Can There Be Necessary Connections between Successive Events?

THE aim of this paper is to refute Hume's contention that there cannot be logically necessary connections between successive events. I intend to establish, in other words, not 'Logically necessary connections do exist between successive events', but instead the rather more modest proposition: 'It may be, it is possible, as far as we can ever know for certain, that logically necessary connections do exist between successive events.' Towards the end of the paper I shall saysomething about the implications of rejecting Hume's contention. It should perhaps be noted at the outset that Hume does not, in a sense, deny the idea of necessary connections between events: but he does deny the possibility of the objective existence of logically necessary connections between events. According to Hume the idea results from habit or custom after the observed frequent conjunction of two events. Thus he declares: 'Upon the whole, necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects . . . Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects, and from effects to causes, according to their experienced union.' In other words we may, if we wish, hold that Hume does not reject, but merely gives an analysis of, the notion of 'necessary connection', but in this case we must admit that his analysis excludes the possibility of the existence of any kind of logically necessary connections between events. Looked at in this way, the main task of this paper is to analyse, or interpret, "There exists a logically necessary connection between two successive events E1 and E2", in such a way that this statement cannot be refuted on a priori grounds. It must be admitted of course that it is propositions, and not events, that can be logically related or connected, and hence that there is something ill-formed about the assertion "There exists a logically necessary connection between E1 and E2". In view of this I suggest that this statement is to be analysed as, or is to be interpreted to mean: