Causality and Modern Science

Milton Hindus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351529747
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

The causal problem has become topical once again. While we are no longer causalists or believers in the universal truth of the causal principle we continue to think of causes and effects, as well as of causal and noncausal relations among them. Instead of becoming indeterminists we have enlarged determinism to include noncausal categories. And we are still in the process of characterizing our basic concepts and principles concerning causes and effects with the help of exact tools. This is because we want to explain, not just describe, the ways of things. The causal principle is not the only means of understanding the world but it is one of them.The demand for a fourth edition of this distinguished book on the subject of causality is clear evidence that this principle continues to be an important and popular area of philosophic enquiry. Non-technical and clearly written, this book focuses on the ontological problem of causality, with specific emphasis on the place of the causal principle in modern science. Mario Bunge first defines the terminology employed and describes various formulations of the causal principle. He then examines the two primary critiques of causality, the empiricist and the romantic, as a prelude to the detailed explanation of the actual assertions of causal determinism.Bunge analyzes the function of the causal principle in science, touching on such subjects as scientific law, scientific explanation, and scientific prediction. In so doing, he offers an education to layman and specialist alike on the history of a concept and its opponents. Professor William A. Wallace, author of Causality and Scientific Explanation said of an earlier edition of this work: "I regard it as a truly seminal work in this field."

PART I

A Clarification of Meaning

1

Causation and Determination, Causalism and Determinism

The bewildering confusion prevailing in contemporary philosophic and scientific literature with regard to the meanings of the words ‘causation’, ‘determination’, ‘causality’, and ‘determinism’, obliges us to begin by fixing the terminology. A certain nomenclature will be proposed in this chapter, and the place of causal determination in the frame of general determinism will be sketched.

1.1. Causation, Causal Principle, and Causal Determinism

1.1.1. The Threefold Meaning of the Word ‘Causality’

The word ‘causality’ has, unfortunately enough, no fewer than three principal meanings—a clear symptom of the long and twisted history of the causal problem. The single word ‘causality’ is in fact used to designate: (a) a category (corresponding to the causal bond); (b) a principle (the general law of causation), and (c) a doctrine, namely, that which holds the universal validity of the causal principle, to the exclusion of other principles of determination.

In order to minimize the danger of confusion, it will be convenient to try to keep to a definite nomenclature in correspondence with such a semantic variety. Let us designate by:

(a) causation, the causal connection in general, as well as any particular causal nexus (such as the one obtaining between flames in general and burns produced by them in general, or between any particular flame and any particular burn produced by it);

(b) causal principle, or principle of causality, the statement of the law of causation, in a form such as The same cause always produces the same effect, or any similar (and preferably refined) one. It will be convenient to restrict the term ‘causal law’ to particular statements of causal determination, such as “Flames invariably cause burns in the human skin”; finally,

(c) causal determinism, or causalism, and often simply causality, the doctrine asserting the universal validity of the causal principle. A few formulations of the kernel of this theory are: “Everything has a cause”, “Nothing on earth is done without a cause”, “Nothing can exist or cease to exist without a cause”, “Whatever comes to be is necessarily born by the action of some cause”, and “Everything that has a beginning must have a cause”.

In short, while the causal principle states the form of the causal bond (causation), causal determinism asserts that everything happens according to the causal law.

1.1.2. Causation: A Purely Epistemological Category of Relation, or an Ontological Category?

As here understood, causation is synonymous with causal nexus, that connection among events which Galileo¹ described as “a firm and constant connection”, and which we shall try to define more accurately in Chapter 2. But what is the status of the category of causation? Is it a form of interdependence, and has it consequently an ontological status? Or is it a purely epistemological category belonging solely, if at all, to our description of experience?

The modern controversy over this question began with the skeptic and empiricist criticism. According to modern empiricism, the status of the causation category is purely epistemological, that is, causation concerns solely our experience with and knowledge of things, without being a trait of the things themselves—whence every discourse on causation should be couched in the formal, not in the material, mode of speech.² Thus Locke³ proposed the following definitions: “That which produces any simple or complex idea, we denote by the general name ‘cause’, and that which is produced, ‘effect’. Thus finding that in that substance which we call ‘wax’ fluidity, which is a simple idea that was not in it before, is constantly produced by the application of a certain degree of heat, we call the simple idea of heat, in relation to fluidity in wax, the cause of it, and fluidity the effect”. Moreover, like Kant after him, Locke held the causal principle to be “a true principle of reason”: a proposition with a factual content but not established with the help of the external senses.

The conception of causation as a mental construct, as a purely subjective phenomenon, was emphasized by Locke’s followers Berkeley⁴ and Hume,⁵ as well as by Kant.⁶ But, whereas Locke had regarded causation as a connection, acknowledging production as its distinctive mark, his followers have held that causation is only a relation,⁷ and moreover one relating experiences rather than facts in general. Hume emphasized this point particularly, on the ground that it would not be empirically verifiable that the cause produces or engenders the effect, but only that the (experienced) event called ‘cause’ is invariably associated with or followed by the (experienced) event called ‘effect’—an argument which is of course based on the assumption that only empirical entities shall enter any discourse concerning nature or society.

The empiricist doctrine of causality will be examined rather closely in the course of this book, especially as it is a widespread belief that Hume gave the final, or almost final, solution of the causal problem. For the time being we shall merely state the opposite thesis, namely, that causation is not a category of relation among ideas, but a category of connection and determination corresponding to an actual trait of the factual (external and internal) world, so that it has an ontological status—although, like every other ontological category, it raises epistemological problems.⁸ Causation, as here understood, is not only a component of experience but also an objective form of interdependence obtaining, though only approximately, among real events, i.e., among happenings in nature and society.

But before we can ascertain whether causation is a category of determination, and long before we can hope to show that, while being so far used in both science and philosophy, it is not the sole category of determination, we shall have to examine what is meant by ‘determination’.

1.2. Toward a General Concept of Determination

1.2.1. Two Meanings of ‘Determination’: Property, and Constant Connection

Let us take a glance at the different uses of ‘causation’ and ‘determination’, two concepts that are frequently regarded as equivalent⁹ although some philosophers have acknowledged their difference.¹⁰ In actual use the word ‘determination’ designates various concepts, among which the following are particularly relevant to our discussion: (a) property or characteristic; (b) necessary connection, and (c) process whereby an object has become what it is—or way in which an object acquires its determinations in sense (a).

In its first acceptation, ‘determination’ is synonymous with ‘characteristic’, whether qualitative or quantitative; this is what determinatio meant in post-Roman Latin, and in this way it is used in various European languages, notably in German (Determination and Bestimmung). In this sense, that is determinate which has definite characteristics and can consequently be characterized unambiguously; when applied to descriptions and definitions, ‘determinate’ is used as an equivalent of precise or definite, in contradistinction to vague. Thus Locke¹¹ called determinate or determined the ideas which Descartes had described as clear and distinct; and Claude Bernard¹² termed indéterminés the facts collected without precision, those ill-defined facts “constituting real obstacles to science”.

But in science the most frequent use of the word ‘determination’ that is relevant to our concern seems to be that of constant and unique connection among things or events, or among states or qualities of things, as well as among ideal objects. (Thus, for instance, machines that run regular and reproducible—hence fully predictable—courses have been called determinate. Their successive states follow one another in a constant and unique way to the exclusion of new, unexpected states—contrarily to indeterminate machines, whose states are only statistically determined and constitute moreover an open set, that is, one admitting new elements.¹³) If by necessary is meant that which is constant and unique in a connection,¹⁴ then in sense (b) the word ‘determination’ amounts to necessary connection.

If the form of a necessary connection is known, then some features of certain relata will be inferable from the knowledge of certain other relata. Thus, for example, the relation ‘twice’, that is, y = 2x, enables us to derive unambiguously the value of y when that of x is specified. Analogously, an equation suc...