Causality Between Habit and Meaning: An Analytical Reading of David Hume's Philosophy

Abstract

This study examines the problem of causality in the philosophy of David Hume, one of the most influential philosophical issues in the history of knowledge. Hume rejected the notion of a fixed and necessary connection between causes and effects, arguing that what human beings perceive is not necessity itself, but rather the repeated conjunction of phenomena, which generates a psychological habit in the mind that leads it to expect the effect whenever the cause is present. The study seeks to reinterpret the concept of causality through an analytical perspective that links habit and meaning, whereby habit is not merely a blind psychological response but a cognitive mechanism that contributes to the production of meaning and the understanding of the world.

The research raises a central question concerning how mental habit, in Hume’s philosophy, becomes the foundation that grants causality its epistemic meaning despite the absence of either rational or empirical necessity. From this main question emerge several subsidiary inquiries related to the nature of causality, the role of repetition and experience in the formation of causal belief, and whether such a conception ultimately undermines knowledge or, instead, reconstructs it on new analytical foundations. The study assumes that Hume did not completely abolish causality; rather, he reinterpreted it as a psychological and epistemological phenomenon grounded in experience and regularity. Habit, therefore, constitutes an essential element in the formation of significance and meaning. Accordingly, the study aims to analyze the concept of causality in Hume’s philosophy, highlight the role of habit in the construction of knowledge, deconstruct traditional conceptions of causal necessity, and reveal the analytical dimensions of the Humean project and its connection to contemporary analytic philosophy