Phi 242 Sp11

Reading guide for Mon. 4/4: Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §VII (pp. 39-53)  
 

Section VII completes Hume’s account of cause and effect, by giving an account of the idea of a necessary connection that we attach to the relation. The two parts of the section follow a pattern you’ve seen before.

In the first part, Hume is critical or skeptical, arguing against accounts of a necessary connection and related ideas that he imagines might occur to a reader.

In the second part, Hume provides his own positive account (perhaps again solving skeptical doubts), using ideas from section V.