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The Powers That Be

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1971

E. H. Madden  and
P. H. Hare
E. H. Madden
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
P. H. Hare
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
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Extract

The Humean tradition claims to show that the direct perception of causal power is in principle impossible. One argument for this conclusion is very simple: One cannot perceive what is not there; ‘causal power’ entails ‘necessary connection’; there are no necessary connections between matters of fact; therefore one cannot perceive causal power. The heart of this argument, of course, and the backbone of the Humean tradition, is that there are no necessary connections between matters of fact. This contention is supported by the familiar Humean dialectic. If there were a necessary connection of any kind between C and E, then the conjunction of C · ˜ E would be self-contradictory. However, all events are complete in themselves and never alone require that any other event will or must result from them. It is very strange to think of water freezing when heated or air pressure decreasing with depth, but no matter how foreign these conceptions may seem there is nothing self-contradictory about them. Since the assertion of C · ˜ E is never self-contradictory, it follows that there can be no necessary connection, logical or “causal”, between them, and hence there is no causal power that we could directly perceive.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 12 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1971

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References

1 Madden, Edward H., “A Third View of Causality,” Review of Metaphysics, September, 1969Google Scholar. Cf. Lamprecht, Sterling P., The Metaphysics of Naturalism (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1967), pp. 129–45Google Scholar, and Ayers, M. R., The Refutation of Determinism (London: Methuen, 1968), pp. 80–101Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Hume's Treatise, Book I, Part III, Section XIV, and Enquiry, Section VII.

3 Cf. Lindsay, A. D., Intro, to A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Dutton, 1964)Google Scholar, and Lamprecht, S., “Empiricism and Epistemology in David Hume,” in Studies in the History of Ideas, Vol. II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925)Google Scholar.

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8 Ibid., p. 168.

9 Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 199.

10 A number of writers in addition to James and Whitehead have been advocates of direct perception of causal necessities without being able to avoid the inferential predicament: Schiller, F. C. S., “Humism and Humanism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, VII (1906–07), 93–111Google Scholar; Boyce Gibson, W. R., “The Experience of Power,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, XII (1911–12), 65–104Google Scholar; Stout, G. F., “Mechanical and Teleological Causation,” Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XIV (1935), 46–65Google Scholar; Stout, G.F., Mind and Matter (New York: Macmillan, 1931), pp. 15–36Google Scholar; Ushenko, A. P., “The Principles of Causality,” Journal of Philosophy, L (1953), 85–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hartshorne, Charles, “Causal Necessities: An Alternative to Hume,” Philosophical Review, LXIII (1954), 479-99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 Weinberg, Julius, “The Idea of Causal Efficacy,” Journal of Philosophy, XLVII (1950), 399Google Scholar.