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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The explanatory model that infers hidden causes from visible effects cannot secure the inference that same visible effects share the same hidden cause.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.There is always a barrier in moving from sensible qualities to the structure of hidden qualities.
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    • 2.Experience of visible effects does not yield knowledge of the secret power by which one object produces another.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hume's problem of induction shows that no finite set of observed regularities can logically necessitate a universal causal law connecting effects to a single hidden cause.
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    • 2.Underdetermination of theory by evidence (Duhem-Quine) entails that multiple incompatible hidden causal structures can always account for the same observed effects equally well.
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    • 3.If rival hidden-cause hypotheses are empirically equivalent, no observable datum can privilege one over another, making the inference to a shared cause epistemically groundless.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Locke conceded in Essay II.xxiii that we have no positive idea of substance itself, only a supposition of 'something' supporting observable qualities, leaving hidden causes irreducibly opaque.
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    • 2.Because the content of any inferred hidden cause is derived solely from its postulated relation to visible effects, two distinct hidden causes producing identical effects are in principle indistinguishable by the inferential method itself.
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