Metaphysics
The principle of causation, there is no change without a cause. This is one of the principles of pure understanding.
Causal anti-realism goes back to antiquity. Like Parmenides and the Eleatic philosophers. If you think there is no place in the first place there are no causes.
The more challenging position is that of David Hume, in the treatise on human nature. Hume holds that ultimately there are changes but whether there are causes we cannot know – though which to some is radicalised to the view that there are no causes. Hume’s view is a kind of philosophical heresy, of which he is entirely aware. In his Enquiry of Human understanding, he simplifies the idea but the gist of it is always the same. We describe reality using causal language. Gravity is something we would call a causal power, and procreation is something we would consider causal.
However, Hume argues that causal relations may be an idea that is based on nothing but a prejudice. He says that of course there is succession but it does not mean that they are causally linked. A priori speaking, we have connections which are simply within the logic of language. There are fixed logical relations between ideas. According to Hume causal language is not like this, it is not a priori, it is only about matters of fact, which can only be empirically observed. Causation is somehow a kind of umbrella term that we use to cover all these kinds of connections that we take to be causally linked. Hume says we lack empirical procedures for finding out what causation is. We can observe that two events share a conjunction, perhaps even generalise and say there are event types, but we are only customarily reading causation into this connection which is not really a causation.
Ultimately there is nothing wrong with it, but we should not claim that we ever have causal knowledge.
Is this a problem for Hume? Yes, because he is an empiricist. He believes that everything we know comes from perception. Perceiving something means that it leaves an impression on our sense-organs. We receive impressions and then this becomes a kind of knowledge eventually. This becomes problematic because impressions are a kind of cause. Ultimately he says that we then have to retreat into universal skepticism, due to the self-cancellation of the theory. Anglophone literature is still very much impressed by Hume and does not usually think about the fact that his philosophy is self-defeating.
Kant writes about how it was Hume that woke him up from his dogmatic Leibnizian slumber. Leibniz takes causation for granted and thinks that causation is an application of the principle of sufficient reason, everything that exists has sufficient reason to do so. The sufficient reason for an event is a cause that made it come to be.
Kant solves Hume by arguing that causation is an a priori concept of reason. It is a concept of pure reason in his list of categories. Hume is right on the one hand that causation cannot be observed empirically but is wrong to determine it as a posteriori. It belongs not to pure logic but to transcendental logic.
Humeans don’t like Kant’s sollution and argue that it is an ad hoc move.
In the British context, Bertrand Russel converted to Humeanism after having started from platonic origins. Russel argues that Hume was ultimately right. The very notion of causation is not really necessary, but is part of an outdated conception of physics. More advanced conceptions of physics since Newtons allows us to do away with causation.
Russel’s argument was that he was a mathematician, who looked upon the formulas that mathematicians used, and saw that there was no operator for causation, and as such it is not a very important concept. Most people would probably say that the laws are themselves laws of causation, laws of change.
Finally, David Lewis developed the standard account of causation in recent metaphysics. He is also famous as a logician. His account is of causal links in terms of counterfactuals. We have these events that are linked: hume says we just have constant conjunctions or successions, but the notion of causation is more powerful than these notions. E2 is necessitated by E1. How can we spell that out? According to David Lewis we can try counterfactuals. E1 is followed by E2, and E2 would not have come about if E1 had not come about first. This is the idea of the counterfactual nature of an analysis of causation.
Lewis is still a Humean however. There may be many factors which we say they may be necessary for something to come about without them being causes. Had the light not been on, then A would not have been able to shoot B. Did the light cause the shooting? No, it is just a condition for A to shoot B.
What would be the requirements for a concept to be causation?
A lot of modern literature after Hume assumes that causation is something that takes place between two events. This also explains the impression of mystery. How can one event be causally linked to another event qua event? First there is the event of A pulling the trigger and then of B lying down. Is it that we really have events, or do we have agents that constitute these which do something or to which something happens. Given this prior analysis the event seems to be a black box in which we cannot distinguish what is involved in it.
Donald Davidson defends the view of an event-ontology, in which you replace the traditional language of agents and causes with events. An event then being the smallest unit of a process makes him kind of a whiteheadian. Ultimately we conventionally say that A shoots B, though in reality we need a better analysis that is more sophisticated. There are two events that both involve A and B but which happen at different times, and then there are a sequence of events in between which lead to the consequent.
Ultimately we think there should be a causal agent that brings something about.
There is a crucial difference between activity and pacivity. A lot of people will still be trying to find causal structures yet basically accepting Hume. What they find is that not every agent is a suitable agent for a certain effect. The processes things can undergo is also limited. This is usually shown through the powers of agents, but not other powers, and every agent has certain dispositions to perhaps actualise that power under the correct conditions.
When we head to matter and form, we should distinguish between active and passive dispositions. Perhaps language is not ideal for talking about passive or active powers. Aristotelians speak about potencies, and distinguish between active and passive potenties. Active potenties are powers to make a change in something else, while passive potenties..
In Aristotelian thinking this is linked to the contrast between matter and form. If we think of material substances, we should think of them like active or passive potencies. Each material substance has the power to engage in certain activities. In the case of non-living substance the range may be limited, but according to Aristotle the difference are between those that are heavy and those that are light. Heavy things have the power to lay on the ground or fall down, whereas light things have the power to rise. The powers that things have are due to their material structure. The material structure is due to the composition of matter and form, and this is enabling certain activities. In the case of stones, it is the power to be solid that makes it suitable as a building material or it can be used as a weapon. But its being thrown is not an active potency, it does not have that power within it. The stone has a combination of active and passive potencies, the passive potencies of material things can always be traced back to their matter. It is ultimately matter that is at the principle of passivity. Prime matter has the potency to become everything. It can be changed into anything conceivable. The active powers of a thing are ultimately rooted in form.
Of course language reflects ontological structures, if there is a relevant difference between activity and passivity we should expect this to be reflected in language. In Greek there is the active, the passive and the middle voice. But according to Aristotle there is no middle kind of potentiality. Something is passive from the point of view of the agent, and active from the point of view of the patient.
The last of the four aristotelian causes is the final cause. They have come under attack in modern philosophy. They were under attack during ancient philosophy. For the sake of something (hohk heneka), things happen for some good. This is not backward causation because it is not the future that determines the past but some anticipation of the future. If I want coffee, and I know where the coffee machine is, I will go there for the sake of getting coffee – getting coffee is the final cause of my activity.
Then it is not my getting coffee that causes me to walk out, but my anticipation of that very activity.
Aristotle introduces this notion in the context of physics, because he thinks final causes are everywhere in nature. Aristotle says final causes have no place in mathematics, so physics should be ignorant about final causes. Physics needs efficient and material causes but no more than that. Even though it’s not an argument against final causes it is just a decision to exclude them for the sake of theoretical convenience. If we look at Descartes, the most famous philosopher who took Galileo to his heart and came up with a thoroughly matematicised physics, he agreed that we need no final causes in physics. Nature has no ends or goals. We should understand everything something mechanical. This is why Hume puts such a blow against the classical modern view of causation, but this is just efficient causation according to a covering law.
Does Descartes remove final causes? No he doesn’t because he leaves space for intentional agency, and puts that in the substance of the human mind. We want to find out what is the case, so wanting, and we do things and operate in the world. Galileo is not interested in that because it is outside the scope of physics, but for Descartes as a philosopher he cannot simply ignore this – which then says that final causes are located in the mind. The same happens in Kant who distinguishes between a world of appearances, that is governed by physical laws, and the noumenal world of reason which is governed by the laws of thinking – within which there is teleology. Theoretical and practical rationality. Pursuing the good and avoiding evil; final causation.
Thomas Hobbes tried to challenge Descartes and said that ultimately when Descartes talks about intentions and so on it doesn’t exist. Cogito ergo sum is nothing but a mess. Why not argue ’I walk therefore I am a walk’.
Eliminative materialism argues that final causes are folk psychology.
In the third critique of Kant, Kant starts to think about life. Something about life is special however, we are not talking bodies but organisms. And what is an organism, it resembles a machine because even a machine is a structured body in which different parts perform certain functions, but if they are machines they are very special machines. They are self-maintained machines, and they are machines that reproduce other machines that are similar. So then you end up having structures that require teleological language. An organ by definition is a thing that serves another end. This is what we may call internal teleology. But there is also external teleology in that every organism takes measures in order to flourish. Plants do things that animals do not do, and different kinds of animal and plant species do it differently, but what they do is usually in line with their species’ nature.
Some have suggested that Darwin was a kind of second newton, but he presupposes the simple life forms and cannot explain them. There is no teleology in Darwin’s view.
Some think that teleology means the goal-directed process of evolution, but this is not what Kant means. Rather the core idea of teleology is a more basic humble concept in the way of animals acting out their nature. If part of their nature is to develop through evolution, this is entirely in line with evolution. No biology without teleology.