ARE CAUSES EVENTS OR FACTS?
By John Watling
In the collection of lectures edited by Lawrence Foster and J. W. Swanson entitled Experience and
Theory there is one in which Donald Davidson proposes a solution to the problem of reconciling
determinism with the freedom of the mind. The novelty and, I think, the implausibility of his
reconciliation prevented me, for a while, from grasping what it was. I have certainly heard it maintained
that antipathy to an opinion stated can prevent someone grasping the statement of the opinion. Such a
possibility itself presents a problem concerning causation, although not, I suppose, a really fundamental
one. Once I had grasped Davidson’s reconciliation I felt that its implausibility provided a strong
argument against the conjunction of its premisses. I suspected one of them, that causes and effects are
events, and was led to reflect further upon it. My reflections were undoubtedly influenced by an
unpublished paper on the subject which I heard Peter Downing read some years ago.
Davidson sets out the contradiction he intends to dispel by stating three principles which seem
to form an inconsistent triad but each of which he believes to be true. First, some mental events interact
causally with physical events. For example, (p. 8o), “if a man perceives that a ship is approaching, then a
ship approaching must have caused him to come to believe that a ship is approaching.” Second, (p. 8o
—81), “where there is causality, there must be a law; events related as cause and effect fall under strict
deterministic laws.” Third, (p. 81), “there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental
events can be predicted and explained.” These three principles appear to form an inconsistent triad
because it seems that mental events cannot fall under strict deterministic laws, as the first two principles
require, if, according to the third principle, there are no deterministic laws on the basis of which they
can be explained and predicted. Davidson’s reconciliation consists of an argument that they can and do.
I will consider his reasons in a moment, but before I do so I want to point out that the existence of this
possibility is not sufficient to reconcile the first and third principles. Of course, it is the inconsistency of
these which constitutes the paradox; the second principle is no more than Davidson’s explanation of
the inconsistency of the other two. It is an inadequate explanation and it enables him to conceal from
us that the first principle has a stronger implication, relevant to the third, than that mental events fall
under strict deterministic laws. The first principle has the further implication that those deterministic
laws imply that the mental events which fall under them are causes of other events and effects of other
events. Consider, as an example, an entirely physical event, the acceleration of a car. Let us suppose the
acceleration to be jerky and the universal joints in the drive shafts of the car to be worn. Let us further
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suppose that there is a law according to which wear in the drive shaft universal joints is a sufficient
condition of jerkiness in acceleration. We have supposed that the car’s acceleration falls under a strict
deterministic law, yet we have supposed nothing which implies that it was itself an effect. The wear in
the universal joints did not cause the acceleration of the car.
It follows that, even if Davidson can show that it is possible for mental events to fall under
strict deterministic laws and yet for there to be no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which they
can be predicted and explained, he will not have reconciled principles one and three. To do that he
must show that it is possible for mental events to fall under strict deterministic laws which imply that
they are causes and effects of other events and yet for there to be no strict deterministic laws on the
basis of which they can be explained and predicted. That is obviously a more difficult matter.
Davidson’s proposed reconciliation rests upon two premisses: one, that it is events which are
causes and effects, the other, that it is the exemplification of kinds of event which is explained and
predicted. If these premisses were true, then there would exist the possibility that an event of a certain
mental kind could fall under a strict deterministic law although there existed no laws allowing the
exemplification of such kinds of event to he explained or predicted. The possibility would exist because
the event of a certain mental kind might have non-mental properties which bring it under a strict
deterministic law. If, for example, it had physical properties, as Davidson believes every mental event
has, then those properties might bring it under the strict deterministic laws of physics.
Even if those two premisses were true, the reconciliation would fail unless it could be shown
that the laws of physics under which mental events fall do constitute them causes and effects of other
events. Can that be shown? First of all, it seems doubtful whether showing that particulars of some kind
fall under a law could ever show that they were effects, however much it might show that they were
affected. Wax candles fall under the law that as they get hotter they get softer, hut that does not imply
that candles are causes or effects. No doubt that points to one reason why those who take particulars to
be causes and effects choose events rather than physical objects. However, neither the heating nor the
softening of the candle falls under the law that as the candle gets hotter it gets softer. At least, I think
not but I am not certain of it, and I will return to a related question later. Laws under which the heating
and softening certainly fall, for example that the slower the heating the more uniform the softening, do
not imply, as we saw in the similar example of the car’s acceleration, that the heating causes the
softening.
Second, even if the laws of physics would imply, of some events which fell under them, that
they were causes and effects, would that implication hold for a mental event that happened to fall under
them? Davidson treats the mental properties of events which have both mental and physical properties
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as if they were convenient for reference but of no great importance. Certainly, if I believed that the
important properties of an event which had happened near me were governed by a law, I would accept
that the event had a cause even if I did not believe that any law governed its place of occurrence.
Davidson adopts precisely that attitude towards the mental properties of an event with both mental and
physical properties. I might say that the event which happened near me just now had a cause, although
nothing caused it to happen near me. Davidson would say of an event with mental and physical
properties that it had a cause although no strict law allowed its mental properties to be predicted or
explained. Evidently he does so without justification. How can it be right to treat the mental properties
of events as if they were merely convenient marks for reference? What is more, suppose that two people
both believe that a certain event has both physical and mental properties, both believe that the physical
properties are governed by law and the mental properties not, but that, while one of them is impressed
by the physical properties to the neglect of the mental ones, the other is impressed with the mental
properties and finds the physical ones of little account. The materialist, I suggest, would take the event
to be caused, to be, in fact, a physical event with accidental mental properties. The mentalist would take
it, with equal justification, to be uncaused, to be a mental event with some law-governed physical
properties. If effects are events, then it cannot be that they are both right; yet one is as right as the other.
Surely a view which gives rise to such an unreal dispute should be abandoned, but, even if it is not,
there is no reason to accept that the demonstration that the physical properties of mental events are
governed by laws would establish that those events have causes.
I should point out that Davidson does not rest his reconciliation upon any materialist
denigration of mental properties other than that they are never exemplified except in conjunction with
physical properties. It would indeed be interesting to consider whether there is a stronger form of
subservience which would enable Davidson to conclude that mental events are caused while still
preserving the non-predictability and non-explicability of the mental, but it would take me too far from
the subject of causes and effects.
I conclude that Davidson’s two premisses do not reconcile the first principle with the third.
However, even if they had done so, they would not have reconciled the freedom of the mental with the
proposition concerning physical and mental interaction which he wishes to accept and which I quoted
at the beginning of this paper. They would not have because that proposition does not concern the
causation of a particular. To show that a ship, or a ship’s approaching, might have caused the mental
event of his coming to believe that a ship was approaching without there being any possibility of
predicting, from the approach of the ship, that he would come to believe this shows nothing more than
that the assertion that a ship’s approaching caused him to believe that a ship is approaching does not
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assert, or does not merely assert, that the ship’s approaching caused a mental event. Davidson’s
assumption that his first principle embodies the causal beliefs concerning the mental which he wishes
to accept is no better founded than the assumption that ‘Something caused the explosion which
happened near me’ implies ‘Something caused the explosion to happen near me’. He should, at least,
have admitted the distinction between such propositions and proceeded to attempt to explain both
propositions in terms of the causation of particulars. I admit the existence of both forms of speaking
but contend that that in which particulars figure as effects cannot be regarded as fundamental, or be
quite freed from difficulties of interpretation. That I shall proceed to show.
When a tree in leaf casts a deep shadow, it is perhaps true that the tree, a particular, is a cause
and has an effect. No-one who supposes so could suppose that the tree would have had the same effect
had it not been in leaf. Therefore, if a particular has effects, it does so because of the properties it has, or
because of some of them, and because of the relationships in which facts concerning what properties
the particular has stand to other facts. Such a relationship might be that, because the tree is in leaf, there
is a deep shadow at a certain place. If it is possible for particulars to be causes, then a particular will be a
cause if, and only if, because some fact concerning it is a fact, some other fact, not entailed by that one,
is a fact.
If particulars can be causes, then it must also be possible for particulars to be effects: otherwise,
those which were causes would form a class of causes which could not possibly themselves be caused.
Evidently, it is not true that if, because one fact is a fact, another fact, not entailed by that one and
which concerns a particular, is a fact, that particular is an effect. It might be that, because a glasshouse
had been built round it, a deciduous tree was in leaf during the winter. That would not imply that the
tree was an effect of the glass-house, although it would imply that the glass-house had an effect upon it.
To be an effect, a particular must be caused to exist, that is, produced or created, by some cause. It
might be held that particulars are never created, that when we speak of the creation of a particular we
should, to be correct, speak of the creation of at least one particular of a certain kind. This seems to
have been Aristotle’s opinion in Book VII, Chapter 8 of the Metaphysics: “Obviously then the form also,
or whatever we ought to call the shape present in the sensible thing, is not produced, nor is there any
production of it, nor is the essence produced; for this is that which is made to be something else either
by art or by nature or by some faculty. But that there is a brazen sphere, this we make.” (Ross’s
translation, O.U.P.) If Aristotle’s opinion were correct, then the requirement that, to be an effect, a
particular must be created, would have the consequence that no particular could be an effect. To speak
of a particular brazen sphere as an effect would be to speak of that brazen sphere as created, which, in
its turn, would he to speak of the effect that there is a brazen sphere, an effect which is not a particular
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at all. However, I do not think that Aristotle’s opinion is correct. There is a distinction between the
creation of a particular and the creation of at least one particular of a certain kind. If you make
someone into a mathematician, then you create a mathematician, but you do not create a particular:
you do not create the mathematician you made into a mathematician. What account can be given of the
creation of particulars?
When we speak of the creation of a particular by a craftsman or an artist, we do not imply that
every one of its properties has been determined by him. No doubt certain properties of the particular
strike us as important and we regard the craftsman or artist as its creator if he was responsible for those.
If, in our eyes, the most notable feature of a brazen sphere is the delicate tracery upon its surface, we
shall not regard the man who made the brass round as the maker of the brazen sphere. If, in our eyes,
the most notable feature of a pebble we have found on the shore is the shape into which the waves have
ground it, the discovery, perhaps from its material constitution, that it was the stopper of a bottle would
not lead us to regard it as man made. When we speak of the creation of a particular, someone who
wishes to understand us must guess at what properties we find most notable in it, just as in
understanding metaphorical language a guess or interpretation is required before the intended meaning
can be reached. The situation is no different when we speak of the production of a particular by natural
means. The difficulty can be avoided, and a single relation of creation obtained, only by adopting the
implausible definition that a particular is a creation, and hence the effect, of a cause if, and only if,
because some fact concerning that cause is a fact, every fact concerning that particular is a fact. That
implausible definition is required also if the possibility that particulars are causes and effects is to be
squared with the transitivity, or at least a form of it, which holds for cause-and effect. If a cause has an
effect and that effect, in its turn, a further effect, then the original cause is indirectly responsible for the
final effect. If a particular could have another particular as its effect without determining all its
properties, then, if the further effects of that effect arose from properties which the original cause had
not determined, that original cause would not be responsible, even indirectly, for the final effect.
The relationship at which we have arrived might, I think, hold between particulars. Probably
people have sometimes supposed that every fact concerning one particular is determined by facts
concerning just one other particular. Perhaps those who advanced the theory that the present state of
the universe is a consequence of a single explosion suppose that innumerable particulars stand in this
relationship to the original explosion. Perhaps particulars which were so related might plausibly be
termed cause and effect. However that might be, it is certain that such a relationship is not the only
relationship of cause and effect, nor the most fundamental one.
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For one thing, what account could be given, converse to my account of causation between
particulars, in terms of determination between facts, of determination between facts in terms of
causation between particulars? For causation between particulars is a much less specific relation than
determination between facts. It is useful, for example, to be able to identify the object lens of a telescope
as the common cause of two faults in the instrument, unwanted colour and lack of definition of the
image, although it would be more natural to speak of the cause of each fault lying in the object lens
rather than being the object lens, but it would be a grave disability to be unable to go further and
distinguish the cause of one fault from the cause of the other. If a particular can be found which is the
cause of one but not of the other, then the view that it is particulars which are causes ascribes both a
common cause and different causes to the two effects. If no particular can be found, then the very
important fact which we would express by saying that they have different causes is, on that view, no fact
at all. Even if the particulars which are causes and effects are events or states rather than physical
objects, it may not be possible to make all the causal distinctions we wish. It has been suggested that
there cannot be two events occurring at the same time and place. If there cannot, and if it is events
which are causes and effects, then it may not be possible to distinguish what is an effect of a cause, for
instance the acceleration of a body at one time, from what is not, for instance the velocity of the body at
the same time.
If we are to accept that a relationship between particulars is the most fundamental relationship
of cause and effect, then we cannot regard the relation of causing to exist as involving a more general
relation of causation: we must identify ‘causes’ with ‘causes to exist’. If we do so, what sense are we to
make of the innumerable other relationships in which, it seems, causation is involved? For we speak not
only of particulars being caused to exist, but also of their being caused to turn colour, to harden, to exist
no longer. It seems more natural to suppose that causation enters into each of these relations in the
same way than to choose one of them and try to see it as a common factor in each of the others. What is
more, although it may seem possible to construe each of the others as the creation of a particular—not,
of course, the particular which was caused to change colour or exist no longer hut another particular,
invented for the purpose—that is not in fact possible. ‘It was caused to turn colour’ cannot be
interpreted as ‘Its turn of colour was caused to exist or to occur’ because that implies that, due to some
cause, all facts concerning its turn of colour were facts and the facts concerning its turn of colour do not
comprise the fact that it turned colour alone. No doubt when we ask what caused the disappearance of
the rainbow we are asking what caused the rainbow to disappear, but that shows only that what is
phrased to suggest a question concerning the causation of a particular is not such a question at all. It
cannot be that to cause and to cause to exist are the very same. Consequently, to establish that it is
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particulars which arc caused to exist, or caused to occur, is to establish that it is not particulars which
are caused. If events are particulars, then it is not events which are, in the fundamental sense, causes
and effects.
One of the premisses of the foregoing argument—the premiss that, to be an effect, a particular
must be produced or created—is, I think, a consequence of a more general truth concerning individuals
of all types and which holds for facts no less than for particulars. Of course, no argument parallel to the
foregoing could rule out facts as causes and effects. Part of the attraction of facts as candidates for these
roles is that they would set no limits to the fineness of our causal distinctions, nor compel us to admit a
more fundamental relation which did not have facts as its terms. Nevertheless, from the more general
premiss it is a very short step to the conclusion that facts, too, must be dismissed. Just as with the
creation of mathematicians, we must distinguish between bringing it about that a certain fact exists and
bringing it about that that fact is a fact. A cause can do the latter, but no cause can do the former. Some
thing may cause a cup to break but nothing can create the fact that the cup is broken: that fact is a
possibility which no cause can bring into existence. Since, to be an effect, a fact must be produced or
created, no fact can be an effect. It is absurd to hold that individuals which cannot possibly be effects
can be causes, so it is not facts, any more than events, which are causes and effects. Since, I take it, there
is a dichotomy amongst individuals between those of logical type, such as facts, and those of non-logical
type, particulars, there seems to be no escape from the conclusion that causes and effects are not
individuals at all.
There is no doubt that that conclusion is, in some ways, a paradoxical one. If it is correct, then
causes cannot, strictly speaking, he described in any way. It cannot even be that they hold, obtain, or
operate. I can see no way of removing that paradox. Again, if it is correct, causation cannot be a relation
between causes and effects. However, that paradox cannot be avoided by supposing causes and effects
to be individuals. The relationship which holds when something is produced by a cause— that I
contend that, if effects are individuals, it must be that they are produced or created by causes—would
have held even if the cause had not existed, or had not had the properties it did have. It might have
held, therefore, even if the effect had not existed and it cannot be that the cause and the effect are its
terms. Had the effect not existed, the relationship could only have been expressed in such words as ‘If
the cause had existed, or if it had had properties it did not have, the effect would have existed’. The
difficulty of interpreting such a sentence on the assumption that effects are individuals provides
another argument against that assumption. It is, indeed, obvious that a great deal of our knowledge of
causal relationships is useful to us just because it enables us to avoid effects we find undesirable,
because it enables us not to bring it about that certain possibilities arc realised. Causal relationships can
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certainly have particulars as terms, although those terms will be neither causes nor effects: presumably
the earth and the sun stand in a causal relationship, since when the sun moves the earth is caused to
move. However, causal relationships concerning the existence and non-existence of particulars of
certain kinds can only be regarded as standing between possibilities. Of course, just as before, those
possibilities are not causes or effects.
In other ways the conclusion is a natural one. To give the causes of any effect we must discover
that certain facts are facts and state that they are. Naming individuals is of no use, whether they be
particulars or facts. We must do this merely to present the causes. To state, further, that they are the
causes, we must assert a proposition with the general form of ‘The tree came into leaf with the effect
that its shadow deepened’. I am inclined, therefore, to accept that causes and effects are not individuals
of any type and so, to the question which forms the title of this paper, in the words of John Stuart Mill, I
answer ‘No’.
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