1
00:00:01,170 --> 00:00:11,130
George. Okay.

2
00:00:11,730 --> 00:00:15,870
Now we're going to turn to book one part three of the treatise.

3
00:00:16,110 --> 00:00:19,650
This is the single most important part of the treatise.

4
00:00:20,100 --> 00:00:28,530
It's the longest. It is the part that gives almost all of the substance of the abstract of the treatise.

5
00:00:28,530 --> 00:00:34,049
The vast majority of that comes from book one, part three, and the later works.

6
00:00:34,050 --> 00:00:42,840
In particular, the inquiry concerning human understanding is crucially built around the central spine of Book one.

7
00:00:42,840 --> 00:00:50,489
Part three. So to start with, we're going to have a look at relations again.

8
00:00:50,490 --> 00:00:58,770
We've already seen something about relations in an earlier lecture, and we'll see the route that HUME follows in this part of the treaties.

9
00:01:01,180 --> 00:01:04,690
Now understanding what Hume's doing here can be quite tricky.

10
00:01:06,350 --> 00:01:10,670
The title of treatise book one. Part three is of knowledge and probability.

11
00:01:11,390 --> 00:01:18,710
So you might reasonably expect that you're going to have a significant chunk devoted to knowledge, a significant chunk devoted to probability.

12
00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:24,020
You don't get that. Only the first section deals with knowledge.

13
00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:28,340
And by knowledge, you means the knowledge in the strict sense.

14
00:01:28,550 --> 00:01:31,790
The realm of demonstration, demonstrative knowledge.

15
00:01:33,720 --> 00:01:42,730
But then perhaps even more puzzling. Probability doesn't make an entrance except in the title of section two.

16
00:01:43,170 --> 00:01:46,320
Until halfway through the argument concerning induction.

17
00:01:47,100 --> 00:01:53,009
So what's going on here? Well, the real unifying thing theme of book one.

18
00:01:53,010 --> 00:01:57,600
Part three is the idea of causation and causal reasoning.

19
00:01:58,260 --> 00:02:01,650
But HUME, as we'll see, follows rather a circuitous route.

20
00:02:04,030 --> 00:02:10,400
So. At the beginning of the first section, we get something that we've already met.

21
00:02:10,460 --> 00:02:13,820
I've talked at some length about Hume's theory of relations.

22
00:02:14,210 --> 00:02:16,880
And here it begins to play quite a major role.

23
00:02:18,850 --> 00:02:25,780
So as we've seen, HUME divides the relations into four constant relations and three inconstant relations.

24
00:02:30,040 --> 00:02:38,050
But then what he does is argue that these relations have special links to particular mental operations.

25
00:02:38,620 --> 00:02:44,650
So resent resemblance, continuity, degrees in quality are discoverable at first sight.

26
00:02:46,650 --> 00:02:50,490
Whereas proportions of quantity or number of susceptible of demonstration.

27
00:02:51,210 --> 00:02:53,220
So if you read these paragraphs,

28
00:02:53,220 --> 00:03:01,080
you'll see he's effectively arguing that only proportions of quantity or number can give rise to complex mathematical reasoning.

29
00:03:02,910 --> 00:03:06,840
And the other things resemblance control 80 degrees in quality.

30
00:03:07,020 --> 00:03:11,100
They're discoverable at first sight. We've seen that's a problematic claim.

31
00:03:11,820 --> 00:03:18,180
There are all sorts of different types of resemblance. Some of them are discoverable at first sight, no doubt, but many others aren't.

32
00:03:18,300 --> 00:03:24,060
They can involve considerable investigation. Moving to the other group of relations,

33
00:03:24,540 --> 00:03:30,660
HUME wants to say that identity and relations of time and place are matters of perception rather than reasoning.

34
00:03:31,380 --> 00:03:38,430
Another dubious claim. Causation remains as the only relation that can be traced beyond our senses.

35
00:03:38,430 --> 00:03:41,760
To existence is an object which we do not see or feel.

36
00:03:44,620 --> 00:03:49,900
So we get a taxonomy which looks just a bit too good to be true.

37
00:03:50,860 --> 00:03:54,190
It reminds me of some of Kent's stuff.

38
00:03:56,140 --> 00:04:01,720
Great philosophers love shoehorning everything into some neat taxonomy.

39
00:04:02,260 --> 00:04:04,690
And it seems to me that's what HUME is doing here.

40
00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:13,120
The real result he's after, and this is probably a genuine result, or at least it looks close to being one,

41
00:04:13,990 --> 00:04:21,400
is that probable reasoning that is reasoning beyond what we immediately perceive or remember.

42
00:04:22,090 --> 00:04:28,480
Reasoning from observed to unobserved does seem to have a pretty intimate connection with causation.

43
00:04:29,500 --> 00:04:32,560
That does seem to be a genuine truth.

44
00:04:33,710 --> 00:04:38,150
But the rest of it really is not terribly convincing.

45
00:04:38,540 --> 00:04:48,750
At least I don't find it so. So what he was doing, I mean, he started the treaty is trying to give a very systematic account of our ideas.

46
00:04:49,380 --> 00:04:54,530
Amongst the ideas, he comes to a. Complex ideas.

47
00:04:55,220 --> 00:05:00,530
He then divides up the complex ideas, a very important subset of complex ideas of relations.

48
00:05:01,070 --> 00:05:04,610
He then sets out to analyse our relations and gives a taxonomy.

49
00:05:05,060 --> 00:05:12,200
And he knows roughly where he's heading. And he finds this a neat way of leading to where he wants to go.

50
00:05:12,620 --> 00:05:21,390
But it's all a little bit artificial and it doesn't quite work. Fortunately, however, this doesn't vitiate most of but one part three.

51
00:05:24,600 --> 00:05:29,130
Okay. We want to understand reasoning to the unobserved.

52
00:05:29,400 --> 00:05:34,410
And here we get the real nub of Hume's interest. Now in the enquiry concerning human understanding.

53
00:05:34,590 --> 00:05:38,070
This is completely explicit, much more so than in the treatise.

54
00:05:38,370 --> 00:05:40,640
In the treatise we get this, if you like,

55
00:05:40,650 --> 00:05:49,050
charade of investigating all these different ideas and the focus is on the origin of our ideas in the inquiry.

56
00:05:49,950 --> 00:05:57,450
Section four. HUME proceeds in a very different way. He says, Well, there are relations of ideas, matters of facts.

57
00:05:57,450 --> 00:06:03,510
Remember Hume's fork, which I mentioned in an earlier lecture, is a replacement for his theory of relations of the treaties.

58
00:06:04,380 --> 00:06:08,250
Okay, we've got relations of ideas. That's things that are true, if you like, by definition.

59
00:06:08,850 --> 00:06:13,020
All bachelors are unmarried. All things that we can know by demonstration.

60
00:06:13,110 --> 00:06:20,590
Mathematical truths. There's not too much of an epistemological problem about how we come to know those because those are a priori.

61
00:06:21,280 --> 00:06:25,720
On the other hand, there are matters of fact. That's a different matter.

62
00:06:25,840 --> 00:06:31,420
How do we come to know any matter of fact, beyond the immediate testimony of our memory and senses?

63
00:06:31,570 --> 00:06:36,880
That's the big question. And in inquiry, section four, that's the question he sets out to answer.

64
00:06:37,760 --> 00:06:42,900
In the treaties. He's looking for the origin of the idea of causation.

65
00:06:43,990 --> 00:06:47,710
He's argued that causation is intimately bound up with probable reasoning,

66
00:06:48,400 --> 00:06:53,080
and he twists it so that we end up discussing the basis of probable reasoning.

67
00:06:54,370 --> 00:07:03,040
So I think this is where his real interests lie, but he's inserting it within the context of a discussion of the idea of causation.

68
00:07:03,850 --> 00:07:08,980
I'm not meaning to suggest that the discussion of the idea of causation isn't also very important to him.

69
00:07:09,760 --> 00:07:15,490
But the the theory of probability of belief plays a lot,

70
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:22,870
much larger role than you might expect if the discussion were actually principally founded on the origin of our ideas.

71
00:07:25,320 --> 00:07:29,370
But at any rate, the origin of ideas is how HUME structures it.

72
00:07:30,180 --> 00:07:36,450
We're looking for the nature of our idea of causation and the light that the origin can shed on that.

73
00:07:36,900 --> 00:07:41,520
So we look at causes and effects and what do we see?

74
00:07:41,940 --> 00:07:45,810
Do we see any uniform property that causes an effect having common.

75
00:07:45,960 --> 00:07:50,070
No, we don't. All sorts of things can be causes. All sorts of things can be effects.

76
00:07:51,340 --> 00:07:56,260
It must be some relation between the cause and the effect that makes them cause and effect.

77
00:07:56,260 --> 00:08:01,719
Well, what relations? Well, if we look at things, take two things that are cause and effect.

78
00:08:01,720 --> 00:08:05,530
What do we find? We find, first of all, that they're contiguous in space and time.

79
00:08:05,530 --> 00:08:12,630
They close together. We always find, HUME suggests, that Causal Relations act locally.

80
00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:19,120
You might think. Hang on. What about gravity? Uh, that doesn't make an entrance at this point.

81
00:08:19,900 --> 00:08:25,600
One thing that does make an entrance at this point via a footnote is Hume's observation

82
00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:31,030
that we can have causal relations between things that are not spatially located.

83
00:08:31,780 --> 00:08:40,420
Later in the treatise at 145 of the Materiality of the Soul, HUME is going to point out that many of our perceptions do not have a spatial location.

84
00:08:40,960 --> 00:08:49,140
So it looks like the requirement of spatial contiguity cannot apply to those that are obviously causally active.

85
00:08:50,640 --> 00:08:56,850
So notice that although contiguity is signalled as a part of our idea of causation,

86
00:08:57,570 --> 00:09:02,190
HUME himself, via this footnote, is actually saying, well, it doesn't matter that much.

87
00:09:03,780 --> 00:09:07,230
What about priority? We find causes to be prior to their effects.

88
00:09:08,470 --> 00:09:17,140
And HUME gives a rather unsatisfactory argument for the conclusion that causes must always be prior to their effects.

89
00:09:17,380 --> 00:09:22,990
It goes a bit like this. If causes and effects can be simultaneous, then all of time would collapse.

90
00:09:24,800 --> 00:09:29,920
Therefore they can't be okay. Well, if this argument appears satisfactory, that's fine.

91
00:09:29,930 --> 00:09:37,610
If not, don't worry. It doesn't matter too much. It seems a slightly odd attitude to take, but there it is.

92
00:09:40,860 --> 00:09:48,540
So what HUME is really after, what he really does care about is not the contiguity or the priority.

93
00:09:49,020 --> 00:09:56,680
It's the idea of necessary connection. The famous quotation often misunderstood.

94
00:09:58,030 --> 00:10:05,410
Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession as affording a complete idea of causation?

95
00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:14,530
By no means an object may be contiguous and prior to another without being considered as its cause.

96
00:10:16,390 --> 00:10:21,040
There is a necessary connection to be taken into consideration and that relation

97
00:10:21,040 --> 00:10:25,450
is of much greater importance than any of the other two above mentioned.

98
00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:38,230
So HUME is saying that the causal relation is not just a matter of contiguity and priority, it involves some sort of necessary connection.

99
00:10:39,160 --> 00:10:45,129
And what he's now going to do over the rest of but one part three, though, as I say,

100
00:10:45,130 --> 00:10:53,080
in a rather circumlocution way, is to find out the origin of that idea of necessary connection.

101
00:10:56,880 --> 00:11:03,930
So what you looking for? When he's looking for the idea of necessarily connection, he's looking for the extra ingredient.

102
00:11:04,560 --> 00:11:09,830
Besides what? Contiguity priority.

103
00:11:10,580 --> 00:11:17,150
Just notice for future reference, he said nothing yet at all about anything like constant conjunction.

104
00:11:18,150 --> 00:11:21,270
Its single instance, contiguity and priority.

105
00:11:21,270 --> 00:11:24,840
That's all he's got so far. And he's looking for the extra thing.

106
00:11:25,970 --> 00:11:31,400
[INAUDIBLE] find the extra thing when he's discussing induction, as we shall see.

107
00:11:33,310 --> 00:11:40,360
But for the moment, he has no idea where to go. How do I find this elusive, necessary connection?

108
00:11:41,020 --> 00:11:44,200
Well, I might think of something like. Power of production.

109
00:11:44,590 --> 00:11:49,780
Oh, but that just means the same thing. Right. I want to know what this power is.

110
00:11:49,780 --> 00:11:53,290
This necessity that that governs causes.

111
00:11:53,980 --> 00:11:57,400
Where am I going to find that? Oh, I haven't a clue. What should I do then?

112
00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:04,660
Well, I better proceed. Like those who not being able to find what they want just beat around the neighbouring fields.

113
00:12:04,880 --> 00:12:08,710
Hmm. Just hope that something will turn up. All right, I'll.

114
00:12:08,950 --> 00:12:13,780
I'll do that. I'll go and hope that something turns up. Very strange way of proceeding.

115
00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:19,090
But that's what he does. The first neighbouring field is the causal maxim.

116
00:12:20,740 --> 00:12:26,170
It is a general maxim in philosophy that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence.

117
00:12:27,330 --> 00:12:31,890
Well, here's an interesting question. Why do we believe the causal maxim?

118
00:12:33,130 --> 00:12:37,420
Well, many philosophers say that it's intuitively certain or demonstratively certain.

119
00:12:38,200 --> 00:12:45,620
HUME argues that it is neither. And we've actually seen part of that argument before.

120
00:12:45,650 --> 00:12:50,750
Do you remember in The Theory of Relations, I mentioned that in drawing his dichotomy.

121
00:12:51,610 --> 00:12:58,089
Part of Hume's aim seems to have been to show that the causal maxim can't be intuitively certain because,

122
00:12:58,090 --> 00:13:01,930
he says, intuitive certainty can only involve the constant relations.

123
00:13:02,080 --> 00:13:07,630
Causation is an inconstant relation. Therefore, the causal maxim can't be intuitively certain.

124
00:13:09,230 --> 00:13:12,770
More securely. He appeals to the appeals to the conceive ability principle.

125
00:13:13,730 --> 00:13:18,380
It's perfectly conceivable to have something beginning into existence without a cause.

126
00:13:19,130 --> 00:13:24,800
Therefore, it cannot be intuitively or demonstratively certain that every beginning of existence must have a cause.

127
00:13:27,380 --> 00:13:31,670
Since it's not from knowledge, remember humans using knowledge in the strict sense.

128
00:13:31,670 --> 00:13:39,020
When HUME talks about knowledge in the treatise, he almost always means demonstrative knowledge, absolute certainty.

129
00:13:40,300 --> 00:13:44,260
So it's not from knowledge or any scientific reasoning that we derive this opinion,

130
00:13:44,290 --> 00:13:50,470
the causal maxim it must necessarily arise from observation and experience.

131
00:13:54,760 --> 00:14:00,220
The next question then should naturally be how experience gives rise to such a principle.

132
00:14:00,460 --> 00:14:04,240
How from experience do we get a belief in the causal maxim?

133
00:14:05,680 --> 00:14:10,000
But as I find it will be more convenient to sink this question in the following.

134
00:14:10,510 --> 00:14:16,990
Why we conclude that such particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects, and why we form an inference from one to another.

135
00:14:17,680 --> 00:14:24,670
We shall make that the subject of our future inquiry will perhaps be found in the end that the same answer will serve for both questions.

136
00:14:25,330 --> 00:14:34,870
Well, an intriguing passage, because not only does he sink the causal maxim at this point, it sinks without trace.

137
00:14:35,500 --> 00:14:44,650
It never reappears. He never comes back to it. So we have the appearance here that he's interested in the origin of the causal maxim.

138
00:14:45,160 --> 00:14:48,290
He says. That's very interesting.

139
00:14:48,530 --> 00:14:53,300
I'm going to sink it in. This other question, he goes off and discusses the other question never comes back.

140
00:14:55,450 --> 00:14:59,770
Now many people have supposed that he is not a believer in the causal maxim.

141
00:15:00,940 --> 00:15:02,620
This does not seem to be the case.

142
00:15:03,940 --> 00:15:10,630
I suppose it's quite natural that people would think that because he's argued that the causal maxim is not intuitively or demonstratively certain.

143
00:15:10,990 --> 00:15:20,200
He's attacked various philosophies arguments, notably those of Hobbs, Locke and Samuel Clark for the causal maxim.

144
00:15:21,160 --> 00:15:25,360
But bear in mind, he said quite explicitly that it arises from experience.

145
00:15:25,420 --> 00:15:29,290
Here he's saying the next question is how it arises from experience.

146
00:15:35,780 --> 00:15:42,200
There are two main lines of evidence for the claim that HUME does believe in the causal maxim.

147
00:15:42,500 --> 00:15:49,610
Beside those hints, first of all, we will see that HUME seems to be a pretty committed determinist.

148
00:15:51,070 --> 00:15:55,630
If you're a determinist, then inevitably you're going to believe in the causal maxim.

149
00:15:56,260 --> 00:16:00,670
It's an interesting question why he's a determinist and whether he's justified in being one.

150
00:16:01,150 --> 00:16:06,040
But I think it's pretty clear that he is just saying we'll come back to that later.

151
00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:17,300
But secondly, we've got some letters. So this is the letter from a gentleman to his friend in Edinburgh, written in 1745.

152
00:16:17,990 --> 00:16:25,760
He's been attacked by the local clergy as an atheist for denying the doctrine of causes and effects.

153
00:16:26,030 --> 00:16:31,639
And they're saying HUME, in the treatise, denies that every event has a cause for that.

154
00:16:31,640 --> 00:16:40,010
Every beginning of existence has a cause. This is the foundation of, for example, Samuel Clarke's cosmological argument for the existence of God.

155
00:16:40,400 --> 00:16:46,350
Therefore, Hume's an atheist. And HUME is saying, no, I didn't say that in the treaties.

156
00:16:46,360 --> 00:16:54,090
What I said was that the causal maxim is not founded on demonstrative or intuitive certainty.

157
00:16:54,240 --> 00:17:00,540
Instead, it's founded on moral evidence, probable evidence, inductive evidence, evidence from experience,

158
00:17:01,440 --> 00:17:05,910
and it's followed by a conviction of the same kind with these truths that all men must die.

159
00:17:05,970 --> 00:17:13,460
And that the sun will rise tomorrow. Now. If that is written sincerely.

160
00:17:14,760 --> 00:17:22,530
Then HUME seems to be thinking out there in the country as to just who a madman without his books.

161
00:17:23,100 --> 00:17:31,740
Here he is, writing from memory, and he seems to be thinking that in the treatise he had asserted that the causal maxim is derived from experience,

162
00:17:31,890 --> 00:17:35,520
and these are certain, as these things are certain pretty much as anything.

163
00:17:39,030 --> 00:17:47,340
Again. We have a letter to Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart had written that HUME denied the doctrine of causes and effects.

164
00:17:48,150 --> 00:17:52,380
And here he is saying, no, I didn't.

165
00:17:52,530 --> 00:17:56,220
I didn't deny that at all. Saying much the same as in the letter from a gentleman.

166
00:17:59,260 --> 00:18:02,200
Okay. So much for the causal maxim HUME discusses.

167
00:18:02,200 --> 00:18:11,440
It takes the opportunity to attack some attempts to prove it, then says, I'm going to go on to talk about causal inference.

168
00:18:11,740 --> 00:18:15,550
And as I've suggested, I think that's where his interests really lie.

169
00:18:18,850 --> 00:18:23,320
So the next few sections are structured around this and it is a very systematic structure.

170
00:18:23,800 --> 00:18:25,210
In Treatise one, three, four.

171
00:18:25,450 --> 00:18:33,690
HUME argues that causal reasoning, if it's going to result in belief, must start from something that we perceive or remember.

172
00:18:35,670 --> 00:18:39,180
So that gives us an agenda here.

173
00:18:39,180 --> 00:18:45,030
Therefore, we have three things to explain. First, the original impression that's the thing from which we reason.

174
00:18:45,510 --> 00:18:49,140
Secondly, the transition to the idea of the connected cause or effect.

175
00:18:49,620 --> 00:18:55,230
So when we draw an inference from what we perceive to something that we don't perceive.

176
00:18:55,980 --> 00:19:04,650
Thirdly, the nature and qualities of that idea. And we'll see in the rest of this part of the treatise.

177
00:19:05,670 --> 00:19:12,829
He does discuss the original impression. The transition to the idea of the connected cause or effect.

178
00:19:12,830 --> 00:19:18,110
That's the argument concerning induction of the inference from the impression to the idea.

179
00:19:18,950 --> 00:19:22,070
And then he goes on to discuss the nature of belief.

180
00:19:22,520 --> 00:19:26,270
So the next few sections of the treatise are all structured accordingly.

181
00:19:28,870 --> 00:19:34,000
135 has an odd title of the impressions of the senses and memory.

182
00:19:34,120 --> 00:19:40,390
That's a bit peculiar because. The memory does not present impressions.

183
00:19:40,410 --> 00:19:44,190
The memory presents ideas. So what's he doing here?

184
00:19:44,190 --> 00:19:47,280
Talking about the impressions of the senses and memory.

185
00:19:47,790 --> 00:19:57,420
Well, I think it's a slip, but it's a fairly natural slip, because what HUME is doing here is contrasting the senses and memory with the imagination.

186
00:19:58,050 --> 00:20:04,500
And what he's saying is that the impressions of the senses and the ideas of the memory have a force,

187
00:20:04,500 --> 00:20:09,850
an vivacity, a strength, a liveliness beyond those of the imagination.

188
00:20:10,710 --> 00:20:16,050
And that seems to be what enables us to found an inference from them when we

189
00:20:16,050 --> 00:20:21,480
infer beyond what we have perceived or remembered to something unobserved.

190
00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:31,920
It seems to be that extra force and vivacity over the mere ideas of the imagination that enables us to actually draw an inference from it.