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September 23 - October 2, 2021
John Locke (1632–1704) in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1691) drew a famous distinction between nominal and real essence. The nominal essence of a thing—gold, for instance—was the set of superficial, observable qualities by which we recognized it. Gold is yellow, shiny, and malleable, we might say. And this nominal essence is what we use to identify gold and talk about it.
Nominal
But Locke thought things also had an underlying essence—the real essence—and it was this that was truly the thing. Locke thought the real essence was hidden but with advances in science we now think we know something about it. To be gold is to have atomic number 79, for example, which is to say that gold is the element that has 79 protons in its nucleus.
Real essence
Corpuscularians thought that there were small parcels of matter, like tiny versions of Hume’s billiard balls, that were also bashing each other around. The causal interactions we saw around us—at what we can call the macro level—were ultimately produced by the action of micro-level corpuscles.
Corpuscularian
On the regularity view, for instance, it seems there could be a constant conjunction between the barometer falling and it raining, the barometer falls before it rains, and the rain occurs in the same place as the barometer. The case seems thus to satisfy the regularity definition of cause. Similarly, one might argue that rain counterfactually depends on the falling of the barometer: it doesn’t rain unless the barometer falls.
Interesting take.
In a physical transfer theory, one could respond that there is a line of physical connection between the drop in pressure and the falling barometer, and one between the drop in pressure and rain, but none between the falling barometer and rain.
Physical transfer theory
One thing that could be said is that it is merely apparent that the ice is doing something to the drink. What looks like causation in one direction is in fact causation in the opposite direction. The liquid is actually melting the ice, transferring its kinetic energy to it and in the process melting it. There is a true scientific explanation of this process and the popular understanding of it is just uninformed. It’s a mistaken perspective that the ice cools the drink.
Both ways with the ice and drink example
As long as there is a transfer of a conserved quantity between A and B, in either direction, then we have causation. Thus, whether energy is transferred from A to B, or B to A, there is causation going on.
It is a process that they affect each other
There is also a view, possibly inspired by Newton’s third law of motion, that causation always involves reciprocity. Causation doesn’t just change the effect: there is also an equal and opposite change to the cause.
reciprocal
Suppose that Tom likes Tina and Tina likes Tom. Tina accidentally touches Tom’s knee and Tom blushes. There is some transference of energy here. Tina’s hand passes on energy to Tom’s knee when it presses it but how does that explain Tom’s blushing? Ron could have pressed Tom’s knee in exactly the same way, exerting exactly the same amount of energy on it, but Tom would not have blushed then.
Hmm
There are some other difficult conceptual matters that the reductionist position has to face. One is that, for all we know, there might not be a bottom level in nature. As a matter of sheer philosophical principle, there is no reason why there has to be a very bottom level in the world, upon which everything rests. And just as we cannot know there to be a bottom level through our reasoning, nor is it the sort of thing that we could know from the evidence of the senses. The problem is that while we could know something is complex, by seeing that it has parts, we could never know that something
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Interesting! There might not be a bottom level in the world
The reductionist could maintain that higher-level phenomena are explained in terms of lower-level phenomena but deny that there is a very lowest level, or remain agnostic on it.
Agnostic
It needs to be made clear, though, that physicalism is not the same thing as reductionism. Some physicalists are attracted by reductionism but it is not inevitable that a physicalist hold that view.
There is also a view called emergentism, which allows that certain higher-level phenomena ‘emerge’ at that level and are not merely the sum of their lower-level parts.
Emergentism
There may be something about emergent phenomena that thus will not allow, even in principle, an explanation at a lower level. There are some forms of emergentism that are anti-physicalist. Some are emergentists about the mind and mental phenomena, for instance. On this view, mind would be non-physical and non-physically explicable. But another form of emergentism would be simply that higher-level physical things are not mere sums of lower-level physical things and not explicable in terms of them. Instead, the higher-level phenomena could be indivisible wholes. Holism is a term that could be
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Not all physical. Holism
The cuckoo clock is like this. But in other cases, when some of the parts come together to form a whole, they interact and change each other. Chemical composition sometimes exhibits this kind of change. When two elements come together to bond, doing so affects the chemical properties of the constituents so that the whole has a very different set of properties. Both sodium and chlorine are dangerous and harmful, for instance, but when they are chemically bonded in a certain proportion, they form sodium chloride: common salt.
Hmm
If the properties of common salt are emergent from those of the constituents, having a very different set of causal powers from those of its parts, then how could we rule out that the causal powers in economics, psychology, biology, and sociology are emergent?
Hmm
What it suggests is that there are certain higher-level phenomena that have to be treated holistically. They could be indivisible unities in the sense that to take them apart is to lose the causal role possessed by the whole. In that case, causation could occur at the level of the whole.
Causation at the level of the whole.
And if this is so, it might then be impossible to explain causation in these domains simply in terms of transference of energy or other conserved quantities at the micro level.
Hmm
Opponents of free will point out that all physical processes are determined by prior causes. If causation is specific to a domain, perhaps this need not impinge on our free will.
Freewill. Interesting take
And just as one can be a physicalist without being a reductionist, nor would the defeat of reductionism be the end of transfer theories. What is transferred could be something at a relatively macro level.
Transfer theory. Marco level phenomenon
There are many different things that we call mammals: a whale, a human, a cow. The differences between a whale and a human are significant. A non-mammal fish resembles a whale more than does a mammalian human. Perhaps causation similarly permits a wide diversity of particular instances that have different features. This is what the pluralist says.
Pluralist
The form of a pluralist theory of causation is to say that where we have different theories a, b, c, and d that apply in some but not all cases, we should instead take causation to be their disjunction: causation is either a or b or c or d. If causation is a varied phenomenon, while some of its cases will involve constant conjunction, others will instead be cases of counterfactual dependence, energy transference, or whatever else is needed.
Hmm. Pluralist
We seem to invoke a number of causal verbs in philosophical talk about causation: influence, produce, prevent, determine, control, interfere, counteract, enhance, increase, decrease, etc. Maybe there is nothing more to causation than the sum of these things.
Interesting ! Does it combine with emergence?
A big challenge to this Socratic tradition came in Wittgenstein’s later work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Some of our notions, Wittgenstein said, could be thought of as family resemblance concepts. A family resemblance concept is one that groups together various different things on the basis of them having resemblances but where there isn’t a single essence they all have in common.
Family resemblence concept. Wittgenstein
Stathis Psillos argues for this, following Elizabeth Anscombe. Some but not all cases of causation involve constant conjunction. Some but not all involve temporal priority, contiguity, energy transference, difference making, and so on. None of these features is either necessary or sufficient for causation. So there could be cases of causation where one or more may be lacking, and cases that are not causation but which exhibit one or more of these features. But cases that are causation will be ones that possess enough of these features such that we are able to recognize them as causal.
Interesting! Main
We saw this in the case of an elk on the rail producing a train delay even though a signal was also stuck at red. Arguably the elk made no difference to the outcome but it did produce it. Similarly, when a firing squad of seven each fires into a hostage, we could say of each individual bullet that it produces the victim’s death even though it makes no difference. Had one bullet not hit, six others did the job anyway.
Hmm interesting take
Suppose a doctor is about to administer a life-saving drug to a patient but the patient has an enemy. One way in which the enemy might cause the patient’s death is by preventing the doctor from giving the drug. Prevention is difference making without production; indeed, it prevents a potential production.
Prevention is Different making without production
Hall’s pluralism suggests just two concepts of causation and something qualifies as causal by being either.
Aristotle (384–322 BC) spoke of there being four causes. We refer to them now as the material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause. Was he the first pluralist?
Four causes
The material cause is the matter out of which something is made. This is what undergoes a change in the causal process. It could be the wood which is carved into a bowl, or the metal that is melted into the shape of a spoon. The formal cause concerns the form that the matter took, the bowl or the spoon, and is related to its function.
Material cause. Formal cause. Aristotle
But the material and formal causes are not sufficient to cause the change. There has to be some extrinsic cause as well: the efficient cause that initiates the change. In the case of the bowl one needs someone to do the carving, and included in this is also the knife.
Efficient cause
For Aristotle there was also a final cause: the final aim or purpose of the change. The bowl was made for the purpose of serving soup, for instance.
Final cause
The problem with a family resemblance concept, whatever it concerns, is that resemblance on its own doesn’t seem enough. A family could get an imposter: someone who looks a bit like the family members but who is not really one of them. Whales resemble most fish but without belonging to the fish family.
Imposter
There is at least one attempt to explain what unites all the plurality of things we call causes without tacitly admitting there is a worldly essence to causation. What is common to all causal truths is that we use them to make a certain kind of inference.
Inference -> causation family. Like milk -> mammal
causation should not be equated with the inferences themselves: causation would be that in the world which makes inferences reliable and useful.
There is a different kind of response, however. What about saying that any analysis would fail because causation is so fundamental that it is unanalysable?
Primitivism
An analysis is not quite the same as what we mean by a definition. It is more about what something is in the world rather than an explanation of the meanings of words. Philosophers tended to move from mere definitions to more worldly analyses and this remains a core project of the subject. We even had, in the early 20th century, the rise of so-called analytic philosophy.
Analytic philosophy
In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke tells us that many of our ideas are complex and built out of simple ones.
Complexity
If one adopts the Lockean framework, then, one might say that an idea such as knowledge is, despite any contrary appearance, a complex idea made up of the simpler ideas: for example, justification, belief, and truth. And if we want to understand how we could acquire the idea of knowledge, then we have to find the original experiences from which we gained these simpler ideas. An idea such as belief may itself also be complex and permit further analysis until we reach the level of absolute simplicity. This, it must be said, allows one possible criticism of the analytic approach: what if there
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Locke. All the way down?
If we return to the question of causation, then the Lockean approach would be to wonder what the simpler components are from which we gain the idea of causation. Hume followed Locke’s empiricist project and much of his work was on precisely this topic, as we have seen.
If there is infinite complexity in the world, all the way down, then nothing would be basic after all. But we don’t know for sure that this is true. And perhaps there is a level of nature that is as simple as we are capable of knowing. That might do for a relative primitivism about causation. It could be at least as simple as anything else we know, even if there is hidden complexity within it. The point is, however, that some primitivisms will probably be right, so there is nothing that is obviously wrong about making a primitivist move. It ought at least to be an option.
Primitivism. Interestingly similar to the four forces
Perception is important in the Lockean philosophy because it explains to us how ideas are legitimately acquired by the human mind. But what is it to perceive something? It seems that it is an irreducibly causal phenomenon. At the very least, to perceive F—whatever that might be—is for F to cause an idea or belief in the perceiver.
Perception. Locke
One might, for instance, say additionally that the idea or belief has to resemble or correspond to that which is perceived.
Tractatus
Our perception of the world is at the basis of everything we can possibly know. If the very possibility of any empirical knowledge rests upon there being causal connections between the world and our perception of it, then causation turns out to be the most fundamental thing of all.
Perception being the fundamental
