Hume

Hume

1. Causal Inference

   • Cause & Effect
     • See puddle = infer rain
     • See fire = infer heat
   • Negative Claims
     • No apriori knowledge of causal relations
       • Rejection of rationalist view of causation
     • Constant Conjunctions
       • Experience of similar pairs of events
         • E.g. fire + heat
         • Come to attribute certain powers through experience
           • Paralysis
             • At first, try to move limb
               • Believe they have power to move limb
             • Experience = no power to move
       • Uniformity principle
         • Unprovable
           • Via demonstrative reasoning
             • Attempt to prove on apriori grounds
             • No contradiction
           • Via probable reasoning
             • Attempt to prove on empirical grounds
             • Circular
         • Conclusions based on supposing future will echo past
   • Positive Claim
     • Custom (not reason)
       • Experience of constant conjunction between fire & heat has effect on human imagination so that seeing fire prompts idea of heat
       • Prompts idea that is more intense/steady than fictions of imagination
         • Law of human nature rather than rational reason for belief
     • No argument for belief
       • Animals, children etc. have belief without reasoning ability
       • Primitive mechanism

2. Copy Principle

   • Ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions
   • Impossible to think of something we haven't previously experienced

3. 4 mutually inconsistent propositions

   • Theory of Ideas
     • If we have idea of x it must be possible to explain how we acquired x in accordance with copy principle
   • Causal Beliefs
     • We have beliefs about causal relations
   • Necessary Connexion
     • Part of the idea of x causing y necessitates occurrence of y
   • No Experience of Necessary Connexion
   • Responses
     • Regularity Theory
       • Reject Necessary Connexion
       • Causation = pairs of similar events regularly follow each other
       • Seems incompatible with claim that our idea of causation involves more than the idea of correlation
     • Sceptical Realism
       • Believe things to have causal powers but can't know what they are
       • Idea of them isn't acquired through experience
     • Projectivist Account
       • Causation = analogous to Locke's secondary qualities
         • Power of object to produce sensation
       • Repeated experience -> internal sensation
         • Attribute internal sensation to external object