Davidson holds that a covering generalization is required for the truth of singular causal statements, but that requirement alone does not fully determine their truth

An initial objection is that Hume’s analysis of singular causal statements (‘a caused b’ is true if and only if ‘whenever an A occurs, it is followed by an occurrence of a B’), which articulates his own version of the cause-law principle, is not an accurate rendering of the way in which we typically use the term ‘cause’. We are confident in judgments such as ‘Harry’s smoking caused his lung cancer’ while knowing that in fact not all smokers are stricken by lung cancer. This point is entirely gen