Causes As (Local) Oomph

Causes As (Local) Oomph

R. Tallis

Consider a paradigm example of causation: one billiard ball bumping into another (Cause C) and causing the latter to move (Effect E). There is, in fact, no gap between C and E, and we could redescribe the two events as a single process, except for the fact that two distinct objects are involved, and, what is more, the outgoing effect is composed of more than one event (slowing of the first billiard ball, setting the second one in motion, producing a ‘click’ – and that’s just for starters). The separation between cause and effect seems more decisive where there is an evident temporal gap between them – in the case, for example, of the relationship between a flash of lightning (Cause C) and a peal of thunder (Effect E).

In all cases, however, the impression of a gap is false. There are no gaps in nature. A thunderstorm is a continuous process that encompasses flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. Objects that seem to interact at a distance do so through the intermediaries of forces and fields that transmit energy. This is most clearly evident in contemporary physics where, as philosopher of physics William Simpson recently put it to me, “everything seems delocalized and dissolves into the quantum field of some common substratum.” At any rate, physical reality is seamless and law-governed, (possibly) unfolding over time, not a chain or network of discrete events that have somehow to be connected by causal cement. Causes, far from being a constitutive stuff of the physical world, are things we postulate to re-connect that which has been teased apart.

Whence this teasing apart of the physical world? It is the consequence of the irruption of individual consciousnesses into the world. Conscious beings, especially self-conscious beings such as you and I, are centres of worlds opened up in a universe that in itself has no centres (or peripheries), nor items that are salient or irrelevant; no contrast between causes, conditions and backgrounds, nor causes and effects. Embodied subjects divide the world into localities, and items and events that are localised within those localities. This is the realm of spatio-temporally discrete items – including separate events that have to be cognitively glued together to relieve them of their individual responsibility for occurring; to relieve them of the burden of contingency.

Hume was correct in arguing that causation was not a constitutive property of mindless reality.

See also:

Reflecting on this essay I think Tallis was too wedded to the idea of non-mental causes here:

This is perhaps why an alternative theory, that of causation as manipulability, has recently attracted so much attention. It situates our causal sense within our ability to make, or prevent, events from occurring, to bring things about, to make happenings happen. So we are allowed to think of A as the cause of B if an agent could bring about the occurrence of B, or at least increase its probability of occurring, by bringing about the occurrence of A. Causes are, as it were, ‘handles’. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem right, because our standard understanding of causation extends beyond the scope of agency. There is nothing odd in talking about causal processes, such the influence of gravity on the tides, that take place independently of any actual or (as in the case of events occurring in the universe before human life emerged) possible human actions. Manipulability theories seem too anthropocentric.

Yet there is good reason to think our very understanding of causation rests on considering a source of action that begins with the idea that we have to reason about what follows from our decisions. I also think this relates to what @Laird has said here.

As the philosopher Nathan Hawkins has noted, mental acts are actually what makes causation intelligible as causal reasoning begins with considering ourselves as agents and reasoning through the consequences of our actions. We then project this reasoning onto the world to explain other events. 

Yet this entire type of reasoning begins with treating our decisions as the beginning point, an "uncaused cause" that starts the chain of events. (Which I believe aligns with what Laird said if I understood him correctly!)

We then think through what the consequences of such an action would be. 

The other issue that Tallis seems to not consider are the Classical Theist regress arguments. If we think of infinite regression back along a timeline we could call this a "horizontal regression". But we also need to consider a "vertical regression" where each cause, on its own, needs some background of causal factors. Aquinas uses the example of a stick moving a stone, where something has to allow for the stick to have the causal power to move the stone. (The stone also has to be receptive to the stick's causal power.)

Following this line of thought leads to consideration of an "Unmoved Mover". Aquinas would have us go all the way back to God, but even if one [is] hesitant to go that far we can note that there is a mental agent who would be moving the stick as in an "unmoved mover" relative to the stick & the stone.

While I've mentioned the passage a few times over I feel WJ Mander makes a very good and succinct case in the introductory part of his book The Volitional Theory of Causation:

Pre-reflective common sense supposes that a cause brings about or produces its effect. It makes it happen. But this aspect of what philosophers term ‘efficient causation’ is puzzling, for as David Hume notes, if we pay careful attention to precisely what is given in immediate sense experience, it would seem that we are presented with one event followed by another, but not with anything which might be characterized as the one generating or putting forth the other. The ‘creation’ or ‘power’ or ‘necessary connection’ which, on the face of it, seems a quite manifest aspect of the phenomena, on closer inspection, eludes us. The volitional theory of causation recognizes this analysis, but argues that the case is quite otherwise if we look instead to our experience of ourselves. In reflexive awareness, it maintains, we feel ourselves to bring about or produce our own actions, choices, and thoughts. They do not simply appear before us, still less are they done to us; rather they are performed by us. They are willed or voluntary. It is here, argues the volitional theory, that we find genuinely efficient causation. We feel or experience ourselves to be effective causal agents.

What we find in our own case, we may reasonably judge takes place also in our fellow creatures. Although we do not experience their actions in the same way as we do our own, we nonetheless infer that they are agents just as we are. Moreover, the theory continues, taking a considerably bolder step, that same inference may be extended to the external world at large also. For if causation is a matter of generation or force or power, and such influence is felt directly in our own case, may we not conclude that something analogous takes place whenever one thing influences or brings about another? May we not conclude that the nature of the productive activity which lies behind all causation is something disclosed to us in the case of our own volitional agency? Looked at from the external or third-person point of view, everywhere in the world causation is ‘dark’ to us, but (goes the argument), grasped in introspection with respect to our own first-person agency, we catch it at work, and this happy insight encourages us to suppose that what we observe here is in fact the basis of all causality.

No God, No Laws

Nancy Cartwright

... I do not mean to argue that the enterprise of modern science cannot be made sense of without God. Rather, if you want to make sense of it you had better not think of science as discovering laws of Nature, for there cannot be any of these without God. That depends of course on what we mean by ‘laws of Nature’. Whatever else we mean, I take it that this much is essential:

Laws of Nature are prescriptive, not merely descriptive, and – even stronger – they are supposed to be responsible for what occurs in Nature. 

Since at least the Scientific Revolution they are also supposed to be visible in the Book of Nature, not writ only on stone tablets nor in the thought of God. My claim here is that neither of these features can be made sense of without God; this despite the fact that they are generally thought to provide some autonomy of the world order from God.

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No God, No Powers

James Orr

Nancy Cartwright has recently claimed that analysing physical regularities as laws – that is, as quasi-causal necessitation relations between universals –presupposes theistic commitment. To borrow her slogan: no God, no laws. She argues that the more plausible alternative for
nomic realists who reject theism is to ground regularities in powers. I argue that this alternative is in fact inconsistent with a core commitment of metaphysical naturalism. I then examine and reject a platonic version of the powers account before concluding with a more promising theistic alternative. In slogan form: no God, no powers.