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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.
Clarification
'Intensional' means concerning meaning
Gist of Idea
Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata
Source
report of G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], 1) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.3
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!
| 8351 | With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects [Anscombe] |
| 8350 | Since Mill causation has usually been explained by necessary and sufficient conditions [Anscombe] |
| 8353 | Freedom involves acting according to an idea [Anscombe] |
| 8352 | To believe in determinism, one must believe in a system which determines events [Anscombe] |
| 10363 | Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata [Anscombe, by Schaffer,J] |
| 4777 | The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe] |