Perception, Physics, and Reality; An Enquiry Into the Information That Physical Science Can Supply about the Real (Paperback)

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1914 Original Publisher: University Press Subjects: Light Mechanics Perception Reality Relativity (Physics) Metaphysics Physics Knowledge, Theory of Sense data Philosophy / General Philosophy / Epistemology Philosophy / Metaphysics Psychology / Cognitive Psychology Science / Light Science / Mechanics / General Science / Physics Science / Relativity Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER II ON CAUSATION; AND ON THE ARGUMENTS THAT HAVE BEEN USED AGAINST CAUSAL LAWS In this chapter we propose to discuss Causation, and more particularly certain problems connected with it on which objections to causation have been based. It is clearly quite useless to discuss the causal theory of perception and its bearing on the reality of what we perceive until we at least know whether there is any reason to believe that causal laws are necessarily invalid. At the same time this chapter will omit some considerations which, though vitally necessary for a complete view of causation, are beyond our present scope. I shall assume in fact the belief that the results of proceeding upon the theory of probability are correct without exhaustively discussing the nature and validity of the axioms on which it is based. This practically means that I shall assume what everybody does assume that the ordinary processes of induction do lead to propositions which are probably true; though we might find it very hard to say on precisely what grounds we believed this. What then does Causality mean ? This question has, of course, been discussed ad naiiseam, but the discussion has lead to so little agreement that it is worth while to enter upon it again. There ...