Notes on Hume's Treatise

by G. J. Mattey

PART III. OF KNOWLEDGE AND PROBABILITY

§ XV. Rules by which to judge of causes and effects.

Any object may produce any other. "Creation, annihilation, motion, reason, volition; all these may arise from one another, or from any other object we can imagine."

This follows from the principles that constant conjunction determines causation, and the only contraries are existence and non-existence, so any object may be constantly conjoined.

Given the possibility of any order, we need general rules "by which we may know when they really are so."

1. Contiguity in space and time

2. Priority of cause to effect

3. Constant union

4. Uniformity (as with single case "experiments")

5. The same quality in several objects is the cause of the same effect

6. Different effects, difference in causes

7. Correlative increase and diminution attributable to complex causes

8. Inefficacious, complete object requires another object to assist it

This is enough LOGIC for our reasoning. Scholastic rules add nothing to the capacity of the vulgar. But they are difficult in their application, requiring great sagacity in separating out the inessential, the more so in moral philosophy. Enlarging experience is the best remedy for this.

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