlife.
5. Painful Emotions
I don't really know what to say, still kind of based on my earlier point about what belief is I think.
On the whole I think the main point of contention was on the nature of belief, which I don't think Hume explains sufficiently.
Thank you.
>> I think a better way of distinguishing beliefs is that beliefs are ways of thinking of propositions such that they are seen as true by the subject.
I think Hume would agree with this, but he would probably respond that it just pushes the problem back. What exactly is it to see a proposition as true? How do I distinguish between seeing a proposition as true, and merely imagining that it's true, or wondering if it's true, etc.? And here he would appeal to the force/vivacity with which the proposition is held in the mind.
>> This belief will influence their actions and disposition, but not in an entailing relation
Hume would definitely agree with this. In Hume's view, beliefs in themselves are inert with respect to action. We also need desires. If believe that my house is burning down, and I believe that fire can kill me, I won't make any attempt to escape unless I also have the desire to remain alive. Of course, this point does raise a serious problem for Hume's argument concerning action: we could account for the behaviour of religious people by arguing that they are deceived about their own desires, not about their beliefs. Perhaps they genuinely believe in the afterlife, but it's that their desires are oriented towards this world (even if they would prefer their desires to be otherwise).
hume is the best philosopher in the world
The notion of a belief driving certain behaviors seems oversimplified. People buy lottery tickets, yet I doubt more than an extremely small number actually believe they will win. I suspect that if you did Hume's test on a large number of beliefs, you would find a disappointing correlation between belief and behavior with regard to beliefs that we consider interesting, as opposed to the mundane refrigerator belief. Also, the question whether there is some particular way that it feels to believe something or a way that it feels to mean something is perhaps not so easily answered. Although Hume's ideas are interesting, I think the most important reason by far that people may not believe in an afterlife is very simple: lack of evidence. Observation and induction tell us all men are mortal. The identity through time problem probably has little to do with it, and in fact probably becomes an issue only if you do believe that a person survives in some sense or other but are unsure just what form this survival takes, or what such survival is like.
I think for the lottery example, Hume might respond that while people don't believe that they will win the lottery, they do believe that playing the lottery is a possible means for acquiring a large amount of money. This is confirmed by the many cases of people who have in fact won the lottery. Since the cost of entry is small and the potential benefits enormous, it's understandable that people do it. I would add that I suspect that the vast majority who play the lottery significantly overestimate their chance of winning. If people realized that they're more likely to die while buying the ticket than winning with the ticket, I'd bet that far fewer of them would bother. No doubt some would -- but again, the cost of entry is so low, and people are easily reminded of past winners and of the potential rewards, so it's natural that they would take a shot with it.
I actually think that lottery playing fits quite naturally with Hume's view of the mind. You're at a the shop, you see the lottery tickets, which you are told have a 1 in 40,000,000 chance of winning. This perception prompts memories of reports of people winning the lottery. Due to the enormous rewards, this possible outcome imposes itself on your mind with a great force/vivacity. By contrast, because we are bad at reasoning with probability and because we cannot comprehend large numbers, the extremely small probability of actually winning is not felt so strongly. "1 in 40,000,000" is just not something we have any intuitive grasp of, and when we try to conceive it, the mind runs into a fog. You do not really believe that you have a 1 in 40,000,000 chance of winning -- that's not an idea that your mind can hold -- so of course, it does not motivate you as we would expect such a belief to do!
>> I think the most important reason by far that people may not believe in an afterlife is very simple: lack of evidence. Observation and induction tell us all men are mortal
But there are plenty of religious people who will claim that they do have evidence and argument for the proposition that there is an afterlife. Of course, I don't find their case convincing, and neither did Hume, but are there good reasons to think that the people offering such arguments are not really convinced by them? Hume provides some independent reasons for thinking so. Putting those reasons to one side, all we have is that we judge the religious arguments to fail. But we know that people can genuinely disagree in their assessment of the strength of arguments. So I don't think lack of evidence in itself is a good case for Hume's conclusion.
Part of the argument seems to use a dispositional account of belief, that's interesting!
I'd seen that in the pragmatist tradition, but I didn't know Hume used it
I assume that from our point of view, Hume's account would be an inchoate mixture of views. He treats beliefs as mental entities -- ideas held with a particular force or vivacity -- but yes, he does sometimes hint at a dispositional account. However, I think Hume would probably say that patterns of behaviour indicate belief rather than constitute it. Ultimately, what really matters is what's going on in the head. We believe a proposition when it feels forceful or vivid or solid.
You'd be surprised how Islam explains in detail the significant changes in the human condition in the afterlife. There are also many realms before entering heaven in Islamic religion.
However, the problem lies in the lack of coherent explanations. If you ask them, they're told to say only Allah knows the truth.
Although I'm not religious anymore, it's true that even Islamic people rarely ponder these things or have knowledge about them. I believe religion is a form of self-deception, although that isn't necessarily bad for normal people. I'm not against religion or anything. But I will worry if highly influential people being too religious
this is an interesting thought
Would you agree with kant in these points?
I wasn't aware that Kant wrote anything about this topic.
I think Hume's core argument feels very ego centric. How can he actually claim with certainty that he knows what others believe? From this I also find that most of his other arguments aren't convincing. They all leave the impression that he assumes everyone else would think like him. A good example is his fear argument. Some people do actually enjoy fear in their real lives (sky diving is a good example).
A second point is that I also don't really see how his arguments follow out of his conclusions.
If I tell you I believe there is a solid wall right here, but I persistently walk thru that area, I'm demonstrating that I don't in fact believe in the wall. That's what Hume is saying: people demonstrate their beliefs by what they do.
As for sky-diving, it is the adrenaline rush people enjoy, not the fear. To the degree there is any fear at all, it is the fear talked about in the video: autonomic fear, neutered by being logically convinced that there is no real danger.
@@jursamaj
Your example isn't really equivalent to what is actually happening. Faith and religion is a large personal but very nebulous thing, where as the wall is incredibly concrete. I don't see why a person cannot truly believe in a religion but not act like it. I don't even really see what the problem is with that. You can call them poor followers of their religion, but you cannot claim that they actually don't believe it at all. You don't know the inside of someone's mind better than they do.
@@TheGlenn8 I don't have to be in their minds. Their actions *show* their beliefs.
@@jursamaj
No it doesn't. Not on something as vague and immaterial as faith and religion.
Some people do act as though they believe in the afterlife. Those people are terrifying.
"Negative emotions become enjoyable when they are not prompted by genuine belief"
Could we apply this to the sensational style of political commentary? You could make an argument analogous to Hume's about a lot of idividuals enjoying political controversies and the like a bit too much for matters of serious concern. And the most popular political content creators on YT are very much of the doom and gloom variety.
If I have to go to Hell, I hope I can take my Alzheimer's with me
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Einstein
Personal Identity is recorded (saved) AS spactime geometry. We are not losing states. They are all preserved.
@Oners82 If I don't, then neither does Tegmark. Perhaps you don't understand and I do?
(Max Tegmark discussing Life and Death according to Space-time)
“In the end, all the information is of course encoded just in the geometry of these patterns in space-time.
So in that sense, if you know what’s in space-time, it’s like you have the whole video tape of the Universe. It’s all in there. If we take Einstein seriously about space-time, I THINK IT ALSO FORCES US TO RETHINK DEATH in the sense that when I was a little kid I THOUGHT IT WAS SO HORRIBLE WHEN I DIE I’M GOING TO DISAPPEAR SOMEHOW AND THERE’S NOTHING LEFT. WHEREAS, OF COURSE, IF I THINK OF MYSELF AS JUST THIS PATTERN IN SPACE-TIME, THAT’S NEVER GOING TO GO AWAY. MY DEATH IS JUST THE END OF THE LITTLE SPAGHETTI STRAND AND MY BIRTH WAS THE OTHER END. IT’S ALL THERE. Personally this sort of works for me, this way of life thinking about life. It re-emphasizes to me that the important thing is the journey itself, not the end points of the spaghetti. I know what I’m going to be doing 100 years from now. It’s going to be very boring. Bu that doesn’t in any way take away from the fact that this is a fascinating life here. AND MOREOVER, IT’S NOT THIS IS EVER GOING TO GO AWAY. Space-time is the fundamental thing.
I THINK THIS WHOLE FEELING THAT THE PAST JUST DISAPPEARS IS JUST AN ILLUSION. BECAUSE EVERY LITTLE PIECE OF OUR CONSCIENCE AS WE MOVE ALONG OUR WORLDLINE WILL ONLY REMEMBER ITS PAST AND NOT ITS FUTURE. BUT THE PAST IS NO LESS IMPORTANT THAN OUR FUTURE. AND I THINK THAT GIVES A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF CONSOLATION.” Max Tegmark
@@eenkjet I'm Catholic but that quote does not mean what you think it means. He's specifically talking about physical (and nearly imperceptable) local perturbations in space-time caused by your body, not anything about your spirit.
@@brendanfay5140 How do you read that into this condolence?
His statement is consistent with the notion that space-time presents a quasi-substance dualism that is common among physicists.
What Hume thinks about marxism?
Nothing. Hume was dead before Marx was born. I have a video on Hume's political philosophy here: ruclips.net/video/2-_av0tw_4w/видео.html
Hume do not have any credibility..Because he was so evil, he is coming back as a beggar
So the dogmatic beliefs of at least the Catholic church are well defined with regards to the after life. If we are going to argue that people do not believe in the afterlife as proposed by for instance the catholic church we should at least regard what the church says. In this case the church says you will be revived in the body you had upon death but this body will have been transformed by resurrection into a perfected state free of illness and the like. A body similar to the resurrected body of Christ. Now I should mention that these statements have a contradiction namely Jesus body famously had the signs of crucifixion after his resurrection. Meaning that the perfected body may retain signs of the cause of death. Then again it may simply be the case that Jesus allowed his wounds to be physical when he had to prove his resurrection.
In any case, if your argument hinges on having a radically different perception that is not how pretty much any afterlife has been percieved.
"The body you had at death, but massively transformed to perfection" is *not* well defined.
Christianity actually gives strong hints about metaphysical existence after death if you read the scriptures:
"So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. - 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 "
" Who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. - Philippians 3:20-21 "
It basically says that you get a new and better body in a "higher state" of existence; the best way to metaphysically conceptualize this state would be to imagine if your physical state and environment were somehow free of entropy
In Vedic philosophy, it's pretty simple, your pure consciousness (Ātman) gets thrown into another human body repeatedly.
The ancient Greek case was interesting; according to them, you roamed around as a shade/fraction of your former self in Hades. It was admittedly quite a crappy existence, according to the Iliad.
I cannot think of a religion that proposes an entirely disembodied existence in the afterlife, except maybe early Gnosticism?
Hume's argument is ultimately a Strawman
Otherwise, great channel; you cover philosophy with good clarity and neutrality.
Wouldn’t he still consider this belief faulty as well? Plus wasn’t a non corporeal state the popular belief at the time?
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Your consciousness is a form of energy. Hence it can never be destroyed. Hence the existence of a soul.
@Oners82 The brain runs on electrical signals. That requires energy. Everybody has a special energy signature that makes them who they are. And when one dies the energy returns to the source And that source is God. Consciousness can never die remember that.
@Oners82 Yes I did have a soul before I was sent into this world but that's a whole other can of "worms" to open lol. How wonderful 😄😄😄
Weak.
@Oners82 Perhaps. Comment refers to video.
@Oners82 I know you know and I know. Video not important enough. Too cliche you see. Just a sequence of unfalsifiables. Lot of what would be true if religion was x, but not what if true entails religion is x. So weak. This is just a long gaslighting fallacy. Pretty obvious. Regardless the articulation is not very on par either.
@Oners82 1:12 Belief in a proposition is not a way of thinking about a proposition. “Force and vivacity” are merely metaphorical here.
Okay, one is a possible world and one is the actual world. They could be phenomenologically equivalent depending on how well someone is able to convince themselves of it, otherwise it wouldn’t be imagining.
Unless you mean imagine as in make a purely representational construction in your mind.
Him saying that the content of the proposition is the same is an assumption actually.
Also representationally, when you consider “God”, it is redundant with respect to the truth of the proposition “God exists”. They are the same. Regardless of this it is an assumption that one is actually able to represent God’s existence only as a possibility while not holding it as an actuality and have as much phenomenological access to the implications of the actuality of God’s existence. This is just an assumption of Hume.
“The force of the proposition in the mind” is vague. Obviously if something is true v. untrue, in it being true I’d have to act on the basis that it is true, but if false I can ignore it. It is not “the force of the proposition on the mind” in any direct sense, rather it is actually the truth of the proposition. If I imagine a Tiger exists v. belief a Tiger exists, firstly it is not actually obvious that the content of the propositions in my mind would be the same, because imagining is something abstractly represented while knowing can be something more directly phenomenologized depending on how exactly it is known. Secondly, obviously I need to react to a Tiger in real life and not in my abstract representation so it has a greater impact insofar as it actually matters in the real world of the proposition is true.
3:49
Also it is obvious that what moves you is belief insofar as ethical criteria are predicated on states of the real world as best judged by some agent. Beliefs don’t “govern” actions, they form the basis on which choices to act are made based on ethical criteria.
Hume’s Identity over Time Thesis. We consider two things identical over time if any change in the objects is gradual, if the change is dramatic then we consider the object to be two separate objects.
No one believes in the after life because no one can phenomenologies the Afterlife in any way that is concrete relative to our local experience.
Hume’s notion of identity over time is by time continguity.
Hume makes all sorts of assumptions about how we naturally intuit objects as though in some uniform empirical way. As though the afterlife is something which we must compare to a walk on the park. Instead of say, something like dreaming. Very very weak. The whole sudden radical change thesis makes no sense because he assumes that under some uniform notion of experience we will have some dramatically different experience. This is just an assumption.
10:31 now comes a lot of weak vagueness. When we go out into the world Hime claims we assume that other toro ole actually exist. But what is the difference between assuming people actually exist and people actually don’t beyond an artificial mental projection? There isn’t one. This is a vacuous point. Unfalsifiable either way.
“Ordinary resemblance”? What does that mean? Why not just any resemblance? Why not in ordinary resemblance? What is the difference between these?
Now do you get what weak means? I could go on and on.
Hume has in the end essentially just defined “belief in the afterlife” in a trivial way, in a way no one uses it or very much cares to use it.
When we say that we believe in the afterlife, we are not saying we can actually phenomenologize it in some sense because obviously we know it is unlike our local experience. All you need to know is that paradise is bliss, fire is painful, and belief in God and good work in this world leads to the former, sin to the latter. We analogize from our local experience to how pleasure and pain feel, and have been told what is right and wrong. Nothing else is necessary.
Where is Hume’s evidence that all people or even most people are actually motivated by this world? Then his entire case is actually equivalent to this assertion. What about the people who die in war believing they will go to paradise? There were very many people in the Medieval period. Very ignorant sentiment of Hume.
Hume fails to see this, so his entire writing is a irrelevant waste of time.