Realism and Empiricism in Hume's Account of Causality

Abstract

AbstractHume's empirical approach seems to drain the concept of causality of all content, so that causality in objects is reduced to constant conjunction. His use of language of causality, which is necessarily realist, is undermined by his account of causality, which is not realist. The realist intepretation of Hume, by philosophers such as Galen Strawson, is rejected because it is incompatible with empiricism. However, if Hume's view that we do not have any sensory experience of causing is challenged, then the way is open to give an account of causality which is both empiricist and realist.