Hume on Causation: The Projectivist Interpretation

Abstract

Abstract Hume’s views on causation are notoriously hard to pin down. The traditional interpretation takes Hume to be a naive regularity theorist: one event a causes another, b, just if a is prior to and contiguous with b. and events similar to a are constantly conjoined with events similar to b. Causation, on this view, just is regular association: there is no ‘tie’ or connection of any sort between a and b. The traditional interpretation of Hume has, of course, spawned an entire philosophical tradition, running from the logical positivists, through Quine, Davidson, and others, to David Lewis’s thesis of’ Humean supervenience’ (‘Humean’ because Lewis, in line vvith the traditional interpretation, regards Hume as a ‘denier of necessary connections’ (1986, p. ix)), and the industry of providing a reductive analysis of causation.

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