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Realism and Empiricism in Hume's Account of Causality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2007

Bernard McBreen
Bernard McBreen
Affiliation:
Liverpool
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Abstract

Hume's empirical approach seems to drain the concept of causality of all content, so that causality in objects is reduced to constant conjunction. His use of language of causality, which is necessarily realist, is undermined by his account of causality, which is not realist. The realist intepretation of Hume, by philosophers such as Galen Strawson, is rejected because it is incompatible with empiricism. However, if Hume's view that we do not have any sensory experience of causing is challenged, then the way is open to give an account of causality which is both empiricist and realist.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 421 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2007

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References

1 Strawson, P.F., Analysis of Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 1992), 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The two main statements of this new interpretation are: Strawson, Galen, The Secret Connexion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)Google Scholar and Wright, J.P., The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (Manchester University Press, 1983Google Scholar). But also see Strawson's later re-statement of his position in ‘David Hume: Objects and Power’. The New Hume Debate, (eds.) Rupert Read and Kenneth A. Richman (London: Routledge, 2000).

3 I refer to Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) in the text by using the letter T followed by the page number. This book also contains Hume's Abstract. T656 is a quote from the Abstract. I refer to Hume's Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding And Concerning The Principles of Morals ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch 3rd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) in the text by using the letter U followed by the page number.

4 Op. cit. note 2.

5 J.P. Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 133.

6 Op. cit. note 5, 129.

7 ‘The New Hume’, The New Hume Debate, 54.

8 ‘On the Notion of Cause’, Mysticism and Logic (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1918), 186.

9 The Secret Connexion, 121.

10 ‘David Hume: Objects and Power’, The New Hume Debate, 48.

11 The Sceptical Realism of David Hume, 129.

12 The Secret Connexion, 11.

13 Op. cit. note 12, 254.

14 ‘David Hume: Objects and Power’, 48. But also see chapter 5 of The Secret Connexion.

15 One account of this tradition is given by Craig, Edward in The Mind of God and the Works of Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 37–40Google Scholar.

16 Kant, ImmanuelProlegomena to Any Future Metaphysics trans. and ed. by Hatfield, Gary (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Op. cit. note 16, 7.

18 Op. cit. note 16, 10.

19 Essays on the Active Powers of man' in The Works of Thomas Reid, D.D. vol 2 ed by William Hamilton (Edinburgh: MacLachlan and Stewart, 1872), 604.

20 Op. cit. note 19, 527.

21 The Secret Connexion, 133.