Hume vs. Kant: Causality Principle Debate
Hume’s Empirical View of Causality
Hume argued that the principle of causality is empirical and a posteriori. It is contingent and not strictly universal, meaning it is logically possible to have exceptions.
Kant’s A Priori Principle of Causality
In contrast, Kant believed that the principle of causality is a priori. It is necessary and strictly universal. For Kant, there can be no derogation from the principle of causality; only the particular causal laws can vary.
Influence of Hume on Kant
Sensory experience is the beginning of our knowledge. However, experience cannot provide universal and necessary knowledge. Experience is the limit of our knowledge; the categories can be applied only to the “phenomena.” The application of the category of causality to the “noumena” does not provide any knowledge.
Kant’s Opposition to Hume
Kant opposed Hume’s view by asserting that not all our knowledge comes from experience. The universality and necessity of our knowledge come from what is contributed by the subject: the a priori forms of sensibility and the categories of understanding.
Interpretation of Kant’s “Noumenon”
Kant’s “noumenon” remains unknowable. Humans know a fact constructed by them. It can be argued that there is no place and time. There is no other reality than that known by humans.
Reasoned Critique of Hume’s View on Causality
Critique of Hume’s Position
In Hume’s view, the principle of causality is not intuitively or demonstratively certain. If it is analytic, it is tautological and says nothing about synthetic reality. If it transcends experience, it does not provide knowledge about reality because we only perceive the spatiotemporal contiguity between cause and effect and their constant conjunction, but not the necessary connection.
Disagreement with Hume
It is impossible to start with “pure” observations without the active participation of the subject. However, contrary to what Kant and Popper established, I believe that this a priori way of knowing does not guarantee the universality and necessity of our knowledge. We have a propensity, a priori of a psychological nature, to find regularities in our observations, and this enables us to formulate scientific theories, but it does not demonstrate their truth.
The Role of Metaphysics
The principle of causality, even as a metaphysical principle because it is not verifiable or refutable, should not be discarded. Metaphysical propositions are not meaningless; they have played and continue to play a significant role in the formulation and discovery of scientific theories.
Conclusion
We have “faith” in the existence of regularities and causal relationships because only then can we formulate explanatory theories that go beyond concrete experience. We are “condemned” to think causally, but we cannot conclude from this, as Kant did, that the causal relationship is objective. Theories based on faith in the existence of causal relationships can only aspire to be tentative explanations that will be replaced when they fail to respond adequately to our questions.
Can We Achieve Probably True Knowledge?
All our knowledge that transcends immediate experience is based on the existence of causal relationships, and this relationship can only be established after experience. The causal relationship is not knowledge gained by the mind to relate ideas and, therefore, is neither intuitively nor demonstratively certain. This knowledge is intuitively true.
Evidence
The mind does not perceive any causal relationship intuitively. There is knowledge that is intuitively true because its opposite implies no contradiction. This knowledge is not demonstratively certain.
Arguments and Criticisms
- First argument: Everything must have a cause because if something did not have a cause, it would produce itself, i.e., it existed before it existed, which is impossible.
- Second argument: Everything produced without any cause is not caused by anything or, in other words, is due to nothing. But nothing can be the cause of anything else.
- Criticism of the first and second demonstrations: They assume what they aim to demonstrate.
- Third argument: Every effect must have a cause because it is involved in the very idea of the effect.
- Criticism: The interrelationship between the concepts of cause and effect does not imply that there are proper causes and effects.
Knowledge depends on facts and experience.