Question

Good afternoon!
David Hume argued that a person never actually observes causality itself, and therefore concluded that induction is merely a mental process and nothing more (like the famous example in which the rooster thinks that its crowing brings up the sun).
And this is difficult for me:
1. Hume himself is an empiricist, so how does that fit if, according to his words, science is based on thought and not on observation?
2. I don’t understand what he means, because even if the rooster’s crowing does not bring up the sun, still there is some prior cause that brings about both of them, and if so then there is causality after all; we just do not know how to identify what it is (though we do at least identify the correlation).
And here there are two options: either he means that there is a cause and we simply do not identify the correct cause (or we identify only correlation or statistics), and if so it is hard for me because it is not true that we do not see the truth, but only that we do not see the complete truth. After all, even if Newtonian physics is not correct at the micro level, where Einstein’s physics comes in, it is still correctly applicable to large objects. So true, we do not see the perfect cause, but we still identify part of it. Or does he mean that there are no causes for things at all, and everything just happens for no reason?
3. If he means that there are no causes for things, then how does science predict? Are these merely convenient theories and not truth?
4. I understand that this is what Kant said: that we really do not see causality itself in the noumenon, but only in the phenomenon. And here I do not understand: does he mean that all science is constructed only within the human world (and a physical description is only a description of the world as it appears to the observer)? If so, it is difficult for me how that works. (And one cannot answer like Berkeley, that there really is no noumenon, because in the phenomenon itself there are two parts: the observed physical thing, whether it exists or not, and the enactive process that occurs in the observer.) Or does he mean that we do not know how to describe what the noumenon really looks like, but science is still built on what works, which is at least a partial truth?
5. Does Hume’s view imply that there is no “truth,” only convenient observation? If so, it is difficult for me: what created everything? Would he answer that in fact there is no first cause? And if so, can one say that all his statements are true only with respect to physical causation, or is that all the same to him?
6. Henri Bergson expanded on this by saying that every theory begins with an intuition that the scientist has and then tries to prove. But according to Hume, how does that work? After all, this is just an a priori intuition, which says nothing about reality. And if you say that this itself came from prior observation, then the whole problem of induction collapses, because then a person identifies the law of nature from observation and not from an a priori process.
7. A question about Kant: according to Kant, it follows that there is no access to the noumenon, and if so, why does the a priori have the status of truth? After all, it is a process within the phenomenon (and it makes no difference whether the fact that the noumenon cannot be grasped is an advantage or a disadvantage).
Does he mean that yes indeed, the status of the a priori is only truth relative to the phenomenon?
Sorry for the length. I assume that most of the questions rest on one specific mistaken assumption, and if so I would be happy for the Rabbi to identify it. (And if the Rabbi doesn’t have the energy for that, I understand. I would just be happy if the Rabbi would write that, rather than simply answer me with some answer that does not settle my assumptions.)
Thank you very much!