The Inference from the Impression to the Idea

The Constant Conjunction Between Cause and Effect Comes from Experience

We infer the existence of one object from the existence of another object only through experience.

Experience lets us remember:

• frequent instances of the existence of one kind of objects, and
• that the other kinds of objects have:
  • always attended them, and
  • existed in a regular order of contiguity and succession relative to them.

We remember to have seen a flame and its sensation called heat.

• From this we readily recall the one from the other.

Learning the cause and effect of a phenomenon creates the conjunction.

When we have not learned the conjunction, we perceive or remember only the cause or the effect.

• The other is supplied by our past experience.

Thus when we think about cause and effect, we create a new relation of constant conjunction between cause and effect.

Contiguity and temporal succession are not enough to for 2 objects to be cause and effect of each other, unless there is constant conjunction between them in several instances.

What we do not learn from one object, we can never learn from 100 of the same kind.

Our senses show us in one instance two bodies, motions, or qualities in certain relations of temporal succession and contiguity.

Our memory presents us only with a multitude of instances.

We always find like bodies, motions, or qualities in like relations in these instances.

A necessary connection never arises from the mere repetition of past preceptions [impressions].

Our discovery of the constant conjunction of any objects allows us to always infer one object from another.

What is the nature of that inference?

How does it transition from the impression to the idea?

The necessary connection depends on the inference more than the inference depending on the necessary connection.

The transition from remembrance or sensory perception to an idea, which is either a cause or effect, is founded on:

• past experience, and
• on our remembrance of their constant conjunction.

Does experience produce the idea via the understanding or imagination?

Do we make the transition:

• by reason, or
• by a certain association of perceptions?

If reason made us do the transition, it would be caused by the principle, that:

• instances that we had no experience of must resemble those that we have had experience, and
• the course of nature is always uniformly the same.

To clear up this matter, let us consider all the arguments on which such a proposition may be founded.

As these must be derived from knowledge or probability, let us view each of these degrees of evidence and see whether they afford any just conclusion of this nature.

No demonstrative arguments can prove that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those, of which we have had experience.

We can at least conceive a change in the course of nature.

This proves that such a change is not absolutely impossible.

To form a clear idea of anything, is:

• an undeniable argument for its possibility, and
• alone a refutation of any pretended demonstration against it.