New Hume

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Author: Aisling CreanAisling Crean
Affiliation: Australian National UniversityAustralian National University
Source: Causation 1500-2000
Keywords: causation, Hume [edit]

Synopsis

We thought we knew what Hume said about causation. He said that causation was nothing but constant conjunction, a mere regularity obtaining between events. But recent news from the field of Hume studies is telling us that this is precisely what Hume did not think. Recent interpreters of Hume such as John Wright (1983), Edward Craig (1987), Galen Strawson (1989), Helen Beebee (2006) and Peter Kail (2007) have all argued in one way or another that Hume was a sceptical realist about causal powers grounding necessary connections in nature. A sceptical realist about these things is one who believes in their existence but deems them to be somehow unknowable – ‘secret’ as Hume says – epistemically inaccessible in some non-trivial way. This sceptical realist interpretation of Hume is sometimes called The New Hume, and in opposition to it are defenders of the old view – the Old Hume, let’s say (Bennett, Blackburn, Winkler). My aim here is not to say decisively whether or not Old Hume or New Hume is the true Hume. Instead, I want to examine a problem for New Hume – a problem threatens to make his philosophical position dialectically crippling.

The problem has its root in New Hume’s claim that there exist causal powers grounding necessary connections in nature and that these are unknowable. This claim is problematic because it’s difficult to square with Hume’s epistemology in a way that avoids making the claim self-defeating. Section one sets up the problem. Section two sketches a familiar aspect of Hume’s epistemology, explains in more detail New Hume’s position and says more about why it’s problematic. Section three takes a less traditional line: it explores a neglected externalist dimension to Hume’s epistemology. Section four gets into the details of this. Section five then shows how to bring the lessons of sections three and four to bear on the apparent problem for New Hume and dissolves it in a way that squares well with Hume’s texts. Whether or not Old Hume or New Hume is the true Hume, New Hume’s position is not dialectically crippling after all.