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Must a Cause Be Contingently Related to Its Effects?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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Most writers on causation have distinguished causal relations or natural necessities from mere correlations or accidental generalizations. I shall assume that this is a valid distinction. However, a "Dogma" of empiricism has been that natural necessity does not amount to logical necessity and that causes are contingently related to effects. In this paper I shall argue that this Dogma is mistaken.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1979
References
1 Enquiries, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A., 2nd ed. (Oxford at the Clarendon Press), p. 30.Google Scholar
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5 Kripke, op. cit., pp. 319-21.
6 Ibid., pp. 274-75.
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8 Kripke writes: “Any world in which we imagine a substance which does not have these properties is a world in which we imagine a substance which is not gold, provided these properties form the basis of what substance is. In particular, then, present scientific theory is such that it is part of the nature of gold as we have it to be an element with atomic number 79. It will therefore be necessary and not contingent that gold be an element with atomic number 79.” Kripke, op. cit., pp. 320-21. Putnam writes: “In fact, once we have discovered the nature of water, nothing counts as a possible world in which water doesn't have that nature. Once we have discovered that water (in the actual world) is H20, nothing counts as a possible world in which water isn't H20.” Putnam, , “Meaning and Reference,” The journal of Philosophy 70 (1973), p. 709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 See the quotes in footnote 8. The phrase ‘hidden structure’ occurred in “The Meaning of Meaning” in Putnam's Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Mind, Language and Reality Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).Google Scholar
10 See the quote from Putnam in footnote 8.
11 In “Naming and Necessity” Kripke writes: “But once we know that this is a thing composed of molecules- that this is the very nature of the substance of which it is made -we can't then, at least if the way I see it is correct, imagine that this thing might have failed to have been composed of molecules” (p. 322).
12 5 stands for the conditions where no interfering factors are present.
13 I am very grateful to Professor Francis W. Dauer for his extremely helpful comments and suggestions. Also I want to thank the referee for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.