What Is The Basis And Foundation Of Causality

The question that “What the basis and foundation of causality is” has only attracted extensive attention till western modern philosophy arises. Also, only from the viewpoint of western modern philosophy can we realize the importance of this question.Before Hume’s answer, there are two basic ways to answer this question. The rational way, adopted by Descartes and Leibniz, claims that causality is based on reason. Another one is empiricists’ answer, e.g. Locke, that causality is finally found on sensation. These two ways stand opposite to each other.Hume, relying on his empiricism, denys the validity of either ways. He believes that causality has no certainty either from intuition or from reason, it is just some beliefs that “ the future must be accordant to the past ” which is generated from repeating customs. After negating all entities, Hume leads the foundation of causality to an unreasonable area. However, Kant establishes the authority of reason. He believes that a causal judgment is a priori and synthetic judgment, which is strictly necessary and universal. The category of causality is one of the priori forms of thinking, which gives every intelligent individual the ability to obtain experience. Via the transcendental ontology of Kant, causality is successfully demonstrated as a causal category derived from Pure Reason. In this way, the question of what the basis and foundation of causality is, has realized its highest principle in Kant’s philosophy. Experiences are not something immediate, but something originated from the framework of our priori and synthetic faculty of reason.With the thinking process above, this article attempts to clarify the question of what the basis and foundation of causality is in the field of ontology.