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Russell on the Notion of Cause

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Donald Lipkind
Donald Lipkind*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

Writing in 1912, Bertrand Russell declared talk of causes and of causality to be obsolete, noting its elimination from scientific theory as he saw it: “in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word 'cause' never occurs .... The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.” Causal laws, he claimed, “tend to be replaced by quite different laws as soon as a science is successful.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 701 - 720
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

Donald lipkind died during the winter term of 1978, in his first at the University of Calgary and at the very beginning of his philosophical career. Born in Calgary on May 23, 1950, he received his B.A. summa cum laude from Yale University in 1972 and his M.A. in philosophy in 1973 from the University of Chicago on his doctoral dissertation at the time of his death. His “Russell on the Notion of Cause” represents the beginning of his work on that project. Donald lipkind will be remembered by his colleagues for his gentleness, his human sensitivity, his selflessness, his keen integrity (philosophical and otherwise), and for his quiet probing intelligence. We publish this article as some small record of a philosopher of great promise whose life was cut short before he could bring his work to fruition. The Editors.

1 Russell, Bertrand, “The Notion of Cause,” Mysticism and Logic. (london: (George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 117), pp.180-81, 194.Google Scholar

2 Oxford English Dictionary,1971 edition, s.v. “cause.

3 Russell, p. 187.

£ Ibid., p. 184

5 Ibid., pp. 184-85.

6 Ibid., p. 192.

7 Brand, Myles, The Nature of Causation (Urbana, lll: University of Illinois Press, 1976), p. 14.Google Scholar

8 Collingwood, R.G., An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1940), p. 327,Google Scholar

9 Russell, p. 187

10 Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, 8th ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1874), lll, V, 3.Google Scholar

11 Collingwood, op. cit., pp. 314-315.

12 Davidson, Donald, “Causal Relations,” Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967) pp. 692-93CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 ) Mackie, J.L., The Cement of the Universe (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 34–43.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., pp. 37-38. Mackie argues that the form of the presuposition must be, “in the circumstances, a caused b,” and not, “there were circumstances such that a caused b,” because in the former, while not in the latter, any factor in the field might be considered a cause. This is because the latter, by fixing what is in the circumstances, also fixes the cause. Several considerations count against Mackie's choice. First, under his proposal, the cause becomes and event-inthe- field, a totality of conditions, which is not the ordinary concept of event. Second, a consequence of the first point is that the possibility of there being a close relation between singular causal statements and laws is remote since the particular circumstances of a certain casual relation may be unique of almost unique to that situation. Third, the phrase, “in the circumstances,” suggests that what the circumstances are could be specified.

15 Our analysis in terms of singular causal statements, rather than causal laws, is not essential. The parallel interpretation would see causal laws as referring to event-types, where any instance would refer to an event in the particular sense we are employing.

16 Collingwood, p. 313.

17 Ibid., p. 334.

18 Brand, p. 15.

19 Ibid., p. 14.

20 Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, lnc.,1961), p. 463.Google Scholar

21 For an argument that the theory of scientific explanation should take cost/benefit considerations into account, see William C. Wimsatt, “Reductive Explanation: a Functional Account,” P.S.A. 1974 (Dordrecht-Holland: DReidel Publishing Company 1976), pp. 701-6.

22 Russell, p. 193. The second sentence quoted indicates that the question Russell is considering here is not just the epistemological one of what provides sufficient evidence for knowing that A causes B, but whether A may cause B enen though A is not sufficient for B (because sometimes an A occurs and a B does not) Clearly ‘A’ and ‘B’ represent event-types, for an A may not cause a B where no B occurs.

23 Russell, p. 188

24 Ibid., pp. 194-95

25 Suppes, Patrick, A Probabilistic Theory of Causality (Amsterdam: NorthHolland Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 5–6;Google Scholar and Earman, John, “Causation: A Matter of life and Death,” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976) pp. 5–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Nagel, pp. 74-78.

27 This point is emphasized by Feynman, Richard, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965), pp. 55–56.Google Scholar

26 Russell, pp. 194-95.

29 Ibid., p. 205.

30 Mackie, chapter 7 and E arman, pp. 13-16.

31 David Lewis's counterfactual solution to the problem of distinguishing causes from effects will not be of much aid to us here. According to Lewis, we can distinguish the cause the from the effect in virtue of the fact that it is less of a departure from reality for an event e (the cause) to occur and e (the effect) not by virtue of a change in the laws and circumstances fixed and get rid of e by abolishing c. In asking whether lawful occurrences are causal, however, we can hardly consider the possibility of changing the laws of nature. “Causation,” Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973). pp. 565-66.Google Scholar

32 Reichenbach, Hans, The Direction of Time (Berkely: University of California Press, 1971 ), p. 23.Google Scholar

33 Maxwell, James Clerk, Matter and Molion (New York: Dover Press, 1952), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar