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In this revised edition of The Secret Connexion, Galen Strawson explores one of the most discussed subjects in philosophy: David Hume's work on causation. He argues that Hume believes in causal influence, but insists that we cannot know its nature. The regularity theory of causation is indefensible, and Hume never adopted it in any case.
List of contents
- Part 1: Meaning, Scepticism, and Reality
- Part 2: Causation in the Treatise
- Part 3: Causation in the First Enquiry
- Part 4: Reason, Reality, and Regularity
- References
- Index
About the author
Galen Strawson is Professor of Philosophy at Reading University, UK, and the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Jesus College, Oxford (1987-2000). From 2004 to 2007 he was also Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center in New York. He has held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University (1993 and 2012), New York University (1997), Rutgers University (2000), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2010). Strawson received his degrees from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and studied at the Ecole normale supérieure and the Sorbonne in Paris (1977-8).
Summary
In this revised edition of The Secret Connexion, Galen Strawson explores one of the most discussed subjects in philosophy: David Hume's work on causation. He argues that Hume believes in causal influence, but insists that we cannot know its nature. The regularity theory of causation is indefensible, and Hume never adopted it in any case.
Additional text
His style is lively, even impassioned. Best of all, he shares the reader's amusement at his own fevered combing of the text.
