Kant’s Model of Causality: Causal Powers, Laws, and Kant’s Reply to Hume

KANT’S VIEWS ON CAUSALITY have received an extraordinary amount of scholarly attention, especially in comparison with Hume’s position. For Hume presents powerful skeptical arguments concerning causality, yet Kant claims to have an adequate response to them. Since it turns out to be far from obvious what even the main lines of Kant’s response are, scholars have felt the need to clarify his position. Unfortunately, however, no consensus has been reached about how best to understand Kant’s views. To gauge the current state of the debate, consider briefly Hume’s two-fold skeptical attack on causality in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and what strategy Kant is often thought to be pursuing in response in the Critique of Pure Reason.1