(a) Critically analyse Hume's argument that causality is a matter of habit/custom involving psychological principle of association. (20 marks)

(b) Present an exposition of Aristotle's distinction between actuality and potentiality. Does it provide a

Question

(a) Critically analyse Hume's argument that causality is a matter of habit/custom involving psychological principle of association. (20 marks)

(b) Present an exposition of Aristotle's distinction between actuality and potentiality. Does it provide a solution to the problem of being and becoming as presented in ancient Greek philosophy ? Discuss with suitable examples. (15 marks)

(c) Discuss Descartes' theory of innate ideas and the grounds on which Locke refutes it. (15 marks)

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Hume’s Scepticism on Causality and Critical Evaluation

David Hume bifurcates all objects of human inquiry into ‘Relations of Ideas’ (analytic, a priori) and ‘Matters of Fact’ (synthetic, a posteriori). Causality belongs strictly to matters of fact, grounded entirely in experience. However, Hume argues that sensory experience yields only the impression of spatial contiguity, temporal succession, and constant conjunction of events, but never any sensory impression of a "necessary connection" or productive power. Guided by the psychological principles of association—resemblance, contiguity, and cause-effect—the repeated observation of conjoined events generates an involuntary subjective expectation in the imagination. Causality, for Hume, is not an objective ontological reality or a rational necessity, but a psychological habit or custom. This underpins his problem of induction, demonstrating that the belief that the future will resemble the past lacks rational justification.

Critically, Hume’s radical reduction of causality to subjective habit overpsychologizes an indispensable rational principle. Immanuel Kant demonstrated that causality is not derived a posteriori from custom, but is a pure synthetic a priori category of the understanding, serving as a necessary condition for the possibility of objective experience. Karl Popper bypassed Hume's inductive habit altogether, showing that scientific progress relies on deductive falsification rather than inductive habituation. Furthermore, P. F. Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics establishes that a stable causal framework is a structural presupposition for individuating spatio-temporal particulars. Thus, while Hume successfully dismantled dogmatic rationalist assumptions of metaphysical necessity, his subjectivist account fails to explain the objective validity and predictive success of natural laws.

Aristotle: Potentiality, Actuality, and the Resolution of Being and Becoming

Aristotle resolves the ancient Greek metaphysical antinomy between Parmenides (who asserted immutable ‘Being’, declaring change illusory) and Heraclitus (who posited radical flux and ‘Becoming’) through his distinction between potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (energeia or entelecheia).

Change is neither the impossible generation of being from absolute non-being (against Parmenides) nor an unanchored, chaotic transition (against Heraclitus); rather, it is the actualization of an already existing potentiality. In Aristotle’s hylomorphic framework, matter represents potentiality, while form represents actuality. For example, an acorn is potentially an oak tree, and unshaped bronze is potentially a statue; change occurs when the latent potentiality of the material substrate is actualized into its determinate form. Aristotle establishes the absolute priority of actuality over potentiality logically, epistemologically, and temporally, since potentiality can only be defined in reference to an actualized end (telos). By demonstrating that becoming is the continuous realization of an enduring substance's inherent potential, Aristotle successfully synthesizes Being and Becoming.

Descartes’ Theory of Innate Ideas and Locke’s Refutation

René Descartes classifies human ideas into adventitious (sensory), fictitious (invented), and innate (inborn). Grasped through the criterion of clarity and distinctness, innate ideas include the eternal truths of geometry, the principles of logic, and the idea of an infinite, perfect God—stamped upon the human soul like the "mark of the maker" on his work. Descartes argues that such ideas cannot originate from finite human experience or arbitrary construction.

John Locke, in Book I of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, systematically refutes innate ideas, establishing the mind as a tabula rasa (blank slate) upon which experience alone writes via sensation and reflection. Locke attacks the rationalist argument from universal assent, showing that children and idiots have no awareness of logical principles such as the principle of non-contradiction, nor do all cultures share the idea of God. He presents a fatal dilemma: if an "innate idea" merely signifies the innate capacity of the mind to understand, the claim is trivial, as all future knowledge would then be innate; if it requires actual conscious awareness, it is empirically false.

G. W. Leibniz subsequently defended the rationalist stance by clarifying that innate ideas exist not as explicit conscious knowledge, but as active dispositions or structural inclinations—likening the mind to a veined block of marble whose natural contours guide the sculptor, rather than Locke's passive wax.

Ultimately, these debates dismantled naive metaphysics, leading directly to the Kantian critical synthesis and laying the foundational frameworks for the modern cognitive and epistemological nature-nurture debate.

(a) Critically analyse Hume's argument that causality is a matter of habit/custom involving psychological principle of…

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