Q&A: Causality
Causality
Question
David Hume argued that no one has ever seen causality, nor is it possible to prove it, and apparently it is a foundational assumption with which one approaches science.
The question is whether there is no absolute statistical proof of causality, since in everything we do we expect it to happen according to the principle of causality, and it indeed happens; so even if we have not seen causality, and from the outset we assumed it arbitrarily, in practice isn’t it statistically proven millions of times every day (for each of us)?
Answer
The question is what you define as causality. If you are talking about correlation (temporal precedence and a logical connection without physical causation), then you are right. That is indeed how Hume defined it because of this problem. But causality that also includes actual causation is not statistically proven. I discussed this in my book The Science of Freedom, chapters 5–6.