David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...
coined a sceptical, reductionist viewpoint on causality that inspired the
logical-positivist definition of
empirical law that "is a regularity or universal generalization of the form 'All Cs are Es' or, whenever C, then E". The Scottish philosopher and economist believed that human mind is not equipped with the
a priori ability to observe causal relations. What can be experienced is one event following another. The reductionist approach to causation can be exemplified with the case of two
billiard balls
A billiard ball is a small, hard ball used in cue sports, such as carom billiards, pool, and snooker. The number, type, diameter, color, and pattern of the balls differ depending upon the specific game being played. Various particular ball pro ...
: one ball is moving, hits another one and stops, and the second ball is moving.
In ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' Hume coined two definitions of the cause in a following way:
also fixed eight general rules that can help in recognizing which objects are in cause-effect relation, the main four are as following:
See also
*
Humeanism
Humeanism refers to the philosophy of David Hume and to the tradition of thought inspired by him. Hume was an influential Scottish philosopher well known for his empirical approach, which he applied to various fields in philosophy. In the philosop ...
References
Further reading
* {{cite web , url= https://www.iep.utm.edu/hume-cau/ , title= David Hume: Causation , website= Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP)
David Hume
Humeanism
Causality