BSHP Conference: Causation 1500 – 2000
Abstracts
Tom Baldwin (University of York), ‘Russell on Causation’
Russell’s 1913 paper ‘On the Notion of Cause’ is still rightly esteemed. In discussing it, I shall
concentrate on its place within Russell’s general philosophical programme, on its relationship to
broader debates about causation at the time, and on the connections between that debate and
contemporary discussions of causation.
Martha Brandt Bolton (Rutgers University), ‘Causality, Physical and Mathematical
Induction: the necessitarian and “skeptical” theory of Lady Mary Shepherd’
Early in the 19th century, Lady Mary Shepherd advocated an anti-Humean theory of causality.
Shepherd opposed not only the view that the relation between cause and effect consists of nothing
but regularity (and a mental disposition), but also Hume’s contention that cause and effect are
temporally successive objects (events), that they are discovered by repeated experience, that
causal inference is due to an acquired habit rather than reasoning, and that it is possible that
nature’s course should change. This paper is not mainly concerned with Shepherd’s objections to
Hume’s reasoning (in Treatise and Enquiry), although they are acute, nor with the argument by
which she claims to show it is necessary that that every event we experience has a cause. Rather
the paper mainly concerns Shepherd’s own account of the relation between cause and effect and
her closely connected theory of induction.
Shepherd maintains that cause and effect are simultaneous. Indeed, she apparently holds that there
can be no strictly necessary connection between temporally disparate events. On her view, a
cause consists of several properly assembled objects and the effect is a quality that necessarily
pertains to the assembly. To put this in contemporary terms, an effect supervenes on a certain
collection of objects; more exactly, causality is a compositional determination relation.
According to Shepherd’s theory of perception and knowledge, we directly perceive, i.e. perceive
without inference, nothing but effects. The existence of causes is discovered by an elementary
form of reasoning, but we do not experience the nature of causes, and our inferential knowledge
is restricted to certain relations among them. Shepherd is, without doubt, a “skeptical realist”, to
use the popular term. To use another current phrase, causal generalizations are a posteriori
necessary truths. It is a consequence of this account that we know causal relations are necessary,
but have no grasp of the necessary connection between different relata. For example, conceptual
understanding of the necessity is not required.
This analysis seems to have been motivated by Shepherd’s youthful reflections on the method of
discovering general mathematical truths. She propounds a theory of induction which she applies
to universal propositions in both physics and mathematics. Discovery that a certain combination
of “objects” determines certain properties of the composite in one case suffices to discover a
necessity which, because it is a necessity, holds in all (relevantly) similar cases. Since several
objections are likely to occur to one at this point, some discussion is needed to show how this is
supposed to work. Still, I believe it is a coherent theory. It has the consequence that we can, and
do, prove that mathematical truths are necessary without needing an intellectual grasp of their
necessity. Thus we are, or at least may well be, as ignorant of the nature of mathematical
necessity as we are of causal necessity—a result that is, to my mind, very attractive.
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Angela Breitenbach (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), ‘Kant and the Limits of the
Mechanical Explanation of Nature’
Kant famously presents the principle of the causal determination of nature, developed in the
Second Analogy of his Critique of Pure Reason, as an a priori principle of the understanding
rather than an empirically discoverable fact about the world. According to this principle, Kant
explains, we cannot experience or know of anything that is not determined by natural causes. In
the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant furthermore distinguishes the mechanism of nature, its
continuous determination by causal laws, from freedom. He argues that we can only prove the
existence of natural causes but not that of freedom. In the Critique of Judgment, finally, Kant
claims that although mechanical explanation is the only type of explanation of nature available to
us, there are certain things, that is, all organisms, that are inexplicable by reference to mechanical
laws.
The combination of these claims made by Kant throughout his Critiques raises an important
question. For if anything we can experience about the natural world must be caused, and if the
causal determination of nature is identified with its mechanism, how can there be objects in the
natural, and hence knowable, world that are inexplicable in mechanical terms? In what sense can
Kant’s theory of nature, celebrated for showing the a priori and necessary nature of the principle
of natural causality, incorporate the claim that some parts of nature fall outside the mechanistic
framework? The paper aims to tackle these questions, firstly, by investigating the relationship
between Kant’s concepts of causality and mechanism and, secondly, by exploring the limits of the
explicability of nature by means of these concepts.
Different commentators have contrasted the mechanism of nature, on Kant’s account, with
freedom from the laws of nature, with the life of organised beings, and with the relationship of a
material whole to its parts. The paper argues that these three approaches stress important aspects
of Kant’s concept of the mechanism of nature. Considered in isolation, however, they each
present an incomplete characterisation. An alternative reading is proposed according to which
mechanical explanations refer to a particular species of empirical causal laws. Just like any other
empirical causal law, however, mechanical laws can never be known with full certainty on Kant’s
account. The conception according to which we can explain all of nature by means of mechanical
laws, it turns out, is based on what Kant calls ‘regulative’ or ‘reflective’ considerations about
nature. By means of the proposed reading of natural mechanism, the paper aims to show how
Kant could hold on to the claim that all objects of experience are determined by the a priori
principle of causality, while at the same time arguing that, considered from a different
perspective, some objects of experience cannot be regarded as mechanically determined material
wholes.
Aaron D. Cobb (Saint Louis University), ‘An Eighteenth-Century Critique of Productive
Cause Explanations’
Eighteenth-century philosophers, including George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid,
reject the view that the proper aim of natural philosophy is to discover the productive causes of
natural phenomena. They argue that productive cause explanations are neither necessary nor
warranted in natural philosophy. In the place of this account of explanation they offer a
revisionary conception which holds that a proper explanation of some phenomenon consists in
showing that it can be subsumed under an experientially-grounded law. They derive this novel
approach to scientific explanation primarily from their reflection upon the discussions of
methodology in Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton’s explicit
disavowal of causal hypotheses concerning the underlying productive causes of gravity in the
General Scholium combined with Newton’s achievements suggested that natural philosophy
could dispense with inquiry into underlying productive causes. Rather than speculating about the
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causes of gravity, Newton considers this task unnecessary for establishing the mathematical
principles of physics.
But the eighteenth-century rejection of productive cause explanations was not based solely upon
their interpretative understanding of a Newtonian methodology. It was also predicated upon a
common critique of the legitimacy of specific kinds of causal inquiry. Berkeley, Hume, and Reid
all contend that inquiry into the underlying productive causes of phenomena is not warranted
within the legitimate scope of natural philosophy. This critique does not undermine all forms of
causal inquiry, but it does require a specification of the proper understanding of causal inquiry
and use of causal terminology in natural philosophy. Following the Lockean analysis of the
evidential grounds of one’s ideas concerning causal powers, they argue (i) that there is no clear
evidence indicating that physical substances or their qualities are capable of acting as productive
causes of phenomena and (ii) that the methods and sources of justification proper to natural
philosophy cannot warrant ascribing effects to the productive powers of agents. Furthermore, they
contend that all other explanatory entities (e.g., forces) are either reducible to physical substances,
their qualities, or agents, in which case they are not legitimate explanations of phenomena, or
they are occult entities and, hence, are not genuinely explanatory. If Newton shows that one can
dispense with inquiry into productive causes, this eighteenth-century critique shows that one
should dispense with this form of causal inquiry.
In this paper, I reconstruct the eighteenth-century criticism of productive cause explanations and
discuss the philosophical motivations underpinning their revisionary conception of scientific
explanation. I argue that a central assumption of this novel understanding of scientific
explanation is an underlying pragmatism concerning the aims of a theory of scientific
explanation. Berkeley, Hume, and Reid argue that one of the most important aspects of scientific
understanding produced by nomological explanations of phenomena is its utility in directing
human action. Knowledge of the produtive causes of phenomena is not necessary for the goal of
successful action.
Aisling Crean (Australian National University), ‘New Hume’
We thought we knew what Hume said about causation. He said that causation was nothing but
constant conjunction, a mere regularity obtaining between events. But recent news from the field
of Hume studies is telling us that this is precisely what Hume did not think. Recent interpreters of
Hume such as John Wright (1983), Edward Craig (1987), Galen Strawson (1989), Helen Beebee
(2006) and Peter Kail (2007) have all argued in one way or another that Hume was a sceptical
realist about causal powers grounding necessary connections in nature. A sceptical realist about
these things is one who believes in their existence but deems them to be somehow unknowable –
‘secret’ as Hume says – epistemically inaccessible in some non-trivial way. This sceptical realist
interpretation of Hume is sometimes called The New Hume, and in opposition to it are defenders
of the old view – the Old Hume, let’s say (Bennett, Blackburn, Winkler). My aim here is not to
say decisively whether or not Old Hume or New Hume is the true Hume. Instead, I want to
examine a problem for New Hume – a problem threatens to make his philosophical position
dialectically crippling.
The problem has its root in New Hume’s claim that there exist causal powers grounding
necessary connections in nature and that these are unknowable. This claim is problematic because
it’s difficult to square with Hume’s epistemology in a way that avoids making the claim selfdefeating. Section one sets up the problem. Section two sketches a familiar aspect of Hume’s
epistemology, explains in more detail New Hume’s position and says more about why it’s
problematic. Section three takes a less traditional line: it explores a neglected externalist
dimension to Hume’s epistemology. Section four gets into the details of this. Section five then
shows how to bring the lessons of sections three and four to bear on the apparent problem for
New Hume and dissolves it in a way that squares well with Hume’s texts. Whether or not Old
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Hume or New Hume is the true Hume, New Hume’s position is not dialectically crippling after
all.
Michael Funk Deckard (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), ‘Edmund Burke on Formal,
Material and Efficient Causes of Beauty’
In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757),
Edmund Burke wrote:
Such a confusion of [the] ideas [of the sublime and beautiful] must certainly render all our
reasonings upon subjects of this kind extremely inaccurate and inconclusive. Could this admit of any
remedy, I imagined it could only be from a diligent examination of our passions in our own breasts;
from a careful survey of the properties of things which we find by experience to influence those
passions; and from a sober and attentive investigation of the laws of nature, by which those
properties are capable of affecting the body, and thus of exciting our passions. (Preface)
Rehabilitating Aristotelian causation for the new science of aesthetics that was developing in
Britain after Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Hume, Burke devotes part I of his text to the formal
cause (i.e. ‘a diligent examination of our passions in our own breasts’), parts II and III to the
material cause of sublimity and beauty (i.e. ‘a careful survey of the properties of things’), and part
IV to the efficient cause (‘a sober and attentive investigation of the laws of nature’). By
examining specifically the causation of beauty, it is possible to argue that Burke is working from
both a typical early modern view of mind/body relations (i.e. whatever effects the mind also
effects the body and vice versa) combined with an Aristotelian understanding of object relations
(i.e. there are characteristics of an object that are causally uniform throughout nature). In this
paper, I will examine closely how Burke argues for formal, material and efficient causes in the
terms of subject/object relations such that certain uniform causal events in the human mind occur
universally.
Giuseppina D’Oro (Keele University), ‘The Reasons/Causes Debate Before and After
Davidson’
This paper explores the way in which the conception of the reasons/causes debate changed after
the publication of Davidson’s seminal 1963 essay “Actions, reasons and causes”. Prior to
Davidson the reasons/causes debate was essentially a conceptual debate about the nature of
explanation in different forms of enquiry. Both supporters (Hempel) and critics (Dray/
Collingwood) of the thesis for methodological unity were at one in the belief that the task of a
philosophy of action was to determine whether the logical structure of action-explanation was or
was not reducible to the logical structure of event-explanation, not to address the metaphysical
problem of mental causation. Indeed this generation of non-reductivists would have regarded the
very posing of the question “how is mental causation possible?” as resting on a category mistake
because answering it requires applying the explanatory framework of one science to the
explanandum of another. The publication of “Actions, reasons and causes”, altered the conception
of the very nature of the reasons/causes debate because in this essay Davidson argued that a
philosophy of action should address not only the conceptual questions, “What are actions? What
are events? What kind of explanation is appropriate to the former and which to the latter?” but
also the metaphysical question of how can mind have an impact onto the physical world.
Davidson’s essay brought about a paradigm shift in the philosophy of action because it altered the
very perception of the reasons/causes debate, from a purely conceptual debate about the nature of
explanation at work in different sciences to an ontological/metaphysical debate about the
possibility of mental causation.
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The paper argues two theses. The first is that the kind of conceptual non-reductivism which
dominated prior to the publication of Davidson’ essay and encapsulated in the slogan “reasons are
not causes” thrived against the background of a conception of philosophy as an epistemologically
first science whose task is to reflect on the explanatory practices of different sciences and tease
out the heuristic principles which govern them. Davidson’s own brand of non-reductivism, by
contrast thrives against the background of a return of real metaphysics (a kind of ontological
backlash against linguistic philosophy) and a conception of philosophy as the underlabourer of
science. The second is that Davidson’s argument in “Actions, reasons and causes” fails to provide
sufficiently strong grounds for abandoning the non-causalist consensus that dominated in mid
twentieth century and that the move from a non-causalist to a causalist consensus in the
philosophy of action may have to be explained sociologically by a change in the philosophical
Zeitgeist.
Steffen Ducheyne (Ghent University), ‘Galileo’s Interventionist Notion of Cause’
In this essay, I shall take up the theme of Galileo’s notion of cause, which has already received
considerable attention. I shall argue that the participants in the debate as it stands have overlooked
a striking and essential feature of Galileo's notion of cause. Galileo not only reformed natural
philosophy, he also introduced a new notion of causality and integrated it in his scientific practice
(hence, this new notion also has its methodological repercussions).Galileo’s conception of
causality went hand in hand with his methodology (see section 3). Galileo's new notion of
causality was closely intertwined with a new conception of how to discover causal relations. His
new notion of causality focused on heuristics rather than on ontology. This is the main message of
this essay. It is my claim that Galileo was trying to construct a new scientifically useful notion of
causality. This new notion of causality is an interventionist notion. According to such a notion,
causal relations can be discovered by actively exploring and manipulating natural processes. In
order to know nature, we have to intervene in nature. Generally: if we wish to explore whether A
is a cause of B, we will need to establish whether deliberate and purposive variations in A result
in changes in B. If changes in A produce changes in B, the causal relation is established. It will be
shown that this notion first emerged from Galileo's work in hydrostatics and came to full
fecundity in his treatment of the tides.
William Eaton and Robert Higgerson (Georgia Southern University), ‘Causation and the
Cartesian Reduction of Motion: God’s Role in Grinding the Gears’
Cartesian physics has the resources to explain the nature of local motion in purely mechanical
terms. What this means is that in Cartesian physics, the displacement of a body from one location
to another involves nothing more than changes with respect to certain modes of extension,
namely, duration and location. The mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century sought to
explain all natural phenomena in terms of matter and local motion. Though more famous today
for their quantitative and experimental methods, mechanical explanations were originally
championed for their superior intelligibility. A highly advertised feature of the mechanical
philosophy was the ability to explain natural phenomena at deeper and deeper levels, rather than
accepting explanations that ended by appealing to substantial forms or occult qualities. For
example, the motions of the parts of a clock might be explained in terms of matter and local
motion, while the parts of the clock themselves were explained by deeper mechanical structures.
We argue that an interpretation of motion, suggested by Descartes and adopted by later Cartesians
such as Louis de la Forge, can explain local motion itself in a way that is more intelligible than
rival explanations that ultimately take motion as a primitive.
What makes this reduction possible is the basic Cartesian metaphysical commitment that matter is
essentially passive. Cartesians, including Descartes, believed that all motion was ultimately
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caused by God. And in God there is no real distinction between creation and preservation. In
other words, at each moment God must create the world anew or else it would cease to be. La
Forge realized that this provides a simple and intelligible way to account for local motion. Since
God must continually re-create each object, he must always place the object in some location.
Thus local motion is really a sort of divine teleportation in which an object comes into and passes
away from existence at successive locations.
We argue that La Forge’s conception of motion has all the qualities valued by the mechanical
philosophers. La Forge’s explanation of the nature of local motion contains such a high degree of
intelligibility that all competing accounts, especially those of the scholastics, appear quite murky
and superfluous by comparison. It also provides us with the best way to bridge the apparent gap
between Cartesian theological metaphysics on the one hand, and Cartesian science on the other.
We shall conclude by explaining how the Cartesian mechanical reduction of motion offers an
interesting solution to a particular paradox of Zeno and that the Cartesian solution should be
favored on the grounds of intelligibility and relative simplicity.
Gary Hatfield (University of Pennsylvania), ‘Mind/Body Causation and Neutral Monism:
Helmholtz, Mach, and James’
The relation between mind and body, or between the psychological and the physiological, was a
central problem in theoretical psychology and in philosophy of mind in the latter nineteenth
century and into the twentieth century. Helmholtz provided one solution, founded in an empiricist
theory of causation and a phenomenalist epistemology that eschewed metaphysics. His view of
the proper elements of knowledge was strongly influenced by a conception of the relation
between physiology and sensation. Using a different starting point that was more closely aligned
to a phenomenological methodology, Mach developed a similar position into a neutral monism,
which finessed the problem of mind/body causation by regarding mind and body as constructions
out of a common, neutral basis: sensation-like elements. Finally, from a position that took
metaphysics seriously in a way that neither Helmholtz nor Mach did, James articulated a version
of this ‘neutral monism’ that addressed apparent objections about the phenomenology of mental
activity more fully than had Helmholtz or Mach. (‘Phenomenology’ is used here in its wide sense,
as a descriptive approach to the contents of direct experience.)
Boris Hennig (University of Pittsburgh), ‘Causation and the Unity of Events’
In post-Humean discussions of causation, causality is usually treated as an external relation
between two states or events; or, less commonly, as a relation between a person and an event. It is
often assumed that although we can see the related items, we do not literally see the causal
relation between them, and that the task is to give an account of this relation in terms of laws,
probabilities, the transmission of energy, or an underlying mechanism. This may seem to be the
most natural approach for two reasons. First, causality is traditionally associated with
mechanisms; and mechanisms are complex systems, the parts of which may be considered in
isolation. Second, Hume himself started from the assumption that if two items can be
distinguished at all, they can also be separated and considered in complete isolation without any
loss. Thus it seems that causation is to be understood as a relation between separable items.
When Kant drew attention to the radical nature of Hume’s challenge, however, he pointed out that
Hume’s question may be naturally extended to other fundamental relations; such as the relation
between substances and their accidents and the relations of simultaneity and inter-dependence.
Taken at this level of generality, Hume raises the general problem of accounting for the objective
unity of complex items of any kind. The problem of causality is only a special case of this general
problem: it is the problem of the objective unity of events. I will argue that the problem of the
objective unity of events is not only a more general version of Hume’s problem, but that the
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distinction between causal processes and mere aggregates of events really is the distinction
between complex events that possess an objective unity and mere aggregates of events that do
not. When we ask whether A causes B, we really ask whether there is an objectively unified event
of which both A and B are parts. If this is the correct way of posing the problem of causation, we
cannot any longer assume that we do not literally see causal relations; for it should follow from
this that we do not literally see any objectively unified events at all. This has important
consequences regarding contemporary discussions of causation.
If the question of causality is ultimately the question about the unity events, we cannot answer it
by taking two events as given and determining a relation between them. For to take events as
given is to assume that the problem regarding their objective unity is already settled. The question
about their relation may do as an induction step in a recursive definition of “causation,” but then,
the first step is to explain the difference between unified events and mere aggregates. This first
step, however, is the one Hume and Kant actually call into question.
It follows that in discussions of causation, one should not primarily focus on the relation between
two parts of a causal sequence. The relation that matters is the relation of a complex event to its
parts. I take it that this leads us back to an Aristotelian approach of causation. Aristotle often
takes an agent or substance to be the cause of an event, and he does not even raise the question of
how separable events are causally related. His “efficient cause” is essentially involved in the
event that it causes, rather than being separate and merely related to it.
Andreas Hüttemann (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster), ‘The Elimination of
Causal Vocabulary from Physics in the late 19th Century’
In 1912/13 Russell famously argued that the notion of cause is a relic of a bygone age. The paper
explores the historical background of this claim. I argue that the elimination of causal vocabulary
took place in two steps.
1. In the late 18th and early 19th century physics textbooks usually defined physics and
mechanics in particular as the science of the ultimate causes of natural processes. These ultimate
causes were identified with the forces of the force laws. In the middle of the nineteenth century
the concept of force came under attack as a fundamental concept in (biology and) physics. The
paper discusses the various critiques of the force-concept. Force in physics became a derivative
concept. As a consequence of this development Gustav Kirchhoff famously denied in his 1876
introduction to his ‘Lectures on Mechanics’ that the aim of mechancs is to search for causes. This
completes the first step of the elimination of causal vocabulary.Causes in the sense of productive
causes (bringing about the effect) were eliminated from physics.
2. This development left intact conceptions of causation such a Mill’s, which was very influential
among scientists interested inphilosophical issues (such as Fechner and Mach for example).The
second step consists in replacing the latter kind of causal terminology by the concept of functional
dependence. When Mach introduced the notion of functional dependence in 1872 he used it to
explicate the notion of a causal relation. However, the late Mach and (early) Russell argued that
functional dependence should replace causation because the concept of causation is for various
reasons inadequate to capture the relations described in advanced physical theories. (The paper
traces the arguments for the replacement claim.) This completes the second and final step of the
elimination of causal vocabulary from physics.
Kile Jones (University of Glasgow), ‘Hume, Causality, and the New Hume Debate’
Does Hume believe that there is no such thing as causality in the external world? Or does he just
believe that causality cannot be known through experience? This debate, coined the ‘New Hume
Debate’ has become a prominent issue in contemporary Hume studies and philosophy of science.
This article covers Hume and his general position on causality, then explains the current debates
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over Hume, and ends with an argument, in the line of G. J. Warnock, that causality is nonfalsifiable, and thus that Hume is consistent in his analysis on causation.
Peter Kail (St. Peter’s College, Oxford), ‘Hume, Realism and Quasi-realism’
I consider recent attempts by commentators such as Beebee and Coventry to view Hume as a
quasi-realist, and find such a general orientation wanting.
George MacDonald Ross (University of Leeds), ‘Teaching the History of the Concept of
Cause’
This will be an interactive workshop rather than a formal paper. In UK philosophy departments,
there is (rightly, in my view) a strong preference for teaching the history of philosophy through
original texts, rather than using books about historical concepts. This raises two issues:
1. Many of the relevant texts were written in languages other than English (especially Latin)
which we do not expect our students to know. Consequently the texts must be given to the
students in translation. But if they are translated into modern English, apart from the standard
problem of the mis-match between the meanings of abstract terms in different languages, the use
of the modern term ‘cause’ will obscure conceptual differences between older and modern
understandings of the concept.
2. There is a similar problem with using English texts written more than a couple of centuries ago.
Words change their meaning over time, and students are often unaware that they are
misunderstanding a text by assuming words have their modern meaning. Moreover, many
philosophy students have had no previous experience of reading older English, and sometimes
they simply cannot make head of tail of early writers, such as Bacon or Hobbes.
The purpose of the workshop will be to explore various strategies for overcoming these problems.
Phyllis McKay and Jon Williamson (University of Kent), ‘Mechanisms and Causality’
We pursue the relation between causality and the comparatively neglected concept of mechanism.
Mechanisms have been neglected despite their vast importance to the sciences over several
centuries, at the heart of the burgeoning of many different scientific disciplines. The word
‘mechanism’ has been used in physics, to talk about the motions of the planets; throughout the
life sciences, to talk about things as diverse as protein synthesis and natural selection; in
economics as is shown by this year’s award of the Nobel prize for mechanism design; and is
increasingly used in other social sciences.
We have two interests in this paper: historical and current. Historically, it is interesting that while
causal talk was largely out of fashion in the sciences from around 1910-1990, the concept of
mechanism was growing in use. Does this show that causality and mechanism are quite distinct?
We argue that the sciences were actually always concerned with causality and a lot of causal
work was done by talk of mechanisms rather than causes.
In terms of current scientific and philosophical concerns we explore what use there is for talk of
mechanisms in the 21st C now that causality has been rendered scientifically respectable with the
creation of formal methods of causal inference by Judea Pearl and others. We argue that
mechanisms are still very important, and illustrate how they are used in a certain sort of causal
explanation. We argue, however, that different sciences think of and use mechanisms in quite
different ways, illustrating this by comparing protein synthesis and natural selection: two
mechanisms that have very close links, but that are nevertheless also quite different. We pick out
crucial differences – and crucial similarities that explain why they are both legitimately thought
of as mechanisms.
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Peter Millican (Hertford College, Oxford), ‘Hume, Causal Realism, and Free Will: The
State of the Debate’
Perhaps the strongest evidence against the ‘New Hume’ Causal realist interpretation derives from
Hume's use of his analysis of the idea of necessary connexion within his discussions of free will
and determinism. I have recently argued this case in detail twice, drawing critical responses from
Helen Beebee and Peter Kail respectively (the exchanges may be found in the Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society and Supplementary Volume 2007, and in the second edition of Read and
Richman's The New Hume Debate collection 2007). In this talk, I aim to show that their
responses are ineffective, and that the evidence against the New Hume interpretation is
overwhelming. Some of the talk will also be devoted to a general picture of Hume’s position on
causation, explaining why Causal realism would be quite contrary to his overall aims.
Walter Ott (Virginia Tech), ‘Causation, Intentionality, and the Case for Occasionalism’
Despite their influence on later philosophers such as Hume, Malebranche’s central arguments for
occasionalism remain deeply puzzling. In The Search After Truth, Malebranche argues that a
causal connection between a and b could obtain only if those events were necessarily connected.
But if there were such a necessary connection, it would be impossible to conceive of a’s occurring
without b. God’s will and its effects aside, we can always conceive of this happening; thus there
is no necessary connection, and hence no genuine causal connection, between a and b. The real
puzzle about this kind of argument has never been its form or structure but rather who is supposed
to be bothered by it. Even if we accept that the connection between two events is not logically
necessary, why should anyone believe that it is not a bona fide instance of causation? The ‘no
necessary connection’ argument seems to be aimed at a strawman. I argue that Malebranche in
fact gets it right: his philosophical opponents, and a key strand of scholasticism in particular, do
indeed hold that causation requires logical, not nomological, necessitation.
Solving this problem raises another. Even if the conflation of logical and causal necessity is
intelligible in its context, why is Malebranche so quick to deny that finite relata, and bodies in
particular, can be causes? Suárez, for example, endorses the logical necessity requirement but
also holds that objects can be secondary causes in virtue of their powers. I argue that
Malebranche’s dismissal of bodies as causes makes sense only if the requisite tie between cause
and effect involves intentionality. The scholastics’ notion of power underwrites the necessary
connection between causes and effects. A power is characterized by its ‘esse-ad’ or ‘beingtoward,’ its intrinsic directedness toward non-actual states of affairs. Like Descartes,
Malebranche rejects the attribution of powers to bodies on the grounds that esse-ad amounts to
intentionality, a feature only minds possess. The flip side of this, however, is that Malebranche
accepts the need for precisely the kind of connection intentionality alone can provide. What
makes a divine volition a suitable causal relatum is the intentional nature that ties it to its effects,
since the propositional content of a divine volition just is that volition’s effect. Having taken over
key elements of the scholastic conception of causation, Malebranche finds that in the context of
mechanism nothing but God’s will can fit this conception.
The intentionality requirement can also help us understand Malebranche’s argument against
attributing causal powers to finite minds. If a mind were to cause the motion of, say, one’s arm, it
would have to will the temporal antecedents of that event, which include brain events. But we
seem to move our arms all the time in the absence of such knowledge; so whatever the cause is, it
cannot be our minds. I show how this argument comes into focus if we assume that a cause must
include its effect as its intentional object.
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Pauline Phemister (University of Edinburgh), ‘Monads and machines’
Leibniz’s pre-established harmony advances a harmony between the realm of efficient causes and
the realm of final causes. In the first, bodies act in accordance with mechanical laws of motion; in
the second, minds or souls act according to what each perceives as being the best. Each realm is
supposed to operate without interference from the other. Within the realm of bodies, Leibniz
distinguishes living ‘machines of nature’ (organic bodies) from artificial machines. The former
are constructed by divine wisdom through pre-formation which requires that they are ‘machines
in the least of their parts’. In addition, each organic body must also possess a monad that is
‘dominant in the machine’. This paper explores the role of this monad ‘dominating in the
machine’ in ensuring that the organic body is a machine ‘in the least of its parts’, but also
questions whether its presence in the ‘machines of nature’ undermines the overall coherence of
Leibniz’s account.
Stathis Psillos (University of Athens), ‘Regularities all the way down: Thomas Brown’s
Philosophy of Causation’
David Hume has been seen as making available a view of causation as it is in the world that can
be called the Regularity View of Causation (RVC):
c causes e iff
i.
c is spatiotemporally contiguous to e;
ii.
e succeeds c in time; and
iii.
all events of type C (i.e., events that are like c) are regularly followed by (or
are constantly conjoined with) events of type E (i.e., events like e).
A corollary of RVC is that there is no extra element in causation, which is of a fully distinct kind,
like a necessary connexion or a productive relation—something, moreover, that would explain or
ground or underpin the regular association. RVC has been taken to be the official Humean view.
Dissenting voices have painted a picture of a new Hume: the New Hume was a causal realist,
albeit a sceptical one. This interpretative line has been traced to the work of Norman KempSmith, though it was developed in the early 1970s by John P. Wright and, more recently, has been
re-invigorated in the work of Edward Craig and Galen Strawson.
It might be ironic that this line of interpretation of Hume’s account of causation can be found in
the work of the first unequivocal defender of RVC, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Brown
(1778-1820)—whose own formulation and defence of RVC, in his Inquiry into the Relation of
Cause and Effect, is perhaps the best available.
The view that causation is regularity did not develop in an intellectual vacuum. It was an attempt
to remove efficiency from causation and hence to view causation as a relation of dependence
among discrete events. Brown revolted against Thomas Reid’s power-based account of causation.
He took it that “the invariableness of antecedence and consequence, which is represented as only
a sign of causation, is itself the only essential circumstance of causation; that in the sequence of
events, we are not merely ignorant of any thing intermediate, but have in truth no reason to
suppose it as really existing, or if any thing intermediate exist, no reason to consider it but as
itself another physical antecedent of the consequent which we knew before”. In his attempt to
defend this view, Brown advanced a number of important arguments against powers—defending
what might be called the identity-theory of powers: powers are nothing but the regularity, the
uniformity of sequence. He also articulated a number of arguments aiming to show “the sources
of various illusions” which have lead philosophers to posit powers and to consider causation
something more “mysterious” than regularity. Brown also made an extra effort to neutralise
Reid’s chief objection against the regularity view, viz., that there are sequences that are regular
but not causal.
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The paper articulates and explains Brown’s views along two dimensions: his criticism of Hume
(for allowing the conceivability of powers as distinct from their manifestations) and of Reid (for
making powers the locus of causation). It discusses the relevance of Brown’s strategy and
arguments for the contemporary defences of metaphysically thin views of causation and in
particular of the regularity view.
Constantine Sandis (Oxford Brookes University), ‘The Influence of Hume’s Empiricist
Theory of Meaning on his Account of Causation’
Until relatively recently Hume was thought to be propounding a ‘regularity theory of causation’
according to which there exists no causal necessity in nature, but only regularity (Ayer, Mackie,
Stroud, Woolhouse, etc.). The last few decades have seen a wealth of new interpretations of
Hume, according to which he was either a ‘sceptical realist’ who claimed that there may well be
causal necessity in nature (and perhaps even believed that there was), but that we could never
know whether or not this is certainly the case, since neither reason nor observation can help us
here (Craig, Wright, G. Strawson, etc.) or a ‘projectivist’ who believed that our causal talk is an
expression of our inferential habits (Blackburn, Beebee, etc.) In this paper I argue that both the
traditional and the modern interpretations of Hume are mistaken. The problem is that they do not
take Hume’s empiricist account of meaning seriously.
Hume’s empiricism dictates that all meaningful ideas are derived from impressions. All other
ideas, he claims, lack any meaning whatsoever and should be consigned to the flames (along with
all other metaphysical and religious speculations). This reasoning leads him to claim that since we
have no impression of a necessary connection beyond that of an ‘internal impression of the mind’
(about which Hume is a full-blown realist), that is all we could possibly mean by the term. We
must consequently reject the very idea of a necessary connection in a more metaphysical sense,
for such an idea (from here onwards capitalised as ‘Necessary Connection’) would be devoid of
any meaning whatsoever. But if one cannot meaningfully state that there is such a thing
(Necessary Connection), by the same token, it also follows that one cannot meaningfully state
that there isn’t one, or that – for all we know - there may or may not be one. Nor is there any
meaningful idea of Necessary Connection available in our minds for us to project unto the world
(we cannot meaningfully talk ‘as if’ there were Necessary Connections in the world if the very
notion of such a thing is meaningless, at best would be employing the term ‘necessary
connection’ in senseless delusion). So it is that when Hume finally presents us with his two
definition of what the term ‘cause’ might necessarily mean all traces of the notion of a Necessary
Connection have disappeared. Hume’s view is that any meaningful notion of cause or causation
will not be in the least concerned with any notion of necessity beyond that of existing internal
impressions of the mind (which we have knowledge of).
In the second half of this paper I look at why Hume (in my opinion correctly) did not take his
empiricist conclusion to pose any threat whatsoever to scientific enquiry. This involves sketching
a picture of what a truly Humean science would like, complete with an account of the meaning
and explanatory role (if any) of the notions of a ‘force’ and a ‘law’ of nature. I contrast this
picture to various modern views in the philosophy of science (and, in particular, the philosophy of
physics). I end by comparing Hume’s view of science and causation to that of both the early and
the later Wittgenstein, concluding that Hume has much in common with the latter.
Eric Schliesser (Leiden University), ‘Colin MacLaurin’s Newtonian refutation of Spinoza,
and the Fate of Final Causes in the Hands of Hume’
In this paper I discuss the philosophic and historical significance of Colin MacLaurin’s brief but
stinging attack on Spinoza’s metaphysics in his posthumously published, An Account of Sir Isaac
Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries (London, 1748). The main point of the paper is to describe
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how Newton’s challenge to the independent authority of philosophic reflection was perceived at
the start of the 18th century and how this evolving tension (between philosophy/metaphysics and
natural philosophy/science) impacted which kinds of causes were perceived to be legitimate.
In his Account, MacLaurin argues from the (perceived) empirical inadequacy of the
consequences of Spinoza’s doctrines to the claim that the Cartesian method of inspecting “true”
ideas (MacLaurin cites Ethics Ip8s2 and The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect) leads to
absurdity even in the context of an otherwise coherent system. The mere existence of
MacLaurin’s treatment undermines a widely accepted historiographic myth that members of the
Scottish Enlightenment (Hume, Adam Smith, Reid, etc) only knew and thought of Spinoza
through Bayle’s treatment of Spinoza (cf. Kemp Smith 1941). For MacLaurin was the most
influential and widely read Scottish Newtonian of the first half of the 18 th century. This paper
follows, thus, the recent trend to re-integrate the history of philosophy with science in the early
modern period (e.g., Hatfield, Garber, Friedman) as well as contribute to a better understanding of
the background assumptions necessary to recover a proper interpretation of Hume’s reception of
Newton (and Spinoza).
The paper is divided in two main sections. First, I analyze the nature and context of MacLaurin’s
arguments against several elements of Spinoza’s system. MacLaurin’s criticism offers a series of
inferences to the best explanation which all rely on the empirical success of Newton’s physics.
(MacLaurin is explicit that he is using his refutation of Spinoza – and related criticisms of Leibniz
– to undermine Cartesian philosophy.) In so doing, MacLaurin aims to show what he perceives to
be the absurdity and bankruptcy of a) a philosophical methodology accepted not just by
Rationalist followers of Descartes but also by their Empiricist critics, that is, the inspecting of
ideas as objects of the mind; b) the metaphysical position that the universe can be best compared
to a machine in which some general quantity is conserved (in Spinoza the proportion between rest
and motion). To make the full implications of MacLaurin’s treatment (of a and b) clear it has to
be understood in light of a further context: MacLaurin’s attempt to dismiss the Spinozistic attack
on final causes in order to defend the legitimacy of natural religion (most familiar to the reader
through the character Cleanthes in Hume’s Dialogues). For MacLaurin, Descartes Spinoza (but
also Berkeley) privilege illegitimately first principles and norms of enquiry beyond those
implicated in the practice of Newtonian experimental philosophy.
The second section of the paper briefly sketches how Hume's treatment of causation, with its
rejection of final (and other Newtonian) causes, can be understood as a move in a newlydeveloping struggle between philosophers and scientists.
Tad Schmaltz (Duke University), ‘Primary and Secondary Causes in Descartes’s Physics’
I consider in light of its scholastic background the distinction in Descartes’s physics between God
as the ‘universal and primary’ cause of motion and ‘laws of nature’ as the ‘secondary and
particular’ causes of it. Though there is a prominent interpretation on which Descartes offered an
occasionalist account of body-body interaction, I argue that he in fact offered what, in the context
of scholastic debates regarding causation, is the antipode of such an account, namely, the view
that bodies rather than God are causally responsible for natural changes in motion.
Peter Simons (University of Leeds), ‘Causation in Whitehead’
For a cosmologist and philosopher of nature, Whitehead is surprisingly reticent about the notion
of causation. Despite being based on the idea of a spread and succession of events, his writings on
the philosophy of nature even explicitly disown or avoid the concept: in The Concept of Nature
(1920) he writes, “causation raises the memory of discussions based upon theories of nature
which are alien to my own”; and causation does not figure among “the ultimate physical
concepts”. By the time Whitehead came in the mid- to late twenties to formulate the philosophy
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of organism, most fully in Process and Reality (1929), causation begins to play a role in his
metaphysics, especially through the doctrine of prehensions and the rejection of any selfsufficiency of actual occasions. It is in the nature of all actual occasions to be determined in part
by others: both the eternal objects which confer on them their general nature, and the pre-existing
actual occasions which they directly or indirectly prehend. Whitehead also leaves room for a final
or teleological concept of causation in his idea that actual occasions are partly self-determining
according to their “subjective aim”. Yet even though causation is now accommodated, it is
neither metaphysically basic nor terminologically prominent, but seems to emerge as a
subordinate pattern within the overall mosaic of events. The paper will draw on Whitehead’s
mature philosophy and the discussion of commentators from Emmet to Lowe in assessing the
place of causation in Whitehead’s metaphysics; it will attempt to explicate his conception in more
standard and tractable terminology; and it will appraise the adequacy or otherwise of his
conception.
Fred Wilson (University of Toronto), ‘Mill on the Logical Structure of Causal Theories’
It has become customary to argue that there is no one method to science, there are many different
methods. John Stuart Mill thought otherwise. I propose to argue that Mill’s case is not without
merit. I examine Mill’s account of explanation in science and his account of the logical structure
of casual theories and their role in scientific research. I then go on to show how this view of
causal theories enables one to make sense of two widely different cases, the Newtonian synthesis
and the Freudian synthesis. This is not a broad sample, but the fact that Mill’s account of science
can deal with these two very different theories goes some way, I suggest, to justifying the claim
that science has in it a common method, and justifying moreover that claim that Mill has in broad
outline at least described that method and showed it provided a set of norms conformity to which
is conducive to the discovery, within our fallible limits, of matter-of-fact truth.
David Wootton (University of York), ‘Galileo: Causation, Representation, Intervention’
Scholastic natural philosophy was addicted to causation: “We have scientific knowledge when we
know the cause,” said Aristotle. Galileo in his early work De motu shares this assumption:
experience alone never constitutes scientific knowledge, and knowledge of causation often allows
us to dismiss experience as irrelevant because shaped by accidental features. (Mathematics is not
science because it does not deal with causation.)
Galileo did not abandon arguments about causes – his account of bodies floating in water (1612)
and his tidal theory (1616, 1632) are both presented as causal arguments. But his accounts of
falling bodies and of projectiles are accounts of mathematical patterns, of laws not causes: this is
scientific knowledge without knowledge of the cause. It so happens that Galileo’s most successful
science is law-science not cause-science, which has led some commentators to see Galileo as
having escaped from the idea of causation. This is a mistake: but Galileo does think there is
science without knowledge of causation; his theory of science is, we might say, causeindependent rather than cause-dependent.
Does Galileo have a consistent idea of scientific knowledge that unites his different (causal and
non-causal) types of scientific enquiry? I will argue that science for Galileo involves representation (the building of models) and intervention (the demonstration that variations in the model
produce predictable effects). Scientific knowledge for Galileo depends on having models which
are both realistic and variable: this places him firmly in the maker’s knowledge tradition. For
Galileo scientific knowledge is inseparable from experimental knowledge.
Where does Galileo get his non-scholastic idea of science from? In 1600 Galileo read Gilbert’s
De magnete. The importance of De magnete is underestimated in recent scholarship. Here was a
book grounded in experiments which produced a new type of philosophical knowledge – and yet
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the cause of magnetism was occult: this new knowledge was not knowledge of causation. It was
however knowledge based on representation, variation, prediction – on experimentation. In
arguing that Galileo’s idea of scientific knowledge derives from Gilbert, I will be arguing that it
does not derive from the other most likely candidate: Alhacen, Alhazen, or Ibn al-Haytham (9651039), whose experimental optics was available to Galileo in the 1572 edition. Gilbert, and
Galileo following Gilbert, transformed the relationship between science and causation.
Anna C. Zielinska (Université Pierre Mendès, France), ‘Indeterminacy of Causation in the
Philosophy of Action’
Causation in the philosophy of action is one of the most debated questions. The agent is either
seen as causing events or causing actions, or as acting as a result of a cause; there is a general
interest in the question of what is to be identified as a cause, and what is rather a reason for
action. Those questions are extremely lively, particuarly since the mid-century, but it is clear that
we cannot properly understand their challenges unless we look back to the last four centuries of
philosophy.
With Georg von Wright I would like to argue that the understanding of the role of causation in the
philosophy of action depends upon our understanding of the concept of action itself, and, even
more than that, of the concept of cause. Those two notions acquired their essential role in history
of philosophy thanks to Aristotle; nevertheless, Aristotelian multiplicity of causes was rejected,
and an idealised version of causation was famously discussed by Hume. However, it might seem
that some Aristotelian intuitions should be preserved, and both action and cause should receive a
much less schematic treatment. In the framework of pure rationalism aiming at universally valid
conclusions imposed by Descartes, some ancient philosophical concepts were taken out of context
assigning them a clear and useful place. They were subsequently investigated as such, and their
explanatory role was lost, since they begged for explanation too. This concept had thus a career
similar to several other notions coming from the Antiquity, like virtue or duty. The extreme
version of causation conceived as something purely logical is to be found in Spinoza’s Ethics,
where he uses this notion to demonstrate basic unity of the world as caused by the only entity that
has no cause itself; God is recognized mainly by his place in the chain of causes.
Contemporary philosophy of action faced with this tradition must ask itself whether the notion of
cause can be used in the same abstract way as it was in the case of post-Cartesian metaphysics.
The answer I would like to propose is negative, and I want to show it using examples from both
16th and 20th century philosophy. I shall also use this opportunity to show how successive
modifications of philosophical conceptions of freedom were forming a resourceful background
for discussions of what causation might mean.