display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
4 ideas
| 8351 | With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: It is much easier to trace effects back to causes with certainty than to predict effects from causes. If I have one contact with someone with a disease and I get it, we suppose I got it from him, but a doctor cannot predict a disease from one contact. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], §1) | |
| A reaction: An interesting, and obviously correct, observation. Her point is that we get more certainty of causes from observing a singular effect than we get certainty of effects from regularities or laws. |
| 4777 | The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: The word "cause" can be added to a language in which are already represented many causal concepts; a small selection: scrape, push, wet, carry, eat, burn, knock over, keep off, squash, make, hurt. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], p.93) | |
| A reaction: An interesting point, perhaps reinforcing the Humean idea of causation as a 'natural belief', or the Kantian view of it as a category of thought. Or maybe causation is built into language because it is a feature of reality… |
| 10363 | Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata [Anscombe, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Anscombe has inspired the view that causation is an intensional relation, and takes it to be relative to the descriptions of the primary relata. | |
| From: report of G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], 1) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1 | |
| A reaction: It seems too linguistic to say that there is nothing more to it. It seems relevant in human examples, but if a landslide crushes a tree, what difference does the description make? 'It was just a few rocks and some miserable little tree'. No excuse! |
| 8350 | Since Mill causation has usually been explained by necessary and sufficient conditions [Anscombe] |
| Full Idea: Since Mill it has been fairly common to explain causation one way or another in terms of 'necessary' and 'sufficient' conditions. | |
| From: G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], §1) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to see what Hume implies about these criteria. Anscombe is going to propose that causal events are fairly self-evident and self-explanatory, and don't need analyses of conditions. Another approach is regularities and laws. |