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Why is 'necessity' important in cause and effect? Shouldn't experience and high probability be enough? And, how does Hume define 'necessity'?
Thank you! cctabla

cctabla
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    See [IEP, Necessary Connections and Hume’s Two Definitions](https://iep.utm.edu/hume-cau/#H2). – Conifold Sep 21 '21 at 17:48
  • Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer. – Community Sep 23 '21 at 15:14
  • @cctabla, in the first part of your question, are you asking why "necessity" (or the idea of "necessary connexion") is important for *Hume's* account of causation, as you indicate in the later part of your question? (I.e., is this an exegetical question about understanding the philosophy of David Hume?) Or are you asking why it's important more broadly, *in fact*, regardless of what Hume thinks? (I.e., is this a philosophical question about the correct analysis of causation?) The answer to the first part is going to depend a lot on what sort of answer you're looking to get. – AlabamaScholiast Feb 19 '22 at 13:07
  • @AlabamaScholiast - thanks for clarifying my question. It is more this - Or are you asking why it's important more broadly, in fact, regardless of what Hume thinks? (I.e., is this a philosophical question about the correct analysis of causation?) – cctabla Jun 21 '22 at 21:16
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    Of course if one is fine being a total empiricist, statistical correlated conjunction is the bottom instead of a necessary nomic conjunction. But Hume had his fork in mind and could not be at peace with it, there was still some puzzle lingering in his mind trying to square the fork... – Double Knot Jun 22 '22 at 06:07

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One way to understand this is to look at the difference between causation and correlation. Experience and high probability some give correlation. As an example, having large feet correlates with being tall. But that is not causation, the large feet don't cause people to grow tall.

So to conceive something as causation, we need to further reach a belief that one event necessarily leads to another.

That's why experience and high probability are useful, but not enough to speak of causation.

tkruse
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  • Even when we show causality isn't it just a very high probability argument through the back door. – cctabla Jun 21 '22 at 21:19
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Necessity means that when the cause occurs, the effect will inevitably follow. And vice versa, every effect has a necessary cause.

Experience has nothing to do with causality. Experience is a mental thing, causality is about physics.

Probability steps in when we notice that no cause is the sufficient cause for any particular effect. In a probabilistic universe causes don't determine their effects with absolute accuracy. They only determine the probability distribution within which the effect will occur.

Pertti Ruismäki
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  • Thank you for answering. The meaning of necessity then in real-word experience is what? – cctabla Sep 30 '21 at 01:47
  • Thank you for answering. The meaning of necessity then, in real-word experience, is what? Some examples please. (Yes, I understand experience has nothing to do with causality but in scientific method that is where we start, and by testing our guess we narrow it down to some mechanistic explanation.) I was hoping that Hume was saying something more profound. A course of action is to drop the ambiguous 'necessity' and then carry on without losing much. Why is necessity important? – cctabla Sep 30 '21 at 01:55
  • If event A necessarily causes event B, we can experience it in two ways. We can either _observe_ event A or we can _perform_ action A. In both cases we can be sure that event B will follow. – Pertti Ruismäki Sep 30 '21 at 03:27
  • But isn't this what Hume is criticizing? We can define necessity, but as Hume points out, there is no observable thing as 'necessity' in the real world. All we can do is fit models to our observations, and depending on the probability, glom 'necessity' to it. Hume clarified this for us. – cctabla Sep 30 '21 at 18:50
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    "Experience has nothing to do with causality. Experience is a mental thing, causality is about physics." Philosophy of science begs to differ. Causation is a theoretical concept applied to two different observable events. Insofar physics is understood as a theory/model of a metaphysical reality, it certainly can be said to be about "mental things" and especially experience. Actually, it would be weird to say physics as the original empirical science per se wasn't about experience and how to systematically theorise about it. – Philip Klöcking Oct 22 '21 at 09:59
  • "Experience has nothing to do with causality. Experience is a mental thing, causality is about physics." I know what you are getting at, but I would not necessarily agree that "experience has nothing to do with causality". That is because experiences tend to follow certain events in the real world and/or inside people's minds, so they, too, are subject to causation. – Daniel Asimov Oct 23 '21 at 01:57
  • Experiences are not caused, experiences are not physical events. Experiences are only our interpretations of, the meanings we associate with some physical events. – Pertti Ruismäki Oct 24 '21 at 04:54
  • Correlation and causality is also, about Physics - my head is spinning. – cctabla Jun 21 '22 at 21:11