Abstract
In Part I of ‘Causality and Determination” (CD), Anscombe writes that (1) we understand causality through understanding specific causal expressions, (2) efficient causation can be perceived, (3) “causality consists in the derivativeness of an effect from its causes”, and 4) no “analysis in terms of necessity or universality” has a place for this. Theses (1) and (2) represent fundamental and important insights. (3) is unsatisfactory; for, taken in a sense that does not already build on the general notion of causation, deriving from does little to elucidate this notion. CD is however right to urge the need to identify a “core, the common feature, of causality in its various kinds”—a kind of criterion, such as the one suggested by Makin (2000), that takes account of (4) in that it is more substantial than, but does not entail, “necessity or universality”. What CD seems to underestimate is the important role of regularities, possibly neither necessary nor exceptionless, for our understanding of the causal relation. Finally, such understanding also requires us, not only to rely on a common criterion of causation, but also on a subjective component of this idea: the consciousness of our own causal agency. Anscombe’s own investigations into non-observational practical knowledge open the door to the study of this aspect of causality.
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Notes
I do not intend any systematic distinction between causation and causality. But causality is what we ascribe to the causal agent (by which I do not just mean human subjects), whereas causation is of the effect.
Intransitively used, deriving is more or less equivalent to having its origin in, or having developed from. The transitive meaning is something like obtaining from.
Even the resemblances between the members of a real family, however one draws its actual boundaries, are obviously not such as to gather only them into its bosom! The resemblances found among the Higginbottoms also recruite some of the MacQuoids. Nor are the Higginbottoms Higginbottoms in virtue of resemblances. What unifies them is connexions by marriage and descent.
Or is it too good?—cf. Sect. 1.5.
Why, in other words, do we “feel”—why are we unreflectively inclined to think—that we learn something about the nature of causation by being told that it is derivation?—Here is a suggestion: On the one hand, with the word derive we associate, more readily than with the somewhat academic verb to cause, specific concepts of familiar procedures and processes; and many of these concepts—e.g. emission, fission, transformation, transportation—can frequently be applied on the basis of perceptual observation or at any rate without the need to establish causality. On the other hand, almost all of those procedures do involve causation; and we apply the word derivation to them because we know them to do so.
In using the idea of a causal pattern rather than e.g. constant conjunction of events, I wish inter alia, first, to leave room for causes and effects that cannot very well be called events and, second, to characterize a generality of connexion that is not affected by exceptions, in particular, on account of interference.—Patterns can be subspecies of more generic patterns, and they can overlap.—Anscombe is implicitly using the idea of a causal pattern when she treats ‘C and E […] as general expressions, not singular terms’ for cause and effect (CD, p. 144) and when she gives us her ‘small selection’ of causal concepts (CD, p. 137).
One of Makin’s examples instances perceivability of causal routes that are not, but might be, covered by a C-expression: the sequences of positions traversed by balls on the Galton board. Any individual ball’s descent here “fills” a route allowed by the law of gravity (2000, pp. 61–62).
Anscombe calls it ‘an original phenomenon of causality: one of its types’, a connexion ‘between the original witnessing of the event and the present thought, or again, that present state of a human being of which we speak when we say he knows that such-and-such occurred’ (CP II, p. 127).—Cf. also Wittgenstein’s suggestion that indistinguishable seeds might grow into different kinds of plant depending on their provenance (1953, § 608). This would involve a pattern of causal chains A–B–C and D–E–F, where B = E.
She actually formulates this as a sort of pun on the word derive: ‘Effects derive from […] their causes. […] Now analysis in terms of necessity or universality does not tell us of this derivedness of the effect; rather it forgets about that. For the necessity will be that of laws of nature; through it we shall be able to derive [!] knowledge of the effect from knowledge of the cause, or vice versa, but that does not show us the cause as source of the effect. Causation, then, is not to be identified with necessitation’ (CD, p. 136).
Anscombe praises Hume for overthrowing the view that cause and effect are connected by logical necessity and rebukes him for reintroducing ‘necessary conjunction’ in a subjectivist form (CD, p. 134). I’ll argue in Sect. 3 that it is not entirely wrong to bring the subject’s condition into an account of his or her or the philosopher’s conception of causality.
(1) is emphasized by the whole of CD (p. 138; cf. p. 147), (2) is the upshot of CD part I, (3) of part II.
The criterion is partial, given that it needs supplementation by something like the discernment of a ‘filled causal route’ (cf. Sect. 1.7), and I’ll argue that no criterion exhausts our understanding of causation (cf. 3.6). In practice, however, the generality of a pattern is almost decisive evidence on which the ascription of causation ultimately relies in everyday reflexion as well as in the sciences. Application of this criterion involves inductive procedures of the kind suggested by Mill’s canons. They also take account of the possibility of interference and non-causal conjunction. (If a shop reduces its opening hours and fewer customers frequent it, either occurrence may be the cause of the other, or each may be an effect of a common cause such as scarcity of goods.).
Anscombe herself draws attention to this in ‘The Causation of Action’, GG I, p. 105.
‘But not because she is the tallest girl, surely?’ (§ 2.5; cf. CP II, p. 175).
As an instance consider the reference to such laws of nature as ‘If a sample of such a substance is raised to such a temperature and doesn’t ignite, there must be a cause of its not doing so’ (CD, p. 138; cf. Müller 1977).
It appears to have been written in the 1970s, after CD (GG IV, p. 95).
The limiting case in which you assume probability 1 shows that plain assertion, too, has this subjective side.
Moreover, in both kinds of context, part of the function of free-floating, as of other, probability statements is of course to serve as evidence on which others form probability estimates.
I am ignoring the irrelevant possibility that, e.g., NN both feels fatigue and observes the signs of fatigue on his or her/NN’s face in a mirror. Even in such a case the subject’s application of the P-concept isn’t an instance of ‘one ascription’ of fatigue going with both unmediated consciousness and evidence.
Thanks to the referee who draws my attention to this query.
Cf. in particular CP II, pp. 209–210; but also 1957, § 2; § 47; GG II, p. 94.—Anscombe also envisages absence of causal determination in ‘the voluntariness and intentionalness in the conduct of other animals which we do not call “free”’ (CD, p. 146).
See GG I, p. 106.
References
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Acknowledgments
Thanks go to my friends Christian Kietzmann and Dawa Ometto as well as to two anonymous reviewers, who made useful suggestions and kindly helped me to reduce mistakes.
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This article belongs to the topical collection "Causality and Determination, Powers and Agency: Anscombean Perspectives", edited by Jesse M. Mulder, Dawa Ometto, Niels van Miltenburg, and Thomas Müller.
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Müller, A.W. Understanding causation. Synthese 199, 12121–12153 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03326-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03326-x