We keep falling back on Hume as if no one has thought critically about the subject since science became more mature. For the curious, Mackie's "The Cement of th

We keep falling back on Hume as if no one has thought critically about the subject since science became more mature. For the curious, Mackie's "The Cement of the Universe" from 1974 provides a more recent analysis of causation. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cement_of_the_Universe.html?id=KhJ99xSUkPAC http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cement_of_the_Univer... For a sample, suppose a barn burns down right after someone chucks a lighted match in the barn. You can't say that the match was "necessary," the barn could have been struck by lightning or arson and still burned. And the match wasn't "sufficient," because the match probably also needed to fall upon something flammable, like dry hay; there had to be oxygen; etc. Mackie comes up with a fancy acronym, INUS, but I'll leave unpacking all that aside. One of the more provocative suggestions is that a "cause" is highly contingent on context (that might only be relevant to human observers). If people harmlessly throw matches into a concrete-floored barn every day, if it's widely accepted as hot match disposal, but one day some joker uses it to store a bunch of oily rags... well, the unusual factor tends to get the blame.