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Critique of Hume’s �ominalism and Sensist Phenomenalism

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2008

Life and Works. The Scottish empiricist David Hume1 (1711-1776) was born in

Edinburgh on April 26th, 1711. Originally groomed for a legal career he instead pursued a

1 Studies on Hume: C. W. HENDEL, Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1925 ; J. LAIRD, Hume’s Philosophy of Human �ature, Methuen, London, 1932 ; B. M. LAING, David

Hume, Benn, London, 1932 ; R. W. CHURCH, Hume’s Theory of Understanding, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1935 ; H. H. PRICE, Hume’s Theory of the External World, Clarendon, Oxford, 1940 ; N. K. SMITH, The

Philosophy of David Hume, Macmillan, London, 1941 ; R. M. KYDD, Reason and Conduct in Hume’s Treatise, Oxford University Press, New York, 1946 ; A. B. GLATHE, Hume’s Theory of the Passions and of Morals, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1950 ; D. G. MACNABB, David Hume: His Theory of Knowledge and

Morality, Hutchinson, London, 1951 ; T. BRUNIUS, David Hume on Criticism, Stockholm, 1951 ; J. A. PASSMORE, Hume’s Intentions, University Press, Cambridge, 1952 ; A. BASSON, David Hume, Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1958 ; J. B. STEWART, The Moral and Political Philosophy of David Hume, Columbia University Press, New York, 1963 ; C. W. HENDEL, Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1963 ; R. M. KYDD, Reason and Conduct in Hume’s Treatise, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964 ; A. SABETTI, Hume filosofo della religione, Liguori, Naples, 1965 ; J. V. PRICE, The Ironic Hume, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1965 ; L. L. BONGIE, David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965 ; R. F. ANDERSON, Hume’s First Principles, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1966 ; D. G. C. MACNABB, David Hume: His Theory of Knowledge and Morality, Archon Books, Hamden, Conn., 1966 ; P. S. ÁRDAL, Passion and Value in Hume’s Treatise, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1966 ; J. PASSMORE, Hume’s

Intentions, Basic Books, New York, 1968 ; J. WILBANKS, Hume’s Theory of Imagination, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1968 ; D. BROILES, The Moral Philosophy of David Hume, The Hague, 1969 ; A. SANTUCCI, Sistema e

ricerca in D. Hume, Laterza, Bari, 1969 ; G. STERN, A Faculty Theory of Knowledge: The Aim and Scope of

Hume’s First Enquiry, Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, 1971 ; I. CAPPIELLO, La morale della simpatia di

David Hume, Liguori, Naples, 1971 ; C. MAUND, Hume’s Theory of Knowledge: A Critical Examination, Macmillan, New York, 1972 ; G. CARABELLI, Hume e la retorica dell’ideologia, La Nuova Italia, Florence, 1972 ; D. C. STOVE, Probability and Hume’s Inductive Scepticism, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973 ; M. DAL PRA, Hume e la scienza della natura umana, Laterza, Bari, 1973 ; J. NOXON, Hume’s Philosophical Development, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1973 ; N. CAPALDI, David Hume the �ewtonian Philosopher, Twayne, Boston, 1975 ; D. FORBES, Hume’s Philosophical Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975 ; J. HARRISON, Hume’s Moral Epistemology, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976 ; B. STROUD, Hume, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1977 ; J. BRICKE, Hume’s Philosophy of Mind, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1980 ; J. L. MACKIE, Hume’s Moral Theory, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980 ; A. SANTUCCI, Introduzione a Hume, Laterza, Bari, 1981 ; J. HARRISON, Hume’s Theory of Justice, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981 ; D. MILLER, Philosophy and Ideology in Hume’s Political Thought, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981 ; T. L. BEAUCHAMP, A. ROSENBERG, Hume and the Problem of Causation, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981 ; A. SANTUCCI, Scienza e filosofia scozzese nell’età di Hume, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1983 ; D. W. LIVINGSTON, Hume’s Philosophy of Common Life, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984 ; L. TURCO, Lo scetticismo

morale di David Hume, Clueb, Bologna, 1984 ; D. F. NORTON, David Hume: Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical

Metaphysician, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1984 ; M. DAL PRA, David Hume: la vita e l’opera, Laterza, Bari, 1984 ; G. PALOMBELLA, Diritto e artificio in David Hume, Giuffrè, Milan, 1984 ; R. J. FOGELIN, Hume’s

Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1985 ; F. G. WHELAN, Order and

Artifice in Hume’s Political Philosophy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1985 ; J. V. PRICE, David Hume, Twayne, New York, 1986 ; F. RESTAINO, David Hume (1711-1776), Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1986 ; J. CHRISTENSEN, Practicing Enlightenment: Hume and the Formation of a Literary Career, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1987 ; J. C. A. GASKIN, Hume’s Philosophy of Religion, Macmillan, New York, 1988 ; N. CAPALDI, Hume’s Place in Moral Philosophy, Peter Lang, New York, 1989 ; G. STRAWSON, The Secret

Connexion: Causation, Realism and David Hume, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989 ; A. SCHWERIN, The

Reluctant Revolutionary: An Essay on David Hume’s Account of �ecessary Connection, Lang, New York, 1989 ; N.

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PHILLIPSON, Hume, Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 1989 ; C. MONTELEONE, L’Io, la mente, la

ragionevolezza: saggio su David Hume, Ed. Bollati-Boringhieri, Turin, 1989 ; D. PEARS, Hume’s System: An

Examinaton of the First Book of His Treatise, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990 ; M. A. BOX, The Suasive Art

of David Hume, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1990 ; J. W. DANFORD, David Hume and the Problem of

Reason: Recovering the Human Sciences, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1990 ; D. T. SIEBERT, The Moral

Animus of David Hume, University of Delaware Press, Cranbury, 1990 ; E. LECALDANO, Hume e la nascita

dell’etica contemporanea, Laterza, Rome-Bari, 1990 ; R. GILARDI, Il giovane Hume: il ‘background’ religioso e

culturale, Vita e Pensiero, Milan, 1991 ; A. BAIER, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume’s Treatise, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1991 ; D. LIVINGSTON and M. MARTIN (eds.), Hume as

Philosopher of Society, Politics and History, University of Rochester Press, Rochester, NY, 1991 ; D. E. FLAGE, David Hume’s Theory of Mind, Routledge, New York, 1991 ; F. SNARE, Morals Motivation and Convention:

Hume’s Influential Doctrines, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991 ; T. PENELHUM, David Hume: An

Introduction to His Philosophical System, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, IN, 1992 ; W. BRAND, Hume’s

Theory of Moral Judgment: A Study in the Unity of ‘A Treatise of Human �ature,’ Kluwer, Boston, 1992 ; J. B. STEWART, Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political Philosophy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1992 ; J. JENKINS, Understanding Hume, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 1992 ; A. KOLIN, The Ethical

Foundations of Hume’s Theory of Politics, Peter Lang, New York, 1992 ; D. F. NORTON (ed.), The Cambridge

Companion to Hume, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993 ; B. LOGAN, A Religion without Talking:

Religious Belief and �atural Belief in Hume’s Philosophy of Religion, Peter Lang, New York, 1993 ; M. BANWART, Hume’s Imagination, Peter Lang, New York, 1994 ; W. WAXMAN, Hume’s Theory of

Consciousness, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1994 ; S. TWEYMAN (ed.), David Hume: Critical

Assessments, 6 vols., Routledge, New York, 1995 ; O. JOHNSON, The Mind of David Hume: A Companion to Book

I of ‘A Treatise of Human �ature,’ University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1995 ; D. F. PEARS, Hume’s System, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996 ; D. GARRETT, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997 ; J. A. HERDT, Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997 ; G. DICKER, Hume’s Epistemology and Metaphysics, Routledge, London, 1998 ; M. FRASCA-SPADA, Space and Self in Hume’s ‘Treatise,’ Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998 ; D. J. SHAW, Reason and Feeling in Hume’s Action Theory and Moral Philosophy: Hume’s Reasonable Passion, Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, 1998 ; D. W. LIVINGSTON, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume’s Pathology of

Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998 ; H. NOONAN, Hume on Knowledge, Routledge, London, 1999 ; H. O. MOUNCE, Hume’s �aturalism, Routledge, London, 1999 ; A. QUINTON, Hume, Routledge, London, 1999 ; D. OWEN, Hume’s Reason, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999 ; C. WILLIAMS, A Cultivated Reason:

An Essay on Hume and Humeanism, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 1999 ; C. HOWSON, Hume’s Problem: Induction and the Justification of Belief, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000 ; J. BAILLIE, Hume on Morality, Routledge, New York, 2000 ; D. OWEN (ed.), Hume: General Philosophy, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, 2001 ; E. RADCLIFFE, On Hume, Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, 2000 ; J. BRICKE, Mind and

Morality: An Examination of Hume’s Moral Psychology, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000 ; R. READ and R. RICHMAN (eds.), The �ew Hume Debate, Routledge, London, 2000 ; T. PENELHUM, Themes in Hume: The

Self, the Will, Religion, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000 ; D. O’CONNOR, Hume on Religion, Routledge, London, 2001 ; D. JACQUETTE, David Hume’s Critique of Infinity, Brill, Boston, 2001 ; P. MILLICAN (ed.), Reading Hume on Human Understanding: Essays on the First ‘Enquiry,’ Oxford University Press, New York, 2002 ; L. E. LOEB, Stability and Justification in Hume’s ‘Treatise,’ Oxford University Press, New York, 2002 ; A. E. PITSON, Hume’s Philosophy of the Self, Routledge, New York, 2002 ; P. STANISTREET, Hume’s Scepticism and

the Science of Human �ature, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, 2002 ; J. A. FODOR, Hume Variations, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2003 ; C. SCHMIDT, David Hume: Reason in History, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 2003 ; A. M. COVENTRY, Hume’s Theory of Causation: A Quasi-Realist Interpretation, Continuum, New York, 2006 ; S. BOTROS, Hume, Reason and Morality: A Legacy of Contradiction, Routledge, New York, 2006 ; H. BEEBEE, Hume on Causation, Routledge, London, 2006 ; S. TRAIGER (ed.), The Blackwell

Guide to Hume’s ‘Treatise,’ Blackwell, Malden, MA, 2006 ; R. HARDIN, David Hume: Moral and Political

Theorist, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007 ; C. FINLAY, Hume’s Social Philosophy: Human �ature and

Commercial Sociability in ‘A Treatise of Human �ature,’ Continuum, New York, 2007 ; D. BAXTER, Hume’s

Difficulty: Time and Identity in the ‘Treatise,’ Routledge, New York, 2007 ; T. M. COSTELLOE, Aesthetics and

Morals in the Philosophy of David Hume, Routledge, New York, 2007 ; A. M. COVENTRY, Hume: A Guide for the

Perplexed, Continuum, New York, 2007 ; J. P. E. KAIL, Projection and Realism in Hume’s Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007 ; C. WENNERLIND and M. SCHABAS (eds.), David Hume’s Political Economy,

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literary and, above all, philosophical path. He sojourned in France between the years 1734-1737, composing during this period his Treatise on Human �ature, a work that, to Hume’s great disappointment, failed miserably to attract attention in intellectual circles. In 1737 he returned to Scotland and a few years later published his Essays, Moral and Political (1741-1742), which proved to be a success. In 1748 he published Philosophical Essays Concerning Human

Understanding, which was a revision of the first part of his earlier unsuccessful Treatise. A second edition of this work appeared in 1751, its final title being An Enquiry Concerning Human

Understanding. That same year saw the publication of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of

Morals, a reworking of the third part of the earlier Treatise. A year later he published Political

Discourses, which made him very famous. He became, also that year, librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. All throughout the 1750’s Hume laboured assiduously on his series of tomes on the history of England. In 1756 he published a history of Great Britain from the accession of James I to the death of Charles I, followed that same year by a history of Great Britain up to the revolution of 1688. In 1759 he published his History of England under the

House of Tudor, and in 1761 his History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the

Accession of Henry VIII. In 1762 Hume saw himself in Paris as secretary to the British Embassy in France. In 1766 he brought the famous, but difficult, Jean-Jacques Rousseau back with him to England, but their friendship soon ended when the unstable Frenchman accused Hume of having conspired with his enemies to destroy him. From 1767 to 1769 Hume was an Under-Secretary of State. He died in Edinburgh on August 25th, 1776. His controversial work, Dialogues

Concerning �atural Religion, written by him before 1752, was published posthumously in 1779. Hume’s Sensism. With the empiricist pan-phenomenalism of David Hume we find human

knowledge restricted to the level of the senses. Gone is abstraction. Gone are universal concepts properly speaking, which are reduced to images. Gone is intellectual knowledge properly speaking. For Hume, all man’s knowledge consists of perceptions, which can either be strong (impressions) or weak (“ideas”).2 ‘Perception’ is the collective name he gives for the contents of consciousness in general. All these impressions and ideas have their origin in sense experience. Impressions, for him, are very vivid and immediate, the first products of the mind. Ideas, on the other hand, would be of a derivative and inferred character, mere reproductions or copies of those original impressions or elaborations of them, and can be manipulated and ordered among themselves by the imagination, according to the “law of association” (resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and causality). These laws of association of ideas are purely psychological laws.

‘Ideas’ would be the copies or faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning. If

one looks at one’s room, what he receives is an impression of it. And “when I shut my eyes and think of my chamber, the ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions I felt; nor is there any circumstance of the one, which is not to be found in the other…Ideas and impressions appear always to correspond to each other.”3 It is clear from this passage that Hume reduces ideas to that of images.

Routledge, London, 2008 ; K. R. MERRILL, Historical Dictionary of Hume’s Philosophy, The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD, 2008 ; P. RUSSELL, The Riddle of Hume’s ‘Treatise’: Skepticism, �aturalism, and Irreligion, Oxford University Press, New York, 2008. 2 Cf. D. HUME, A Treatise of Human �ature, Book I (Of the Understanding), Part I, Section I (Of the Origin of Our Ideas). 3 D. HUME, op. cit., Book I, Part I, Section I.

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Describing the difference between impressions and ideas in terms of vividness, Hume writes in his Treatise: “The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind and make their way into our thoughts or consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence we may name impressions; and, under this name, I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion.”4

Hume also distinguishes between simple and complex perceptions, a distinction which he

applies to both impressions and ideas. The perception of a red apple is a simple impression and the thought (or image) of the red apple is a simple idea. But if I am at the top of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral and, gazing out, survey the city of London, I receive a simple impression of the city, of the roofs, the chimneys, the various towers, the many streets, and the various persons hurrying by the sidewalks and inter-sections. And when I afterwards think of the city of London and recall this complex impression I have a complex idea. In this case the complex idea of the city of London corresponds to a certain degree to the complex impression of the city of London that I received gazing out of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, but not so exactly and adequately. But Hume gives us another example: “I can imagine to myself a city as the New Jerusalem, whose pavement is gold, and walls are rubies, though I never saw any such.”5 In in this case one’s complex idea does not correspond to a complex impression.

Hume states that it is not true that to every idea there is an exactly corresponding

impression. But he observes that the complex idea of the New Jerusalem can be broken down into simple ideas. And to the question as to whether every simple idea has a corresponding simple impression and every simple impression a corresponding simple idea, Hume replies: “I venture to affirm that the rule here holds without any exception, and that every simple idea has a simple impression which resembles it, and every simple impression a correspondent idea.”6

Hume’s Laws of Association. Hume acknowledges three different forms of association;

he maintained that the contents of consciousness are connected together in accordance with the laws of resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and causality. For him, the process involved in association is always purely mechanistic. In the law of similarity we know, for example, that a portrait painting naturally leads our thoughts to the original person represented by the painting. In the law of contiguity the mention, for example, of a specific hotel room in a hotel naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning others. And in the law of causality, when we think of a bad wound on our knee, for example, we can scarcely refrain from reflecting on the pain which resulted from it.

In a subsequent development of his laws of association Hume reduces the idea of cause to

that of an orderly succession of two happenings in time and place. Consequently, he retains only the first two laws of association (resemblance or similarity and contiguity in time and place). Of

4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.

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the two laws, the association of resembance or similarity would be limited in extent to a mental comparison of ideas, and therefore to the mathematico-geometrical sciences, while the sole law that would be applicable to the entire spectrum of the physical sciences would be the law of contiguity in time and space. The success of the law of contiguity is determined by our experience and habit. So for Hume, all order in the world and in science is reduced to this purely psychical element.

With regard to science, Hume distinguishes between ‘truths of reason’ and ‘truths of

fact.’ ‘Truths of reason’ express the various relations of ideas and to this class belong the truths of geometry, algebra and arithmetic, in short, to every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. Truths of fact, in contrast, do not demand or contain the so-called logical necessity as to the truths of reason. Hume writes in section IV of his An Enquiry

Concerning Human Understanding: “the contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction…That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, it will rise.”7

And what is experience for Hume? Nothing other than the association of ideas on the

basis of a space-time contiguity. One specific event (e.g., the billiard cue stick hitting the billiard ball) is followed by another specific event (e.g., the billiard ball moving across the billiards table), and so both ideas are associated. If we see and hear the first event occur a second time, having acquired this experience previously, we would naturally wait for the second event to occur. Hume writes: “If a body of like color and consistency with that of bread of which we have formerly eaten be presented to us…we forsee with certainty like nourishment and support.”8 This experience, Hume holds, is nothing more than a custom or habit: according to him, experience does not deal with thought-acts or reasoning, or with other processes of the understanding, but rather with feeling, or habit, or familiarity which makes us expect and believe that something similar to what we experienced previously is happening and, therefore, that a second is about to follow the first.

Hume’s �ominalism. Hume was a thorough nominalist; he taught that there are no

universal concepts, only general ideas, “ideas” being simply blurred images expressing a resemblance common to a collection of particular sense perceptions. Therefore, all the contents of our experience must be particular and contingent, the consequences being that we would be unable to have a basis at all for any universal and necessary knowledge.

Hume’s Immanentism. The core of Humean empiricist epistemology is that what we

know are our perceptions, not external, extra-mental reality. What the human mind knows is not something existing outside consciousness, but merely facts of consciousness. What is known are not real things but only our perceptions which are subjective modifications produced in us by sensible experience. “Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are derived from something antecedently present to the mind, it follows that it is impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of anything specifically different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a

7 D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV. 8 D. HUME, op. cit., Section V.

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step beyond ourselves, nor can we conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions which have appeared in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produced.”9

Critique of Hume’s Sensist Immanentism. The problem with Hume is that he is a gnoseological (epistemological) immanentist, which logically leads to ontological immanentism (agnosticism or atheism). He is trapped within the prison of his mind, unable to access extra-mental reality. Being unable to access the extra-mental world of real things, of real beings endowed with their respective acts of being, he is unable to demonstrate the existence of God using objective causality. Now, the root cause of the theoretical agnostic and atheist world view lies in a particular type of epistemology called immanentism, which has as its founder the French rationalist philosopher René Descartes. When the immanentist position is adopted the obfuscation and eventual discarding of metaphysics (the science of being qua being, the most noble of the purely human sciences) becomes inevitable. Once metaphysics is eliminated, access to a rational effect to cause demonstration of God’s existence is impeded and one either falls into the various forms of agnosticism (Humean, Kantian, Neo-Positivist) or takes one step further and subscribes to the atheistic position that God is nothing but a projection of man himself (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre), a mere idea that in no way corresponds to a real, extra-mental, extra-subjective, transcendent Supreme Being.

The �ominalism of Hume. For Hume there are no universal concepts, properly speaking.

Ideas which are universal are, for him, are nothing but a collection of singular percepts accompanied by a common name. All our general ideas, he writes, are really particular ones joined to a general term. In his Treatise of Human �ature, Hume writes: “A great philosopher (Berkeley) has asserted that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. As I look upon this to be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries which has been made of late in the republic of letters I shall here endeavour to confirm it by some arguments, which I hope will put it beyond all doubt and controversy.”10

Hume also writes in his later work Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: “There is

no such thing as abstract or general ideas, properly speaking; but all general ideas are, in reality, particular ones, that resemble in certain circumstances the idea present to the mind.”11

For Hume it is an illusion that general names really represent universal concepts. The

impression arises owing to the habitual association of images (theory of associationism), he says. Hume is a nominalist in the strict sense of the term since he does not allow there is in the mind any universal idea which corresponds to the ‘general’ term, but regards the ‘idea’ as singular, this ‘idea’ being the image or sense impression of a particular object imagined or sensed at the moment.

9 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human �ature, I, 2, 6. 10 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human �ature, Book I, Part I, Section VII. 11 D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section XII, Note (P).

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Giving a brief description of the nominalist position on the question of the universals, the Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain writes: “For the nominalist school, universals have no existence except as names or ideas with which nothing in reality corresponds; for instance, there

is nothing in the reality of human nature which is equally present in Peter, Paul, and John. This position amounts to sheer negation of the possibility of intellectual knowledge, and reduces science to a figment of the mind. The most typical representatives of this school are, in antiquity the sophists and the skeptics, in modern times the leading English philosophers, William of Occam in the fourteenth century, Hobbes and Locke in the seventeenth, Berkeley and Hume in the eighteenth, John Stuart Mill and Spencer in the nineteenth. It may be added that the majority of modern philosophers (that is to say, of those who ignore or oppose the scholastic tradition) are more or less deeply, and more or less consciously, imbued with nominalism.”12

Coffey gives us a description of modern sensist and empiricist nominalism (from Hobbes

to Hume to Taine) as follows: “While differing more or less on the contructive side of their theories of cognition, these philosophers all agree in denying to the human mind any cognitive power of a higher order than that of sense, or any apprehension of a mental object that is

properly speaking universal in its capacity of representing reality. They speak, of course, of ‘intellect,’ ‘conception,’ ‘concepts,’ ‘thought,’ ‘abstraction,’ ‘generalization,’ etc., but these they hold to differ not in kind, but only in degree, from organic sense perception, imagination, imagery, percepts, etc., – explaining the former rather as refinements or complex functions and products of the latter. Neither do they deny the existence of some sort or other of a mental

correlate, some sort or other of a conscious, cognitive process and mental term, corresponding to the common name or general logical term of language. But inasmuch as they deny to this mental term or object of awareness all genuine universality, maintaining that there is in the mind or present to the mind no object which is ‘one-common-to-many,’ and thereby confine universality to the verbal sign or name, they are properly described as nominalists. Since, moreover, as we shall see in dealing with sense perception, these philosophers generally hold that knowledge does not and cannot extend beyond mental states, phenomena, or appearances, or reach to the extramental, they must be set down as denying the real objective validity of knowledge.”13

12 J. MARITAIN, An Introduction to Philosophy, Sheed and Ward, New York, 1956, pp. 119-120. Describing the position of nominalism, Juan Jose Sanguineti writes: “In its more common version, nominalism affirms that only the names or terms of things are universal; it is only the term ‘man,’ for example, that the multitude of men have in common. Universal concepts, in the strict sense, do not exist, but only schematic images which ‘sum up’ or ‘generalize’ the similar traits of different individuals. Nor are there such things as common essences: only individuals and individual properties exist, and these differ from the properties of other individuals. We employ common names to economize on mental effort, since it would be practically impossible to give a proper name to each thing. The function of common names is, therefore, to classify objects which are more or less similar. The similarities of these objects are of a very relative nature, and certainly not necessary; they merely point to a fact that has been repeated in the past, but do not guarantee its repetition in the future. “Nominalism usually goes hand in hand with a materialistic philosophy of man, in which human thought is reduced to a collection of signs whose purpose is to produce certain reactions in others. Nominalism links up in this way with behaviorism and pragmatism. There is no necessity in the world, no law that applies absolutely to individuals: everything is singular, different, unforeseeable. Language is only the means whereby man, who is regarded simply as a more developed animal, adapts himself to his biological needs”(J. J. SANGUINETI, Logic, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 1992, p. 42). 13 P. COFFEY, Epistemology, vol. 1, Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA, 1958, pp. 315-316.

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Critique of Hume’s �ominalism. Criticizing the nominalist position of Hume from the perspective of moderate realism, R. P. Phillips writes: “Let us then first see what is to be said with regard to the nominalist view that we have no concepts which are, properly speaking, universal. When we reflect we see that we have in our minds some idea which corresponds to the common name we utter – such a name, for example, as man. Now reflection also shows us that this idea is not an individual sense impression, nor a collection of parts of similar sense impressions, but something which our mind grasps as being quite distinct from these impressions, though it is really in them and predicable of them. This universality is primarily in the mind, and not in the name. If I say ‘man,’ the idea in my mind is not that of an individual man, nor yet of a collection of individual men; but is a distinct mental concept, which is known to differ from that of any individual man with whom I am acquainted; but which, at the same time, is known to be applicable to them all, and so predicable of them; and not only of them, but of all similar beings. This is clear from the way in which we use these terms, for when we say ‘Peter is a man,’ we do not mean ‘Peter is a collection of men,’ nor do we mean that the name man is to be confined to Peter, so as to exclude Paul, John, etc., as we should if it signified a singular or individual concept. We make a distinction, too, between universal and collective terms, the latter class not being applicable to individuals: so I cannot say, e.g., Peter is an army.

“Further, the idea of the universal is itself a universal idea, being that of one concept

which is capable of being predicated of many individuals. If then the Nominalist denies that we have any universal concepts he must also deny that he has the concept of the universal, and so is precluded from discussing this question, since it is useless to talk avout what is altogether unknown.

“The Nominalists themselves acknowledge that their theory destroys the possibility of

science, and so, like Hume, are skeptics; for if we can have no notion of anything which is common to several individuals, we can have none of any connection between them, or of the laws which govern them.

“Hume’s argument that when we use such a term as ‘horse,’ ‘we figure to ourselves’ a

particular animal proves nothing more than that an image accompanies our conceiving a universal idea, if indeed this ‘figuring’ is to be granted to be a fact; which is highly doubtful. Huxley’s notion that the universal may be said to be of the same kind as a composite photograph is plainly inadmissible, for such a photograph gives us only an indistinct blur, unless the sitters are just alike, i.e. unless their features are the same. Actually we never get such identity of features, and if we did, a photograph of one of the sitters would serve as well as a photograph of a hundred, for we should be photographing the same thing in each case. So we should have in features what we are asserting we have in the case of universal natures, one thing which is common to many individuals.”14

Against the nominalism of Hume, we affirm that the concept is not the image; we have

concepts and images. Giving various arguments against nominalism and in favor of moderate realism, the epistemologist Joseph Thomas Barron writes: “We have concepts in the strict sense

14 R. P. PHILLIPS, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 2 (Metaphysics), Newman, Wesminster, MD, 1935, pp. 98-100.

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of the term. We prove this by introspection which shows us that there is a difference between concepts and percepts, or images.

“First argument. (1) Concepts represent the nature or essence of whatness of a thing,

prescinding from all its individuating notes. The percept and the image do not represent the nature or essence, but only the external qualities of an object, such as its color and size. They represent an object more or less concrete, with certain individuating characteristics, in a definite situation etc.

“(2) The concept is universal, since it is capable of representing equally all members of a

class. This is because it represents the essential characteristics, and these alone, of all the members of a class. For example, the concept ‘horse’ is predicable of all horses, no matter what their size or kind of color may be. The image, whether it is distinct or obscure, is not universal; it can picture only one individual, of some particular kind and color. If we think ‘horse’ and note the accompanying imagery we see at once that the concept is not to be identified with the imagery since the concept can be applied to all horses indiscriminately, while the image can be attributed only to a horse which it resembles.

“(3) The concept is immutable and necessary; it cannot be otherwise than it is. If we add

to it, or subtract any note from it, it no longer represents its object. The image, on the other hand, is unstable, contingent, and fluctuating.

“This can be verified by introspection. My concept of a man has the two notes of

rationality and animality. If my concept is to be a concept of a man it must contain these two notes and these alone. If I add a new essential note, or if I take away either animality or rationality, I no longer have the concept of a man. In other words, my concept is unchangeable and fixed. But the same is not true of images. They change even in the same person as introspection shows. The same concept will be accompanied by varying imagery in the same person at different times.

“(4) Concepts may be perfectly clear but the concominant imagery may be extremely

hazy. My concept of a million-sided figure is clear – I know what such a figure is. The same is true of my concepts of minute things; my concept of a cell that is one one-thousandth of an inch in diameter is perfectly clear. But is the accompanying imagery as clearly defined? What is the verdict of introspection? If the concept is clear and the image is hazy they cannot be identified.

“Second argument. Appealing again to introspection I find that my concept is not a sense

datum, but that it is a thought-object apprehended apart from all sensory characteristics. Granting that I am conscious of an image when I think ‘horse,’ ‘virtue,’ ‘triangle,’ it is not about these sensuous images that I enunciate the judgments. ‘The horse is an animal,’ ‘Virtue is good,’ ‘A triangle is a figure.’ I certainly am not speaking of ‘the (pictured) horse,’ ‘the (pictured) virtue,’ or ‘the (pictured) triangle.’ In making these judgments I mean ‘all horses,’ ‘all virtue,’ and ‘all triangles.’ The image, to repeat, can only picture the individual, and if we had no concepts we could make no universal judgments.

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“Third argument. Nominalists admit that the name or term is universal, but they hold that there is no mental correlate which is really universal corresponding to it. But it would seem that the term can have no universal significance unless its mental correlate is universal, because language derives its significance from thojught – not thought from language. The term itself, whether written or oral, is concrete. It is general or universal because it is the expression of an idea that is universal. If there is no concept of which it is the expression it is a more concrete symbol of experience. Hence its universality is given to it by the concept for which it stands. The admission of nominalists that there are universal terms is thus an argument against their theory.

“Our position is strengthened by the results of psychological investigation. Psychologists

have established two facts concerning the relation between image and thought: (1) that different persons differ considerably as regards the images that accompany their thought on one and the same objects; (2) that images vary in the same person. Hardly anyone experiences the same images on successive occasions when thinking of the same thing.

“If our images were our concepts how could words be used as vehicles of thought? If our

universal terms stand for varying and unstable images how could the same words convey the same meaning to different people? For example, the term ‘animal’ may arouse fifty different images in fifty different people. Yet all understand the word in the same way – it has the same meaning for all fifty. It is clear that if the images were the thought there could not be this unanimity in understanding. As a matter of fact I know that when I make use of universal terms I do not manifest my images to others; I manifest my thoughts to them. I know this because they understand me.”15

The Solution to the Problem of the Universals: Moderate Realism. The real solution to

the problem of the universals, that which corresponds to reality, lies in the position of moderate

realism. Describing moderate realism, Maritain writes: “The moderate realist school,

15 J. T. BARRON, The Elements of Epistemology, Macmillan, New York, 1936, pp. 57-60. Coffey critiques nominalism as follows: “1. Introspection reveals the presence in consciousness of a mental correlate of the common name, a correlate of which the latter is the outward expression, and from which therefore the latter derives its function of standing for an indefinite multitude of individuals. This mental correlate introspection reveals to be not an individual sense datum, or a concrete portion isolated from each of a number of similar sense data, but to be a mental object apprehended apart from all the conditions of its actual existence in the similar sense data, but really in them and predicable of them: and it is because the common name connotes or implies this abstract and universal

mental object that it can denote or stand for an indefinite multitude of the similar sense data. Therefore universality is not merely or primarily in the name; it is also and primarily in the mental term or object. And if some nominalists admit, as Sully seems to admit, that the mind can attain to the conscious possession of an object which expresses what is indefinitely realizable in individuals, and therefore stands for those in which it is de facto realized, – by this admission such writers really abandon the nominalist position. “2. The main contention of nominalism is that the verbal term or name alone is universal; and that the mental correlate, being itself sensuous and individual, derives the only universality we can ascribe to it from its uniform alliance with the name. But the verbal term or name can have, of and in itself, no universal significance unless its mental correlate be itself a universal mental term or object: since language derives its significance from thought, and not vice versa. If, therefore, the human mind had no power of apprehending any mental term or object other than a concrete, individual datum, or individual collection or fusion of such data; if it had no power of apprehending an abstract and universal mental term or object, – then so far from the common name conferring universality on the former sort of mental term, the common name would be non-existent for us, it could could have no meaning for us: in a word, we should be, like the lower animals, destitute of language, because like them we should be incapable of thought as distinct from sensation”(P. COFFEY, op. cit., pp. 318-319).

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distinguishing between the thing itself and its mode of existence, the condition in which it is presented, teaches that a thing exists in the mind as a universal, in reality as an individual. Therefore that which we apprehend by our ideas as a universal does indeed really exist, but only in the objects themselves and therefore individuated – not as a universal. For example, the

human nature found alike in Peter, Paul and John really exists, but it has no existence outside

the mind, except in these individual subjects and as identical with them; it has no separate

existence, does not exist in itself.”16 Sanguineti argues the case for moderate realism in two steps: “a) Firstly, we show that

common names express universal concepts. Common names do not signify concrete images or concrete actions, but universal and intelligible essences. The signs with which animals communicate with one another always have a material and concrete content. They may sometimes give the impression of universality, but this is because some animals can associate images and other sensible signs with one another (when the dog hears a certain sound, it ‘knows’ it is going to eat). On the other hand, words are signs of an act of understanding; they transmit intelligible meaning. For example, when a man hears the term ‘relation,’ he does not understand a concrete relation, but the essence of relation as such. When he grasps the meaning of ‘circle,’ he is not thinking of the circle on the blackboard but of the nature of the circle as such. The concept of a circle is not material; it is not an image and it cannot be localized in a material place; and yet, it is not something vague: it has a very precise intelligible meaning that is applicable to every circle that we draw or imagine. Common names, therefore, express universal concepts.

“b) Secondly, we show that concepts signify a real nature. When we speak of a ‘parrot,’

a ‘chair,’ or an ‘oath,’ we are referring to a certain perfection or essence which is found in several individuals. These words do not signify something only in our mind; otherwise, there would be no such thing as extramental reality. All chairs have a common structure or form which is materialized in every chair that exists. The mind understands this form by abstracting it from concrete chairs. What we understand by ‘chair’ is not something added to this particular chair: it is precisely what this object called chair is. When we point to an object and ask ‘What is it?’ our intention is not to find out ‘what it is called,’ though the reply to the former means giving the reply to the latter. If the names of things did not signify the being of things – what things are - , they would only point to what we think about things or what we do with them. Hence, concepts signify real natures.”17

Critique of Hume’s Skepticism with Regard to Extra-Mental Reality. Hume’s skepticism

regarding extra-mental reality must also be addressed. Humean philosophy cannot admit that there is anything real, anything objectively existing outside the states of human consciousness. The verdict of Hume’s radical empiricism is that the real existence of things can be but a hypothesis incapable of verification, a postulate that can neither be proved nor disproved. Now, contrary to Hume’s radical empiricism, the existence of things is not an hypothesis or a postulate, that is, something that we must assume since we cannot prove it, but, rather, an evident fact. An hypothesis or assumption is something that we cannot, at the moment, prove or disprove; for example, that the cure for cancer will be discovered in 2089. One can assume that

16 J. MARITAIN, op. cit., p. 120. 17 J. J. SANGUINETI, op. cit., pp. 43-44.

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the cure for cancer will be discovered at that point in time, but we simply cannot prove it. We can neither prove that it will not occur at that point in time. But if the cure for cancer is discovered in 2095, then we are no longer dealing with an assumption but with an accomplished fact. Now the existence of things in the world that we see around us is not an hypothesis but a fact. They are not assumed but given. Naturally, the existence of the things of the world cannot be proved because they need no proof; they are self-evident. We start with the things of the world; we say that these things are, for these things are there to begin with. They are thus judged to exist for they simply do exist.

General Critique of Skepticism. A skeptical philosophy professor can deny the self-

evident certainty that reality exists, but the minute he steps out of the classroom he acts like a realist (i.e., he holds as certain that the floor he is walking on really exists, that the car he is driving really exists, and that the fourteen-wheeler truck speeding towards him really exists, and so forth. If he denied these facts he would be dead). Therefore, skepticism is a practical impossibility (unworkable in action), as Bittle explains: “Skepticism is a practical impossibility. No sane human being can live without certitude of a practical kind. Even the most confirmed skeptic, no matter how many reasons of a theoretical and speculative nature he may have for doubting the possibility of genuine certitude, cannot lead a human life without denying his skeptical theory all day long in his conduct. His life shows that he is certain of very many things: the physical world, with its seasons and changes of weather, with its periods of day and night, with its differences of time and space relations; his own body, in all its concrete reality, in its conditions of health and sickness, in its physical needs of food, drink, and sleep; the existence and knowability of other people and other minds, some of whom agree with him while others disagree, and whom he communicates by means of conversation and writing, and whom he tries to convince of the truth of universal doubt. The story is told of Pyrrho the Skeptic that, when chased one day by a rabid dog, he ran for safety without allowing his skepticism to exercise its doubt about the existence and viciousness of the brute. When the bystanders laughed at him and ridiculed him for the inconsistency of his action, he is said to have made the sage remark (completely out of keeping with his theory): ‘It is difficult to get away entirely from human nature.’ After all, he could not doubt, in an untheoretical moment, that his body and the dog were real objects. This discrepancy between fact and theory, between life and philosophic system, between practical certitude and speculative doubt, is an incontrovertible proof that universal doubt is an impossibility except as a mere formulation of the mind. When facts and theories clash and contradict each other in such a transparent fashion, the sane man will not deny the facts and cling to his theories, but will realize that something is radically wrong with his views. Facts cannot be denied. To persist in universal skepticism in the face of a million contradicting facts of life bespeaks either insanity or stubbornness of mind. When the inconsistency between life and theory cannot be harmonized, it will not do to deny life, because that would be ridiculous; the theory must be abandoned as essentially faulty. Universal skepticism, therefore, must be rejected as a practical impossibility.”18

Skepticism is not only a practical impossibility but also a theoretical or speculative

absurdity. If our skeptical professor maintains that he cannot be certain about anything, the very judgment that he pronounces is already a certainty. He is certain that there cannot be any certainty about anything. Even though his certainty is erroneous, it, nevertheless, is a certainty. 18 C. BITTLE, Reality and the Mind, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1959, pp. 45-47.

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Bittle states: “One simply cannot doubt all things and principles, not even in a speculative way. The skeptics prove this by their own intellectual inconsistencies; and inconsistencies are the stigma of every false theory. Any normal person will realize the inherent contradiction of universal skepticism, if it is real and genuine, upon considering the following points:

“Skeptics contend that real certitude in knowledge is impossible, so that we must always

suspend our judgment because of a real doubt as to the truth of our judgment. This, in their view, is the only logical and rational thing to do. But then, they have at least arrived at this truth that we cannot be certain; and there is at least no doubt that we must doubt. Therefore, even skeptics possess certitude about something, and their fundamental tenet of universal doubt is involved in a contradiction.

“Skeptics claim we must suspend our judgment regarding any question, because we

might fall into error. But error is the opposite of truth. Consequently, they acknowledge that there is a difference between ‘truth’ and ‘error,’ and the two are not the same. Similarly, they must admit that ‘certitude’ and ‘doubt’ are not the same; otherwise, why should we doubt rather than be certain? Their very insistence on this difference shows plainly that they recognize the fact that something cannot be true and erroneous, certain and doubtful, at the same time. But thereby they surreptitiously admit the certainty of the truth of the principle of non-contradiction.

“Skeptics either have valid reasons for their universal doubting, or they have no valid

reasons for it. If they have valid reasons, they surely know something that is valid, and they no longer are real skeptics. If they have no valid reasons, they have no reason to doubt. In the first case their position is inconsistent, and in the second case their position is irrational. Whichever way they turn, their position is untenable.

“Skeptics, in defending the necessity of universal doubt, must naturally be conscious of

their doubt and its necessity; for, if they were not conscious of this, they could neither be aware of their doubt nor speak of it. Consequently, they rely upon the testimony of their consciousness as a source of valid knowledge. But that involves certitude regarding their own existence and person and regarding the trustworthiness of consciousness. They cannot, in consistency, cast a doubt upon the testimony of consciousness, because the argument of St. Augustine, in speaking to the skeptics, would apply to them: ‘If I err, I exist. For one, who does not exist, cannot err; and by the very fact that I err, I exist. Since, therefore, I exist, if I err, how can I err about my existence, when it is certain that I exist if I err?’19 That the skeptic must admit and acknowledge the certain existence of various states of his own consciousness, has been pointed out by St. Augustine in another passage, marked by a keen appreciation of the facts in the case: ‘If he doubts, he lives; if he doubts, he remembers why he doubts; if he doubts, he understands that he doubts; if he doubts, he wants to be certain; if he doubts, he thinks; if he doubts, he knows that he does not know; if he doubts, he judges that he must not give a hasty consent.’20 Notwithstanding their claim to universal doubt, therefore, the skeptics by their doubting actually, though inconsistently, express certitude concerning a great number of facts and principles.

19 ST. AUGUSTINE, The City of God, II, 26. 20 Ibid.

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Universal skepticism collapses under the weight of its own folly. And thus we see that universal skepticism is a philosophic absurdity.”21

Critique of Hume’s Attack on Objective Ontological Causality. Hume’s Denial of the

Objective Validity of the Principle of Causality. Then comes the attack on the objective validity of the principle of causality22: Hume denies the objective, universal and necessary validity of this principle. It is simply not objectively, universally, and necessarily true, he argues, that every effect has a cause, since in human perception cause and effect are in fact two phenomena with two separate existences, one following after the other. We cannot therefore conclude that the latter phenomena is due to the causality of the former just because it comes after it. The only conclusion that we can come up with is that, owing to the laws of the association of ideas,23 it is believed (felt) that a certain phenomenon is caused by another, because, by habit, we have grown accustomed to believe it. For him, causality does not truly occur in extra-mental reality but is rather a subjective phenomenal complex idea, a creation of the human mind. With this doctrine Hume dismisses the traditional a posteriori demonstrations of the existence of God as being devoid of demonstrative capacity.24

21 C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 47-48. 22 Hume repeatedly denies the objective, universal and necessary validity of the principle of causality in his An

Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, which is contained in his work Philosophical Essays Concerning

Human Understanding, first published in 1748. 23 “A prominent part of Hume’s philosophy is his theory of associationism. We speak, for example, of the principle of causality, and consider it to be a universally and necessarily valid axiom that ‘Every effect must have a cause.’ Hume claims that this axiom is derived from experience. What we perceive is an invariable sequence of events: one thing invariably follows an antecedent event, and from this sequence we conclude that the antecedent event ‘causes’ the one that follows as an ‘effect.’ We do not perceive anything like the ‘production’ of one thing by another. From his phenomenalistic, sensationalistic standpoint, Hume could not admit real ‘causation.’ Whenever we observe one event to occur, we feel the mental compulsion to assert that the other will follow. But whence the mental compulsion to conjoin just these two events as ‘cause’ and ‘effect’? Hume gives as the reason that ‘the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant and to believe that it will exist.’ In other words, it is the association of ideas which compels us to formulate necessary and universal judgments, axioms, and principles. Such judgements, axioms, and principles have no objective value, but are mere associations of impressions derived from the succession of phenomena”(C. BITTLE, op. cit., p. 317). 24 “Having eliminated an objective origin for the idea of active power and the causal bond, Hume had to trace them to purely subjective conditions within the perceiver. The objects of perception are atomic, unconnected units which may, nevertheless, follow one another in a temporal sequence and pattern. Through repeated experience of such sequences, the imagination is gradually habituated to connect antecedent and consequent objects in a necessary way. The necessity does not arise from any productive force or dependence on the side of the objects so related but comes solely from the subjective laws of association operating upon the imagination to compel it to recall one member of the sequence when the other is presented. The causal bond consists entirely in our feeling of necessity in making the transition, in thought, from one object to the other. The philosophical inference from effect to cause is abstract and empty until it is strengthened by the natural relation set up by the workings of habit and association upon the imagination. Given this all-embracing psychological basis, however, causal inference can have nothing stronger than a probable import. Absolute certainty cannot be achieved, since the mind is not dealing with dependencies in being, on the side of the real things, but is confined phenomenalistically to its own perceptions and their relations. It is very likely that our habitual connection among ideas corresponds to some causal link among real things, but this can never be verified. Hence causal inference can yield only probability and belief, not certainty and strict knowledge. Hume rigidly applied this conclusion to the a posteriori argument for God’s existence, maintaining that it is, at the very most, a probable inference and nowise a demonstration”(J. COLLINS, God in Modern Philosophy, Regnery, Chicago, 1967, p. 117).

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Hume teaches that we do not have a perception of a cause; all that is perceived, experienced, are successive sensations. There is no intrinsic connection between these sensations nor any necessity for such a connection. So, what is this principle of causality that the scholastics boast about? Simply a subjective product of habit. We have gotten so used to seeing fire burn that, by habit, we say that fire causes the burning; but since Hume states that we cannot sense this causing, this causing can be but a subjective product of the imagination.

The common man in the street observes a ‘constant conjunction’ of A and B in repeated

instances, where A is contiguous with B and is prior to B, and so he calls A the cause and B the effect. Hume writes in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: “When one particular species of events has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other, and of employing that reasoning (casual inference) which can alone assure us of any matter of fact or existence. We then call the one object cause, the other effect.”25 “Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are

followed by objects similar to the second. Or, in other words, where, if the first object had not

been, the second never had existed.”26 For Hume, causation can be considered either as a philosophical relation or as a natural

relation. Considered as a philosophical relation, he defines cause as follows: “A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are placed in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects that resemble the latter.”27 As a natural relation, Hume defines cause thus: “A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.”28 Hume observes that “though causation be a philosophical relation, as implying contiguity, succession and constant conjunction, yet it is only so far as it is a natural relation and produces a union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it or draw any inference from it.”29

It is thus that Hume gives an answer to his question “why we conclude that such

particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects, and why we form an inference from one to another.”30 Our pan-phenomenalist empiricist gives us a psychological reply, referring to the psychological effect of observation of instances of constant conjunction. This observation produces a custom or propensity in the mind, an associative link, whereby the mind passes in natural fashion from, for example, the idea of flame to the idea of heat or from an impression of flame to the lively idea of heat.

In keeping with his immanentist phenomenalism, Hume denied the objective ontological

validity of the principle of efficient causality, reducing the objective causality affirmed by methodical realism into nothing but a mere succession of phenomena put together by the

25 D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, VII, 2, 59. 26 Ibid. 27 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human �ature, I, 3, 14. 28 Ibid. 29 D. HUME, op. cit., I, 3, 6. 30 D. HUME, op. cit., I, 3, 3.

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associative force of habit, a mere product of our imagination. When we observe, for example, a lighted torch and then feel heat we are accustomed to conclude a causal bond. But in fact, Hume points out, it is the imagination, working by habit, that conjures up this causal bond from what is in fact a mere succession of phenomena: “We have no other notion of cause and effect but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoined together…We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire a union in the imagination.”31 Attacking the objective validity of the principle of efficient causality in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he states: “When we look towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connection; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequent of the other. We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other. The impulse of one billiard-ball is attended with motion in the second. 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, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connection.”32

Kreyche explains that “it is primarily by Hume that the major attack is launched upon

efficient causality. According to Hume, man knows only his ideas and images directly, and not the world of reality. Mind is, for him, simply a state of successive phenomenal impressions, and judgment is replaced by association. In asking whether causality can be justified, Hume requests that one show how its most important characteristic, necessary nexus, is grounded in experience. Not finding it rooted there, he concludes that the necessary connection between cause and effect is psychological, having its ground in custom and the association of ideas. Cause thereupon becomes a relationship among ideas, and no longer an influence of one thing upon the other in the real world…The principal shortcoming of Hume’s view stems from his empiricism and nominalism. He attemped to have the senses detect, in a formal way, causality and necessity per

se – something that those powers are incapable of doing. Aquinas had himself observed that not even substance is sensible per se, but only per accidens. Since he did not admit abstraction of an intellectual nature, Hume was consistent within his own system in rejecting causality and substance. And, unable to justify causality ontologically, he did the next best thing in justifying it psychologically.”33

31 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human �ature, I, 3, 6. 32 D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, VII, 1, 50. 33 G. F. KREYCHE, Causality, in �ew Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p. 346. Benignus’ Critique of Hume’s Rejection of Efficient Causality: “1. Sensism. Hume’s original error, which led to his rejection of substance and causality as valid philosophical concepts, was sensism. He considered experience as the sole ultimate source of valid human knowledge, which it is, but by experience he meant pure sensation, or at very best perception, and nothing more. Impressions of sense and their less vivid relics in the mind, namely, ideas, are the only data of knowledge for which experience vouches, according to Hume. We have no impression of causality or substance; therefore, he argues, these are not given in experience. “Hume mistakes an analysis of the factors in perception for an account of the perceptive act. The data of pure

sensation are, as he says, fragmentary and intermittent sense impressions. But the act which he is analyzing is not an act of pure sensation. What I perceive is not these fragmentary impressions, but the things of which they are accidents. It is doubtful that even animals perceive merely sensory qualities. Substances (i.e., particular, concrete) are the data of perception. They are incidental sensibles immediately perceived by means of internal sense co-operating within external sense. In his analysis Hume takes as the immediate datum of perception something which is actually known only as a result of a difficult abstraction, namely, the pure sensation. Then his problem is to

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discover how, starting from pure sensations, we come to believe in objective substances which exist unperceived and permanently. It is a false problem. “2. Human Experience Includes Understanding. Hume is right in saying that we never have a sensory impression of causality or substance. But he is wrong in saying that we never experience causes or substances. Efficient causes are immediately experienced every time we observe anything physically influencing anything else, every time, for example, we see a hammer driving a nail. But the cause qua cause is never sensed directly; cause, like substance, is only sensed per accidens. The cause as a sensible object, its movement, and the subsequent movement of the object acted upon are the immediate data of sense. But to limit experience to the sensible data perceived is to imply that man perceives without ever at the same time understanding what he perceives. When I perceive a hammer descending upon a nail and the nail moving further into the wood, I also understand that the hammer is something and is driving the nail into the wood. Both perception and understanding are equally parts of the experience. To exclude the understanding is to reduce all human experience to uncomprehending sense awareness. Not only is this not the only kind of human experience, but, at least in the case of adults, it never normally occurs at all. We simply do not perceive without some understanding of what we are perceiving; we do not perceive phenomena without perceiving them as the phenomena of something; nor do we perceive one thing acting upon another without at the same time understanding the former as a cause of the effect produced in the latter. “3. Understanding in Perception. There is surely a crystal-clear distinction between mere perceiving and understanding. The domestic animals of the battlelands of Europe are no more spared the bombing and the fire, the hunger and the cold, the noise and the stench, than are their human owners. But they have no understanding of what is going on; no reason for what is happening is known to them, and none is sought. Their minds do not grope for reasons the way their parched tongues crave for water. The darkness that their eyes suffer when they are driven in the midst of the night through strange lands is matched by no darkness of intellect seeking a reason which it cannot find – that awful darkness which is so often the lot of man. Failure to understand could no more be a privation and a suffering in man if his intellect were not made for grasping the reasons and causes of things, than blindness would be a suffering if sight never grasped the visible. A man who does not understand feels frustrated, because his mind is made for understanding; he suffers when he cannot grasp the reason, because he knows that there is a reason. Perception is not understanding; but normally some understanding occurs together with perception: we could not possibly have the experience of failing to understand what we perceive, if we did not have the prior experience of understanding what we perceive. “4. Cause is ‘Given’ to the Intellect. Cause is something that we grasp intellectually in the very act of experiencing action – whether our own action or another’s. We understand the cause as producing the effect: the hammer as driving the nail, the saw as cutting the wood, the flood as devastating the land, the drill as piercing the rock, the hand as molding the putty, ourselves as producing our own thoughts, words, and movements, our shoes as pinching our feet, a pin as piercing our finger, our fellow subway travelers as pressing our ribs together. We do not think that the nail will ever plunge into the wood without the hammer, the marble shape up as a statue without a sculptor, the baby begin to exist without a father, the acorn grow with no sunlight; if something ever seems to occur in this way, we do not believe it, or we call it a miracle (i.e., we attribute it to a higher, unseen cause). In a similar manner, substance is given directly to the intellect in the very act of perception; the substance is grasped as the reason for the sensible phenomena. “5. The Subjectivistic Postulate. The arguments of Hume are based on the subjectivistic postulate, namely, that we know nothing directly except our own ideas. From this starting point, certitude about real causality can never be reached. The only causality that could ever possibly be discovered if the primary objects of our knowledge were our own ideas would be the causal relations among the ideas themselves. No such relations are as a matter of fact found, since none exist and since the subjectivistic postulate is false to begin with. Causal relations exist between objects and the mind, and between the mind and its ideas, but not between ideas and ideas. Hume places causality in our mind, as a bond between ideas, when he accounts for our idea of causality by attributing it to mental custom. Whatever his intention, he actually presents similar successions of ideas as the cause of our ideas of causality and the principle of causality. As a matter of fact, such causality would not account for our belief in causality, because it would never be an idea, but only an unknown bond connecting ideas. It is only because Hume is already in possession of the concept of causality gained through external experience that he is able to formulate the theory that invariable succession of ideas produces mental custom, which in turn gives rise to the idea of cause. “6. Imagination and Causality. It is, perhaps, this locating of causality among our ideas that leads Hume to a very peculiar argument against the principle of causality: ‘We can never demonstrate the necessity of a cause to every new existence, or new modification of existence, without showing at the same time the impossibility there is that anything can ever begin to exist without some productive principle…Now that the latter is utterly incapable of a

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Proof of the Objective Existence of Efficient Casuality Against Hume. Contrary to the deniers of the objective existence of efficient causality like Hume, Kant, and J. S. Mill, we instead maintain the objective validity of efficient causality based upon the data furnished by experience and demanded by reason as the only true explanation of the facts. A mere invariable sequence of antecedents and consequents is not sufficient to account for the concepts of ‘cause and effect’ and that there really exists an actual production of one thing or event by another thing or event.

Bittle explains: “In proving the existence of efficient causality among things, it will be

necessary first to show that the assumptions which underlie the position of the opponents are unwarranted; then it will be necessary to adduce the positive evidence which supports the view that efficient causality actually is present in nature.

“The opposition against the existence of efficient cause is based primarily on an adverse

theory of knowledge, and not on the facts themselves. As such, the denial is made primarily on

demonstrative proof, we may satisfy ourselves by considering, that as all distinct ideas are separable from each other, and as the ideas of cause and effect are evidently distinct, it will be easy for us to conceive any object to be non-existent at this moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or productive principle. The separation, therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of existence, is plainly possible fot the imagination; and consequently the actual separation of these objects is so far possible, that it implies no contradiction nor absurdity; and it is therefore incapable of being refuted by any reasoning from mere ideas; without which it is impossible to demonstrate the necessity of a cause’(D. HUME, Treatise of Human �ature, I, 3, 3). “This argument, even if we overlook the flagrant petitio principii in the statement that ‘all distinct ideas are separable from each other,’ is no argument at all. What Hume says is nothing more than that he can imagine a thing beginning to exist without a cause, and that consequently no argument from mere ideas can ever prove the necessity of a cause. We can agree with him that no argument from mere ideas can ever prove real causality; but we will add that that is why Hume could never prove it – he started with mere ideas, or rather images. Aside from this, the argument is utterly unrelated to the subject of causality. Imagination has nothing to do with causes or with beginnings of existence. I never imagine anything as beginning to exist, or even as existing; I simply imagine the thing, and in my image there is no reference to existence. The thing which I imagine may as easily be a fire-breathing dragon as my own brother. The reference to existence lies in thought, not in imagination. The words of Hume, ‘The separation, therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of existence, is plainly possible for the imagination,’ have no real meaning, because the imagination never possesses the idea of a beginning of existence. Thought judges whether a thing conceived exists or not, and thought (even Hume’s ‘natural belief’) judges that nothing begins to exist without a cause. Surely, I can imagine a situation in which a certain thing is not an element and then a situation in which it is. To do this is not to conceive the thing as beginning to exist; it is merely to imagine it after not imagining it. Such imaginative play has no connection with causality, except in the obvious sense that I could not imagine anything, to say nothing of making imagination experiments, if I had not the power of producing, that is, causing images in my mind; and presumably that is not the sense in which Hume intended his illustration to the interpreted. “7. Loaded Dice. The subjectivistic postulate prejudices the whole issue as to the reality of causes before examination of the question even begins. If knowledge cannot attain to anything real and extramental, it cannot attain to real, extramental causes. The only causality it could possibly discover would be causal relation among images in the mind. If the object is read out of court by the postulate that we know only our ideas, objective causality is read out with it. It is not surprising that sensism and subjectivism should lead to the explicit denial of the principles of causality, sufficient reason, and substance, since they begin with their implicit denial. Sensations, impressions, images, separated from any being arousing them must be viewed by any intelligent mind as so many phenomena without any sufficient reason for existing. Normal men cannot abide sensory experiences without objective reasons. They regard a person who has such experiences as a psychopathic case; they say, ‘He imagines things,’ and suggests a psychiarist”(B. GERRITY, �ature, Knowledge, and God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1947, pp. 337-341).

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epistemological grounds. Kant, since he maintained that we can have no knowledge of things-in-themselves, naturally had to deny any knowledge of efficient causality as existing among these things-in-themselves. It is the purpose of epistemology to vindicate the sources of our knowledge, among them being sense-perception, consciousness, and reason. In this connection we will restrict ourselves to one consideration. If Kant’s fundamental assumption were correct, we could know nothing of the existence and activity of other minds beside our own, because these ‘other minds’ are evidently things-in-themselves. But we have a knowledge of other minds. This is proved conclusively by the fact of language, whether spoken or written or printed. We do not use language to converse with ourselves; conversation is essentially a dialogue between our mind and ‘other minds.’ Hence, we can and do acquire knowledge of things-in-themselves, as they exist in themselves, through the medium of language. Kant’s fundamental assumption is, therefore, incorrect. Consequently Kant is wrong, when he asserts that we could know nothing of efficient causality, if it existed among things. If we can show that efficient causality exists in ourselves, we prove that efficient causes exist in nature, because we ourselves are a part of nature.

“Hume, Mill, and others, denied efficient causality because of their phenomenalism.

According to their assumption, all we can perceive are the phenomena, and phenomena are revealed to us in our senses merely as events in ‘invariable sequence.’ Whenever, then, we perceive phenomena as invariably succeeding each other in place and time, we are prompted by habit and the association of ideas to imagine a causal connection to exist between them, so that the earlier event is the ‘cause’ and the later even the ‘effect.’ This is, in their view, the origin within our mind of the concept of efficient causality.

“This is a deplorable error. The fact is, we clearly distinguish between mere ‘invariable

sequence’ and ‘real causality.’ We notice, for example, an invariable sequence between day and night every twenty-four hours, and we are convinced that this sequence has been maintained throughout the ages; at any rate, we have never experienced a single exception in this sequence. We also notice, when the day is hot and humid, and a sudden, decisive drop in temperature occurs, that a rainstorm develops; this sequence, however, is by far not as invariable as the sequence between day and night. No one, however, dreams of considering day and night as being in any causal connection, as if the day ‘produced’ or ‘caused’ the night. On the other hand, we certainly are convinced of the existence of a causal connection between the states of the weather, although the occurrence has by no means the invariability of the sequence we observe between day and night. Hence, the fundamental assumption of the phenomenalists, that our observation of ‘invariable sequence’ is the basis of our concept of ‘efficient causality’ is opposed to fact. In accordance with their principle, the phenomenalists must maintain a parity in all cases of invariable sequence. We, however, do not judge the cases to be the same. There must, then, be some other reason why we judge a causal connection to exist between phenomena, between things and events.

“Besides this, we clearly distinguish between conditions and causes, even if there be an

invariable succession between them. We know by experience that we are unable to see objects except in the presence of light. In the dark all objects are invisible; light must first be admitted before we can see. There is an invariable sequence between the presence of light and the seeing of objects. According to the phenomenalists’ principle, therefore, we should judge that light is

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the ‘cause’ of vision, because its presence invariably precedes vision. But we do not so judge. We consider light to be the condition, not the cause, of vision, although vision must always ‘follow after’ the admission of light in sound eyes. And so it is with all ‘conditions.’

“It is entirely untrue to assert that we obtain our concept of cause and effect from the

observation of the frequency of an occurrence through habit and the association of ideas. We judge of the presence of causality even in single cases. When the first steam engine, or the first telephone, or the first automobile, went into operation, no one waited for the hundredth or thousandth appearance or operation in order to apply the principle of causality; this was done immediately. Similarly, when an accident or disaster occurs, we do not wait until it occurs frequently before we think of cause and effect; we look for the causal connection as soon as it occurs. On the other hand, though we see a million automobiles follow each other down the highway, we never think of the one being the cause of the other, due to association of ideas or habit.

“Hence, mere sequence, no matter how frequent and invariable, is not the principle which

forces us to accept the concept of efficient cause and causal connection as valid in nature. The facts themselves compel our reason to judge that the relation of cause and effect exists between things.

“Our experience proves causality. Critical analysis of our internal states and of external

nature convinces us of its reality. Internal consciousness is an indubitable witness to the fact that our mental activities not only take place in us, but that they are also produced by us. Such are the activities of thinking, imagining, desiring, willing. They are clearly observed to be ‘produced’ by ourselves, and this production is observed to be due to our own action, so that their existence is intrinsically dependent on this productive action. Thus, we are conscious that we deliberately set about to solve a certain mental problem by combining ideas into judgments, judgments into inferences, and a whole chain of inferences into an extended argumentation. With the help of our imagination we work out poems, essays, melodies, pictorial scenes, machines, etc., before they ever appear outside the mind. We desire certain things and consciously will them; and we are fully aware that we are the responsible agents of these desires and acts of the will, because we produce them by direct action. No one can deny these facts; they are present for everyone to observe. But if the conscious knowledge of ourselves as the active agents in the production of these internal activities is unreliable and false, all our knowledge, of whatever character, must be adjudged an illusion, because knowledge rests ultimately on the testimony of consciousness. In that case, however, universal skepticism is the logical outcome, and that means the bankruptcy of all science and philosophy. Hence, our consciousness is a trustworthy witness to the fact of efficient causality within us.

“External experience proves the same. We speak. Language is an external expression of

our internal ideas. It is impossible for us to doubt that we actually produce the sounds of language which express our own thoughts. We intend to express these thoughts in conversation, and we actually do; and we are conscious of the fact that we are the agents in this process. If I am a painter, I set up my canvas, mix the paints, apply the colors, and with much effort project my mental images upon the canvas in form and color; I know that all this is not a mere ‘sequence of events,’ but a production of something in virtue of my own actions. So, too, if I take pen and ink

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and write something on paper, I not only perceive one word following the other, but I am also convinced beyond the possibility of any rational doubt that I am the ‘author’ of the words appearing on the paper. Neither Hume, nor Mill, nor any other phenomenalist, disclaimed the authorship of the books which appeared in their name, nor would they refuse to accept royalties from their publishers on the plea that they were not the efficient causes of these books.

“Again, we are convinced that many bodily actions are of a voluntary nature. I move my

hand, my arm, my head, and I know that these members move because I make them move. If I am set for a sprint, and the gun goes off, I jump into action. But I am conscious that there is not a mere sequence between the shot and my running; and I am also conscious that the shot does not make my limbs move so rapidly: it is I myself who decides to run and who deliberately produces this action of running. This is all the more obvious to me, when I compare this sort of action with the action of the heart or of the liver, etc., over which I have no control. I clearly distinguish between ‘sequence’ and ‘causality.’ Hume, as we have seen, claims that we cannot know of this causal connection between our will and our bodily movements, because we cannot ‘feel’ the energy involved in this operation. This merely proves that we do not observe the whole process. Of the fact of causation itself we are most assuredly aware, and we are also aware of the exertion

and fatigue involved in producing these effects; but if we ‘produced’ nothing, of if there were no energy expended in the production (for instance, in walking, working, running, making a speech, etc.), why should we feel exertion and fatigue? And thus our external experience also testifies to the fact that we ourselves are efficient causes which produce definite effects.

“In order to disprove the opponents’ contention, no more is required than to prove a

single case of causality. We could, therefore, rest our case with the above argument taken from the internal and external experience of our own selves. However, we contend that the existence of other efficient causes in nature is also capable of proof.

“Reason demands efficient causality in nature. If reason demands that we admit the

existence of efficient causes acting in the universe, the philosopher cannot refuse to accept the verdict of reason, because science and philosophy are based on the operations of reason. Now, if I am convinced beyond doubt that I am the cause of the picture I paint, what am I to conclude, when I see someone else paint a picture? I must conclude that he is doing what I did, when I went through the same series of actions. Of course, all that my senses can observe is a ‘sequence’ of actions; my reason, however, demands that he, too, must be the ‘producer’ of his picture, just as I am of mine. This is common sense and sound logic. And the same principles applies to all actions performed by others, when I observe them doing the same things that I do or have done: if I am the efficient cause, they must be efficient causes for the same reason. There is a complete parity between my actions and their actions, and so I know, through a conclusion of reason, that real causality exists in nature in these and similar cases.

“It is only a short step from instances of such activities to productive activities in the

world at large. A farmer places seed into the soil. After a period of time it sprouts, grows, and eventually matures into an abundant harvest. Here something new has originated. And so with animals and men. We were not here a hundred years ago; but we are here now. We perceive new living beings coming into existence daily. They are new realities. But if they did not exist always and do exist now, they must have received existence. Their existence is a ‘produced’ existence, a

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‘caused’ reality, because they were brought from non-existence to existence. That, however, which exerts a positive influence through its action in the production of another, is an efficient cause. Efficient causes, therefore, exist in nature. We must, then, reject phenomenalism as false and accept efficient causality as the only adequate interpretation of the facts as observed.”34

Conclusion: General Critique of Hume’s Phenomenalism. Hume’s main errors lie in his epistemological and ontological immanentism, as well as in his reduction of human knowledge to the level of the senses (sensism or sensationalism), thus denying that man has the power of abstraction and the ability to form universal concepts. For Hume, sense experience was the ultimate source of valid human knowledge and in the final analysis, all that we could ever hope to know are phenomena, our own internal mental states and not extra-mental reality itself (pan-phenomenalist immanentism). Thus, thrown out together with metaphysics are substance, the substantial metaphysical Ego, the substantial and immortal soul, as well as objective ontological causality. Having done this he remained agnostic concerning God’s existence, a natural consequence of his immanentist, pan-phenomenalist sensism.

Criticizing Hume’s radical empiricism, Celestine Bittle notes a number of things: “First,

Hume’s explanation of ideas as faint images of sense-impressions is totally inadequate. Since both are of a sensory character, they are concrete and individualized. Our ideas, however, are abstract and universal. There is, as we have shown, a radical difference between ‘sensations’ and ‘images’ on the one hand and ‘intellectual ideas’ on the other. To ignore or deny these differences is a serious error. Second, Hume’s explanation of universal ideas is totally inadequate.35 The process of forming universal ideas is not at all the way Hume pictures it. We acquire them by a process of abstraction, taking the objective features common to a number of individuals and then generalizing the resultant idea so that it applies to the whole class and to every member of the class. It is not a question of merely labeling objects with a common name. Intellectual insight into the nature of these objective features, not ‘custom’ or habit, enables us to group them together into a class. Third, Hume’s explanation of the origin and nature of the necessarily and universally true axioms and principles, such as the principle of causality and the principle of non-contradiction, is totally inadequate. He explains their necessity and universality through association. Now, the laws of association are purely subjective laws with a purely subjective result. Consequently, the ‘necessity’ which we experience relative to the logical connection between subject and predicate in these principles would not be due to anything coming from the reality represented in these judgments, but solely to the associative force existing in the mind. It is a subjective and psychological, not an objective and ontological, necessity. The mind does not judge these principles to be true because it sees they cannot be otherwise; it cannot see them to be otherwise because the mind in its present constitution must judge them to be true. So far as objective reality is concerned, 2 + 2 might equal 3 or 5 or any other number; and there might be a cause without an effect, or an effect without a cause. If Hume’s contention were correct, that our observation of ‘invariable sequence’ is the reason for assuming an antecedent event to be the ‘cause’ of the subsequent event, then we should perforce

34 C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 343-349. 35 Describing Hume’s nominalism, Bittle writes: “Relative to universal ideas, Hume maintains that we find a resemblance between objects and apply the same name to them; then, after a ‘custom’ of this kind has been estblished, the name revives the ‘idea,’ and the imagination conceives the object represented by the ‘idea’(C. BITTLE, op. cit., p. 317).

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experience the same psychological necessity of judgment in all cases where we notice an invariable sequence in successive events. Experience, however, contradicts this view. For instance, day follows night in an invariable sequence; but nobody would dream of asserting that the night is the ‘cause’ of the day. In an automobile factory one car follows the other on the belt line in invariable sequence; but this association does not compel us to think that the preceding car is the ‘cause’ of the one following. Reversely, when an explosion occurs but once in our experience, we search for the ‘cause’ of this ‘effect’ and are convinced there must be a cause present; here, however, there can be no question of an ‘invariable sequence’ of events. Fourth, Hume’s theory, if accepted as true, must destroy all scientific knowledge. The very foundation of science lies in the principles of non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality. If these principles are valid only for our mind and do not apply with inviolable necessity to physical objects in nature, the scientist has no means of knowing whether his conclusions are objectively valid. His knowledge is nothing but a purely mental construction which may or may not agree with extra-mental reality. But science treats of physical systems and their operations, not of mental constructions. Since, according to Hume, we can know nothing but our internal states of consciousness, we could never discover whether the external world and other minds exist at all; driven to its logical conclusions, such a theory can end only in solipsism or in skepticism.”36

36 C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 317-319.