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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 579 Here the problem lies in the scope of the word "cause" as we, and Hume, choose to use it. It would seem that Hume, and some of his commentators, have failed to make the distinction between a necessary condition and a contributing cause. Something is a necessary condition for an action if the action would not have been performed without it. Something is a contributing cause of an action if, independently of other causal factors with which it is conjoined, it exerts some causal influence on the agent to perform the action. There is no necessary connection between necessary conditions and contributing causes of some event. Suppose, for example, that I discover a craved cherry pie on the table. I am moved to approach the table. Does my discovery of the pie move me toward the table? Surely not. If I discovered the pie without wanting it, it would have no such influence. Rather, it is my desire for the pie that has this effect on me. Of course my discovery of the pie on the table is a necessary condition of my approaching the table (rather than, say, the window). In that sense, my discovery "directs" or "prompts" me toward the table. But not everything that is required in order for an event to occur can be sensibly described as a contributing cause of its occurrence.16 In particular, my discovery of the pie is a necessary condition of my action, but not a contributing cause of it; for, as Hume often notes, reason by itself has no causal influence whatsoever. The suggestion, then, is that when Hume uses words such as "prompts" or "directs", he is referring to a particularly salient necessary condition of action, i.e. reason - not a contributing cause of it. This interpretation enables us to resolve the passages just cited with Hume's immediately preceding claim to have "prov'd, that reason is perfectly inert, and can never either prevent or produce any action or affection" (T 458; emphasis added). That Hume regards these two points as mutually consistent is made clear in the Enquiry, when he states that [r]eason being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery (E 246/294). That reason directs or prompts, then, does not imply that reason motivates; quite the contrary, on Hume's account. Finally, there are the passages surrounding Hume's account of the origin of the artificial virtue of justice. Hume tells us that society is advantageous for the purpose of compensating individual defects, achieving equality or 16 Of course some contributing causes of action are necessary conditions, as Hume recognizes (E 76/60). But in this passage he accords no higher priority to this quasinomological definition of cause than he does to his own inductive one offered later in the same paragraph. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
