What does Hume think we do perceive in apparent cause/effect scenarios?

Question

According to Hume the problem of induction arises in part because we cannot perceive causation. What does Hume think we do perceive in apparent cause/effect scenarios?

 

a. We see the constant conjunction of certain events
b. We see one thing effect and thereby cause another.
c. We can only see causes retrospectively in virtue of effects.
d. We can see interaction between secondary qualities but not the essential primary
qualities.

Answer 1

What Hume identified here is the correlation-causation fallacy. When we perceive a conjunction of certain events, we have a natural human bias to assume that the first event caused the second event, but this is not necessarily the case. In Latin, logicians called this the "post-hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy.

Here's an example. I perform a rain dance, then it starts raining. You might be tempted to assume that because the rain happened immediately after the dancing, I must have caused it to rain. However, someone using the proper scientific method would not think this.

Causation is actually impossible to prove with 100% certainty. A theory that one event is causing another can either be falsified or corroborated (confirmed) through experimentation. Hume is really concerned here about the scientific method. By doing repeated experiments, we can get to around 99% certainty about causation, but never 100% as we can in Math.

Therefore the answer is A. Our human foible is to assume causation on the basis of constant conjunction.