Socrates Meets Hume by Peter Kreeft

Author:Peter Kreeft [Kreeft, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586172602
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2010-08-11T05:00:00+00:00

7

The Mysterious Idea

of Causal Connection

HUME: Here is my question, which you have not yet answered, Socrates:

[E, IV] These two propositions are far from being the same: I have found that such an object [for instance, a bird, or a billiard ball hitting another] has always been attended with such an effect [for instance, an egg, or the second billiard ball moving], and I foresee that other objects, which are in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects. I shall allow, if you please, that the one proposition may justly be inferred from the other: I know, in fact, that it always is inferred. But if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connexion between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium, which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it, who assert that it really exists, and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact.

Please keep in mind this question of mine, Socrates—my demand that you produce this mysterious medium—as I proceed to explain further. I will expect a direct answer to this direct question.

Let me then repeat the principle of my previous chapter about the two kinds or categories of reason, so we can see which of these two categories your answer will fit into:

[E, IV, 2] All reasonings may be divided into two kinds, namely demonstrative reasoning, or that concerning relations of ideas, and moral [practical, probable] reasoning, or that concerning matter of fact and existence.

SOCRATES: We have already explored this distinction, David: your sharp separation of reason from fact, your confinement of the objects of reason to mere ideas, and your reduction of all objective facts to material events that we can sense. Skepticism immediately follows, for we can no longer know by reason any matter of fact.

HUME: To call me a skeptic is not to refute me.

SOCRATES: It is if skepticism is self-contradictory. This skeptical philosophy of yours—is it objectively true? Is it a matter of fact? Or is it just a subjective idea, merely in your mind?

HUME: It is a matter of fact.

SOCRATES: Then according to your own principles, you cannot reach it by reasoning, but only by sense observation. But you do reach it by the long process of reasoning in your book, and not by sense observation. For of course you cannot reach it by sense observation, for skepticism is an idea, not a fact like the sunrise. It does not register on the senses. So your principle here, your separation of reason from facts, your distinction between “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact”, contradicts itself.

HUME: We have gone over that argument of yours already, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And you have not yet refuted it.

HUME: Let me finish my argument first, please, before we argue about your refutation of it.

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