Humean definition of causality
David Hume coined a sceptical, reductionist viewpoint on causality that inspired the logical-positivist definition of empirical law as "a regularity or universal generalization of the form 'All Cs are Es' or, whenever C, then E". The Scottish philosopher and economist believed that human mind is not equipped with the a priori ability to observe causal relations. Instead, all that can be experienced is one event following another. The reductionist approach to causation can be exemplified with the case of two billiard balls: one ball is moving, hits another one and stops, and the second ball is moving.
In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume coined two definitions of the cause in a following way:
also fixed eight general rules that can help in recognizing which objects are in cause-effect relation, the main four are as following: