Answering an Objection to Hume’s Critique of Causality

David Hume, who along with Berkeley remains the profoundest of empiricists to this day, made a very famous argument against causality.  Essentially, we see events happening one after the other and simply assume necessary connection between them, even though we have no sense impression of such necessary connection in the form of causality.  Causality is a concept we impose on our experience, not something we actually experience.

When we see a billiard ball roll across a table and strike another billiard ball, we see the one ball touch the other ball and then see the other ball roll, but we don’t actually see the causal connection between these events.  The balls could be moved in a similar way by magnets under the table, and in that case the movement of the second ball would not be caused by it’s being struck by the first — yet, the phenomenon would be similar to that that would obtain were the first ball to actually strike the second.  Thus, we cannot actually get any sense experience of causality.

Hume also says for those things in our heads that we have never experienced, such as unicorns, there is an explanation inasmuch as they can be described as composites of other impressions we have experienced.  An objection to Hume’s rejection of causality is that the idea of causality could not have been constituted from a combination of other ideas, that there is no reasonable explanation for why we should have such an idea if we have never had any experience of it (granting Hume’s premise that knowledge comes through experience).

I have a counter-objection to the protest that causality would not even feature in our thoughts if we did not experience it.  Such an objection begs the question by demanding a causal explanation of the presence of the idea of causality in the mind.  It assumes that which it is trying to prove, that there must be some causal reason for the presence of the idea of causality.  It is a meaningless objection therefore.  If causality is an inapplicable concept, which follows when we accept Hume’s premise that knowledge is gained from experience, then there need not be a causal explanation for why the idea of it arises.

The best attempt at salvaging the idea of causality was made by Kant, who described causality like space and time as a category of thought, existing prior to all experience, which allows us to make sense of the raw phenomenal data we perceive.  Again, though, one must presume the necessity of causal explanations, and, thus, the applicability of causation to our understanding of reality, in order to accept this Kantian account.  I would argue an empiricist like Hume, or other phenomenalists such as Nietzsche, need not do this.