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Question: Describe Hume's idea of Cause and Effect!. Is Cause and Effect a simple or complex idea!? How!.!.!.!?
How do we come to have the idea of Cause and Effect!?Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
"Hume begins with a single instance of causality!. All we observe is one billard ball hitting another and the second moving!. "This is the whole that appears to the outward senses!. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects: Consequently, there is not, in any single, particular instance of cause and effect, anything which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connexion!."
http://oregonstate!.edu/instruct/phl302/d!.!.!.

Hume said we can "induce" that one ball will move the other ball, because prior experience has shown that it will, just as every day has shown that the sun will rise!.

But he said this is not "proof" that one ball will move another, because we cannot see the physics, we cannot feel or sense the physics, that makes one ball move another!.

But we cannot physically sense the wavelengths of light that "cause" us to see, and yet we know it is such wavelengths that are all we have as cause!. Hume was making the case that no cause is "necessarily" the reason that something happens, because it might have happened otherwise if the cause had been different, but it would still be a cause we could not sense!.

"!.!.!.to prove the assertion that there is no such thing as “necessity” in the universe, a professor declares that just as this country did not have to have fifty states, there could have been forty-eight or fifty-two—so the solar system did not have to have nine planets, there could have been seven or eleven!. It is not sufficient, he declares, to prove that something is, one must also prove that it had to be—and since nothing had to be, nothing is certain and anything goes!.

The technique of undercutting man’s mind consists in palming off the man-made as if it were the metaphysically given, then ascribing to nature the concepts that refer only to men’s lack of knowledge, such as “chance” or “contingency,” then reversing the two elements of the package-deal!. "
“The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,”
Philosophy: Who Needs It, 28!.

Hume made some great and wise and useful contributions to society, but his ideas on causality was "undercutting man's mind!."Www@QuestionHome@Com