The other day a discussion about a new blog quickly descended into a tangent about Davidson's anomalous monism. I spent most of the time discussing how Davidson's and Peirce's views corresponded. I was, however, still left with the question of whether Davidson's claim about causality really fits Peirce's philosophy. Davidson, as you recall, makes two controversial claims. The first is that mental events can't cause physical events with the second being that mental states can't be causes. The following examples illustrate what I think Davidson is claiming. Thinking about being in pain is a mental event and can have causes such as my mental event of deciding to pull my hand out of the fire. Merely being in the mental state of pain can't cause me to pull my hand out of the fire. The obvious rejoinder to this example is that the state of pain causes the mental event of thinking about being in pain. (i.e. my awareness of pain)
Now I'd encourage anyone still reading and interested in the topic to read my post and comments from the other day. I'll sort of be assuming that discussion here.
The real issue, I've come to see, is the issue of what we mean by causation. That topic is sitting there making my musements rather difficult. Specifically does Davidson mean by cause what is typically mean in Analytic philosophy. More important, does Peirce?
Davidson's best article to understand his thought on this is "Causal Relations," in Actions and Events. (I should add, as an aside, that Davidson's two main books are some of the few books I think ought be on every philosopher's shelf. Even if you completely disagree with him.) In that article Davidson takes up Hume's and Mill's analysis of cause. Davidson argues that "it is not events, but something more closely tied to the descriptions of events that Hume holds to be causes, [and this view] is fortified by Hume's claim that causal statements are never necessary." (150) Davidson's analysis leads to the claim that
. . . we must distinguish firmly between causes and the features we hit on for describing them, and hence between the question whether a statement says truly that one event caused another and the further question whether the events are characterized in such a way that we can deduce or otherwise infere from laws or other causal lore that the relation was causal. (155, emphasis mine)
Now, as Davidson notes, philosophers to argue causes and effects are intelligible only on the assumption of individual events and that causal relations hold between such events. Noting a few of the problems of this approach, Davidson moves towards a narrative view of causality.
. . . such sentences tell, or suggest, a causal story. They are, in other words, rudimentary causal explanations. Explanations typically relate statements, not events. I suggest therefore that the 'caused' of the sample sentences . . . is not the 'caused' of straightforward singular causal statements, but is best expressed by the words 'causally explains.' (162)
The upshot of all this is that due to my fuzzy memory of this paper and others, I've misread to a degree Davidson. What I think he is arguing is that causes aren't causes in the sense of action/reaction but a kind of relationship between descriptions of an event. This follows from his view of events which allows many different descriptions of the same event. It isn't the event with which we are concerned, but a particular subset of descriptions from which we can assert causation. Further the existence of covering laws (previous laws we already adopt dealing with features of our descriptions) we can attribute causation to singular events. (i.e. somewhat "unique" events)
In thinking about all this I'm tend to attribute to Davidson the claim that causes are not a fundamental ontological entity. Those of you who've read this blog long already know that I tend to not view causality as something fundamental. Rather I think it at best an emergent feature of the universe or something we read into phenomena. Because of that position I'm somewhat loath to attribute it to Davidson based upon limited study. There simply is the danger I'm projecting my views on him. However I will say I think there are good reasons from physical theory to think this way. (Those of you familiar with physics will note that this is taking the Hamiltonean view of mechanics as "real" with the Newtonian view of forces and causes as a different equivalent description) Peirce seems to agree.
Those who make causality one of the original uralt elements in the universe or one of the fundamental categories of thought - of whom you will find that I am not one - have one very awkward fact to explain away. It is that men's conceptions of a cause are in different stages of scientific culture entirely different and inconsistent. The great principle of causation which, we are told, it is absolutely impossible not to believe, has been one proposition at one period in history and an entirely disparate one at another is still a third one for the modern physicist. The only thing about it which has stood... is the name of it. (Peirce, "Reasoning and the Logic of Things," quoted in John Sowa Processes and Causality, thanks to Jon Awbey for the quote)
Which takes us to Peirce's view. Now for Peirce laws are best viewed as habits. Because Peirce adopts the notion of "swerve" from the Epicureans as a fundamental ontological feature, chance is inherent in his thought. (Called tychism in his terminology) The implication is that there are no universal laws. After all phenomena will never exactly follow the law, although it may typically. Thus the whole discussion of universal laws we find sometimes in Davidon's discussion of anomalous monism can't be reconciled. However recognizing that Peirce has as an ontological commitment the "exception to the rule," I think we still can engage Peirce and Davidson.
One quote that I inexplicably missed last week most explicitly ties Davidson's theory to Peirce's - that is over the issue of whether causes are between events, states or descriptions.
What is a law then? It is a formula to which real events truly conform. By "conform," I mean that that, taking the formula as a general principle, if experience show that the formula applies to a given event, then the result will be confirmed by experience.
. . . If it were not for the extraordinary misconception of the word "cause" by Mill, I should say that the idea of metaphysical sequence implied in that word, in "infleunce," and in other similar words was perfectly clear. Mill's singularity is that he speaks of the cause of a singular event. Everyone else sepaks of the cuase of a "fact," which is an element of the event. . . .That which is caused, the causatum, is not the entire event, but such abstracted element of an event as is expressible in a proposition, or what we will call a "fact." The cause is an other "fact." (New Elements, EP 2:315)
Peirce was quite unusual in that he was extremely familiar with medieval philosophy. (Even more unusual in the 19th century than the 20th, and it is still unusual today) In particular Duns Scotus exerted great influence on his thought. While it is somewhat inappropriate, I think turning to the medieval notion of causation is perhaps appropriate. Medieval notions of causation are inherently wrapped up in their principle of analogy. The medieval view (which persisted through the Renaissance) was that like affects like. The reason for this is that it was felt that a cause has part of its being transmitted to the effect. In a very real sense the cause is in the effect.
Viewing Davidson's critique in light of this, if only on a superficial level, we can see that the problem of mixing descriptions of mental events and descriptions of physical events is the problem of analogy. They are simply unlike. Now, as I mentioned last week, there are specific arguments by Davidson regarding the problem of translating talk of the mental to talk of the physical. For Peirce, as we saw, there is a similar problem in that such translation takes an infinite number of steps (or signs).
I'd say that, with the caveat of Peirce's view of laws being descriptions, Peirce and Davidson almost exactly correspond in their views. Indeed to such a degree one must honestly wonder whether Davidson developed his ideas from Peirce.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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