Kant and Hume: Cause and Effect

Paper Summary:

This paper compares and contrasts Immanuel Kant's and David Hume's views on how we interpret knowledge of cause and effect. The paper explains that Kant's theory, known as transcendental idealism, allows for a more confident approach to how we examine the world because, while Hume argues that we cannot be certain of the world in any sense, Kant says we can at least be certain of the form our minds give to the world. The paper contends that Kant's epistemology of transcendental idealism shows how Kant made a more compelling and, at least, more hopeful argument that immediately challenged Humean skepticism.

From the Paper:

Hume holds that human ideas outside the realm of mathematics, "matters of fact", are nothing but copies and reflections of "impressions" from experience; impressions are merely lively perceptions of experiences - visual, auditory, smell - that act directly as the source of our less lively ideas. In this finding, Hume issued a blanket denial of the certainty of traditional metaphysical subjects, such as God, a soul or a self, because they were based on the supposition that nature is uniform, that the future will simulate the past. He dismisses moral philosophical systems and hypotheses as having perverted natural understanding. He thinks that these theories of "monkish virtues" and "reasonings on this subject can only be drawn from effects to causes; and that every argument, deducted from causes to effects must of necessity be a gross sophism; since it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause, but what you have antecedently, not inferred, but discovered to the full, in the effect."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Hume, David. "AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING." 1910. 12 Dec. 2008 <http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html#9>.
• Kant, Immanuel, Gary Hatfield, and Karl Ameriks. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics : With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004.

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