Causation In David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

In the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume explored the philosophical problem of causation, and sought to answer the question of “What is involved when we say A causes B?” There have been three main interpretations of Hume’s account of causality, the Skeptical Realist interpretation, the Regularity Interpretation, and the Skeptical Naturalist Interpretation. This essay will evaluate these interpretations, and argue for the Skeptical Naturalist Interpretation as the most plausible. Firstly, Galen Strawson’s skeptical realist (SR) reading of Hume’s account of causality asserts that Hume thought that there were causal powers. Contrarily, the regularity theorists, who champion the Regularity Interpretation (RI), assert that Hume thought

Hume writes: “And experience only teaches us how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable.”2 A similar statement was made in Section 4 of the Enquiry when Hume wrote: “It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects, while she conceals from us those powers and principles on which the influence of these objects entirely depends”. However, these two sentences, at best, shows that Hume believed that secret connexions are possible, but fails as evidence for the stronger claim that Hume believed secret connexions exist. Furthermore, while Hume explicitly refers to a secret connexion that humans are unable to know about, one does feel that Hume did not personally believe in these “secrets” and “powers”. Arguably, Hume talked about “secret connections” only to let the less clever, “vulgar” people understand his theory on causation. This argument is supported by the lack of reference to “secret powers” in the Treatise. Consistency would require the charitable to view Hume’s reference to “secret connexion” and “powers” in such a

According to the regularity theorists, Hume would define “A causes B” as “A is regularly followed by B” . This appears to be supported by the famous billiard ball example that Hume employs in Section 4 of the Enquiry. When one sees billiard ball A hit billiard ball B, one would be inclined to say that A causes B to move. However, Hume as an empiricist, would disagree – we cannot observe the causality. All we can know is what we observe – that billiard ball A striking billiard ball B is regularly followed by billiard ball B moving. Therefore, we cannot say that there is a necessary connection between two events, for we can “only find that one does, actually, follow, on the other” . Hence according to the RI, Hume does not believe that there are causal powers, but merely speaks of constant conjunction and regularity. The RI’s strength lies in the absence of appeal to non-logical causal necessities. However, the question at hand is if Hume would have held such an opinion, and not if the RI’s account of causality is strong. While the RI is consistent with Hume’s empiricist views, Hume as a skeptic would have been more inclined to argue that we cannot know if secret connexions exist (as he does in Sections 4 and 7 of the Enquiry), resorting to non-committal skepticism and agnosticism, rather than making an ontological claim that constant