In section 6, Hume says that chance does not exist in the world, but "our imagination of the real cause of any event has the same influence on the understanding, and begets a like species of belief or opinion." (pg 37) He says that there is a probability that arises from a superiority of chances on any side. Hume uses an example of a die to demonstrate his point and says that if it was marked with a certain figure or number on 4 sides and marked with a different symbol on the other 2 sides, the symbol that is on 4 sides would be more likely to appear than the symbol on 2 sides. He goes on to say the if 1000 sides were marked with a different one, the probability would be even higher.
Later in this section, Hume says that the probability of the die is the same as probability of causes. Some of the effects from causes are relatively constant while others are more irregular. He says that when this happens, philosophers do not claim its due to an irregularity in nature, he says "but suppose that some secret causes, in the particular structure of parts, have prevented the operation."
I think Hume may be onto something here; He's right to assume that there is a kind of probability to every effect and that some effects are more probable than others. It is not simply due to chance that certain causes almost always have the same effect. Although there are some effects we may not know the probability of, this doesn't mean that the effects are chances.
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I think another way to make this point is as follows: chance has no ontological value. If one could know all of the physical facts about the world and the laws according to which the world works, then one would be able to compute exactly what would happen given any circumstance. IN the case of a coin toss, we say that the chance of landing heads is 50% and the chances of the coin landing tails is also 50%, but if you knew the weight of the coin, and the angle at which it was flipped, the the force which was exerted upon it, and the aiur resistance to the sponning of the coin in midair, there would be no doubt of how it would land. So chance is a way of expressing ignorance about the mechanics of the world.
Good point Dan, thanks.
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