Hi again!
So rather than posting another long summation I’m
just going to point out a 5 interesting points about Russell’s meaning of cause
and effect.
- - The idea of a time-constant, which Russell
considers essential, is in fact dependent on multiple assumptions as to the
meaning of both cause and effect. Does Russell go far enough in his explanation
to be able to justify this?
- The sentence “What is essentially the same statement of the law of causation” isn’t allowed, why is Russell allowed to get away with that??? He builds the second half of his critique off this assumption (making some selective interpretations, something he then attacks Bergson for).
- Does the fact that an ‘event’ is only likely to occur once have any relevance to the possibility of a universal law of causality? For me it’s a separate point.
- “I deny is that science assumes the existence of invariable uniformities of sequence of this kind, or that it aims at discovering them”. This encapsulates Russell’s view on the matter, and his whole argument is based on this belief.
- “The principle "same cause, same effect," which philosophers imagine to be vital to science, is therefore utterly otiose.” I don’t think that Russell’s points really prove this. Surely he is only pointing out problems with this assumption but I don’t he think he goes as far as invalidating it.
- The sentence “What is essentially the same statement of the law of causation” isn’t allowed, why is Russell allowed to get away with that??? He builds the second half of his critique off this assumption (making some selective interpretations, something he then attacks Bergson for).
- Does the fact that an ‘event’ is only likely to occur once have any relevance to the possibility of a universal law of causality? For me it’s a separate point.
- “I deny is that science assumes the existence of invariable uniformities of sequence of this kind, or that it aims at discovering them”. This encapsulates Russell’s view on the matter, and his whole argument is based on this belief.
- “The principle "same cause, same effect," which philosophers imagine to be vital to science, is therefore utterly otiose.” I don’t think that Russell’s points really prove this. Surely he is only pointing out problems with this assumption but I don’t he think he goes as far as invalidating it.
Hope these statements are suitably provocative!!!
About your third point:
ReplyDeleteRussell's claim that science (physics) does not deal with causation, i.e. that natural laws do not describe necessary or universal connections of events, seems to rest on two separate observations.
The first is that the only coherent notion of causation involves a time interval between cause and effect, which opens the door to the possibility of an interference in the "causation" of the effect, rendering the connection less probable and the notion of causation senseless.
The second is that in physics events are always described so accurately, that they are likely to be unique. These precise descriptions can never be generalised to causation statements, which require vague notions of events.
This view, if it correctly reflects Russell's intentions, seems to be grounded in his idea of what laws of nature are. In the case of physics the laws of nature are inductive generalisations from experience (described by differential equations), which are merely the simplest of many possible generalisaions compatible with past observations. The only generalisation needed here is the "sameness of differential equations" and this relation stated in the equation is different from a same cause, same effect statement. I am not sure I understand in what way that is and I share your scepticism about it. For don't these equations also generalise a certain structure of behaviour of bodies in the world? The difference is only that they don't postulate a general connection between two particular events. Maybe that's why they do not describe causation, I don't know.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteThanks for that analysis, Mitch. I think you've addressed a lot of Will's issues.
It seems to me the important difference between difference between real scientific laws expressed as differential equations and "same cause, same effect" is that the equations in effect give us a map taking many different "causes" or states to their corresponding "effects" (later states). The importance of this is supposed to be that it helps us to remove the sense of volition that we unconsciously associate with cause. Maybe this is because, instead of saying, "The stone makes the glass break", we just have equations describing the motion of the stone and glass.
I think Russell does succeed in showing that "same cause. same effect" is otiose, just because the *same* cause will never occur twice. Hence the rule has no application. But this very same problem makes his own definition of determinism trivial!