Abstract

Thus the radical character of Hume's causal theory lies far more in its denial of externality to necessary causal connection than in any change he made in the character or status of the connection. It is obvious Hume did not mean his sceptical denial of the "reality" of the causal connection to imply that there is no association or connection between causes and effects. For to him the anarchy of chance, or "liberty," was the only alternative to the truth of causal necessity; and his own "habit" necessity is designed to account for the fact that the universe and human life are not in reality anarchic. Yet in making causal connection a matter of mental association Hume came very close to subverting the idea of necessity despite himself. Had he developed his notion that necessity consists in the unopposable habit our minds form of passing from the idea of the cause to the idea of its effect, he might have seen that causal theory can be divested altogether of the idea of necessity without loss of order and regularity on either the mental or physical levels. Even though he did not do so, Hume's idea of necessity based on habit seems a somewhat attenuated version of causal necessity, since habit is not an inexorable force, and past conjunctions of a given cause and its effect in our experience do not in the least imply that future conjunctions will be the same. For when we anticipate the issue of an effect similar to past effects because the cause is similar to past causes, it is only by a mental presumption that we do so, a "determination of the mind to pass from one object to its usual attendant."