Elements of metaphysics

by A. E. Taylor

So far Mill’s critics among the inductive logicians. But we can push the argument a step further, and show that it leads logically to a dilemma. (1) There cannot really be more than one “cause” for one “effect”; yet (2) in any sense in which we can single out one “effect” from the rest of the contents of the universe, and assign it its “cause,” there is always a possibility of the Plurality of Causes. We will consider the alternative of this dilemma separately.

(1) Cause and effect must be strictly correlative. For to say that there may be variations in the cause not followed by corresponding variations in the effect, is to say that there can be conditions which condition nothing; and to admit variation in the effect without variation in the cause, is to allow that there are occurrences which are at once, as effects, determined, and yet again are not determined, by the assemblage of their antecedents. Thus Plurality of Causes is excluded by the very conception of a cause as the totality of conditions. Following up this line of thought further, we see that it leads to a perplexing result. The “totality of conditions” is never a real totality. For there are no such things as isolated effects and causes in the world of events. The whole fact which we call an effect is never complete until we have taken into account its entire connection with everything else in the universe. And similarly, the whole assemblage of conditions includes everything which goes to make up the universe. But when we have thus widened our conception of the cause and the effect, both cause and effect have become identical with one another and with the whole contents of the universe. And thus Causation itself has disappeared as a form of interconnection between the elements of Reality in our attempt to work out its logical implications.

This is an inevitable consequence of the continuous interconnection of all Reality established by our examination of the problem of the One and the Many in Chapter II. In other words, you never have reached the full cause of any event until you have taken into account the totality of its conditions, i.e. the totality of its connections with all the rest of existence. But this totality cannot be obtained in the form presupposed by the phrase “totality of conditions” as a plurality of events. For to obtain it in this fashion would mean to sum an infinite series. But when you abandon the form of the infinite series, cause and effect alike become identical with the systematic whole of Reality.

(2) On the other hand, the usefulness of the causal postulate depends entirely upon our ability to establish single threads of Causality within the stream of events, i.e. on our ability to assign particular assemblages of events, less than the “totality,” to particular subsequent events as their necessary and sufficient condition. Unless we can do this we can formulate no rules for the practical employment of means for the production of a desired result, and, as we have already seen, it is the necessity of knowing the means to our ends which is the primary, and indeed the sole, motive for the establishment of the causal postulate. Now, to effect this assignation of particular causes to particular effects, we have to make use of a distinction which is more practically necessary than theoretically defensible. We distinguish between indispensable conditions and accessory circumstances, which may or may not be present without affecting the nature of the special result in question.

Now it is clear that the making of this distinction depends upon the separation of a certain part of the “total” stream of events from the rest, and its isolation as “the special result in question.” And this isolation, as we have seen, must always rest upon arbitrary abstraction. When once this arbitrary abstraction of some one part or aspect of the stream of events from its context has been made, we are compelled to recognise the existence of the context from which we have abstracted by saying that any effect may enter into or form part of a variety of different larger effects, according to the nature of the context in which it occurs. And, from the very principle of the complete correlation of condition and conditioned, it follows that what we call the special or partial effect will be preceded by varying conditions, according as it enters into different larger wholes or contexts. Thus any form of the causal postulate of which we can make effective use necessitates the recognition of that very Plurality of Causes which we have seen to be logically excluded by the conception of cause with which science works. As we contended above, any form of the principle in which it is true is useless, and any form in which it is useful is untrue.

The final result of our discussion, then, is that the causal postulate according to which events are completely determined by antecedent events leads to the belief that the stream of events is discontinuous. This belief is inherently self-contradictory, and therefore ultimately untrue. The principle of Ground and Consequence cannot therefore be adequately represented by the causal postulate, however indispensable that postulate may be in practice. Whether the conception of a continuous stream of events affords any better formulation of the principle of the systematic interconnection of all Reality, we shall be better able to judge after the discussions of our third book. If it does not, we shall have to recognise that the conception of temporal succession itself is not adequate to express the way in which the Many and the One of real existence are united, i.e. that time is not real, but only phenomenal.

§ 10. A word may be said here as to the nature of the “necessity” which we ascribe to the connection of cause and effect. There can be little doubt that the origin of this “necessity” must be found in our own feelings of constraint when our action is dictated from without. It is clear, however, that we have no right to ascribe this feeling of constraint to the event which is determined by its connection with the rest of the system of Reality. All that is meant in science by the “necessity” of the causal relation is that given the conditions the result follows, and not otherwise. In other words, if you assert the existence of the conditions, you are logically bound to assert the existence of the result. The constraint thus falls within ourselves, and is of a hypothetical kind. So long as your purpose is to think logically, you feel constraint or compulsion when, after asserting the condition, you seek for any reason to escape asserting the result. It is one of the conspicuous services of Hume to philosophy, that he for the first time brought out clearly this subjective character of the “necessity” of the causal relation, though it must be admitted that he went on to complicate his argument by an admixture of error when he sought to base the necessity of the logical inference from Ground to Consequence on the psychological principle of Association.

§ 11. Before closing our discussion of Causality, we must briefly take note of certain special difficulties by which the problem has been complicated in the systems of some eminent philosophers. A distinction has often been drawn between Transeunt and Immanent Causality. In so far as the changes of state of one thing are regarded as occasions of change of state in others, the relation has been technically called one of Transeunt Causality; the determination of a thing’s change of state by its own previous changes has, on the other hand, been named Immanent Causality. As a consequence of this distinction, grave difficulties have arisen in connection with the notion of Transeunt Causality. Such Causality, i.e. the determination of the changes of one thing by the changes of others, is of course an essential feature in the pre-scientific view of the world of experience as a multiplicity of interacting things.

For systematic Pluralism this conception inevitably presents insoluble difficulties. For it is impossible to reconcile the ultimate absolute independence of the various real things with the admission that the sequence of states in any one depends upon sequences of states in any of the others. If a plurality of things are ultimately independent of each other, it is manifest that each must form a complete whole, self-determined and containing the ground of its details entirely within itself. Conversely, if a thing cannot be explained by a principle of purely internal systematic connection, but requires for its complete explanation reference to an outside reality with which it stands in interconnection, its independence can be only partial. Hence Pluralism, in its more consistent forms, has always sought to deny the reality of Transeunt Causality, and to reduce all causal relations to the internal determination of the states of a thing by its own previous states. Historically, the principal devices which have been adopted for this purpose are (a) Occasionalism, and (b) the theory of a Pre-established Harmony.

(a) Occasionalism. Occasionalism has appeared in the history of Philosophy as a professed solution of the special problem of the apparent interaction between body and mind, taken as two entirely disparate and independent realities, though it is equally applicable in a wider sense to the more general problem of the apparent connection of any two independent real things. The doctrine is most closely associated with the names of the Cartesians, Arnold Geulincx and N. Malebranche, but was in part also adopted by Berkeley as a consequence of his belief in the pure passivity of non-mental things. Starting from the Cartesian conception of mind and body as two entirely independent and disparate kinds of reality, Geulincx and Malebranche were confronted by the apparent fact that mental states lead to modifications of bodily state in voluntary motion, and vice versâ, bodily states determine the occurrence of mental states whenever a sensation follows upon a stimulus.