ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that many contemporary discussions of causation begin with David Hume, Timothy Yenter explores what Hume overlooks in his account. Hume’s considered view is a kind of occasionalism without God. Yenter claims that Hume’s arguments might work against the background of a certain conception of causation derived from Malebranche or against certain kinds of occasionalism. Yenter points out that there are two major deficiencies with his discussions of divine causation, however. First, Hume fails to understand the widespread commitments to direct divine activity in British philosophy before the 1730s. Second, he gives insufficient attention to a tradition that argues for the constant activity of an immanent God. Hume’s discussion of divine causation and occasionalism often focuses on views that tend toward the transcendence side of the immanence/transcendence spectrum. Many thinkers in his time were arguing for a more active role for God in the world. Hume’s criticisms of divine causation, then, are insufficient because he does not respond to important positions that were in the writings of those whom he closely read.
