Hume on Causality

Hume is concerned with the inferences we make concerning what we call "cause" and "effect". He asks what the basis is for one to see one event follow another and then to conclude that the first event caused the second. First of all, this inference is not made on the basis of a priori reasoning, that is, reasoning which precedes experience. Rather, the inference is based on what we experience. What reason do we have, Hume asks, for concluding that since one event was followed by another in the past, that this conjuction will hold for the future. Take bread, for example. Hume asks what justification we have for believing that since bread has nourished us in the past, that objects similar to the bread we have eaten in the past will also nourish us. In other words, what reason do we have for believing that the future will be like the past? But we almost never conclude that there is a causal relation between two events until we have experienced them cnjoined in many instances. For example, fire has never in the past failed to be accompanied by heat, nor snow by cold, so we naturally make the inference that fire causes heat and snow causes coldness. Since we have not discovered WHY the one event follows the other, but that we continue to make the inference that the two events are causally related anyway, Hume concludes that it is not because of any reasoning that we make the inference, but because of habit/custom.