Causality in Hume was re Hume and Pomo etc.

["Ken Hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are at least four types of cause in Hume:
i) the secret causes of  all our impressions.
ii) the causation that leads from impressions to ideas
iii)the causation of Custom
iv) belief-constructed causation.

Winslow's problem comes from conflating iv) with iii). Belief-constructed
causation is that concept of causation based upon constant conjunction etc
and the one that gives rise to the problem of induction. Winslow argues that
if reason cannot prove that effect must be correlated with cause neither can
it prove that custom must cause us to expect the effect given the cause. It
follows that Hume cannot justify his own conception of belief-constructed
causation All one has is constant conjunction correlated with the custom of
expectation. At least this is how I would interpret Ted's argument.  But the
causation of custom is not belief-constructed causation and not to be judged
by the criteria of such, anymore than are the causal relations between
impressions and ideas or the secret causes of our impressions. When Hume
claims that custom causes us to have the expectation that given the cause
there will be a certain effect he is using sense iii) not iv) as Winslow
supposes.Certainly there are problems with all these types of causation.
Commentators on Hume have tended to concentrate upon belief-constructed
causation, the type that  generates the problem of induction. The causation
of custom is crucial to Hume's project of downgrading the role of reason in
human affairs and making it instrumental rather than an independent source
of truth--except of relations between ideas. Some aspects of Hume's concepts
of causation are discussed in a paper by Vance Maxwell that is on line:
http://www.mun.ca/animus/1998vol3/maxwell3.htm

Cheers, Ken Hanly