4. Hume on Causation 2

This response plays around with a conundrum facing teachers when preparing pupils on this part of the course—how do you evaluate Hume's view of causation when a key aspect of Hume's view is not part of the text pupils are required to study?

 

To what extent is Hume’s view of causation convincing?

SQA Specimen Question Paper 2016

Exemplar answer.

1 There is something very puzzling about what Hume says concerning cause and effect. In Section II Hume had argued that all ideas are based on impressions, however, in Section IV Hume claims that although our idea of cause and effect is based entirely on experience that experience is simply the experience of two events being constantly conjoined—we don’t have an impression of what makes the cause the cause and what makes the effect the effect, and we certainly don’t have an impression of the necessity that ties them together into a cause and effect relationship. Given what Hume has said in sections II and IV it is not clear how we can have any idea of cause and effect.
2 The purpose of Section IV Part One is to establish the claim ‘that knowledge about causes is never acquired through a priori reasoning, and always comes from our experience of finding that particular objects are constantly associated with one other’. Hume claims that Adam even if he were capable of perfect reasoning would not have been able to tell, prior to experience, that water would drown him or that fire could burn him. He claims that the qualities of an object that appear to the senses never reveal the causes that produced the object or the effects that it will have. If a stone is held in the air and released then, prior to experience, there is nothing in the stone that gives the idea of a downward rather than upward motion. Furthermore, prior to experience, there is nothing we can say about the necessary connection between the cause and the effect—I may think I know what will happen to the second ball when struck by the first but, prior to experience, I might be able to think of a hundred different events that will follow from the first and have no way of choosing one over another.
3 Even if there are exceptions it seems plausible that in the normal course of events Hume is right that knowledge of particular causes and particular effects depends on experience. However, this doesn’t answer our original problem—knowing what effect follows what cause is one thing but having a general idea of cause and effect is something else and cause and effect is more than just correlation or constant conjunction it contains the notion that the effect is dependent on the cause and that the cause will necessarily have that effect.
4 In Section VII Hume considers and rejects various possible sources for our idea of a necessary connection. One of these is our ability to will certain events such as the movement of a limb. Hume may be right that we don’t understand how that desire results in the desired effect and it may be only through experience that we discover what we can and cannot will and we may still only have an constant conjunction between my willing something and it happening, however, contrary to his previous examples there does seem to be something present in the first event (e.g. my willing my arm to raise) that would suggest the effect (my arm raising).
  In Part Two of Section VII Hume manages to avoid the conclusion that the necessary connection between cause and effect is a meaningless concept by saying it emerges from the way we feel after seeing several occurrences of the supposed cause and effect. He says, “the feeling or impression from which we derive our idea of power or necessary connection is a feeling of connection in the mind—a feeling that accompanies the imagination’s habitual move from observing one event to expecting another of the kind that usually follows it.” This solution is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, the relationship between an idea of necessary connection and the inner experience of expectation doesn’t seem to be just a faint copy as in his earlier examples of inward impressions. Secondly, causes and effects do not always depend on any expectation for both are simultaneously present—I may see the pedals and the back wheel both turning; I may see the foam cushion compressed and the person sitting on it.
  The constant correlations of the bicycle and the cushion present another problem—since they occur simultaneously, if that is all there is to it, then it should be reasonable to come to the conclusion that the back wheel is causing the pedals to turn and so operating the person’s feet, as might happen in a mechanical model where a hidden motor is driving the back wheel, or that the cushion is somehow sucking the person into the seat. That the explanation invariably goes in the other direction is likely due to the importance we place on agency and this would suggest that agency is more involved in our understanding of cause and effect than Hume would allow. This is further supported by the way humans constantly attribute agency even when it doesn’t exist as when we say the flower wants to turn towards the light or the water wants to flow down hill. Whether this emphasis on agency derives from our own experience of being agents or whether it is something we bring to the world still needs to be resolved.
5 In Section II Hume said that anyone who wanted to refute the claim that all ideas were based on impressions only had to provide an example of an idea that couldn’t be traced back to a relevant impression. Hume’s account of the origin of the idea of cause and effect seems forced and it might only be an empiricist dogma against innate ideas that stops this being just such a counterexample. Given the problems with Hume’s account and our greater understanding of developmental psychology it seems better to side with Kant who claimed that we cannot get the idea of cause and effect from experience because cause and effect is one of the concepts we use to make sense of experience.

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Notes

  1. Many essays with this title will be a run-through of the various criticisms that can be made of Hume’s analysis of causation. This essay takes a different approach and considers just one major issue and it is this issue that is flagged up in the introductory paragraph. It would be tempting at this point to summarize what Hume says about impressions and ideas but some things have to be missed out and given the title and the limited time it is better to focus on Section IV Part One.
  2. This paragraph summarizes Hume’s arguments. Although their purpose is to show that our understanding of cause and effect does not rely on reason in doing so they also make clear that there is no direct impression of the cause and effect relationship.
  3. This paragraph clarifies our problem. Knowing the source of our idea of cause and effect is a different question from how we discover particular cause and effect relationships. There is no time to develop ‘even if there are exceptions’ but it is alluding to things like Galileo and Einstein’s thought experiments.
  4. These two paragraphs draw on parts of the text that are not specified as part of the course. This means that SQA cannot require/expect this knowledge or set questions on it. However, this doesn’t mean you cannot bring it into the discussion. This is somewhat similar to the fact that SQA doesn’t specify any particular criticisms. Anything you say that is relevant and helps you build a case will be given credit.
  5. Most essays will probably focus on either Section II or on Section IV. This essay shows how material can be drawn from more than one place to make an argument. In this final paragraph it is important to arrive at a final conclusion that follows on naturally from what has been said in the rest of the essay.