In
this essay I will attempt to examine Kant's claim that causation is
an a priori category. I will attempt to do this by first examining
Hume's understanding of causation, describing what is meant by the
terms necessary and sufficient conditions before finally contrasting
Humes understanding with Kant's view and offering some evaluation of
both arguments.
Hume argues that causation involves an association between a cause and an effect. He argues that Humans have a propensity to conclude that there is a necessary connection between the cause and the effect. So that when I see event A occurring I might always conclude B will occur. Hume denies that any such condition actually exists attributing this to our imagination. To better understand Humes description of causal relationships we should first understand what is meant by the terms necessary and sufficient.
For Hume a necessary condition is one in which the effect will not occur if the cause is not present. As a child I removed the light bulb from my night light and stuck a finger into the electrical socket to ascertain if I would light up much like the bulb. Whilst my childhood curiosity was soon quelled by the resultant mains shock. From this shock I drew a conclusion; if I do not stick my finger in the bulb socket I will not receive an electrical shock.
If this example is understood as a
necessary condition this perspective is problematic. I might stick my
finger into the socket and not receive
a shock because the lamp is not plugged in, or switched off.
Furthermore if wearing nylon or synthetic clothes I become statically
charged and happen to shake hands with another person; I would
experience an electrical shock that is not consistent with the
necessary condition I have associated with the effect of being
shocked. Put differently It does not therefore always follow that
electrical shocks can be avoided by refraining from touching
electrical sockets.
A sufficient cause is one in which if the cause is present the effect will occur. For example I may posit that if the temperature drops below zero degrees centigrade my windscreen will be covered with ice in the morning. This statement again is also problematic in that the sufficient cause may not accounting for the scope of variables that actually result in my windscreen accumulating ice. For example the presence of water vapor in the air, the temperature within the car and of the windscreen, if I choose to cover my windscreen and so on may impact on the presence of ice on my windscreen.
It appears that for Hume that both necessary and sufficient causes fail to account for the scope of variables that may influence a particular effect. A robust collection of variables becomes necessary and arguably may no longer represent an identifiable cause. If an association between cause and effect exists it does not appear that I am able to offer an explicit description.
Kant attempts to escape Humes problem by asserting that Causality is one of the categories of understanding. By this Kant is referring to the categories of the conceptual scheme by which we understand the world. Kant had argued that the passive reception of experience was not sufficient to explain Human knowledge. Kant asserted that to arrive at knowledge humans required a means to interpret information and believed that specific categories were a part of our mental apparatus. Much like a computer which stores an electronic file as thousands of bits of binary data (1's and 0's) there has to be a means by which we make sense of sense data otherwise the data is meaningless.
For Kant, that we perceive the causal relationship as necessary is because our mental apparatus constrains us to perceive it this way; that we perceive the cause and effect relationship as necessary is because this is how our understanding organises this information. Kant's argument however is not without difficulty. Firstly it raises the question in relation to causation, how can we be certain that our understanding of any causal sequence is not distorted? Furthermore, and more significantly if one category of the conceptual scheme has the potential to influence or even 'distort' our perception of the world does this mean others can also? More concerningly If this is the case – how can we be sure that what we perceive actually reflects the real world?
Arguably here Kant here does not escape Hume's problem but merely rephrases it. Hume has argued that our perception of the causal relationship as necessary is imagined and Kant has dismissed this as the wrong conclusion from the available information. Both suggest that we are in some way predisposed to perceive the world contrary to how is actually is. Here there appears to be a striking similarity in how both have attempted to dismiss this problem by attributing it to simply being in error. Furthermore it appears tautological for Hume to conclude that imagination necessarily causes us to believe causes are necessary and Kant to argue that necessarily our conceptual schema causes us to perceive causes as necessary.
