I have not read Hume, but what he may be arguing is that all the causes we see may not be causes at all. He is not claiming that there are no causes; he is only claiming- for the sake of skepticism's purposes and particularly with regards to induction- we cannot go from "I see causation" to "causation is real."

Furthermore, a habit is not necessarily a cause. For example, Hume (I believe) stated that he has a habit of seeing things in a causal way in day-to-day life, and he definitely wrote more than on just skepticism, so he clearly used causation even as a philosopher. However, as a skeptic, he may acknowledge that certain causal events in his perception may not be causation, but only an association between correlated events. In other words, he is not caused to see causation, he just has a tendency to do so. If habits were causes, then they would have complete control over the individual and determinism would follow. However, Hume does not seem to be using "habit" in this way. Like someone who smokes, the form a habit of smoking. The may really feel compelled to smoke and do so regularly, but it is not impossible to break the habit, nor is it impossible for the smoker to temporarily stop the habit in certain moments.

Hume's claim is that we don't see causation. We only see invariant correlation, and then infer causation – and that this inference isn't deduction.

Hume's claim is that we don't see causation. We only see invariant correlation, and then infer causation – and that this inference isn't deduction. — Michael

When Hume notes that inference isn't deduction, was his conclusion that we can't know that causation exists, because it's inferential, or just that we can be wrong about what causes what?

And what was this in reaction to? Did the rationalists think we could deduce causation?

Hume's claim is that we don't see causation. We only see invariant correlation, and then infer causation – and that this inference isn't deduction. — Michael

Deduction is not the only kind of inference. We infer causation as a retroduction - i.e., a hypothesis. We then use deduction to infer predictions that follow from this hypothesis, followed by induction to investigate whether those predictions are falsified or corroborated in experience.

I think the reduction of explanation to description is indicative that Hume's reasoning was flawed. Either he was wrong that we don't perceive causation, or he was wrong in excluding inference as a source of knowledge. — Marchesk

I don't think you have exhausted all possibilities there.

You may have noticed that our best physical theories do not mention causation. They can't because they are time symmetric; they can be used to predict the past just as well as the future.

So, we have "inferred" (whatever that means) fundamental explanations of what exists and how it behaves, without causation featuring in these explanations.

I thought one of Hume's big arguments was to say induction could not be supported as a valid way of reasoning to knowledge because its justification was circular (if I remember epistemology correctly).

This is why it is necessary to understand why Kant said that Hume had 'awoken him from his dogmatic slumbers', and what he did as a result. That was central to Kant's philosophical enterprise. So only considering what Hume had to say about it, is only considering the prologue to Kant's response.

This is why it is necessary to understand why Kant said that Hume had 'awoken him from his dogmatic slumbers', and what he did as a result. That was central to Kant's philosophical enterprise. So only considering what Hume had to say about it, is only considering the prologue to Kant's response. — Wayfarer

So Kant realized that Hume's argument was disastrous to reason, and something more needed to be said.

Peirce was intimately familiar with Hume and rejected the notion that induction depends on presupposing the uniformity of nature. Instead, his justification of induction was that it is a method of investigation that is intrinsically self-correcting, at least in the long run of experience.

So Kant realized that Hume's argument was disastrous to reason, and something more needed to be said. — Marchesk

Absolutely! That was the major impetus for Kant's philosophical project. 'Kant claimed to have logically deduced how causality and other pure concepts originate from human understanding itself, not from experiencing the external world.' Hume takes experience as 'given', but Kant showed that even 'bare experience' is dependent on the categories of understanding, the intuitions, and the other constituents of reason, without which there can be no experience. Delving into what that entails was the subject of the Critique of Pure Reason.

Not to get side-tracked because this argument is different from the one in the OP, but I do not understand how that deals with Hume's argument. If we justify induction via induction, then we are engaging in circular reasoning. We have to appeal to some other reason to justify induction.

See for example Kant and Hume on Causality (SEP), from which:

Kant concludes, in § 30, by stating that we are now in possession of “a complete solution of the Humean problem” (4, 313; 66)—which, Kant adds, “rescues the a priori origin of the pure concepts of the understanding and the validity of the general laws of nature as laws of the understanding, in such a way that their use is limited only to experience, because their possibility has its ground merely in the relation of the understanding to experience, however, not in such a way that they are derived from experience, but that experience is derived from them, a completely reversed kind of connection which never occurred to Hume”

but Kant showed that even 'bare experience' is dependent on the categories of understanding, the intuitions, and the other constituents of reason, without which there can be no experience. — Wayfarer

But if we want to know why this the case, then we're faced with:

1. There is no cause for our reason.

2. Mind is the causative power.

3. Reality is causal, and the mind reflects this. To put it in modern terms, the mind evolved to expect causal explanations, because the world is causal, and creatures who understand that are more fit.

In what sense do you think that we are justifying induction via induction? Again, Peirce's argument was that induction is justified by virtue of its self-corrective nature. If the retroductive hypothesis that we are testing is false, then experience will eventually reveal that to us by confounding the expectations that we deductively derived from it.

Lawfulness is the underlying issue. European culture made a giant transition from the belief that God causes everything to belief in natural law.

Why do we have confidence that the pattern of cause and effect that we have known will persist into the future? God's benevolence was once the answer. But with natural law.. there's no benevolence to assure us. So what is the basis for that confidence that even little babies demonstrate?

Which means that all scientific explanation reduces to description. Predictive success is a fluke, without reason, as are all conjoined events. It's just one damned thing after another.

I think the reduction of explanation to description is indicative that Hume's reasoning was flawed. Either he was wrong that we don't perceive causation, or he was wrong in excluding inference as a source of knowledge. — Marchesk

Does he exclude inference as a source of knowledge? I mean, is the claim that, if we rely on inference as a method, we cannot know the sun will rise tomorrow?

Clearly not. We do that every day and it turns out we are right. Inference of what happens in the word amounts to knowledge of causation all the time. I know hitting the post button will put this message up for the rest of you to see. What's more, I've seen it happen too-- that hitting post then means other people on the site read and respond to me (as opposed to cancelling a post, where they do not).

Hume's argument for radical contingency doesn't deny inference can be a source of knowledge or that we can perceive cause and effect. If it did, he would be literally claiming we couldn't know that one event caused another and that we never experienced such phenomena.

What the argument for radical contingency denies, and something Hume never quite got his head around, is reasons.

Since there is only one event after another, all causation is reduced to a matter of a given state that causes another. Causality is defined only by states themselves. There is no deductive knowledge, no rule that can tell us that, given a particular state, that only some other state can occur afterwards. Possibility can never be closed down such that there is only one necessary outcome.

In radical contingency, one only loses deduction. Knowledge, perception and even certainty are still granted through our experiences. Despite knowing, for example, that the sun might not rise tomorrow, I can know it will, be certain about it (i.e. sure it possible other events might happen, but I'm aware the sun rising will be actual) and perceive it happening.

The trouble is that Kant isn't paying attention. For it is not just bare experience which amounts to a category of understanding, but also the absence of experience too. Kant's boogeyman of a world without sense (and our experiences) is literally impossible.

If there are no experiences, then there is also something which belongs to a category of understanding. The presence of experiences does not function as an account of everything that belongs to a category of understanding.

All Kant's objection really shows is that, when experiences exist, then there must be experiences at those moments, something that was never in question with respect to our knowledge being experientially mediated.

To put it in modern terms, the mind evolved to expect causal explanations, because the world is causal, and creatures who understand that are more fit. — Marchesk

That is putting the cart well and truly before the horse. To begin with, even in order to decide what a true theory is, we have to make judgements about the truth and falsehood of ideas. To say that the ability to make such judgements is a function of evolution is to reduce the capacity to reason to a biological function. But if it's a biological function then what are the grounds for believing its products to be true? 'Evolution done it' is just the secular equivalent of 'God done it', a catch-all explanation which doesn't really explain anything.

Notice how habit is meant to explain our confidence in causality. A habit is a causal psychological explanation for some behavior. Hume invoked causality to explain our faith in it!

This contradiction reveals a fact about explanation. You cannot have any explanation without causation. — Marchesk

Great point. I like Rescher on this issue. As I understand or explain it, we "project" a necessary connection between conjoined events. We just seem born with this ability/tendency. A world without necessity is a chaos. As I see it, Hume showed that our most important kind of knowledge is not deductive and cannot be justified by "pure" reason.

This contradiction reveals a fact about explanation. You cannot have any explanation without causation. The best you can do is describe how events have been conjoined up to this point. Nothing happens for any reason, it just is, and it might not be the case tomorrow. — Marchesk

I agree. Explanation of X is something like: the appearance of X was necessary given conditions Y and Z. But this is just an appeal to a necessity which itself remains unexplained. Or if this necessity is explained by other more general necessities ("laws"), then we still always have some irreducible or "prime" necessities that just are what they are for no reason at all.

Or if this necessity is explained by other more general necessities ("laws"), then we still always have some irreducible or "prime" necessities that just are what they are for no reason at all. — Ignignot

Maybe. I don't know whether it's possible to arrive at a self-explanatory theory for whatever is most fundamental. If not, then something is fundamentally brute.

Actually, I was trying to say (perhaps ineloquently) that something is indeed fundamentally "brute." These are the "prime" necessary connections. They are merely descriptive. "That's just the way things are."

Actually, I was trying to say (perhaps ineloquently) that something is indeed fundamentally "brute." These are the "prime" necessary connections. They are merely descriptive. "That's just the way things are." — Ignignot

That might be the case. My concern with bruteness is that it can be placed anywhere. Maybe experience itself is brute, as a few posters on here have argued in the past. Not my position, but it did help end the discussion in their favor, because where do you go after that?

Just to clarify (and this may connect to your notion that bruteness can be placed anywhere), I think the brute necessities are relative to the consciousness involved. A scientist might create a more general law that converts what was once a brute law into a consequence of the new, more comprehensive law. This new law will likely become the unexplained description of the way things are. I suppose my argument would be that our first-person situation always involves certain brute necessities if we bother to trace our beliefs back far enough.

I suppose a consequence of my view is that the world must remain fundamentally "mysterious" or "miraculous" in the sense that it cannot be explained as a whole. Explanation is a local, "finite" affair. For instance, "God did it" just seems to sweep the brute fact of existence behind a super-human mask. Cause is shifted to intention or human-like motivation. But right away a psychology of God becomes possible. Why did God do it? Psychology relies on the projection of necessities, too. So God's mind is a "machine" to the degree that it is intelligible at all.

suppose a consequence of my view is that the world must remain fundamentally "mysterious" or "miraculous" in the sense that it cannot be explained as a whole. — Ignignot

That was Wittgenstein's position. The issue has come up in materialist vs. idealist arguments, where the idealist can just say the materialist is moving brute from experience to the material, which still leaves the material world unexplained.

I think you take explanation as far as you can, and then what's left is mysterious, for now. Maybe it will be explained one day, and maybe not.

Yes, what's left is mysterious for now. We can always explain the currently unexplained at a later time. But I'd argue that at all times we are working in the context of unexplained laws. Sure, we are working to explain them, but this usually involves generalization. "If we assume that the energy in the universe is constant, then we can derive X, so that X is a consequence of constant energy." But why should energy be constant, for instance? Well, maybe that's patched up with something else. But it seems that our first priority is a theory that predicts accurately enough for our very practical purposes. So we'll settle for recognizing a pattern that we can't yet embed in a larger pattern. As you say, the day may come when we can embed the mysterious but useful pattern in a larger pattern. But I'd suggest that our largest pattern or "theory of everything" can't escape brute facticity. If it could be explained by one of our other theories, then it wouldn't be the largest pattern or a theory of everything.