Fundamental Causation

Physics, Metaphysics, and the Deep Structure of the World

Christopher Gregory Weaver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367665852
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315449067
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

Fundamental Causation addresses issues in the metaphysics of deterministic singular causation, the metaphysics of events, property instances, facts, preventions, and omissions, as well as the debate between causal reductionists and causal anti-reductionists. The book also pays special attention to causation and causal structure in physics. Weaver argues that causation is a multigrade obtaining relation that is transitive, irreflexive, and asymmetric. When causation is singular, deterministic and such that it relates purely contingent events, the relation is also universal, intrinsic, and well-founded. He shows that proper causal relata are events understood as states of substances at ontological indices. He then proves that causation cannot be reduced to some non-causal base, and that the best account of that relation should be unashamedly primitivist about the dependence relation that underwrites its very nature. The book demonstrates a distinctive realist and anti-reductionist account of causation by detailing precisely how the account outperforms reductionist and competing anti-reductionist accounts in that it handles all of the difficult cases while overcoming all of the general objections to anti-reductionism upon which other anti-reductionist accounts falter. This book offers an original and interesting view of causation and will appeal to scholars and advanced students in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics.

1 A Metaphysical Prolegomena for the Theory of Fundamental Causation¹

To get the metaphysics of causation right, one will need to draw upon a metaphysical worldview. A metaphysical worldview includes a collection of purportedly true statements (perhaps supplemented with some directives or principles) that accurately represent a truth-aimed metaphysical methodology, that methodology’s norms, and its commitments. It likewise incorporates a set of theses that purportedly accurately describe and explain what exists, the nature of reality, and the hierarchy of being. I will understand worldview building and metaphysical inquiry in general as knowledge-seeking inquiry. Metaphysical inquiry should be aimed at delivering to cognizers warranted true beliefs about the contents of a metaphysical worldview. Following many others in the epistemology literature, I will assume that warrant is that which (when it is of sufficient degree) distinguishes beliefs that are merely true from knowledge.² My metaphysical inquiry will therefore adopt a knowledge norm of assertion,

(K-A): One ought to (or “one must”)³ assert p, only if, one knows that p.⁴

I will impose this norm on others to such a degree that I will interpret their non-elliptical, unqualified, sincere, and purportedly factual statements in such a way that if one cannot actually be warranted with respect to one’s belief in them, or if one cannot actually have knowledge of them, then that is a strike against them or against the theory of which they are an indispensable part.⁵

To ensure coherence and the mitigation of inaccuracy, building a metaphysical worldview ought to be methodical even if that building is restricted in such a way that it solely serves the purposes of theorizing rightly about causation. I will call a metaphysical worldview, or at least those parts of a metaphysical worldview that are built to facilitate proper theorizing about causation, a metaphysical_C system. The presuppositions of metaphysical_C system building should be clear, as should any principles that facilitate that building. Those presuppositions and principles (sometimes supplemented with obligatory directives) will be understood as parts of the metaphysical_Csystem itself. Those parts represent a metametaphysic for the study of causation (i.e., they constitute what I will call a metametaphysic_C). In this chapter, I articulate and motivate a metaphysical_C system that includes facets of the metametaphysic_C needed to construct the theory of singular deterministic causation espoused in this book. Because one could write a substantial amount on each tenet of any metaphysical_C system, a full-fledged explication and defense of every doctrine of that system is not my aim. I intend only to explicate and begin to motivate and defend the most important doctrines, citing and referring to more full-length defenses along the way.

Section 1: Avoiding Self-Stultification in Metaphysical Methodology: Truth and Meaning Part I

The natures of meaning and truth become relevant to the study of causation at numerous junctures. If one is a verificationist and maintains that a necessary condition for the meaningfulness of informative declarative sentences is that they be empirically and scientifically verifiable, then one will have a reason to dismiss some metaphysical theories of the causal relation that include posits that are beyond the reach of science (e.g., that a non-corporeal mind can cause a belief to form). Likewise, if one were an advocate of an epistemic theory of truth, which says that necessarily what is true depends upon the cognitive activity of human persons, then one would be forced to forsake the existence of objective, mind-independent causal facts_P.⁶ And a fortiori, there could be no objectively true theory or analysis of the causal relation.

My first metaphysically significant assumption will be the relatively uncontroversial thesis (in contemporary analytic metaphysics, at least) that truth or true things depend on reality or being (TDB).⁷ We should accept every instance of the schema: Necessarily, for any true proposition <q>, <q> holds because q. For example, <Water is H₂O.> because water is H₂O. And <Electrons have charge.> because electrons have charge (and here I follow Jonathan Schaffer’s lead in (Schaffer, Truth 2008, 305); Jeffrey C. King (Criticisms 2014, 146; emphasis in the original) said “[s]urely, we want to say … P is true at w because w is a certain way … this seems like a truism”). By affirming TDB, I do not necessarily intend to endorse a truthmaker theory (TMT) (e.g., that states of affairs, or the stuff of the world or indeed, the world itself de re necessitate the truth of truth-bearers, such as propositions, and thereby metaphysically explain truths (see e.g., Armstrong 2004, 5–6, and q.v., n. 199)). I am affirming something considerably weaker than TMT, although truthmaker theory certainly entails TDB.

That TDB is weaker than TMT is evidenced by two facts. First, TMT, but not TDB, requires a commitment to the existence of truthmakers (Schaffer, Truth 2008, 305). Second, leading theoreticians like Trenton Merricks reject TMT, although they embrace TDB as obvious and doubted by no one,

That Fido is brown is true because Fido is brown. That the Trojans were conquered is true because the Trojans were conquered. That hobbits do not exist is true because hobbits do not exist… . And so we might say that truth ‘depends on the world’… . No one would deny it.⁸

Given TDB, the importance of truth and meaning for metaphysical_C system building is as follows. One’s metaphysical_C system ought to admit, on pain of epistemic irrationality, that there exist truths, and therefore meaningful things, or meaning in general.⁹ A necessary condition for the truth of any sentence or statement p is that p be meaningful. If one’s metaphysical_C system S were something that we knew, then it would be something that is true, and therefore also something that is meaningful. But the proposition <S is true.> is true because S is true. Likewise, the proposition <S is meaningful.> is true because S is meaningful. The proposition <S is true.> depends for its truth on a specific way reality is, the way involving S’s being true. The proposition <S is meaningful.> depends for its truth on a specific way reality is, the way involving S’s being meaningful. The intuition (and see sect. 4.5.2 on the role of intuitions in my argumentation) driving these ideas can be made manifest by considering the following questions. How could there be any truths about metaphysical_C systems without truths and meaningful things? How could there be an accurate and meaningful metaphysical_C system at all without things that are meaningful or true? More explicitly (square brackets below function like parentheses),

(Methodological Principle #1 (MP1)): Necessarily, for any cognizer C, and for any theory T, if [((i) C believes that T), and (ii) either [(T asserts or entails that (-M): <T is without meaning.> and C believes that T asserts or entails (-M)) or (T asserts or entails that (-Tr): <T cannot be true.> or (-Tr*): <There are no truths.> and C believes that T asserts or entails (-Tr) or (-Tr*)), or (T asserts or entails that (-A): <C should refrain from believing that T is meaningful or true.> and C believes that T asserts or entails (-A))]], then C has an actual mental state defeater for their belief that T holds.

An actual mental state defeater for a cognizer’s belief B is a believed reason in favor of ~B that robs C’s belief B of warrant, thereby rendering C epistemically irrational with respect to their forming or retaining B.¹⁰

MP1, and the questions that motivated it, suggest the following cautionary directives.

(Directive #1 (D1)): One’s metaphysical_C system ought not preclude or be agnostic about the existence of meaningful things.

Likewise,

(Directive #2 (D2)): One’s metaphysical_C system ought not preclude or be agnostic about the existence of truths.

If one asserts one’s metaphysical_C system in a way that abides by K-A, and if it is possible for one to actually know one’s metaphysical_C system, then one ought to, on pain of epistemic irrationality, allow into one’s metaphysical_C system mental states, mental events, and instances of warranted belief.¹¹ This is because knowledge requires instances of warranted, true belief. Belief is a mental state. Thus,

(Directive #3 (D3)): One’s metaphysical_C system ought not preclude or be agnostic about the existence of mental states (specifically beliefs), mental events, and instances of warranted belief.¹²

If the guiding principle behind D3 is correct, then one’s metaphysical_C system ought not preclude or be agnostic about the existence of mental causation either. This is because mental events like belief formation—whether voluntary or involuntary—are acts or behaviors that causally result in and can result from reasoning to, thinking about, forming, or sustaining a distinct belief (q.v., chapter 2: sect. 2).¹³ Again, ‘formation’ is a causal locution. And when we seek to build and employ a metaphysical_C system, or when we form a belief about a metaphysical_C system, we are doing something insofar as we are performing acts of mental causation such as belief formation. Stephen Yablo put the more general point I’m after this way, “[d]eny mental causation and you are denying that anyone ever does anything” (Yablo 1997, 251; emphasis in the original). I therefore recommend,

(Directive #4 (D4)): One’s metaphysical_C system ought not preclude or be agnostic about the existence of mental causation or instances of the knowledge of “otherly”-mental causation.¹⁴

One might resist this last directive. Donald Davidson (Mental Events 2001) argued for anomalous monism (AM), the hypothesis that (a) there “can be” no “strict laws connecting the mental and the physical,”¹⁵ (b) every event token is identical to a physical event token, and (c) mental concepts receive no conceptual reduction “to physical concepts.”¹⁶ On...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 A Metaphysical Prolegomena for the Theory of Fundamental Causation
• 2 In Defense of the Causal Relation
• 3 The Brute Asymmetry of Causation
• 4 On the Epistemological Isolation Objection to Causal Hyperrealism
• 5 Universal Causal Determination
• 6 On the Irreflexivity, Transitivity, and Well-Foundedness of Causation
• 7 Causal Relata
• 8 On the Argument From Physics and General Relativity
• 9 Fundamental Causation
• Bibliography
• Index