Kant's model of causality: Causal powers, laws, and Kant's reply to Hume

Journal of the History of Philosophy

Volumn 42, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 449-488

  Watkins, Eric ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950219253     PISSN: 00225053     EISSN: 15384586     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2004.0081     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. Hume's fuller views on causality are naturally more complex than the brief summary provided below indicates. For more comprehensive discussions, see, e.g., Barry Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978),
2. John Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983),
3. Richard Fogelin, Hume's Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985),
4. Galen Strawson, The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989),
5. Ken Winkler, "The New Hume," Philosophical Review 100 (1991): 541-79,
6. and Don Garrett "The Representation of Causation and Hume's Two Definitions of 'Cause'," Nous 27 (1993) : 167-90.
7. Moreover, the reception of Hume in Germany, documented by Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl, Hume in der deutschen Aufklärung: Umrisse einer Rezeptionsgeschichte (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1987),
8. Moreover, since Hamann had certainly read the Treatise, he could have brought Hume's critical points to Kant's attention in their conversations, and, to make matters even less clear, one cannot necessarily count on Hamann for straightforward objective accuracy in representing Hume's views, since Hamann had a distinctive agenda that departed considerably from Hume's. A helpful historical discussion of this issue is Manfred Kuehn's "Kant's Conception of Hume's Problem," Journal of the History of Philosophy 21 (1983): 175-93. In this paper, I abstract from the complex historical details in order to focus on a systematic comparison of Kant's and Hume's positions.
9. Translations from the Critique of Pure Reason will be from Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, ed. & trans. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
10. Translations from Kant's lectures on metaphysics will be from Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics, Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, ed. & trans. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). In a few instances, I have made minor modifications in these translations.
11. Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism. An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983),
12. Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, T987),
13. Michael Friedman, "Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science," in Paul Guyer, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-99,
14. and James Van Cleve, Problems from Kant (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
15. Of course, hybrid interpretations are possible. For example, one common strategy is to establish the "every-event-some-cause" principle first and then use the idea that a causal rule implies generality in order to establish the "like-cause-like-effect" principle. See Lorne Falkenstein, "Hume's Answer to Kant," Nôs 32 (1998): 331-60.
16. For a fuller assessment of the historical evidence (which does not lend support to this claim, but suggests rather that on the issue of causality Kant was focused more on Leibnizian-Wolffian considerations) , see my "The Development of Physical Influx in Early Eighteenth Century Germany: Gottsched, Knutzen, and Crusius," Review of Metaphysics 49 (1995): 295-339,
17. and "Kant's Theory of Physical Influx," Archiv für Geschichte derPhilosophie 77 (1995): 285-324.
18. See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, L.A. Selby-Bigge, ed., P.H. Nidditch, rev. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 26-33.
19. See, for example, Hume's conclusion that "In a word, then, every effect is a distinct event from its cause," David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1977), 19. Moreover, if Kant was not aware of Hume's actual position, then this fact ends up providing additional support for understanding Kant's reply to Hume as I do below.
20. See Hume's Treatise, 34-37.
21. 2 in A; this causally necessitates a later alteration in B; and so on" (178, emphasis added).
22. See my "Kant's Third Analogy of Experience," in Kant-Studien 88 (1997): 406-4:1, for a detailed reconstruction of Kant's argument in the Third Analogy.
23. See, for example, his Metaphysics Mrongovius lectures: "Causality is the determination of a cause by which it becomes a cause, or the determination of the relation of a thing as cause to a determined effect. Thus the cause is always to be distinguished from the causality" (29:893)
24. For a discussion of some of the inconsistencies in Kant's doctrine of inner sense, see Henry Allison Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 255-71.
25. For an interesting discussion of Kant's reply to Hume on the issue of self-consciousness, see Patricia Kitcher "Kant on Self-Identity," Philosophical Review 91 (1982): 41-72.
26. Hume, Treatise, 636.
27. For helpful discussions of this aspect of Kant's account of self-consciousness, see Karl Ameriks "From Kant to Frank: The Ineliminable Subject," in The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, ed. K. Ameriks and D. Sturma (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 217-30,
28. and Manfred Frank "Is Subjectivity a Non-Thing, an Absurdity [Unding]? On Some Difficulties in Naturalistic Reductions of Self-Consciousness," in The Modern Subject, 177-97.
29. Berkeley encounters a similar difficulty on this point, since for him ideas are necessarily passive, yet the self is supposed to be active. He solves the problem by claiming that he has not an idea, but rather a "notion" of the self. While introducing a notion of the self in this fashion might initially seem to be ad hoc, Berkeley may be responding to an in dependent philosophical concern. For an excellent discussion of Berkeley's position, see Robert Adams "Berkeley's 'Notion' of Spiritual Substance," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 55 (1973): 47-69.
30. For perhaps different reasons, Shoemaker endorses both of these points in "Self-reference and Self-awareness," The Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 555-67, esp. 563, when he says: "I think that the main source of trouble here is the tendency to think of awareness as a kind of perception, i.e., to think of it on the model of sense-perception" and when he notes that if the use of first-person pronouns as a subject "were not possible then there would be much else, and much that we take for granted, that would also not be possible" (564).
31. For a discussion of how a formal (mathematical) framework could be filled in with mechanical and physical content, see Michael Friedman, The Dynamics of Reason (Stanford: CSLI Publications, 2001).