The Contemporary "New Hume"Debate

Hume's "causal theory" is one of the important topics in the history of western philosophy.In recent decades,some British and American philosophers attempted to re-handle this issue under the model of realism and anti-realism,which formed an ideological trend called "new hume".The dispute between the different opinions during the process of the emergence and development of this trend is called "the new Hume Debate",which focuses on whether there exists the inevitability of hume's causality,and whether Hume himself accepts the concept of "power" when discussing causal relationship.These debates endow hume's "causal theory" a spirit of the time with linguistic analysis and logical analysis,vigorously promotes people's comprehension of hume's causal theory.Starting from the three factions of "New Hume",this paper studied and compared the representative figures and viewpoints of anti-realism,realism and quasi-realism,then analyzed the inevitability between causality and the concept of "power".Details of research are elaborated in following aspects:Firstly,based on literature review of the domestic and overseas existing researches on causality in three factions of "New Hume",i.e.,anti-realism,realism and quasi-realism,this paper has analyzed and compared different viewpoints and comments of the three factions on the inevitability of causality.Secondly,by retrospecting hume's causality theory,this paper elaborated hume's two definitions of causes,sorted out the disputes about different comprehension of the definitions in new Hume,rethought hume's philosophical concept and explained the viewpoints of naturalism proposers,and attempted to discover the fundamental issue of causality from the definition of cause.Next,this paper has compared the hypothesis and assumption of realism and anti-realism on hume's skepticism and theory,and analyzed the naturalistic viewpoints of realists on causality.According to specific theoretical debates,this paper provided reasonable explanation for the mutual fusion of the two theories,and discussed the possibility of inevitability in causality of new hume theory.In addition,this paper proposed the assumption of using physics as the basis of causality,thus introducing the physics concept of "power" to the analysis of inevitability in causality.In the end,this paper has analyzed whether Hume accepts the word "power",which can be dated back to Newton's concept of "power".The new Hume advocates divided the concept of whether "power" exists in hume's causality theory into two periods.At the very start,Hume did not admit there existed a necessarily connected power between the cause and the result.As the concept of Newton's "power" was proposed,Hume had to literally admit that there existed a mysterious power between cause and effect,and Hume discussed causality in a way of direct co-reference,which is a realist viewpoint.The causality issue is one of important contents of studies of hume's philosophy.Accurate understanding and proper quotation of the "new Hume debate" arising from this issue in the contemporary Anglo-American philosophical circles can lay a solid foundation for us to reinterpret this issue in the 21 st century.