Saul Traiger, ed. The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise (Malden: Blackwell, 2006)

Citations are from the SBN editions of the Treatise and the Enquiry:

1. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

2. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed. by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

• For future import to my SDC, note the following: matter in and of itself is passive and can never of itself produce an effect. Thus, physical changes derive from an active being, which I refer to as the Spirit (hence SDC).

Introduction:

The understanding of Hume’s Treatise has advanced on four fronts, according to Traiger (1), of which I think two are important: 1). the influences on Hume’s thoughts, and 2). The scrutiny placed upon Hume’s metaphysics and epistemology. Intense scrutiny has uncovered many influential sources to Hume’s thoughts. Moreover, research conducted in the 20th century has uncovered the naturalistic influences of Hume’s view of causation. New debates have arisen regarding whether Hume’s viewpoint of causation was one of realism, as well regarding the nature and scope of his skepticism.

In a letter to his friend, Henry Home, in December1737, Hume noted that he had spent the better part of three months after having arrived back in London improving the “style and diction” of the first version of his Treatise, and “castrating [the] work, that is, cutting off its nobler parts” [so that] “it shall give as little offence [to religious people] as possible” before submitting it to a publisher ((Hume, in J. Y. T. Greig, The Letters of David Hume, Oxford: Clarendon Press,  1932:I:24-25). The Treatise was thereafter first published in 1739.

Hume claimed that the ultimate causal connection of external bodies is not “discoverable by our sense or reason” (T 2.3.1.4, SBN 400). 

Later in life, Hume actually began to move away from his dogmatism that one finds within the Treatise. In fact, in a personal letter written to his friend Gilbert Elliot in 1751, Hume advises him not to read the Treatise because he had been forced to publish it too early due to the “the Heat of Youth & Invention” (Hume, in J. Y. T. Greig, the letters of David Hume, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932, I:158). Moreover, Hume said that “repented [of his] Haste a hundred, and a hundred times” (Hume, in J. Y. T. Greig, the letters of David Hume, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932, I:158). In another letter written to his friend, Professor John Stewart, three years later, Hume noted that he was particularly troubled by “the positive Air, which prevails in the [Treatise]… “which may be imputed to the Ardor of Youth” (Hume, in J. Y. T. Greig, the letters of David Hume, Oxford: Clarendon Press,  1932, I:187). At the end of his life, in the famous Advertisement of 1775 placed on the last printing of the Treatise prior to his death, Hume disowned the Treatise, he objected to the critics who directed their criticisms toward “that juvenile work, which the Author himself never acknowledge [that he wrote]” (as cited by John P. Wright, Composition, Reception, and Response, in Traiger, 2006, 5-25:20). So, for Hume, the Treatise was ultimately nothing more than a juvenile piece of writing. In a letter to a friend, Hume acknowledges Newton, saying specifically that “Sir Isaac Newton (tho’ some of his Followers have taken a different Turn of thinking) plainly rejects [the occassionalist theory], by substituting the Hypothesis of an Aetherial Fluid, not the immediate Volition of the Deity, as the Cause of Attraction [between objects]” (David Hume, A Letter from a Gentleman to his friend in Edinburgh, ed. E. C. Mossner and J. V. Price, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967:28-29). Later, in the ENQ, Hume also implicitly endorses the above view imputed to Newton in that he recognizes there are some real though unknown forces in nature which we can speculate about (EHU 7.5 n. 16, SBN 73-74). This may also be important to my SDC, note, Bradford.

Published in 1764, Thomas Reid’s book went back to Hume’s Treatise, first published in 1739. Reid pointedly criticizes Book 1 of the Treatise, and especially what he perceives to be the underlying Pyrrhonian skepticism in that book. Book 1 of the Treatise admittedly expresses much skepticism, but it may be important to note that Hume later, in the ENQ, that the philosophical doubts of “Pyrrhonianism or excessive skepticism” [are] “corrected by common sense and reflection” (ENQ 12.3.24, SBN 161). Nonetheless, Reid chooses to press onward in his critique of Hume, and notes that he had 

“never thought of calling in question the principles commonly received with regard to the human understanding, until the Treatise of Human Nature was published, in the year 1739. The ingenious author of that treatise, upon the principles of Locke, who was no skeptic, hath built a system of scepticisim, which leaves no ground to believe any one thing rather than its contrary. His reasoning appeared to me just: there was therefore a necessity to call I question the principles upon which it was founded, or to admit the conclusion” (Thomas Reid, An Inquiry Into The Human Mind On The Principles Of Common Sense, ed. by D.R. Brooks, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997: 3-4).

Reid claims that Hume’s skepticism resulted from the often posited hypothesis that “nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it: That we do not really perceive things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted on the mind” (Reid, 1997, 4).Reid criticizes Hume’s view, writing that “[i]t is a fundamental principle of the ideal system, That every object of thought must be an impression, or an idea, a faint copy of some preceding impression. This is a principle so commonly received, that the author [of the Treatise], although his whole system is built upon it, never offers the least proof of it” (Reid, 1997, 33). Reid thought it was unreasonable to admit to such a philosophy that “overturns all philosophy, all religion and virtue, and all common sense” (Reid, 1997, 5). 

It is apparent that Hume wanted people to read the Treatise through the lenses, so to speak, of the ENQ. As early as 1751, Hume wrote to his friend Gilbert Elliot, and advised him that the Enquiry contains “everything of consequence relating to the Understanding”, and that “by shortening & simplifying the Questions”, in the Enquiry, he was actually making his thoughts “much more complete” (Hume, in J. Y. T. Greig, the letters of David Hume, Oxford: Clarendon Press,  1932, I:158). It is clear that Hume wanted his philosophical principles based on the ENQ, and merely supplemented by the Treatise if there were no distinct contradiction between the two accounts. So should we completely discard the Treatise, as its author apparently desired for us to do? No, for there are many intriguing discussions within the Treatise which were not subsequently incorporated into the ENQ, so the two still need to be read, but with preference to the ENQ. It could very well be argued that Hume’s disowning of the Treatise in favor of the ENQ was as an answer to Reid’s criticisms (John P. Wright, Composition, Reception, and Response, in Traiger, 2006, 5-25:23)

By questioning the causal maxim, Hume essentially attacked the cosmological argument for the existence of God outright. 

Belief, Probability, Normativity, William E. Morris, 77-94

Hume accepts the traditional distinction between knowledge (scientia) and belief (opinio). In Hume’s terminology, knowledge is based on relations of ideas, whereas belief is concerned with matters of fact (Morris, 77).

Hume’s account of probability begins in section 2, and concludes with “rules by which to judge causes and effect” in section 15 (78). In the ENQ (??? Or is the Treatise?), Hume argues that our inferences from the observed to the unobserved are not based on reason, but are solely the product of custom or habit (SBN, 641). Hume calls his account of causation the “CHIEF ARGUMENT of [the] BOOK” (SBN, 641) In the abtract of the Treatise, Hume writes, “[b[y all that has been said the reader will easily perceive, that the philosophy contain’d in this book is very special, and tends to give us a notion of the imperfection and narrows limits of human understanding” (A 27, SBN 657). In the Treatise, Hume argues that our causal inference have “no just foundation” (T 1.3.6.10, SBN 91). Thus, there are no inferences from either probability or demonstration that could yield the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature as a “just conclusion” (T 1.3.6.4-7, SBN 88-90). Therefore, no “conclusions from causes to effects are based on solid reasoning” (T 1.3.6.8, SBN 90).

Abraham Sesshu Roth, “Causation”, in Saul Traiger, ed. The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), 

The part of Hume’s Treatise that supposedly deals with causation, Roth says, does not deal with causation as per se, but causal reasoning instead (95). Hume gives two definitions (some say three) to causation in the Treatise. The first of which defines causation in terms of a realist perspective, and the second of which seems to refer to dispositions of the mind (a regularity notion). Hume writes first, “[w]e may define a CAUSE to be ‘an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are plac’d in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects, that resemble the latter” (T 1.3.14.31, 35, SBN 170). He also writes, “A CAUSE is an object precedent and contingent 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” (T 1.3.14.31, 35, and SBN 172). Roth notes that both of the above definitions given by Hume to idea of “cause” gives support for nothing else but a regularity theory of causation (96). Robinson notes that these two definitions of cause are not equivalent to each other, as they do not even yield the same extensions (see J.A. Robinson, “Hume’s Two Definitions of ‘Cause’,” Philosophical Quarterly 12, 162-171: 162). Roth goes on to state, and which I see evidence of, that Hume seemingly holds to a strict regularity theory of causation in the Treatise, while allowing for “secret powers” in the ENQ (96). 

Hume observes that for two objects to be related as cause and effect, they must be both successive and contiguous. However, Hume writes further, “[s]hall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a compleat idea of causation? By no means. An object may be contiguous and prior to another, without being consider’d its cause. There is a NECESSARY CONNEXION to be taken into consideration; and that relation is of much greater importance, than any of the other two above mention’d” (T 1.3.2.11, SBN 77). In the Treatise, Roth notes, necessary connection is the most important element of causation to Hume, presumably because of its role in probable reasoning (97).