William O'Meara (c) Copyright, 1997
David Hume: The Cause-Effect Connection
1. What is Hume's position on rational intuition into the supposed connection between a cause and its effect? Exemplify and explain.
2. What objection could we raise against Hume? How would Hume reply to that objection? Explain Hume's view that the argument for knowledge of the causal principle is circular.
3. Is there a way of trying to answer Hume's view that knowledge of the causal principle is circular? What is your view about whether or not it is possible for something to come to be from nothig? Explain.
4. Does Hume hold that we have a sensory experience of the necessary connection between cause and effect? Explain his view.
5. Do you agree with Hume's analysis of the experience of causality? Explain why or why not.
Hume on Knowledge of God
6. Exemplify and explain the only way we believe in cause-effect relationships for Hume.
7. Using that way of believing in the cause of an event, exemplify and explain how we could know God as the cause of the world for Hume.
8. Why cannot we use that way of believing in the cause of an event to prove that God is the cause of the world?
9. What is the argument that is usually offered from causality which Hume summarizes?
10. What would Aquinas's evaluation of that argument be?
11. What is Hume's evaluation of that argument?
12. What is the comparison of their evaluations in the lecture at the end of the lecture?
David Hume: The Cause-Effect Connection
Hume argues that there is no rational insight or intuition into the supposed connection between a cause and its effect. On p. 64 of our text, he-writes; "I shall venture to affirm...that the knowledge of this relation (of cause and effect) is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori (by reasonings about the ideas of things)." For example, people with a perfect ability to think could not infer from the appearance of water when they first see it that it would suffocate them. The mere idea of the fluidity and transparency of water does not show to the mind that it will prevent a us from breathing. Another example; the light of a fire does not show to the mind that it will burn us. For example again, the motion of one billiard ball does not show to the mind that it will make another billiard ball move.
We can all predict that water will suffocate, fire burn, and one moving billiard ball make another billiard ball move on their contact, but we make these predictions on the basis of our past experiences. However, the mind in examining the idea of these things has no idea what effects they will produce when the mind ceases to rely on past experience. For example, suppose that I tell you that the library has a special object called 'ssengnlhton' locked up on the fifth floor and that you have never had any experience prior to my telling you this fact. Can you tell me what made 'ssengnihton' if indeed it had a maker, that is to say, what caused it if indeed it had a cause? Can you tell me that it had a cause? Can you tell me what effects it could bring about? Can you tell me if it will bring about any effects whatsoever? Obviously, you can tell me nothing.
Therefore, Hume concludes: "No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the causes which produced it, or the effects which will arise from it."
We might agree with Hume's examples and his conclusion but raise the objection that we would know that 'ssengnihton' must have a cause even though we don't know what that cause would be except that it is able to produce 'ssengnihton.' We would argue that nothing comes from nothing, that if 'ssengnihton' comes into existence, it must come from something: call it that which is able to produce 'ssengnihton.'
Hume could reply as follows to our objection: The objection fully stated would read as follows:
Hume argues that the above argument is circular when we fully analyze it. For it is like the following circular argument:
The 'ssengnihton' argument is similar:
In order to make the argument about humans and mortality a good argument, we need some way of knowing that 'these humans are mortal' without appealing to the general principle that 'all humans are mortal.'
So also, to make the second argument good, we need some way of knowing that 'ssengnihton' which begins to exist must have a cause without appealing to the general principle that'all things that begin to exist must have a cause.'
Hume argues there is no experience of any necessary connection between cause and effect, writes Gallagher:
What Hume was primarily combating was really the common sense notion of a cause, according to which event A 'makes' event B happen; for example, for common sense to say that the moving stone 'caused' the window to break means two things: (1) there was a power in A (the moving stone) which made B (the window breaking) happen, and (2) this connection was a necessary one, such that given a similarly moving stone and a similarly constructed window, a similar breaking would occur. Now, Hume, in keeping with his theory of the origin of ideas from experience, first asks where we get the notion of this 'power.' It is not drawn from observation and cannot be verified through observation. What we observe is the sequence of events, the moving stone and the breaking window; we do not observe some occult 'power' which acts between one event and the other. As for the 'necessity' of this event, we surely do not observe this either. We observe the sequence, but not its necessity. Where, then, do we get the notion of necessity? We get it from the habit we develop of expecting event B to occur whenever event A occurs. We have observed such sequences many times before, and in each case event B follows event A - they are constantly conjoined. Because of this, wherever we witness event A our mind automatically, habitually, anticipates event B; we can't help anticipating it. This, however, 1S only a psychological necessity in us, not an objective necessity in things. We project this psychologically inevitable expectation into the objective sequence and treat it as an inevitable connection in events. While understandable, this projection cannot be logically validated. For the two events are physically distinct, and there is nothing inconceivable about the window not breaking next time." [Gallagher, Philosophy of Knowledge, pp. 141-142, edited]
This awareness that we neither know the cause-effect connection by abstract reasoning about ideas nor experience that connection leaves us in an isolated moment of time. We could be paralyzed in action bu this scepticism about causality. However, realizing the limits of knowledge, we live by our feelings and beliefs that event B whicxh gas always followed A in the past will continue to do so in the future.
We have seen this approach in the ethics of Mill. He could not prove the first principle of morals, but he was not paralyzed by this theoretical scepticism about the first principle of morality. He had an internal feeling that the greatest happiness of the greatest number was worth pursuing. He could not prove that there was a qualitative difference in various kinds of happiness, but he had an internal feeling that it was better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied and better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. The ethics of Hume is quite similar to the ethics of Mill. We cannot prove the basic principle of morality by reasoning, but we can trust an internal feeling which Hume calls the sentiment of humanity and which Mill calls a feeling of oneness with others. This sentiment gives us a feeling of empathic concern for others. If this feeling is developed from infancy to adulthood, then a universal morality can be founded upon this feeling of humanity.
Hume on Knowledge of God
According to Hume's analysis of our belief in cause-effect relationships, we can have no knowledge of God
The only way in which we believe in cause-effect relationships is through the experience of constant conjunction, called today in science a correlation. For example:
The only way we believe in the cause of an event is by experience of first the cause and then the effect a number of times such that a correlation is established. Now it follows that if we could experience God as the first event and the world as the second event, then we could know God as the cause of the world. For example:
However, we do not experience first God and then the galaxy [universe] in any astronomical obserevation of galaxies [universes]. We have only our experience of this one universe since all the galaxies are part of one universe so far as we know. We have no other universe to which we could compare our universe. We cannot, therefore argue by the similarity of a number of examples of different universes to God as the cause of our universe.
If we were to try to analyze our experience of this universe to offer an argument for god as the first cause, this is the argument that might be offered, writes Hume:
Whatever exists must have a cause or reason of its existence; it being absolutely imposssible for anything to produce itself, or be the cause of its own existence. In mounting up, therefore, from effects to causes, we must either go on in tracing an infinite succession, without any ultimate cause at all; or must at last have recourse to some ultimate cause or necessarily existent [Being that has no prior cause. [Such an infinite regression into prior causes is impossible.] We must, therefore, have recourse to a necessarily existent Being, who carries the reason [ground] of his existence in himself; and who cannot be supposed not to exist without an express contradiction. [Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, part IX]
Of course, Aquinas would say that an infinite regression into prior causes is possible in an accidentally ordered series of causes but not in an essentially ordered series of causes. However, Hume is dealing only with accidentally ordered series of causes in which first one event happens and then another event happens. In fact, Aquinas would agreee with Hume that in such a series there would be no need to conclude to a first cause. Aquinas would say that it is conceivable that the world of matter and energy could itself be eternal and that we cannot prove in an accidentally ordered series of causes which goes back infinitely that God is the First, Uncaused Cause of such a series.
Hume, in direct objection to the attempted proof of God which he has summarized, writes:
Why may not the material universe be the necessarily-existent being, according to this pretended explication of necessity? We dare not affirm that we know all the qualities of matter; and for aught we can determine, it may contain some qualities which, were they known,would make its [the world's] non-existence appear as great a contradiction as that twice two is five. [Dialogues]
In summary, Hume rejects any supposed rational insight into the principle of efficient causality and says that we only experience constant conjunction of one event after another. Hence, the argument from causality is turned by Hume into what Aquinas called an argument from an accidentally ordered series of causes. aquinas would agree with Hume that such an argument cannot conclude to a First Cause. However, Aquinas proposes a different argument, not the one rejected by Hume.
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