Kant’s Response to Hume’s Problem of Causation

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“As an empiricist…His sceptical doubts were rooted in the difficulties of justifying ordinary causal claims, not any rationalist desire to extend the principle of causality beyond possible experience. In this way, Kant’s interpretation of Hume is all-too-conveniently suited to Kant’s own project of transcendental idealism”[8].

Having said that, by introducing his categories of the mind, his idea that the mind is not a passive recipient of experiences but that the mind organizes the reality we perceive, he moved from Hume’s understanding of causality as a psychological, out of habit, connection to a more universal, objective explanation, applicable to and by all rational beings. Again, we have to remember that Kant’s main concern was to save science and the method by means of which they attain truth from the scepticism he feared Hume’s concerns may bring along.

But probably the biggest flaw on Kant’s response to Hume is, as Diana Mertz shrewdly observes, that it fails to explain properly genuine coincidences. As we have pointed out, the categories of the mind, together with the notions of space and time are structures of the mind that precedes any possibility of thought, it is the way we perceive reality. If that is the case, if “causality is an a priori rule which makes possible connections between perceptions, even the slightest whiff of its relevance implies that it is already in full force”[9]. As Mertz continues, on Kant’s transcendental model of causality, specifically designed for the purpose of saving science and the Enlightenment movement from the empiricists’ scepticism and reconcile it with the rationalists, “rational beings must be infallible in the attributions of causal relationships”[10]. That is the biggest problem in my opinion. Such infallibility is constantly proved wrong with examples in our daily lives. Many times we wrongly claim causal connections between A and B. Whilst some of these claims may be largely arbitrary and can easily fall into superstition (I did very well on the exam because I took it with my lucky pen and my aunty lit a candle for me at Mass), other connections may be more rational but still wrong, nonetheless (we wake up in the morning and we notice a big puddle by the gate and we think it may have rained during the night and it has not still drained completely, whilst the actual puddle was due to the fact that the neighbour next door poured hot water on his car to get away the frost).

By failing to properly account and distinguish between genuine cases of causation from A to B and mere coincidences, Kant is failing in my view to successfully answer Hume’s concerns. Needless to say, this should not diminish his contribution to philosophy, his Copernican revolution and we should permanently be grateful to him who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber.

References

- De Pierris, Graciela and Friedman, Michael, "Kant and Hume on Causality", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/kant-hume-causality/ [last accessed 21st March 2016]

- Gurmin, Hayden J., Phil of Natural Science – Epistemology- Kant, PowerPoint Presentation, St. Patrick’s College, February 2016

- Jones, William Thomas, Kant To Wittgenstein and Sartre, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969)

- Mertz Hsieh, Diana, “Hume the Cause, Kant the effect”, in “Philosophy in Action”, URL=http://www.philosophyinaction.com/docs/htckte.pdf> [last accessed 21st March 2016]

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