The Influence of Hume's Empiricist Theory of Meaning on his Account of Causation

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Author: Constantine SandisConstantine Sandis
Affiliation: Oxford Brookes UniversityOxford Brookes University
Source: Causation 1500-2000
Keywords: causation, empiricism, science, history, Reid [edit]

Synopsis

Until relatively recently Hume was thought to be propounding a ‘regularity theory of causation’ according to which there exists no causal necessity in nature, but only regularity (Ayer, Mackie, Stroud, Woolhouse, etc.). The last few decades have seen a wealth of new interpretations of Hume, according to which he was either a ‘sceptical realist’ who claimed that there may well be causal necessity in nature (and perhaps even believed that there was), but that we could never know whether or not this is certainly the case, since neither reason nor observation can help us here (Craig, Wright, G. Strawson, etc.) or a ‘projectivist’ who believed that our causal talk is an expression of our inferential habits (Blackburn, Beebee, etc.) In this paper I argue that both the traditional and the modern interpretations of Hume are mistaken. The problem is that they do not take Hume’s empiricist account of meaning seriously.

Hume’s empiricism dictates that all meaningful ideas are derived from impressions. All other ideas, he claims, lack any meaning whatsoever and should be consigned to the flames (along with all other metaphysical and religious speculations). This reasoning leads him to claim that since we have no impression of a necessary connection beyond that of an ‘internal impression of the mind’ (about which Hume is a full-blown realist), that is all we could possibly mean by the term. We must consequently reject the very idea of a necessary connection in a more metaphysical sense, for such an idea (from here onwards capitalised as ‘Necessary Connection’) would be devoid of any meaning whatsoever. But if one cannot meaningfully state that there is such a thing (Necessary Connection), by the same token, it also follows that one cannot meaningfully state that there isn’t one, or that – for all we know - there may or may not be one. Nor is there any meaningful idea of Necessary Connection available in our minds for us to project unto the world (we cannot meaningfully talk ‘as if’ there were Necessary Connections in the world if the very notion of such a thing is meaningless, at best would be employing the term ‘necessary connection’ in senseless delusion). So it is that when Hume finally presents us with his two definition of what the term ‘cause’ might necessarily mean all traces of the notion of a Necessary Connection have disappeared. Hume’s view is that any meaningful notion of cause or causation will not be in the least concerned with any notion of necessity beyond that of existing internal impressions of the mind (which we have knowledge of).

In the second half of this paper I look at why Hume (in my opinion correctly) did not take his empiricist conclusion to pose any threat whatsoever to scientific enquiry. This involves sketching a picture of what a truly Humean science would like, complete with an account of the meaning and explanatory role (if any) of the notions of a ‘force’ and a ‘law’ of nature. I contrast this picture to various modern views in the philosophy of science (and, in particular, the philosophy of physics). I end by comparing Hume’s view of science and causation to that of both the early and the later Wittgenstein, concluding that Hume has much in common with the latter.