Efficient Causation in Hume

Abstract

There is considerable scholarly division regarding the fundamentals of Hume’s account of efficient causation. The majority opinion reads him as offering an austere metaphysics wherein efficient causation consists in regularities of a certain kind, whereas a minority read Hume as circumscribing severely what we can understand of the causal relation. Without deciding this issue, this chapter draws attention to the fact that on either reading Hume’s view starkly contrasts with the metaphysically rich discussions that preceded A Treatise of Human Nature. There is an investigation here of the grounds for Hume’s radical break from his predecessors. These grounds are located not in a simple application of meaning-empiricism, but instead in a “subject-naturalism” that focuses on the explanation of the nature of our causal inference in order to illuminate what we understand by causation. The chapter closes with a discussion of Thomas Reid’s reaction to Hume.

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