The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume - Hardcover

Strawson, Galen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198248539 ISBN 13: 9780198248538

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1989

Synopsis

It is widely supposed that David Hume invented and espoused the "regularity" theory of causation, holding that causal relations are nothing but a matter of one type of thing being regularly followed by another. It is also widely supposed that he was not only right about this, but that it was one of his greatest contributions to philosophy. Strawson here argues that the regularity theory of causation is indefensible, and that Hume never adopted it in any case. Strawson maintains that Hume did not claim that causation in the natural world is just a matter of regular succession, that such a dogmatic metaphysical claim about the nature of reality would have been utterly contrary to his fundamental philosophical principles, and that he rightly took it for granted that there was more to causation than regularity of succession, claiming only that regularity of succession was all that we could ever know of causation.

About this title

About the Author:

Galen Strawson holds the President's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Jesus College, Oxford (1987-2000) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading (2001-2013). From 2004 to 2007 he was also Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center in New York. He has held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University (1993 and 2012), New York University (1997), Rutgers University (2000), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2010), Princeton University (2011), and the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (2012). Strawson received his degrees from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and studied at the Ecole normale superieure and the Sorbonne in Paris (1977-8).

Review:

"a comprehensive and persuasively argued position ... exceptionally well written."

--International Studies in Philosophy

"thoroughly convincing"

--London Review of Books

"beautifully argued"

--Times Literary Supplement

"it stretched me till I twanged"

--Craig Raine, Observer

"His style is lively, even impassioned. Best of all, he shares the reader's amusement at his own fevered combing of the text."

--Australian Journal of Philosophy

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0198248539
• ISBN 13: 9780198248538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 306