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The Nature of Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Ralph B. Winn
Ralph B. Winn*
Affiliation:
College of the City of New York
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Extract

Strange as it may seem, the traditional principle of causality is based on two contradictory assumptions, both of which are generally accepted, explicitly or implicitly, by the contemporary physicists as well as philosophers. That they are not always willing to acknowledge this paradoxical fact, does not save them from the perplexing situation. The two assumptions, in brief, are:

(1) That nothing can act at a distance or across an interval of time, without something mediating between the bodies or events; and

(2) That every cause precedes its effect and may be located at a distance from it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1940 , pp. 192 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1940

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References

1 Elements of Philosophy, Bk. 2, ch. 9, par. 7.

2 The Principles of Philosophy, pt. 2, princ. 16.

3 A Treatise of Human Nature, I, pt. 3, sect. 2.

4 Ibid., I, pt. 3, sect. 14.

5 Papers on Electrostatics, 1872, p. 318.

6 Problems of Life and Mind, II, 393; sec also B. P. Bowne's Personalism, pp. 184-85.

7 Critique of Pure Reason. Transl. by M. Mueller; ed. 1881, pp. 177-78.

8 Bk. III, ch. 5, sect. 7 and 8.

9 The Principles of Logic, Bk. 3, pt. 2, ch. 2, par. 5. Even less acceptable is C. Mercier's strange contention that “the effect begins as soon or almost as soon as the cause begins” (On Causation, with a Chapter on Belief, 26).

10 “Causality”, The New International Encyclopaedia for 1922.

11 Ibid.

12 A Treatise of Human Nature, I, pt. 3, sect. 2. See also Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea, transl. ed. 1890. II, 210-11.

13 Perception, Physics and Reality, 127.

14 “Causality and Effectuality”, University of California Publications in Philosophy, XV, 132.

15 A System of Logic, Bk. 3, ch. 5, sect. 2.

16 “The Problem of Causality”, The Open Court, 1888.

17 “On the Nature and Definition of a Cause”, The Philosophical Review for 1931, No. 5.

18 On Causation, with a Chapter on Belief, 47.

19 We are not here concerned with the principle of indeterminacy. Our argument does not seem to be affected by the recent controversy initiated by Heisenberg and Schroedinger.

20 On the Fourfold Root. Trans. ed. 1897. p. 20.

21 Jevons, The Principles of Science, 221.