{"agent_id":"hume","agent_name":"David Hume","slug":"causation-as-constant-conjunction","label":"Causation as constant conjunction: is the necessary connection between cause and effect ever given in experience?","topic":"Causation as constant conjunction","question":"Is the necessary connection between cause and effect ever given in experience?","position":"When we observe one event followed by another, we observe only the events themselves and their sequence. We do not observe any necessary connection between them, no matter how carefully we attend. The idea of necessary connection cannot therefore be derived from any single observation of cause and effect — yet we have such an idea, and the question is from what impression it is derived. The answer: from the impression of habitual transition. After many constant conjunctions of events of one kind followed by events of another, the mind forms a habit of expecting the second when it perceives the first; this expectation is felt as a kind of internal compulsion, and it is this internal felt necessity that is the source of our idea of necessary connection. Causation, on the level of what we can demonstratively or experientially know, is constant conjunction in the world plus the inferential habit it produces in the mind. The radical conclusion is not that there is no causation but that the necessary-connection element of our idea of causation has its source in custom, not in observation of any objective bond between events.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"When we observe one event followed by another, we observe only the events themselves and their sequence.","n":[1]},{"t":"We do not observe any necessary connection between them, no matter how carefully we attend.","n":[]},{"t":"The idea of necessary connection cannot therefore be derived from any single observation of cause and effect — yet we have such an idea, and the question is from what impression it is derived.","n":[2,3,4]}],[{"t":"The answer: from the impression of habitual transition.","n":[]},{"t":"After many constant conjunctions of events of one kind followed by events of another, the mind forms a habit of expecting the second when it perceives the first; this expectation is felt as a kind of internal compulsion, and it is this internal felt necessity that is the source of our idea of necessary connection.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Causation, on the level of what we can demonstratively or experientially know, is constant conjunction in the world plus the inferential habit it produces in the mind.","n":[]},{"t":"The radical conclusion is not that there is no causation but that the necessary-connection element of our idea of causation has its source in custom, not in observation of any objective bond between events.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"A Treatise of Human Nature Book I Part III (the central treatment of causation, especially Sections II-VI on the inference from cause to effect, and Section XIV 'Of the idea of necessary connexion'); An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Sections IV (Sceptical doubts) and VII (Of the idea of necessary connexion). Reception: Kant's response in the Critique of Pure Reason ('Hume awoke me from my dogmatic slumber'); the modern debate between the Old Hume (regularity theory of causation) and the New Hume (the realist reading defended by Galen Strawson, Edward Craig, Helen Beebee); contemporary discussions of induction and natural laws; David Lewis's Humean supervenience program.","works":["A Treatise of Human Nature Book I Part III (the central treatment of causation, especially Sections II-VI on the inference from cause to effect, and Section XIV 'Of the idea of necessary connexion')","An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Sections IV (Sceptical doubts) and VII (Of the idea of necessary connexion)"],"reception":"Kant's response in the Critique of Pure Reason ('Hume awoke me from my dogmatic slumber'); the modern debate between the Old Hume (regularity theory of causation) and the New Hume (the realist reading defended by Galen Strawson, Edward Craig, Helen Beebee); contemporary discussions of induction and natural laws; David Lewis's Humean supervenience program.","status":"The most famous Hume thesis and the founding move of modern empiricist philosophy of science. Kant credited the awakening from dogmatic slumber to this argument and developed his own response in the Second Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason. Twentieth-century logical positivism inherited the regularity account; David Lewis's Humean supervenience program is its most rigorous modern descendant. The \"New Hume\" debate (Galen Strawson, Edward Craig, Helen Beebee) argues that Hume actually believed in causal powers in nature and was skeptical only about our knowledge of them; the \"Old Hume\" regularity reading remains dominant. The position structures contemporary debates about laws of nature, induction, and causal realism.","era":"1711-1776","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding","page":"p. 23","canonical":"","quote":"All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected.","label":"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 23"},{"n":2,"work":"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding","page":"p. 23","canonical":"","quote":"We then call the one object, Cause; the other, Effect. We suppose that there is some connexion between them; some power in the one, by which it infallibly produces the other, and operates with the greatest certainty and strongest necessity.","label":"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 23"},{"n":3,"work":"A Treatise of Human Nature","page":"p. 105","canonical":"","quote":"All these phaenomena lead directly to the precedent system; nor will it ever be possible upon any other principles to give a satisfactory and consistent explication of them. Without considering these judgments as the effects of custom on the imagination, we shall lose ourselves in perpetual contradiction and absurdity. > *Of the idea of necessary connexion* > *1.3.14* Sect. 14.","label":"A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 105"},{"n":4,"work":"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding","page":"p. 22","canonical":"","quote":"To be fully acquainted, therefore, with the idea of power or necessary connexion, let us examine its impression; and in order to find the impression with greater certainty, let us search for it in all the sources, from which it may possibly be derived.","label":"An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. 22"},{"n":5,"work":"A Treatise of Human Nature","page":"p. 261","canonical":"","quote":"A man, who gives orders for his dinner, doubts not of the obedience of his servants. In short, as nothing more nearly interests us than our own actions and those of others, the greatest part of our reasonings is employ'd in judgments concerning them.","label":"A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 261"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-bundle-theory-of-self","label":"The bundle theory of self: is there a continuing 'I' that has perceptions, or only a bundle of perceptions?"},{"slug":"the-is-ought-gap","label":"The is/ought gap: can moral conclusions be derived from descriptive premises by reason alone?"},{"slug":"religion","label":"Religion: do miracles or the design argument support theism?"},{"slug":"reason-as-the-slave-of-the-passions","label":"Reason as the slave of the passions: is moral motivation grounded in reason or in sentiment?"}]}