International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1 / Philosophy and Metaphysics

by Unknown

We can throw light from another side upon the thought that lies in this outcome of the empiristic interpretation of the causal law. If we still desire to give the name "effect" to an event that is preceded uniformly by no other, and that we therefore have to regard as arising out of nothing, then we must say that it is the effect of itself, that is, its cause lies in its own reality, in short, that it is causa sui. Therefore the assumption that a causa sui has just as much real possibility as have the causes of our experience which are followed uniformly by another event, is a necessary consequence of the empiristic view of causation. This much only remains sure, there is nothing contained in our previous experience that in any way assures us of the validity of this possible theory.

The empiristic doctrine of causation requires, however, still further conclusions. Our scientific, no less than our practical thought has always been accustomed to regard the relation between cause and effect not as a matter of mere sequence, not therefore as a mere formal temporal one. Rather it has always, in both forms of our thought, stood for a real relation, that is, for a relation of dynamic dependence of effect upon cause. Accordingly, the effect arises out of the cause, is engendered through it, or brought forth by it.

The historical development of this dynamic conception of cause is well known. The old anthropopathic interpretation, which interpolates anthropomorphic and yet superhuman intervention between the events that follow one another uniformly, has maintained itself on into the modern metaphysical hypotheses. It remains standing wherever God is assumed as the first cause for the interaction between parts of reality. It is made obscure, but not eliminated, when, in other conceptions of the world, impersonal nature, fate, necessity, the absolute identity, or an abstraction related to these, appears in the place of God. On the other hand, it comes out clearly wherever these two tendencies of thought unite themselves in an anthropopathic pantheism. That is, it rests only upon a difference in strength between the governing religious and scientific interests, whether or not the All-One which unfolds itself in the interconnection and content of reality is thought of more as the immanent God, or more as substance. Finally, we do not change our position, if the absolute, self-active being (in all these theories a first cause is presupposed as causa sui) is degraded to a non-intellectual will.

However, the dynamic interpretation of cause has not remained confined to the field of these general speculations, just because it commanded that field so early. There is a second branch, likewise early evolved from the stem of the anthropopathic interpretation, the doctrine that the causal relations of dependence are effected through "forces." These forces adhere to, or dwell in, the ultimate physical elements which are thought of as masses. Again, as spiritual forces they belong to the "soul," which in turn is thought of as a substance. In the modern contrast between attractive and repulsive forces, there lies a remnant of the Empedoklean opposition between Love and Hate. In the various old and new hylozoistic tendencies, the concepts of force and its correlate, mass, are eclectically united. In consistent materialism as well as spiritualism, and in the abstract dynamism of energetics, the one member is robbed of its independence or even rejected in favor of the other.[^[19]]

It is evident in what light all these dynamic conceptions appear, when looked at from the standpoint of consistent extreme empiricism. These "forces," to consider here only this one of the dynamic hypotheses, help to explain nothing. The physical forces, or those which give rise to movement, are evidently not given to us as contents of sense perception, and at the most they can be deduced as non-sensuous foundations, not as contents of possible sense perception. The often and variously expressed belief that self perception reveals to us here what our senses leave hidden has proved itself to be in all its forms a delusion. The forces whose existence we assume have then an intuitable content only in so far as they get it through the uniformities present in repeated perceptions, which uniformities are to be "explained" through them. But right here their assumption proves itself to be not only superfluous but even misleading; for it makes us believe that we have offered an explanation, whereas in reality we have simply duplicated the given by means of a fiction, quite after the fashion of the Platonic doctrine of ideas. This endeavor to give the formal temporal relations between events, which we interpret as causes and effects, a dynamic real substructure, shows itself thus to be worthless in its contributions to our thought. The same holds true of every other dynamic hypothesis. The critique called forth by these contributions establishes therefore only the validity of the empiristic interpretation.

If, however, we have once come so far, we may not hold ourselves back from the final step. Empiricism has long ago taken this step, and the most consistent among its modern German representatives has aroused anew the impulses that make it necessary. Indeed, if we start from the empiristic presuppositions, we must recognize that there lies not only in the assumption of forces, but even in the habit of speaking of causes and effects, "a clear trace of fetishism." We are not then surprised when the statement is made: The natural science of the future, and accordingly science in general, will, it is to be hoped, set aside these concepts also on account of their formal obscurity. For, so it is explained, repetitions of like cases in which a is always connected with b, namely, in which like results are found under like circumstances, in short, the essence of the connection of cause and effect, exists only in the abstraction that is necessary to enable us to repicture the facts. In nature itself there are no causes and effects. Die Natur ist nur einmal da.

It is, again, Stuart Mill, the man of research, not the empiricist, that opposes this conclusion, and indeed opposes it in the form that Auguste Comte had given it in connection with thoughts that can be read into Hume's doctrine. Comte's "objection to the word cause is a mere matter of nomenclature, in which, as a matter of nomenclature, I consider him to be entirely wrong.... By rejecting this form of expression, M. Comte leaves himself without any term for marking a distinction which, however incorrectly expressed, is not only real, but is one of the fundamental distinctions in science."[^[20]]

For my own part, the right seems to be on the side of Comte and his recent followers in showing the old nomenclature to be worn out, if viewed from the standpoint of empiricism. If the relation between cause and effect consists alone in the uniformity of sequence which is hypothetically warranted by experience, then it can be only misleading to employ words for the members of this purely formal relation that necessarily have a strong tang of real dynamic dependence. In fact, they give the connection in question a peculiarity that, according to consistent empiricism, it does not possess. The question at issue in the empiristically interpreted causal relation is a formal functional one, which is not essentially different, as Ernst Mach incidentally acknowledges, from the interdependence of the sides and angles of a triangle.

Here two extremes meet. Spinoza, the most consistent of the dogmatic rationalists, finds himself compelled in his formulation of the analytic interpretation of the causal relation handed down to him to transform it into a mathematical one. Mach, the most consistent of recent German empiricists, finds himself compelled to recognize that the empirically synthetic relation between cause and effect includes no other form of dependence than that which is present in the functional mathematical relations. (In Germany empiricism steeped in natural science has supplanted the naïve materialism saturated with natural science.) That the mathematical relations must likewise be subjected to a purely empirical interpretation, which even Hume denied them, is a matter of course.

However, this agreement of two opposing views is no proof that empiricism is on the right road. The empiristic conclusions to which we have given our attention do not succeed in defining adequately the specific nature of the causal relation; on the contrary, they compel us to deny such a relation. Thus they cast aside the concept that we have endeavored to define, that is, the judgment in which we have to comprehend whatever is peculiar to the causal connection. But one does not untie a knot by denying that it exists.