Answer to Question #98866 in Philosophy for mary

Question

According to Hume, can contiguity and priority ground our causal claims?

Answer 1

David Hume asserts that contiguity and priority grounds our causal claims. "The idea of necessary connection is a causal consequence of regularities (Beebee, 2016)." Since human beings are cognizers, causation consists of contiguity, regularity, and temporal priority of of the cause to effect. Thus, Hume's definition of causation is based on the fact that a feeling of determination arises from the experience of regularities. This argument implies that contiguity and priority grounds our causal claims.

References

Beebee, H. (2016). Hume and the problem of causation. The Oxford Handbook of Hume, 228.