Constant Conjunction Research Articles

David Hume (review)

478 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY David Hume. By Nicholas Capaldi. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975. Pp. 241. $7.50) Professor Capaldi has taken Hume's profession in the Treatise to establish a new "science of man" very seriously indeed, and he intends to show us in this book how the "almost entirely new'" foundation of this science is thoroughly Newtonian. Hume, he tells us, was "the first philosopher to understand fully, to appreciate and to articulate the philosophical implications of Newtonian physics" (p. 50). Newtonian science is therefore the basis of Humean philosophy, and we should at once set aside the idea that this philosophy is in any way dependent on a preconceived theory of psychology. Even worse would be for us to accept the vulgar error that Hume failed to distinguish between psychology and logic. These are not the only myths Capaldi is intent on exploding, nor the only windmills at which he tilts. He tells us, among other things, that Hume should not be thought of as belonging to the Locke-Berkeley tradition; that Hume's theory of causation must not be regarded as having any connection with his theory of perception; that there is no problem of induction in Hume; that critics as distinguished as Popper and Passmore have been mistaken about Hume's explanation of "constant conjunction" (p. 124); that Hume was not a hedonist; that Hume was not concerned with the is-ought problem; that Hume does not deny the argument from design; and, finally, that we ought ourselves to be skeptical of Hume's alleged skepticism. Lest I give the impression that the book is a long series of refutations, let me give examples of the positive assertions: Hume should be seen as developing, albeit rather elaborately, a common sense theory of reality; Hume advances a naturalistic theory of ethics as well as of religion; Hume provides a scientific basis for the social sciences; and Hume provides a convincing psychology in his theory of the passions. The scope of this relatively short work is therefore rather extensive, and to achieve a tour de force of Hume's thought, Capaldi has organized his book tightly. After a brief glimpse at Hume's life, we are led, in successive chapters, to consider his view of philosophy, the Newtonian program of his work, the structure of the Treatise, the analysis of causation, his moral theory, the theory of the passions, and finally questions about his philosophy of religion and his alleged skepticism. Hume's first contact with Newtonian ideas was probably at Edinburgh University as an undergraduate; at any rate, by the time he comes to write the Treatise he is, according to Capaldi, self-consciously out to apply Newton's method to the "moral" subjects--ethics, psychology, and what we now call the social sciences. Hume begins by rejecting any kind of speculative metaphysics in the traditional, Aristotelian manner; he insists that philosophers, like physicists, must limit themselves to actual experience and concern themselves with experimentation along the lines laid down by Newton. The "Newtonian method" consists of six stages. The first is the identification and isolation of the objects of analysis. Hume's division of perception into ideas and impressions is his first move in applying the method. The second stage is experimentation; in Hume's case introspection and observation of human behavior provide this obligatory experimentation. The next stage consists of the working out of generalizations: Hume's theory of association corresponds to Newton's theory of the attraction of physical bodies. The fourth stage of the Newtonian program is to extend the theory to explain further phenomena: in Hume's case the theory of association is used as an explanatory principle throughout the Treatise. Finally, Newton's concern with momentum is reflected in Hume's theory of the transfer of vivacity, and both share a recognition of the inherent limitations of the reasoning faculty of man. Hume thus combines these procedures and principles of Newtonian science and applies them to philosophical investigation, placing this study on a new footing and dispelling the Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge(Oxford, 1888), p. xx. BOOK REVIEWS 479 them to philosophical investigation, placing...

Causality in the Environment and Health: The Utility of the Multiplex Variable

CAUSALITY IN THE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH: THE UTILITY OF THE MULTIPLEX VARIABLE ERICJ. CASSELL, M.D* and MICHAEL D. LEBOWITZ, PhD.i The model of cause and effect that has been so useful in infectious disease and classic epidemiology has failed in the search for understanding the relationship between the environment and health. That is to say, despite intense effort, no single or even simple combination of common environmental constituents (pollutants or weather factors) has stood up as a cause of human disease or illness in the concentrations found in ambient atmosphere [1-15]. Further, but equally important, methods for air pollution control, that is, establishment of ambient-air or emission standards, pollutant by pollutant, based on the infectious disease model, have not been particularly successful in the management of environmental problems. The weakness of that approach has been especially apparent as a result of the current "energy crisis." The failure seems to us to arise from a durable but nontheless simplistic view of reality common to and now under attack in many areas of science. We believe the basic problem is in our understanding of causality . The concepts of causality as expressed in many of the medical and behavioral sciences have been broadened and made diffuse past utility for further research or control. Another way of saying this is that we have become too wary of making causal statements, replacing them instead with statements about correlation, association, or probability of association. This has come about for good reasons as the phenomena under study have become more complex, making simple or unguarded causal statements increasingly difficult. Indeed, most simplistic statements of "cause" in environmental effects have turned out to be incorrect . Because our world demands action, the scientist so frequently constrained on paper about cause-and-effect statements often behaves as if, in fact, he believed that specific environmental variables (i.e., SO2) were a cause of human disease. "Clinical professor of public health, Cornell University Medical College, New York, New York 10021. tAssociate professor of internal medicine, University of Arizona, College of Medicine, Tucson, Arizona 85724. 338 I Eric J. Cassell and Michael D. Lebowitz · Multiplex Variable We have, then, a curious paradox. On the one hand the situations of our world, such as the effect of the environment on health, seem to demand control, and control seems to require some concept of cause. On the other hand our increasing appreciation of the complexity of the problems increasingly warns us off statements of cause. The resolution of this paradox would seem to demand a reassessment of the concept of cause. The Concept of Cause We are compelled to return to Hume. Hume said that all that can be proved about the phenomenon called cause and effect has been proved when the two events considered "cause" and "effect" are shown to constantly occur together [16]. He argued that causal connections are contingent , not logically necessary. In other words, there is no logical manner by which one can arrive at cause and effect before the fact. As Pap [17] has pointed out, Hume's insight is often ignored because of two common confusions. The first confusion is that the observation comes to stand for its concept. For example, the tubercle bacillus has come to be equated with tuberculosis. That is, one tends to forget the intervening steps or processes involved in the coincidence. The original utility that followed the demonstration of the tubercle baccillus in tuberculosis—guiding the search for cause in other diseases—becomes diluted as the confusion that tuberculosis is the tubercle bacillus directs us away from the power and importance of the intervening processes. When we study health in terms of environmental observations this confusion of the observation for a concept in the infectious disease model persuades us to look for a single cause (i.e., pollutant), regardless of the intervening processes or the discontinuity of the chain of events that is in violation of Hume's demand for constant conjunction. We explain away our difficulties and failures by invoking doctrines of complexity, multifactoriality , contributory variables, etc. The second confusion pointed out by Pap is that once having explained (as distinct from having observed) why an event A...

Hume on Causal Contiguity and Causal Succession

Hume notoriously maintains that contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction are individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of causation. While his arguments for the necessity of constant conjunction have been thoroughly dissected, his arguments for contiguity and succession have generally been either ignored or misstated. I hope both to correct this unfortunate state of affairs and to show some fatal defects in Hume's account.The pertinent passages in Hume's writings acknowledge three conceivable ways in which the temporal relation between causes and effects might be construed: (i) as separated by some interval; (ii) as perfectly contiguous, so that the effect succeeds the cause in the very next moment; (iii) as perfectly contemporaneous, existing at the same moment. Hume defends the correctness of (ii) and denies the tenability of both (i) and (iii).

Biology, causality and abstraction, with illustrations from a behavioural study of chemoreception

There is a persistent gap between biology and philosophical analysis. This paper attempts to surmount part of the gap. First, views on “causality” and “abstraction” are developed. Causal relations afford interpretation according to a modified version of the constant conjunction principle. It is useful to distinguish orders of abstraction in addition to levels of abstraction. A discussion concerning chemo-reception shows that philosophical concepts may provide theoretical biology with a useful analytical device.

The selection of the authors of the Bridgewater treatises

THE argument for the existence of God from Design using the model of Newtonian scientific methodology formed the basis of the Natural Theology of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the proof of God’s existence rested on what God was believed to have accomplished, and His continual benevolent activity was regarded as the explanation of everything which science could not explain, the power of the argument decreased proportionally as the horizons of science expanded. Nevertheless, a steady stream of learned and more popular literature on natural theology was published during the one hundred years after Newton’s death in 1727. The spate of publications continued despite Hume’s contention at the end of the eighteenth century that the use of analogical reasoning in theological discourse had no logical validity (1). In theology, unlike science, hypotheses cannot be tested either directly or by the fulfilment of certain predictions based on the original hypotheses. Although the use of analogical reasoning in scientific discourse is an invaluable aid to the formulation of hypotheses, these always have to be tested against experience. This is impossible in theology since the design analogy does not produce (in Hume’s requirement) a constant conjunction between the hypothetical first cause, God, and its effects, the materials of the observed world. We cannot confirm the existence of a World Designer by observing Him make one. Even so, as has been pointed out recently, the design argument continued to be used after Hume because ‘previously acquired and emotionally grounded prejudices in its favor’ were psychologically persuasive (2). In fact, this kind of natural theology remained a subject of considerable popularity, and it survived, in Great Britain at least, until the biological theory of evolution demolished the last vestiges of the design argument’s empirical foundations.

On Having Reasons

Thesis: Even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience. (Hume) Antithesis: A man who knows of at least one case of an X being a Y, and who does not know of any positive reason for thinking that an X might not be a Y, has some reason for thinking that all X's are Y's (p. 81). When I speak of ‘some reason’ I mean the contradictory of no reason at all (p. 85). (‘A Possible Extension of Logical Theory?’ Geoffrey Hunter, Philosophical Studies 1965, pp. 81–8.)