Hume's Rules Concerning Causes and Effects
In section fifteen of A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume provides rules for causes and effects (1.3.15). I want to find out the impact of these rules on Hume’s attitude in section fifteen. Hume’s rules follow: cause and effect must be in a similar space and time. The cause must come before the effect. A constant union creates the relationship between cause and effect. The same cause always produces the same effect, and the same effect never comes from a different cause. If the same cause creates a different effect, it must stem from some small change in the cause. If other causes repeat an effect, it must be due to some slight similarity between the causes(Humes 1.3.15.1). The importance of the rules stems from Hume’s declaration that all objects can become causes or effects of each other; we need a way to organize them (Humes 1.3.15.2). Hume uses his rules to judge what the causes and what the effects are. With the understanding of Hume’s rules, we can shed light on his deflationary attitude toward causes and effects.
Hume is traditionally known for his skepticism in Part IV of his treatise and future works. However, the rules about causes and effects in section fifteen do not have a skeptical attitude. Hume is not writing that we should be skeptical of causal reasoning; he is instead building a structure to organize causes and effects naturally. Using this natural ruleset, Hume is sucking out the air from the balloon of cause and effect. Humans use the principles of cause and effect daily, and Hume states that nothing can understand cause and effect without first having experience. Hume uses this statement as a seed for later arguments. Hume does this because it is more persuasive to take a neutral stance that slowly builds towards a position of skepticism.
I want to showcase an example to explain Hume’s position towards cause and effect and how it is not skeptical. Let me restate that Hume thinks our understanding of cause is based on experience because we cannot know cause by observing an object without experience (1.3.15.1). Take, for example, a broken computer. If one day I restart the computer and it starts working again, my mind begins to think restarting any computer will fix its problem. However, what if I continue my computer one day and it never turns on again? If we work simply with causal reasoning, I will attribute the breaking of the computer to restarting it, even though the same action had fixed it. The point is that no matter how long I looked at my computer, I could never know that turning off the computer would break it. Hume is not trying to disprove the principle of cause and effect; he is instead showing how our daily understanding of causes and effects is not based on anything but experience. Nevertheless, because we need experience to know the cause, we are no different from brutes (Humes 1.3.15.12).
Animals and humans alike cannot judge whether a cause and effect are linked. We must logically deduce the effect of a cause by first experiencing it. Sharing it increases the probability of it happening again because of experience, not because it is a necessary truth. Later, Hume explains that our experiences do not guarantee our causes and effects. However, in section fifteen, Hume mainly tries to critique intellectuals (1.3.15.11). He succeeds by looking into animals and seeing how they are no better or worse than humans at discerning cause and effect. Hume uses this connection with humans and animals to say we do not know. In the same way that Socrates says, we only know that we know nothing.
Section fifteen is like the initial cracking of a shell; Hume is building up to his transition into a skeptical deconstruction of our causal beliefs. In the Treatise, Hume goes from being more deflationary, like in section fifteen, to breaking down the world and not believing anything in an unstable manner in Part IV, and then finally coming back to a less skeptical ground because he understands that cause and effect are essential to the everyday life of a human being, and being skeptical serves no purpose outside of the academic sphere. It is possible for the laws of physics to fail us or for the sun to never rise in the morning, but it is not likely. The central importance of section fifteen of the treatise is that it makes us question our abilities and forces us to look into how logical our causal reasoning is.
Works Cited
David Hume. “A Treatise of Human Nature : Being An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects.” Davidhume.Org, 1740 1739, https://davidhume.org/texts/t/full.