Causal Knowledge: What Can Psychology Teach Philosophers? Evan Fales and Edward A. Wasserman, The University of Iowa The Journal of Mind and Behavior , Winter 1992, Vol. 13, No. 1, Pages 1-28, ISSN 0271-0137 Theories of how organisms learn about cause-effect relations have a history dating back at least to the associationist/mechanistic hypothesis of David Hume.