Causality
Neo-aristotelianism
Hume found any appeal to causal powers suspect, since he thought there were no impressions of them. Hume's views were dominant until the last quarter of the twentieth century, when there was a resurgence of Aristotelianism. A few contemporary philosophers think that causation should be best understood in terms of causal powers—that is, powers, dispositions, and capacities things have to cause other things to happen. These powers are supposed to stem from the nature or essence of a thing and they determine what a thing is and what it can do. The causal laws that govern the world are supposed to stem from these causal powers. According to Brian Ellis (2001), a chief defender of this view, causal laws state necessary truths about how things are intrinsically disposed to behave. But many philosophers find these views unappealing, not least because they fail to explain the fundamental notion of causal power.
See also Aristotelianism; Cartesianism; Determinism; Dualism; Empiricism; Neoplatonism; Probability.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES
Anscombe, G. E. M. Causality and Determination. London: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Aristotle. Physics. In vol. 1 of The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vols., edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.
——. Posterior Analytics. 2nd ed. Translated by Jonathan Barnes. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
Armstrong, D. M. What Is a Law of Nature? Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Classic defense of the view that natural laws embody necessitating relations among properties.
Carnap, Rudolf. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. Edited by Martin Gardner. New York: Dover, 1995. A classic late statement of the positivist philosophy of science.
Cartwright, Nancy. How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford and New York: Clarendon, 1983. A thorough critique of the Regularity Views of Causation and Laws.
Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 3 vols. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Vol. 1 includes Principles of Philosophy (1644), Descartes's classic presentation of his philosophy of nature.
Dowe, Phil. Physical Causation. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. The standard rendition of the conserved-quantity theory of causation.
Ducasse, C. J. Causation and the Types of Necessity. New York: Dover, 1969. Defends singular causation against Hume and Mill.
Ellis, B. D. Scientific Essentialism. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. A thorough defense of neo-Aristotelianism.
Hempel, Carl G. Aspects of Scientific Explanation, and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press, s1965.
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge from the posthumous edition of 1777. 3rd ed., edited by P. H. Nidditch, published as Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals. Oxford: Clarendon, 1975. A less skeptical version of Hume's critique of causality.
——. A Treatise of Human Nature. 1739. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 1888. 2nd ed., with text revisions by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. 1787. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965. A classic of Western philosophy.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. New Essays on Human Understanding. 1765. Translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Posthumously published defense of rationalism against John Locke's empiricism.
Lewis, David. "Causation." In his Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Mackie, J. L. The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974. One of the most comprehensive and original books on causality.
Malebranche, Nicolas. The Search After Truth (1674–1675). Translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Mill, J. S. A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive (1843). 8th ed. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911. Wideranging treatment of the methodology of science.
Pearl, Judea. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Technical but insightful.
Ramsey, F. P. "Universals of Law and of Fact." 1928. In Foundations: Essays in Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics and Economic, edited by D. H. Mellor. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
Reichenbach, Hans. The Direction of Time. Edited by Maria Reichenbach. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956. A defense of the view that the direction of time stems from the direction of causation.
Russell, Bertrand. "On the Notion of Cause." In his Mysticism and Logic, and Other Essays. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1932. First published in 1918.
Salmon, Wesley. Causality and Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
——. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. The most systematic contemporary mechanistic account of causality.
Schlick, Moritz. "Causation in Everyday Life and in Recent Science." 1932. In Moritz Schlick Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (1925–1936). Edited by Henk L. Mudler and Barbara F. B. De Velde-Schlick. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1979.
Suppes, Patrick. Probabilistic Metaphysics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.
von Wright, G. H. "On the Logic of the Causal Relations." In Causation, edited by Ernst Sosa and Michael Tooley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Woodward, James. Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. The standard development of the interventionist approach.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Clatterbaugh, Kenneth. The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy, 1637–1739. New York: Routledge, 1999. Excellent survey of the main theories of causality from Descartes to Hume.
Eells, Ellery. Probabilistic Causality. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991. A thorough treatment of theories of probabilistic causality.
Psillos, Stathis. Causation and Explanation. Chesham: Acumen and Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2002. Detailed discussion of the main philosophical theories of causality.
Sosa, Ernest, and Michael Tooley, eds. Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. A collection of the most influential philosophical papers on causation in the second half of the twentieth century.
Stroud, Barry. Hume. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. Still the best presentation of Hume's philosophy.
Stathis Psillos
Additional topics
Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Categorical judgement to ChimaeraCausality - Aristotle, Aristotle's Legacy, Descartes, Descartes's Successors, Hume, Kant