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Hume on causation (etiology). Basically Hume denies a necessary connection between the cause or what is perceived as the cause (preceding event), and the effect.
Anyone familiar with Hume's line of reasoning? The reading is pretty dense, methodical, and very pedantic.
Hume on causation (etiology). Basically Hume denies a necessary connection between the cause or what is perceived as the cause (preceding event), and the effect.
Anyone familiar with Hume's line of reasoning? The reading is pretty dense, methodical, and very pedantic.
I once read something that helped me understand Hume. It went something like this: Image there is a baby who has a soft doll. He has dropped this doll five times, and each time it plopped to the floor. Later, this boys uncle comes along and gives this boy a ball. This boy would no doubt think that when he drops this ball, it will plop to the floor like his doll. However, when the boy does drop the ball it bounces. Now, that boy has no possible knowledge of what caused that ball to bounce. Now compare what the boy knows compared to what his uncle knows: The only advantage the uncle has, is that he has witnessed balls dropping and bouncing multiple times. The knowledge that the boy and the uncle have are more or less the same, the uncle's knowledge is only multiplied.
The example is more of a thought experiment than an actual case study. However, I do think that we can continue extending the limits of the knowledge that we gain from experience.
The uncle knows that elastic objects bounce because every time he has experienced elastic objects fall to the ground, they have bounced. If you want to argue that he gained this knowledge from study and not experience, then those people who wrote the books that he read experienced that every time an elastic object fell it bounced. As to the molecular structure, science tells us through repeated observation, a property of the particular molecular structure in question is that it enables objects to bounce.
All of these experiences are but relations between objects properties that habit has created for us.
So you mean that if we examine the molecular structure of the ball's material, we will somehow observe a property called, "bounciness"?
de Silentio - science tells us through repeated observation that a property of the particular molecular structure of elastic is that it enables objects to bounce when they are dropped.
Not at all. What I meant was that science tells us through repeated observation that a property of the particular molecular structure of elastic is that it enables objects to bounce when they are dropped. It is the repeated observing of the dropping and bouncing that tells us elastic objects bounce. It is not by examining the molecular structure itself, it is by examining what happens when objects with that molecular structure are dropped.
Sorry that I was unclear.
That is right. It is the molecular structure, and ultimately the atomic structure, which no one is able to observe directly, which tells us, not that the ball will bounce, but why it bounces. Science explains as well as describes.
Why do you say "That is right." What you said is not what I said. I am confused by your response.
Originally Posted by kennethamy
We observe that the ball does bounce by repeated observations of its bouncing. But in order to explain why it bounces, we need to formulate an hypotheses about the material the ball is made of, and then test that hypothesis by observation. No amount of observation of the bouncing of the ball can tell us why the ball bounces. For that, we have to go further.
Sure. Hume points out that there is no contradiction in supposing the existence of the cause, and supposing that the effect did not exist. But, if there were a necessary connection between cause and effect, there would be a contradiction in such a supposition. Therefore, there is no such necessary connection. An example of a necessary connection is that between a figure being a triangle, and that figure having three sides. We cannot suppose a figure being three-angled, but not being three-sided without supposing a contradiction. But, although it is true that heating a metal causes the metal to expand, we can certainly suppose the metal being heated and not expanding (maybe even contracting). Therefore there is no such contradiction in such a supposition, and there is no necessary connection between the cause (heating) and the effect (expansion). Hume writes that anything can cause anything and we cannot know what can cause what, only by thinking about it (a priori) and not investigating it empirically by observation and experiment. But, in the case of necessary connection, as in mathematics, what we know, we know by just thinking about it, and not by observation and experiment (empirically).
Can someone please clarify the following points for me?
1. How does Hume define 'real' causation, in order to contrast it with mere habitual association? Unless 'cause' is clearly defined, the statement 'we cannot know what can cause what' has no meaning. I suggest it means 'force' or 'compel': when we say that heat causes metal to expand, we mean (albeit without proper justification) that it makes it expand.
2. Did Hume believe that it might be possible - perhaps in the distant future - to find a necessary connection between such things as heating and expansion? Or did he think this was impossible in principle?
3. Did he believe that there could actually be real causation even if we could never know about it?
4. If two very accurate adjacent clocks have been set so that one always strikes the hour exactly 10 seconds after the other, a person encountering them would not say that one causes the other to strike. So there must be more to the common idea of causation than just habitual association. Did Hume acknowledge this?
Hume on causation (etiology). Basically Hume denies a necessary connection between the cause or what is perceived as the cause (preceding event), and the effect.
Anyone familiar with Hume's line of reasoning? The reading is pretty dense, methodical, and very pedantic.