Any imformation on David Humes theory of causation.?

Answer 1

Hey Mich,

When one event continually follows after another, most people think that a connection between the two events makes the second event follow from the first (post hoc ergo propter hoc - after this, therefore, because of this.). Hume challenged this belief in the first book of his Treatise on Human Nature and later in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He noted that although we do perceive the one event following the other, we do not perceive any necessary connection between the two. And according to his skeptical epistemology, we can trust only the knowledge that we acquire from our perceptions. Hume asserted that our idea of causation consists of little more than expectation for certain events to result after other events that precede them. "We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoin'd [sic] together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire a union in the imagination." (Hume, 1740: 93). We cannot actually say that one event caused another. All we know for sure is that one event is correlated to another. For this Hume coined the term 'constant conjunction'. That is, when we see that one event always 'causes' another, what we are really seeing is that one event has always been 'constantly conjoined' to the other. As a consequence, we have no reason to believe that one caused the other, or that they will continue to be 'constantly conjoined' in the future (Popkin & Stroll, 1993: 268). The reason we do believe in cause and effect is not because cause and effect are the actual way of nature; we believe because of the psychological habits of human nature (Popkin & Stroll, 1993: 272).

Such a lean conception robs causation of all its force, and some later Humeans like Bertrand Russell have dismissed the notion of causation altogether as something akin to superstition. But this defies common sense, hence, the problem of causation – what justifies our belief in a causal connection and what kind of connection can we have knowledge of? – is a problem which has no accepted solution. Hume held that we (and other animals) have an instinctive belief in causation based on the development of habits in our nervous system, a belief that we cannot eliminate, but which we cannot prove true through any argument, deductive or inductive, just as is the case with regard to our belief in the reality of the external world.

Answer 2

See the link. For Hume, what we mean when we say A causes B is that in the past, every time A occurs B follows. We do not see directly a necessary causal connection. We see a regular pattern of events.

Answer 3

The theory says that things may be connected but not necessarily conjoined.

Answer 4

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume#The_problem_of_causation

Good Luck!!!