David Hume and determinism

[navyguy]

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Determinism may also be defined as the thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.[1] With numerous historical debates, many varieties and philosophical positions on the subject of determinism exist from traditions throughout the world.

[beachblinkette]

I've also read about Hume after finding out Desmond's last name.His mother came from a family of lawyers but that wasn't for him.He believed that we make the relations between cause and effect in our minds. "The repeated experience of pairs of events sets up a habit of expectation such that when one of the pairs occurs, we expect the other." If the light is on then I expect that someone has turned on the switch. We've learned to make that connection between the two things because that's what we've observed. "He was a popular figure in the literary world of the time.He was sociable, witty, kind,
ingenuous to his friends, innocently vain and devoid of envy." He was known as Saint David in Scotland. He had many women friends but never married.He died from cancer. I tried to read more of his thinking but it was over my head. Like you, I have cracked some books for Lost! Didn't mean to go off the deep end there.Sigh.

[Glenn2000]

I know what you mean about cracking books because of the program. After reading some of Hume I read some of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and his Hegelian System or dialectic,the process in which opposites - the thesis and antithesis - are reconciled in compromise or synthesis.

The application relevant here is the idea that the Others (thesis) are the perceived enemy of the Survivors (antithesis). The ensuing conflict produces an eventual leveling of both sides through battles, switching sides, deaths (synthesis).

Now with the arrival of the Freighter Folks, the process begins again...

[beachblinkette]

Glenn-I've heard several people say that for watching a TV show, they have never delved so deeply into all kinds of books including the Bible! Oh, the power of Lost!

[Turnip Queen]

I just noticed that this Hume guy, A John Locke, and a Rousseau are all linked as philosophers - the amount of stuff linked together is unreal, I knew about Rousseau but not the rest!