I have noticed that a lot of people are reluctant to talk about causation, on LessWrong and elsewhere ever since Hume
I am having trouble understanding what you mean, since I see causation talked about a lot here. But I also think it’s funny how Hume wrote about causation in 1748, and you’re worried that people still haven’t gotten over it.
My aside about Hume referred to the passage where he gives two different definitions of causation in consecutive sentences, yet asserts them to be equivalent:
we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second. Or in other words where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.
The first of these is the idea of constant conjunction, or as we would now call it, correlation, and the second is the idea of a counterfactual statement. Many have remarked on this contradiction.
I am having trouble understanding what you mean, since I see causation talked about a lot here. But I also think it’s funny how Hume wrote about causation in 1748, and you’re worried that people still haven’t gotten over it.
My aside about Hume referred to the passage where he gives two different definitions of causation in consecutive sentences, yet asserts them to be equivalent:
“Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, V,2,60. Emphasis in the original.
The first of these is the idea of constant conjunction, or as we would now call it, correlation, and the second is the idea of a counterfactual statement. Many have remarked on this contradiction.