PHL100Y1 Lecture Notes - Dialectic, Causal Inference, Castaway
Document Summary
[1] hume holds that causal reasoning is, and must be, based on experience. Distinguish two claims: (c1) all effects have causes (c2) all events have causes. The truth of (c1) is based on a relation among ideas: it is part of the idea of an effect that it be caused. That is, cause" and effect" are correlative terms, just as much as husband" and wife". A husband is someone"s husband, and a wife someone"s wife. Likewise, effect" means something like an event brought about by some other event". Hume is interested in (c1) only to the extent that it might be confused with (c2), not in its own right. Now (c2) is a matter of fact: its denial is logically possible. Hume thinks that the point is readily granted in the case of unfamiliar things. Isolated on a desert island, a castaway nds an unfamiliar brownish-green kind of fruit growing on a tree.
