Here is a skeptism problem danoted by David Hume. It is a problem that seems completely ridiculous in the mind, but no one has ever defeated its logic. It has been unsolved for 250 years even by the the greatest minds so if you think you came up with a very logical comeback against this idea really fast, you are either a very intellectual genius or just an ignorant person who doesn't know the size of the issue. Albert Einstein gave up completely after a short time. Other than that, I never know if one of you pops out and says something very persuasive, so here.


Hume correctly explains that Humans do not know the 'Necessary Connetion' between objects and thus do not know the relationship between cause and effect. This quite simply is the Problem of Causation - that until we know 'what exists' and the 'necessary connexions' between these things that exist, then it is impossible for Humanity to have certainty of knowledge. This then leads to the further Problem of Induction, for if we do not know the a priori cause of events then we have no Principles from which to logically deduce our conclusions. We are left simply observing that one event follows another and seems connected, but we do not know how or why, thus we must depend upon repeated observation (Induction) to determine the Laws of Nature (the current state of Modern Physics) and hence tacitly assuming (without reason) that the future is like the past. (It is simply a habit of thinking to connect two events which seem to occur in conjunction and necessarily assumes that the future will be like the past)

When one event continually follows after another, most people think that a connection between the two events makes the second event follow from the first (post hoc ergo propter hoc). Hume challenged this belief in the first book of his Treatise on Human Nature and later in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He noted that although we do perceive the one event following the other, we do not perceive any necessary connection between the two. And according to his skeptical epistemology, we can only trust the knowledge that we acquire from our perceptions. Hume asserted that our idea of causation consists of little more than expectation for certain events to result after other events that precede them. "We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoined together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire an union in the imagination." We cannot actually say that one event caused another. All we know for sure is that one event is correlated to another. For this Hume coined the term 'constant conjunction'. That is, when we see that one event always 'causes' another, what we are really seeing is that one event has always been 'constantly conjoined' to the other. As a consequence, we have no reason to believe that one caused the other, or that they will continue to be 'constantly conjoined' in the future . The reason we do believe in cause and effect is not because cause and effect are the actual way of nature; we believe because of the psychological habits of human nature.
Such a lean conception robs causation of all its force, and some later Humeans like Bertrand Russell have dismissed the notion of causation altogether as something akin to superstition. But this defies common sense, thereby creating the problem of causation – what justifies our belief in a causal connection and what kind of connection can we have knowledge of? – a problem which has no accepted solution. Hume held that we (and other animals) have an instinctive belief in causation based on the development of habits in our nervous system, a belief that we cannot eliminate, but which we cannot prove true through any argument, deductive or inductive, just as is the case with regard to our belief in the reality of the external world.

Reading this I could only think of three things that can disprove this, but I'd rather not say them at the risk of sounding like an idiot. On the other hand, if it has never been solved, I guess what I have to say couldn't sound so stupid....(Of course, I was listening to the song "Fury Of The Storm" while reading this, so don't expect anything that great. I think I'll only say one of them though....)

The thought of cause and effect is only here because the fact that we have come to think that "there is nothing new under the sun" this fact limits our thinking, and only allows us to branch things off of the things that have been done in the past. It is only our own thoughts of cause and effect itself that has made us think that the future is to be like the past, when in fact there are billions of possiblities left in the world for us to uncover, but with out limited thought we can only continue off of what has been done in the past. Cause and effect is only existant in us, the people who came up with the very concept, and in a sense cause and effect controls us, and puts constraints on our very thinking, and capabilities..... But, if we were to remove that limiting factor from our minds, then we would be open to a much broader variety of inventions, idea, ect.....

Please, tell me if I sound like a comeplete moron....

No, you're right, but you're not solving anything, you're meerly repeating what I'm saying...

Basically, ..
So, if you take a pencil in your hand and let go, most people would expect 100% for gravity to go in effect. But according to Hume, just because an object got affected by gravity an innumerous times before, doesn't mean it's gonna happen the next time. It might drop upward or shoot money for all we know. That sounds absolutely ridiculous in our minds, but according to Hume's problem, we can not logically defeat the fact. No one has for 250 years.

Wait this is impossible to solve then, because even trying disprove it proves it correct.

Well, intellegent people have been found to find ways to disprove things thought to be impossible.