Anomalism, Apriorism, and Mind-Body Causation:

Hume’s Best Argument Against Causal Necessity

Abstract

In this paper, I intend to offer a reconstruction of one of the arguments mobilized by Hume against the traditional modal conceptions of causation to show how it, when reinterpreted in light of the thesis of psychophysical anomalism, can prove to be convincing in the contemporary debate about causation. My argument involves reformulating the Humean argumentative strategy entirely and critically reassessing the reasons originally presented by him to, thus, reintroduce what I believe to be his most promising argument remodeled by the concepts of psychophysical anomalism, apriorism, and the nomology of the mind-body causation, such as developed by Donald Davidson and Kim Jaegwon. I conclude, then, from considerations about mental causation in moral deliberations and actions, how this reconstructed version of Hume’s argument could persuade Kant, one of the philosophers who traditionally articulated and developed a type of modal explanation of causation.