Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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As he approached the shadow in which I sat I recognized him as the man whom I had seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But how had I known that this man's name was Margovan? Some cannot. Cause and effect is one of the three philosophical relations that afford us less than certain knowledge, what is billiards the other two being identity and situation. After explicating these two main components of Hume’s notion of causation, three families of interpretation will be explored: the causal reductionist, who takes Hume’s definitions of causation as definitive; the causal skeptic, who takes Hume’s problem of induction as unsolved; and the causal realist, who introduces additional interpretive tools to avoid these conclusions and maintains that Hume has some robust notion of causation. The three natural relations are resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. Hume therefore recognizes cause and effect as both a philosophical relation and a natural relation, at least in the Treatise, the only work where he draws this distinction. But note that when Hume says "objects", at least in the context of reasoning, he is referring to the objects of the mind, that is, ideas and impressions, since Hume adheres to the Early Modern "way of ideas", the belief that sensation is a mental event and therefore all objects of perception are mental.
However, it is not reason that justifies us, but rather instinct (and reason, in fact, is a subspecies of instinct for Hume, implying that at least some instinctual faculties are fit for doxastic assent). Once we realize that "A must bring about B" is tantamount merely to "Due to their constant conjunction, we are psychologically certain that B will follow A", then we are left with a very weak notion of necessity. It is therefore not entirely clear how Hume views the relationship between his account of necessity and the Problem. Because of the variant opinions of how we should view the relationship between the two definitions proffered by Hume, we find two divergent types of reduction of Humean causation. Of two events, A and B, we say that A causes B when the two always occur together, that is, are constantly conjoined. Thus, objections like: Under a Humean account, the toddler who burned his hand would not fear the flame after only one such occurrence because he has not experienced a constant conjunction, are unfair to Hume, as the toddler would have had thousands of experiences of the principle that like causes like, and could thus employ resemblance to reach the conclusion to fear the flame.
Mature trees line the property and are all labeled so that you can appreciate how many different species are on the property! However, not everyone agrees that D2 can or should be dropped so easily from Hume’s system. Hume’s most important contributions to the philosophy of causation are found in A Treatise of Human Nature, and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the latter generally viewed as a partial recasting of the former. Clearly it is not a logical modality, as there are possible worlds in which the standard laws of causation do not obtain. Hume points out that this second component of causation is far from clear. We have stayed at B & B across the US and Riverside Inn was the best by far! Best Bed and Breakfast EVER! A complex book that discusses the works of several philosophers in arguing for its central thesis, Craig’s work is one of the first to defend a causal realist interpretation of Hume. This means that any complex idea can eventually be traced back to its constituent impressions.
As causation, at base, involves only matters of fact, Hume once again challenges us to consider what we can know of the constituent impressions of causation. Instead of taking the notion of causation for granted, Hume challenges us to consider what experience allows us to know about cause and effect. But cause and effect is also one of the philosophical relations, where the relata have no connecting principle, instead being artificially juxtaposed by the mind. Just pulling up to the estate, one gets a sense that they are entering a special and rare retreat of a by-gone era. Hume’s Copy Principle therefore states that all our ideas are products of impressions. Though Hume himself is not strict about maintaining a concise distinction between the two, we may think of impressions as having their genesis in the senses, whereas ideas are products of the intellect. Evening meditation and morning work somewhat allayed her fears, and having decided that she wouldn't be vain enough to think people were going to propose when she had given them every reason to know what her answer would be, she set forth at the appointed time, hoping Teddy wouldn't do anything to make her hurt his poor feelings.
