Hume’s Critique of Causality: Habit Over Reason

Posted on Dec 4, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Hume’s Critique of Causality

Is causation a real and necessary connection between cause and effect? David Hume challenged this traditional philosophical belief, arguing that our understanding of causality is based on habit and experience, not reason.

Hume argued against the following traditional theses on causation:

  • A priori knowledge of causal powers is possible.
  • Reason establishes causal links.
  • Causal links are objective relationships found in things.
  • Causal relations are a consequence of the powers of things.
  • The principle of causality is absolutely true and complete evidence.

Hume’s counterarguments:

  1. Efficient Causality: Hume focused on efficient causality, considering formal and material causes inadequate and final causes reducible to efficient ones.

  2. Empirical Knowledge: Causal relationships cannot be known a priori. Our knowledge of these relationships is empirical, based on experience and observation.

  3. Habit Over Reason: Belief in causal relationships stems from habit based on repeated experiences, not reason. Habit guides our everyday behavior and expectations about the future.

  4. Succession of Phenomena: Experience only reveals a succession of phenomena, not causality as a property.

  5. No Observable Power: We cannot observe the power in a cause to produce an effect or the link between them. We only observe:
    a) Spatiotemporal contiguity between cause and effect.
    b) Priority in time: the cause precedes the effect.
    c) Constant conjunction between cause and effect.

  6. Principle of Causality: The principle that everything that begins to exist must have a reason for its existence is not certain and cannot be demonstrated. Our belief in this principle comes from habit and experience.

  7. Empirical Limits: If we accept Hume’s critique, we must limit causality to the empirical world and cannot use it to infer metaphysical realities like God or the soul.

Hume’s Key Points

Hume emphasized that our certainty about future events is based on causal inferences. We assume that whatever happens has a cause, but this is based on habit, not reason. The contiguity in time and space, priority in time, and constant conjunction between cause and effect are essential factors in our understanding of causality.