Affiliation:
1. Philosophy, College of Charleston
Abstract
Abstract
Addressing issues of causation raised by Hume, Lady Mary Shepherd (1777–1847) argues in her 1824 treatise that we can know causal principles through reason and that conclusions we reach through induction are secure. Her second book (1827) uses her account of causation to argue, against Berkeley, that we can know that enduring, independently existing, external objects exist. In both stages of her project, Shepherd uses mathematical analogies to illuminate her arguments. In particular, Shepherd maintains that cause and effect are not simultaneous but synchronous and that causal relationships can be expressed by equations; in her argument to establish the existence of the external world, she says that our sensations are like “algebraic signs, by which we can compute and know the proportions of their qualities” and thereby understand objects in the external world. This chapter explores Shepherd’s arguments through a close examination of these mathematical analogies.
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