Cause and Effect is based on Perceptions

Reason Cannot Explain the Connection of Cause and Effect Because that Connection is Based on Impressions

Our reason fails to discover the ultimate connection of causes and effects.

Even after experience has informed us of their constant conjunction, we cannot extend that experience beyond those observed instances.

Our minds pass from one object to another even though there is no reason for it*.

I establish a general rule: “wherever the mind constantly and uniformly makes a transition without any reason, it is influenced by these relations.”

Reason can never show us the connection of one object with another.

The mind passes from idea or impression of one object to the idea or belief of another through principles which:

• associate the ideas of these objects, and
• unite them in the imagination.

If ideas no union in the imagination, we could never:

• draw any inference from causes to effects, and
• rest belief in any matter of fact.

The inference, therefore, depends solely on the union of ideas.

There are 3 principles of union among ideas:

1. Resemblance
2. Contiguity
3. Constant connection

These principles are not:

• the infallible causes
  • This is because one may focus for some time on any one object without looking farther.
• the sole causes
  • This is because the thought has a very irregular motion in running along its objects*

I allow:

• this weakness in these three relations, and
• this irregularity in the imagination.

When every individual of any species of objects is found to be constantly united with an individual of another species, the appearance of any new individual of species naturally conveys the thought to its usual attendant.

Thus, because such an idea is commonly annexed to such a word, only hearing that word is needed to produce the correspondent idea.

It will be impossible for the mind to prevent that transition.

In this case, it is not absolutely necessary that on hearing such a sound, we should:

• reflect on any past experience
• consider what idea has been usually connected with the sound.

The imagination itself supplies the place of this reflection.

It is so accustomed to pass from the word to the idea, that it does not interpose a moment’s delay between:

• the hearing of the one
• the conception of the other.

This is a true principle of association among ideas.

But I assert it to be:

• the very same with the principle between the ideas of cause and effects, and
• an essential part in all our reasonings from that relation.

We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects which have been:

• always conjoined together, and
• found inseparable in all past instances.

We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction.

We only observe the thing itself.

We always find that the objects acquire a union in the imagination, from the constant conjunction.

When the impression of one becomes present to us, we immediately form an idea of its usual attendant. Consequently, we may establish this as one part of the definition of an opinion or belief, that it is an idea related to or associated with a present impression.

Causation is a philosophical relation implying contiguity, succession, and constant conjunction.

Yet we are able to reason on it or draw any inference from it only as it:

• is a natural relation, and
• unites our ideas.