Selected Lecture Notes on Cause.1
[Lecture Note #1:]
Concepts and Methods I. Cause.
Considered last time the variety of meanings of necessity, rationality, chance and fortune in the explanation of change and motion.
For much of the tradition of scientific explanation from the Greeks to the present[,] scientific explanation in discovery and statement of causes. Aristotle—we think that we know when we have grasped the cause.
Later (after the mechanical explanations of the 17th century) equation of scientific explanation with necessity—determinism and science. More recently, under the popularization of quantum mechanics, supposition that we have abandoned “cause” because we have abandoned “necessity” for “chance” or “indeterminacy” in one branch of physics.
Proceed today therefore from questions of relation of cause to reason and necessity, to making and knowing, to art and chance, to ask what is meant by cause in these various aspects.
Cause in its broad sense a “reason”—and answer to the question why. Discussion of cause complicated by facts that (1) the “why” explained by one conception of cause seems improper or impossible from the point of view of another—therefore say that science does not ask why, but only what (or sometimes how)—but to know what or how is to know the cause, (2) causes can (in some conceptions of cause) be given not only for change but for the substance or nature of thing or for the schemata of its relations to other things.
As Aristotle gives the history of causation in Bk I of the Metaphysics, previous emphasis on material cause (Democritus) and formal cause (Pythagoreans and Plato) with some recognition of final cause connected with the latter. Aristotle’s own contribution, he thought, in emphasizing importance of efficient cause. Likewise interrelations of the four made what his predecessors said seem only lisping anticipations of his doctrine. In turn criticism of Aristotle by Platonists that he does not grasp nature of that which he explains, and of atomists that he intrudes a needless teleology.
Examine in sequence kinds of cause.
(1) Dialectical—cause as reason (Aristotle would have called it formal).
Explanation in terms of the divided line. Consequences—explanation mathematical in character and sciences unified (more exactly[,] dialectic the one method).
The two necessities—rational and external.
Whitehead’s ingression of eternal ideas—influence of every actual situation on everything else.
Imitation (and reminiscence)
Einstein formula never derived from experience.
(2) Logistic—cause as configuration of elements (matter).
Explanation scientific when a least element or particle chosen and calculations made of its motions and combinations. Characteristics of all things explained by these combinations and changes.
Causes not reasons but matter in motion which supplies the reasons. Analogy of billiard balls and their bombardments. Different nature of the mathematics
Problem of chance.
(3) Problematic—kinds of causes—Aristotle’s four causes. Peculiar place of the formal cause—peculiar place of human soul in biological sciences.
Contrast to Dialectical and logistic.
Causes of substances and artificial things; and causes of changes. Cf. art and nature in dialectical and logistic.
(4) Operational—cause as efficient—analogy of what man does to produce effect like that achieved by nature.
Cf. Peirce’s criticism of J. S. Mill as example of dialectical (cause defined in terms of premises of syllogism) criticism of problematic conception of cause (weaknesses found in distinctions)[.] Cf. also Hume.
[Lecture Note #2:]
Concepts and Methods[.] Cause[.]
If cause to be considered as principle—what does it account for and how?
First, in respect to methods. Theory[,] practice[,] production
Universal—basic analogy between production of art and nature. Common use of model, differently interpreted.
Dialectical—causation identical with generation or creation. Maker like an artificer at beginning, and intelligent organic whole as continuing process.
A series of instantaneous creations; identity and diversity. Causation—Model imitates.
Theory—Reason and Necessity
Operational—explanation by model constructed by inquirer (not discovered beyond process).
Variety of models or choice among models.
Philosophie des als ob.
Production—model—many agents
Particular—denial of the analogy between art and nature. Problem is rather the relation of individual intelligence to what is to be explained.
Logistic—inquiry affecting nature of man.
Cf. Democritus frag[ment] 33[:] “Nature and instruction are similar; for instruction transforms the man, and in transforming creates his nature.” Motion of matter
Science & Practice
Problematic—Nature and intelligence both kinds of causes (contrasted to chance and fortune)
Nature internal principle of motion, art or intelligence external. Knowledge through cause leads to identity. Substances and properties.
3 sciences—3 causes
Universal cause = eternal or arbitrary model it imitates; explanation on analogy of model indicated by mathematics or by diagramming. Particular change, including learning, a result of motion of matter (Books of Democritus with titles including the word “cause”: Heavenly causes, aerial causes, surface causes, causes of fire and things in fire, causes of sounds, causes of seeds, plants and fruits, causes of animals (3 books), mixed causes, on the magnet)—causes as rearrangements of least parts; finally, differentiation of kinds of changes, and kinds of causes by which to explain them, identity of idea and thing in true knowledge.
Turn to principles—how do causes explain, and what?
Holoscopic principles—explain being and becoming. Difference of the links in the various causes between knowledge and known seen in the different relations of causation to necessity.
Comprehensive principles—explain becoming by being[,] both the generation and the motion of that which becomes. Cause the reason—compatible with necessity [are] the interrelations of parts: supplementary explanations.
Reflexive principles—explain generation and motion
Chance and fortune are kinds of cause—distinct from natural causes. Causation compatible with necessity but not dependent on it. First cause.
Meroscopic principles
Simple principles—explanation of state of motion and rest in terms of prior state of motion and rest
Causation depends on necessity—not however an explanation of the atoms themselves (Aristotle—beginning [is] chance, thereafter nothing but necessity)
Familiar dilemma—freedom vs. necessity.
Actional principles—explanation of system of states and processes on basis of constructed model. Only probability, no necessity.
Interpretation and organization
Ontic.
Ontological—whole rational[,] organic.
Entitative—man a microcosm (Dem[ocritus] frag[ment] 34).
Methodic2—
Existential—whole phenomenal variety of perspectives
Essentialist—many aspects of any situation—variety of sciences[,] all employing proper causes.
Operational3—causes—phenomenal sequence in time
Logistic—causes—schematic arrangement of parts—seeds.
Problematic—causes—definitive relations of entities and events; fact and reasoned facts.
Dialectical—causes—comprehensive rational of interrelated aspects of whole.