Explain and discuss Hume’s account of causation.
David Hume introduces and discusses his widely-debated theories and ideas surrounding human belief and knowledge in the two texts A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Using these two texts as the primary focus this essay shall critically explain and discuss Hume’s account of causation. Firstly, Hume’s concepts and theories surrounding human knowledge and belief will be critically discussed, focusing firstly, on the category Relations of Ideas and secondly, on the category Matters of Fact. These are the two categories that Hume believes all human knowledge and objects of knowledge can be sorted into. Secondly, causal relationships between separate events will …show more content…
Also, as Hume believed that cause and effect are discoverable not by a priori reasoning, but instead, through human experience of events in the world, his theory of causation focuses primarily on the contents of the category Matters of Fact (Hume, 2007, p. 20; Coventry, 2010, p. 90). Hume begins his discussion of cause and effect in the Enquiry by introducing his well-known thought experiment using billiard-balls. In this example, he firstly discusses the idea that if someone we to suddenly come into existence in this world and have no experience of how the world is, and then found themselves observing a billiard-ball sitting stationary upon a flat surface. Hume states that most people would likely assume that they would at this point know what would happen if a second billiard-ball was rolled into the first (Hume, 2007, pp. …show more content…
This is because inductive reasoning by nature uses human observation and experience to form beliefs, it is due to this that knowledge gained through inductive reasoning belongs in the category Matters of Fact. Furthermore, just like Matters of Fact inductive reasoning runs into the issue of the changing nature of the world. This is the concept that, due to the ever-changing state of nature there is no way to be able to say with certainty that two events will always follow each other, or that those events have always followed each other in the past (Vickers , 2014; Fogelin, 2008, p.
David Hume introduces and discusses his widely-debated theories and ideas surrounding human belief and knowledge in the two texts A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Using these two texts as the primary focus this essay shall critically explain and discuss Hume’s account of causation. Firstly, Hume’s concepts and theories surrounding human knowledge and belief will be critically discussed, focusing firstly, on the category Relations of Ideas and secondly, on the category Matters of Fact. These are the two categories that Hume believes all human knowledge and objects of knowledge can be sorted into. Secondly, causal relationships between separate events will …show more content…
Also, as Hume believed that cause and effect are discoverable not by a priori reasoning, but instead, through human experience of events in the world, his theory of causation focuses primarily on the contents of the category Matters of Fact (Hume, 2007, p. 20; Coventry, 2010, p. 90). Hume begins his discussion of cause and effect in the Enquiry by introducing his well-known thought experiment using billiard-balls. In this example, he firstly discusses the idea that if someone we to suddenly come into existence in this world and have no experience of how the world is, and then found themselves observing a billiard-ball sitting stationary upon a flat surface. Hume states that most people would likely assume that they would at this point know what would happen if a second billiard-ball was rolled into the first (Hume, 2007, pp. …show more content…
This is because inductive reasoning by nature uses human observation and experience to form beliefs, it is due to this that knowledge gained through inductive reasoning belongs in the category Matters of Fact. Furthermore, just like Matters of Fact inductive reasoning runs into the issue of the changing nature of the world. This is the concept that, due to the ever-changing state of nature there is no way to be able to say with certainty that two events will always follow each other, or that those events have always followed each other in the past (Vickers , 2014; Fogelin, 2008, p.