| | Jordan, in Post 38, you wrote, Circumstances change. Objects change. Identities change. This makes predictive certainty impossible. Joseph's critique doesn't overcome this point. The issue is not with the law of identity. It is with the efficacy of casuation identification. The point of Joseph's critique was to answer Hume, and he's done that. Hume was arguing against necessity in causation. Joseph refutes Hume by showing that necessity is a function of identity. In Joseph's view (and that of Objectivism), the law of identity is ontological; it is not simply a law of thought, but a law of reality. The law of causality, which says that if the cause is the same, the effect must be the same, is a corollary of the law of identity. Just as a thing must be what it is, so it must act according to its nature.
According to Joseph: "The fact of change is not disputed, nor the difficulty of finding two things that are qualitatively the same. But if the second has a different effect, that must be because of its qualitative difference form the first, and not merely because it is a second; and so far as it is qualitatively the same, the effect must be the same also: it being understood of course that to sameness of effect qualitative sameness is equally necessary in all the material conditions. To deny this is to deny the possibility of reasoning altogether. If we cannot truly make the same assertion about a number of things, then, as Aristotle observes, there will be no universal, and so no middle term, and no demonstration. (Anal. Post. a. xi. 776a 5-8) For an universal judgment connects a certain attribute with a certain subject in virtue of their nature and without regard to the frequency of their existence." (An Introduction to Logic, p. 408)
Furthermore, I wouldn't say that just because circumstances, objects or identities change, predictive certainty is impossible. I can predict with certainty that if I drop an ice cube from my freezer into a glass of water, the ice cube will float. I know this, because I know that I am dropping an ice cube into water. To be sure, if I had some reason to doubt that the cube is ice, or the liquid water, then I would have less than predictive certainty. But barring such doubts, I can be certain that the cube will float once it's dropped into the liquid. I can also be certain that if I try to walk on water, I will sink. I know this, because I know my own identity and that of the water.
On the other hand, if I flip a coin into the air, I cannot be certain that it will land heads or that it will land tails. All I can be certain of is that it will land either heads or tails. Predictive certain is possible in some cases, but not in others.
- Bill
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