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I know. I know.

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In the case of causation. Okay.

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Now, very briefly, I want to talk about why HUME is so interested in the notion of causation.

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Why does he spend all this time getting clear on it? No doubt.

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Part of the reason is that causation is an important relation. And he's doing this systematic analysis of where our ideas come from.

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But there's more than that. If you search through the treaties and you ask yourself, well,

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what parts later in the treaties are informed by the discussion of causation and in particular the two definitions?

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You find two sections. One of them dumped the materiality of the soul.

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And one of them. Of liberty and necessity.

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In one case, he is arguing that matter can be the cause of thought.

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Against people who say that on principle matter cannot think.

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In the other case, he's saying that the doctrine of necessity, if you like, determinism applies as much to the mental world as to the physical world.

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Now, both arguments crucially turn on his two definitions.

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So of the materiality of the so okay motion of bodies.

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It's so different in kind from thinking that there's no way that the motion of matter could cause thought.

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Therefore, there must be an immaterial soul or whatever. Very popular argument against Hobbes in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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And humans saying that can't work because causation just is a matter of constant conjunction.

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A priori, anything could cause anything. It's simply a matter of what's constantly conjoined with what.

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And so there's no reason in principle why motion.

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Shouldn't cause thought.

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Indeed, we find by experience that they're constantly united, which being all the circumstances that enter into the idea of cause and effect.

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We may certainly conclude that motion may be and actually is the cause of thought and perception.

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Constant conjunction of objects constitutes the very essence of cause and effect.

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So matter and motion may often be regarded as the causes of thought.

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So he's appealing absolutely explicitly to his definition in terms of constant conjunction,

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saying, there you are, you can have constant conjunction there. That means you've got causation.

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Liberty and necessity. Very similar in principle. Causation is just a matter of constant conjunction and the inference of the mind.

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The first definition and the second definition they apply to the moral realm.

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That is the realm of human behaviour just as much as they do to the physical realm.

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Therefore, causal necessity applies just as much.

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Now, some people won't like that. Some people will say no.

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There is a kind of necessity in the motion of billiard balls, which goes beyond the necessity of human action.

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There's some kind of really deep metaphysical necessity,

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some inexorable force that makes it behave in the way that it does in a way that doesn't imply to us.

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And here HUME says, Sorry, you can't form any idea of such a necessity that goes beyond the two definitions.

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My opponents will deny that my definitions make the whole of necessity.

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But then they must show that we have an idea of something else in the actions of matter, which, according to the foregoing reasoning, is impossible.

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Now, that's a rather pithy statement from the abstract,

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but you can see that similar thoughts are expressed repeatedly in the treatise and in the inquiry.

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And me is absolutely clear that it's his definitions of necessity that make the difference here.

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Our author pretends, in other words, claims that this reasoning puts the whole controversy in a new light by giving a new definition of necessity.

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And he says twice in the treatise in these sections,

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he also says twice in the inquiry that this argument turns on the fact that his definitions are specifying the very essence of necessity.

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He really does think he has defined what necessity is.

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So what? Perhaps a bit odd here is that we have a form of anti realism supporting a form of realism.

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Anti realism in the following sense humans is denying that there is anything to causation beyond his two definitions.

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Realism in another sense, because the very fact that causation only requires the satisfaction of the two definitions

48
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means that he can establish confidently that causation does apply in these areas.

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If causation required, something deeper, something metaphysically thick, then it will be very hard to establish where it applies.

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But if causation just is satisfaction of the two definitions,

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then he is able to show that they apply in the moral realm just as much in the physical realm.

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Now I want to suggest that we can get an insight into Hume's overall vision here,

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which makes a lot of sense in terms of his philosophical development.

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He describes in the abstract of the treatise what he calls the chief argument of the treaties.

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And it's absolutely clear that the chief argument of the treatise is the argument

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concerning induction belief and causation and liberty and necessity free will.

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Applying the copy principle to the idea of necessary connection gives him a handle on what necessary connection is that enables him.

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Both to apply it to the moral sphere, as we've seen.

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And to eliminate a prior mystic causal metaphysics.

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Right. Other people have said, I can look at that. I can understand the notion of matter and I can see that matter cannot cause thought.

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They're claiming to have some sort of a priori insight into the nature of matter.

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HUME saying forget that all causation is is a matter of necessary connection.

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Therefore, the only way you can establish what causes, what is experience, what things are in fact constantly conjoined.

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So a prior mystic reasoning goes out of the window. Empirical reasoning comes in.

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And I shall end just with a suggestion. HUME When he was young, was obviously very concerned about problems of religion.

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He said to Boswell, quite ironically on his deathbed, that he'd never entertained any belief in religion since he began to read Locke and Clark.

67
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So he was reading Locke and Clark, who were arguing for the existence of God, and that undermined Hume's belief in the existence of God.

68
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Apparently they were using the cosmological argument.

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If you're interested in the cosmological argument, you'll naturally be interested in the causal maxim.

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Everything must have a cause. Therefore there must be a first Gould's, therefore God.

71
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So where does the causal maxim come from?

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I suggest that that may have been Hume's way into all this Locke's chapter, in which he talks about the origin of the idea of necessary connection.

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Also talks about free will.

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And there were very active debates going on in particular between Clark and Collins on the notion of free will at the time.

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Indeed, he was intimately connected and very geographically close to some people who were involved in that debate.

76
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So I think that Hume's philosophy may have been very largely driven by the thought

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that pursuing the impression from which the idea of necessary connection is derived.

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That idea, which underlines both the both the cosmological argument and discussions of free will,

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can provide a wedge which enables him to get in to a prior mystic metaphysics, knock that out and at the same time establish empirical causal science.

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So we get an integrated vision with elements of anti theology, pro experimental science, anti a prior mystic metaphysics.

81
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Thank you.