Assess Hume on Causation.

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David Hume was an 18th century philosopher who is widely regarded to be one of the key figures in the empiricist movement. Hume’s philosophy on causation refers to thinking about what and how we can know about ‘matters of fact’. ‘Matters of fact’ is one of the two categories of knowledge Hume defines. The other is ‘Relations of ideas. Whilst ‘Relations of ideas refers to a priori knowledge (true by definition), such as mathematics, ‘Matters of fact’ refers to a posteriori knowledge, synthetic propositions in which the conclusion is contingent on the predicate. While it is impossible for a priori knowledge to be untrue, it is possible that any knowledge that is matter of fact in untrue, because there is no contradiction in terms. We know five plus five must equal ten; it cannot equal anything else. But it is coherent to say “the sun will not rise tomorrow.” In his work on causation Hume is principally asking the question ‘how can we know matters of fact to be true? ‘ Hume says that we can’t predict the effects of a completely alien object solely by studying it. He writes ‘if that object be entirely new to [someone], he will not be able, by the most accurate examination of its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects’. Take for example, flicking the switch in your living room. You would claim to know that this would cause the lights to come on, but you can only claim to know this because of prior experience. If you hadn’t flicked the switch before, you would have no idea what was to happen if you pressed it; the tv could turn on, an alarm could sound, or the house could self destruct. By solely examining the properties of the causal object or action, what follows as an effect could be in no way related or conceivably predictable. Now the idea of causation, is the idea that the two events are related (flicking the switch, and consequently, the
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