HUME'S TREATMENT OF CAUSATION AND REASON/RATIONALITY in 'A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE'

TREATMENT OF REASON/RATIONALITY:

David Hume in his book ‘Treatise on Human Understanding’, gives us a radically different view of Reason. He argues that ‘Reason is the slave of the passions’.

It could mean that we can rationalize our actions by passions and also act on our passions as well. But, his opinion of reason never means any kind of irrationalism, which aims to reject the idea of guidance of reason, completely. He is however trying to reject rationalism and its attempt to give extensive normative powers to reason. He refutes the idea of portraying human nature as a battlefield between passion and reason.

Passions are as much responsible for our thought as is reason. For example, he argues that human morality is not driven by rational thought or reason but is a product of our passions. And what had always been portrayed as a clash between reason and passions, is actually an interaction of different kinds of feelings. The challenge is to know and explore this character of our minds and discover methods which enable us to use these faculties in a balanced way.

“Reason…” according to Hume, “…is the discovery of truth or falsehood. Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact.” According to Hume rational thinking only applies to identifying relationships between objects in the real world, but not to ideas and thoughts of mind itself. Only our judgement concerning cause and effects are directed by reasoning. Connections in the real world are formed by using reasoning. Similarly, relationship between passion and object of that passion must be based on reason.

“Abstract or demonstrative reasoning, therefore, never influences any of our actions, but only as it directs our judgment concerning causes and effects; which leads us to the second operation of the understanding.”

He begins with a distinction between “impressions’ and ‘ideas’ which are two kinds of perceptions. Impressions are those having more force and violence. Simple ideas, derived from simple impressions, are similar to impressions, but they are fainter in comparison to impressions.

“All our simple ideas, when they first appear, are derived from simple impressions
Which correspond to them and which they exactly represent.”

Complex ideas, which are often a collection of many simple ideas, do not necessarily resemble impressions or anything existing in this world. The constituents of a complex idea however are all derived from impressions. Idea becomes memory if it retains a good deal of its original liveliness and is intermediate between impression and idea. If it loses its liveliness completely it is a perfect idea and is called ‘imagination’.

Hume then applies this concept, that, ideas and facts come from experiences, to explore several philosophical concepts.

TREATMENT OF CAUSATION:

Causation, according to Hume is “the power by which one object produces another” and it “can never be discovered merely from the ideas of the objects”. He says that cause and effect are relations that we learn about from experience and not from any abstract reasoning or reflection and only causation produces a connection that assures us, on the basis of existence or action of one object, that some other existence or action followed or preceded it.

Contiguity (proximity in time and space) and Succession (cause preceding the effect) and ‘necessary connection’ are three essential relations for causation. But the idea of necessary connection is not very apparent in the real world. Before delving into the concept of ‘necessary connection’ further, tackles other questions which, he hopes, will eventually lead him to idea of ‘necessary connection’. First he discusses why a cause is always necessary?

He shows how the idea of necessity of ‘cause’ for everything new is neither based on scientific explanation nor on apriori knowledge. It must arise from experience and observation. Before answering how does it arise from experience and knowledge he further raises the questions “Why do we conclude that such-and-such particular causes must necessarily have such-and-such particular effects?” and “Why do we form an inference from cause to effect?” hoping that one answer may satisfy both these questions.

When mind reasons from cause and effects, it must first establish the existence of causes from our memory or senses. Memory and senses are the only ways of actually establishing the existences of cause, even if it is based on someone else’s memories and sensations. Thus all reasoning about causes and effects are originally derived from some impression.

Our arguments about cause and effect consist of impression of memory or senses and an idea of the real object (or event) which caused or was caused by the object of the impression. Thus the question needs explanation of three things 1) Original Impression 2) Transition of that to idea of connected cause or effect 3) Its nature and qualities.

Hume says that memory and imagination are different because memory has stronger and livelier ideas than imagination. Memory can preserve the ideas in their original corresponding order of impressions, but imagination transposes and changes its ideas at its will. An idea of memory, by degeneration, loses its force and liveliness and becomes an idea of imagination, and similarly an idea of imagination can acquire sufficient force and liveliness that it can become an idea of memory.

Belief (or assent about the truth of the perception) that accompanies memory is liveliness of perceptions they represent and distinguishes them from imagination. When we believe, it is a feeling of immediate impression of senses or a repetition of that impression in memory. Thus, when we examine the relation of cause and effect, the force and liveliness of perception helps in judging the exact relationship between cause and effect.

The inference that we make from cause to effect, is not based on, ideas of these particular objects (which constitutes knowledge and as that would make any possibility different from prediction inconceivable). So, by experience, we can infer the existence of one object from that of another. From frequent instances of sort of object, and of other objects which have always gone along with them, we remember and learn the association of particular causes and effects (after perceiving and remembering them), and when we reason, only one is perceived while other is automatically supplied on the basis of our past experience.

Now this constant conjunction of cause and effect is not explained by either contiguity or succession. Here, necessary connection enters the scene. What role exactly does it play; Hume answers it after tackling the process of transformation of an experience into idea.

If reason is responsible then
“Instances of which we haven’t had experience must resemble those of which we have; the course of Nature continues always uniformly the same.”

Then our arguments will have to be based either on absolutely certain knowledge or on probability. It cannot be proven by demonstrative arguments that things we have not experienced will resemble the things we have experienced. We can only conceive a change in the course of nature which is not absolutely impossible. Probability concerns itself with relations among objects. Therefore in probable reasoning something has to be present in mind, which is either seen or remembered and from which we infer something connected with it that we have not seen or remembered.

Only cause and effect can take us beyond the experience of our memory and senses, as only upon them a sound inference from one object to another can be based. We associate certain objects with other, and when objects of one kind are present we expect objects of other kind. Thus idea of cause and effect is derived from experience. And probability is based on presumption that the objects of which we have had experience will resemble those which we have not experienced. This idea itself cannot arise from probability.

And we cannot bring the argument of production, saying that if an object has produced an object of other kind always which means it has power of production implying effect. Past production implies power, and power implies new production and new production is what we finally infer.

Hume says the fact that, an object which produced a certain other object was endowed with that power at that very instant does not ensure that it must continue to be so at other times. And why do we suppose, from experience, about the instances in future about which we have no experience. This line of reasoning leads to the previous argument, continuing ad infinitum.

Hume, then talks about relations which make us pass from one object to another even when no reason makes that transition and puts a general rule that

“Wherever the mind constantly and uniformly makes a transition without any reason, it is
influenced by these relations”

Reason is insufficient to show us connections, even with the help of experience and observation of constant associations of objects in past. So when mind passes from ideas of one object to another it is driven by these principles that link ideas of these objects and unite them in our mind. The inference therefore solely depends on the unreasoned union of ideas.

The principles of union are resemblance, contiguity and connection. They are not infallible (as someone may focus only on one object) or sole causes (as some transitions are not due to any of them), but they are the only general principles of union.

Thus, because a particular idea is attached to a particular word, the transition is very quick from one object to another, as reflection on past experience is not necessary. The work is done by imagination itself. We have only one notion of cause and effect

“Certain objects that have been always conjoined together, and in all past instances have been found inseparable.” The reason for this conjunction cannot be determined. We use the fact itself. Because of constant conjunction objects acquire a union in imagination and mere impression of one is enough to from an idea of its companion. Thus opinion or belief can be defined as “an idea related to or associated with a present impression”

Thus causation is a philosophical relation involving contiguity, succession and constant conjunction whose only role as a natural relation is to produce a union among our ideas and enable it to reason on it and draw inferences from it.

Coming to the question of necessary connection, it does not reveal itself on examination of cause and effect. But the fact that every time, we find the same objects associated, and expect the same objects when impression of certain objects come to our mind, though the repetition is not the same, this necessity gives the idea of necessary connection.

He, continuing from his previous assertions says that reason alone can never give rise to an original idea (all our ideas are derived from experiences) and it can never make us conclude that a cause or a productive quality is absolutely required for every beginning of existence.

Our observation of the repetition of perfectly similar instances of cause and effect in similar relations of contiguity and resemblance gives rise to an impression of necessary connection. The mind is determined to go from one object to other and, conceives the later in stronger light.

Thus, necessary connection between cause and effect is basis of our inference from one object to another. The transition of our mind, arising from the accustomed union is the basis of our inference. Therefore the two things, necessary connection between causes and effects and the determination to move, of our mind, from an impression of the cause to a more lively idea of the effect are actually the same.

This idea of necessity arises from an impression within our mind, not from outer senses. Hume differentiates between philosophical relations (comparison of ideas) and natural relations (an association between two ideas) and finally defines cause to be
“A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and united with it in such a way that the idea of one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of one to form a livelier idea of the other”