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Full Idea
The three main objections to causation being primitive are that causation can't be anything more than what we observe, or that such a primitive is too spooky to be acceptable, or that primitivism leads to elimination of causation.
Gist of Idea
If causation is just observables, or part of common sense, or vacuous, it can't be primitive
Source
Jonathan Schaffer (The Metaphysics of Causation [2007], 2.1.2)
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.22
A Reaction
[summarised] I don't like the first (Humean) view. I suspect that anything which we finally decide has to be primitive (time, for example) is going to be left looking 'spooky', and I suspect that eliminativism is just Humeanism in disguise.
| 4777 | The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe] |
| 15246 | Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden] |
| 10380 | Causation is primitive; it is too intractable and central to be reduced; all explanations require it [Schaffer,J] |
| 10385 | If causation is just observables, or part of common sense, or vacuous, it can't be primitive [Schaffer,J] |
| 14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |