Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

We have already referred at some length ([9-11]) to the philosophy which has endeavoured to reduce all change, or at least all corporeal change, to mechanical change; all qualities, powers, forces, energies of the universe, to ultimate particles or atoms of matter in motion; and all efficient causality to a flow or transference of spatial motion from particle to particle or from body to body. A full analysis of all such theories belongs to Cosmology. But we may recall a few of the more obvious considerations already urged against them.

In the first place, the attempt to explain all qualities in the material universe—all the powers, forces, energies, of matter—by maintaining that objectively and extramentally they are all purely quantitative realities, all spatial motions of matter—does not explain the qualitative factors and distinctions in the world of our sense experience at all, but simply transfers the problem of explaining them from the philosophy of matter to the philosophy of mind, by making them all subjective after the manner of Kant's analysis of experience ([11]).

In the second place, when we endeavour to conceive, to apprehend intellectually, how motion, or indeed any other physical or real entity, could actually pass or be transferred from agens to patiens, whether these be spatially in contact or not, we find such a supposition positively unintelligible. [pg 394] Motion is not a substance; and if it is an accident it cannot migrate from subject to subject. The idea that corporeal efficient causality—even mechanical causality—can be explained by such a transference of actual accidental modes of being from agens to patiens is based on a very crude and erroneous conception of what an accidental mode of being really is ([65]).

The more we reflect on the nature of real change in the universe, and of the efficient causality whereby it is realized, the more convinced we must become that there can be no satisfactory explanation of these facts which does not recognize and take account of this great fundamental fact: that contingent real being is not all actual, that it is partly potential and partly actual; that therefore our concepts of “passive potentiality” and “active power” are not mere subjective mental motions, with at best a mere regulative or systematizing function (after the manner of Kant's philosophy), but that they are really and objectively valid concepts—concepts which from the time of Aristotle have given philosophers the only insight into the nature of efficient causality which is at any rate satisfactory and intelligible as far as it goes.

Of this great fact the advocates of the mechanical theory of efficient causality have, in the third place, failed to take account. And it is partly because with the revival of atomism at the dawn of modern philosophy this traditional Aristotelian conception of contingent being as potential and actual was lost sight of ([64]), that such a crude and really unintelligible account of efficient causality, as a “flow of motion,” has been able to find such continued and widespread acceptance.

Another reason of the prevalence of this tendency to “explain” all physical efficient causality as a propagation of spatial motions of matter is to be found in the sensist view of the human mind which confounds intellectual thought with mental imagery, which countenances only picturable factors in its “explanations,” and denounces as “metaphysical,” “occult,” and “unverifiable” all explanatory principles such as forces, powers, potentialities, etc., which are not directly picturable in the imagination.[488] And it is a curious fact that it is such philosophers themselves who are really guilty of the charge which they lay at the door of the traditional metaphysics: the charge of offering explanations—of efficient causality, for instance—which are really no explanations. For while they put forward their theory of the “flow of motion” as a real explanation of the quomodo of efficient causality—and the ultimate and only explanation of it within reach of the human mind, if we are to accept their view of the matter—the exponent of the traditional metaphysics more modestly confines himself to setting forth the inevitable implications of the fact of efficient causality, and, without purporting to offer any positive explanation of the real nature of action or efficient influence, he is content to supplement his analysis negatively by pointing out the unintelligible and illusory character of their proffered “explanations”.

In the exact methods of the physical sciences, their quantitative evaluation of all corporeal forces whether mechanical, physical, or chemical, in terms of mechanical work, which is measured by the motion of matter through space, and in the great physical generalization known as the law of the equivalence of energies, or of the equality of action and reaction,—we can detect yet further apparent reasons for the conception of efficient causality as [pg 395] a mere transference or interchange of actual physical and measurable entities among bodies. It is an established fact not only that all corporeal agents gradually lose their energy or power of action by actually exercising this power, but that this loss of energy is in direct proportion to the amount of energy gained by the recipients of their action; and this fact would naturally suggest the mental picture of a transference of some actual measurable entity from cause to effect. But it does not necessarily imply such transference—even if the latter were intelligible, which, as we have seen, it is not. The fact is quite intelligibly explained by the natural supposition that in proportion as the agens exhausts its active power by exercise the patiens gains in some form of actuality. Similarly, the fact that all forms of corporeal energy can be measured in terms of mechanical energy does not at all imply that they all really are mechanical energy, but only that natural agents can by the use of one form of energy produce another form in equivalent quantity. And finally, the law of the conservation of corporeal energy in the universe is explained by the law of the equality of action and reaction, and without recourse to the unintelligible supposition that this sum-total of energy is one unchanging and unchangeable actuality.

There is just one other consideration which at first sight appears to favour the “transference” theory of causality, but which on analysis shows how illusory the proffered explanation is, and how unintelligible the simplest phenomenon of change must be to those who fail to grasp the profound significance of the principle that all real being which is subject to change must of necessity be partly potential and partly actual. We allude to the general assumption of physical scientists that corporeal action of whatsoever kind takes place only on contact, whether mediate or immediate, between the bodies in question.[489] Now it is well to bear in mind that this is not a self-evident truth or principle, but only an hypothesis, a very legitimate hypothesis and one which works admirably, but still only an hypothesis. It implies the assumption that some sort of substance—called the universal ether—actually exists and fills all space, serving as a medium for the action of gravitation, light, radiant heat, electricity and magnetism, between the earth and the other planets, the sun and the stars. This whole supposition is the only thinkable alternative to actio in distans. If those bodies really act on one another—and the fact that they do is undeniable,—and if there were no such medium between them, then the causal influence of one body should be able to produce an effect in another body spatially distant from, and not physically connected by any material medium with, the former. Hence two questions: Is this alternative, actio in distans, imaginable? i.e. can we form any positive imagination image of how this would take place? And secondly: Is it thinkable, conceivable, intrinsically possible? We need not hesitate to answer the former question in the negative. But as to the latter question all we can say is that we have never met any cogent proof of the intrinsic impossibility of actio in distans. The efficient action of a finite cause implies that it has active power and is [pg 396] conserved in existence with this power by the Creator or First Cause, that this power is reduced to act by the Divine concursus, and that dependently on this cause so acting some change takes place, some potentiality is actualized in some other finite being. Nothing more than this is involved in the general concept of efficient causality. Of course real influence on the one side, and real dependence on the other, imply some real connexion of cause with effect. But is spatial connexion a necessary condition of real connexion? Is a physical, phenomenal, imaginable, efflux of some entity out of the cause into the effect, either immediately or through some medium as a channel, a necessary condition for real influence? There is nothing of the kind in spiritual causality; and to demand anything of the kind for causality in general would be to make imagination, not thought, the test and measure of the real. But perhaps spatial connexion is essential to the real connexion involved in this particular kind of causality, corporeal causality? Perhaps. But it has never been proved. Too little is known about the reality of space, about the ultimate nature of material phenomena and their relation to our minds, to justify anything like dogmatism on such an ultimate question. It may well be that if we had a deeper insight into these things we could pronounce actio in distans to be absolutely incompatible with the essences of the things which do as a matter of fact constitute the actual corporeal universe. But in the absence of such insight we cannot pronounce actio in distans to be intrinsically impossible. Physical scientists assume that as a matter of fact bodies do not act in distans. Granted the assumption to be correct, it still remains an open question whether by a miracle they could act in distans, i.e. whether or not such action would be incompatible with their nature as finite corporeal causes.

Owing to a very natural tendency to rest in imagination images we are inclined not only to pronounce as impossible any process the mode of which is not positively imaginable, but also to think that we rightly understand a process once we have provided ourselves with an imagination image of it—when as a matter of fact this image may cover an entirely groundless conception or theory of the process. Hence the fairly prevalent idea that while actio in distans is impossible, the interaction of bodies on contact is perfectly intelligible and presents no difficulties. When a billiard ball in motion strikes another at rest it communicates some or all of its motion to the other, and that is all: nothing simpler! And then all the physical, chemical, and substantial changes in the material universe are reducible to this common denominator! The atomic philosophy, with its two modest postulates of matter and motion, is a delightfully simple philosophy; but unfortunately for its philosophical prestige it does not explain causality or change. Nor can these facts be explained by any philosophy which ignores the most elementary implication of all real change: the implication that changing reality involves real passive potentialities and real active powers or forces in the phenomena which constitute the changing reality of the universe.

105. The Subject of Efficient Causality. Occasionalism.—We have established the objective validity of the concept of efficient causality and analysed its implications. There have been philosophers who, while admitting the objective validity [pg 397] of the concept, have maintained that no creature, or at least no corporeal creature, can be an efficient cause. Efficient influence is, in their view, incompatible with the nature of a corporeal substance: only spiritual substances can be efficient causes: corporeal things, conditions, and happenings, are all only the occasions on which spiritual substances act efficiently in and through all created nature. Hence the name of the theory: Occasionalism. There are two forms of it: the milder, which admits that created spirits or minds are efficient causes; and the more extreme view, according to which no creature can be an efficient cause, inasmuch as efficient causality is essentially a Divine attribute, a prerogative of the Divinity.