Abstract
Some philosophers of physics recently expressed their skepticism about causation (Norton 2003b, 2007). However, this is not new. The view that causation does not refer to any ontological category perhaps can be attributed to Hume, Kant and Russell. On the other hand, some philosophers (Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe) view causation as a physical process and some others (Cartwright) view causation as making claims about capacities possessed by objects. The issue about the ontological status of causal claims involves issues concerning the ontological status of capacity, modality and dispositional claims. In this paper, my goal is to show that without engaging metaphysical debates about the ontological status of causal claims, it can be shown that we can objectively assign truth values to these statements. I argue that for causal claims to be objective we don't need to postulate the existence of special facts (specific to causal claims) in addition to ordinary physical facts described by physical theories. This, I think, is enough to justify the usefulness of this concept in certain branches (may be all) of science. Once this is achieved, there is no need to engage in unnecessary metaphysical debates. So, even if advanced physical theories don't mention this notion, causal reasoning can still be important in understanding the world not in the sense that science discovers special ontological category called causation but in the sense that we come to know certain facts about the world.
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Notes
Special sciences do postulate special kinds of properties with respect to their discourse (functions, intentions, and cultures to name the few). Is this practice then unjustified? No such thing follows from the minimalism I endorse. Minimalism is consistent with the view that each of these properties postulated by special sciences is necessary so we can postulate them. There are, however, two senses of necessary here: 1. It is necessary to postulate the existence of such properties in our ontology in addition to underlying ordinary physical facts that macro level objects are made up of to make causal claims in higher level sciences true and 2. It is necessary to postulate the existence of such properties in our epistemological discourse in order at all to be able to carry out our researches in these fields because of the constraints on our cognitive abilities. Minimalism is consistent with both of these. The question is not whether higher level properties are part of the ontology of the world but whether causal talk requires the postulation of special kind of properties in addition to these properties including the ones that arise only at certain levels of organization. On the other hand, it is a coherent position to hold that truths of the claims about these properties (special science properties) don’t require that such properties be part of the ontology of the world in addition to underlying ordinary physical objects (or facts) that physical theories describe but the postulation of such properties are necessary for epistemic reasons. If there is something wrong with this position, it is not because holding 2 to be true entails 1 to be true. Although I am not committed denying 1 in the case of the special science properties, I will argue that it is plausible to defend such a position in the case of causation—i.e., truth of causal claims don’t require the postulation of special facts unique to causal claims so we don’t need to postulate special facts unique to causal claims. Thus, the thesis is: although there are epistemic reasons in postulating causal properties, there need not be ontological necessity for doing so to make causal claims objective. Perhaps, this thesis, once spelled out in more detail, is uncontroversial. If this is so, then this paper can be considered as an attempt to clarify what exactly this truism amounts to.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Elliott Sober for comments on an early draft. I would like to thank Michael Baumgartner, Delphine Chapuis-Schmitz and John Norton for taking time and patiently discussing my ideas over the months I was a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science (University of Pittsburgh). I also would like to thank Isabelle Drouet for introducing me to Jon Williamson’s work on epistemic causality. I want to thank Emine Sonay Elgin and Ergun Tasarkuyu for helping me to understand some of the examples from Chemistry and Physics and Ali Asasoglu for technical help.
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Elgin, M. How Could There Be True Causal Claims Without There Being Special Causal Facts in the World?. Philosophia 38, 755–771 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9238-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9238-9