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Full Idea
We are interested in causes and effects primarily for practical purposes, which needs generalizations; so the interest of concrete individual facts of causation is chiefly an indirect one, as raw material for generalizations.
Gist of Idea
We are interested in generalising about causes and effects purely for practical purposes
Source
Curt Ducasse (Nature and Observability of Causal Relations [1926], §6)
Book Ref
'Causation', ed/tr. Sosa,E. /Tooley,M. [OUP 1993], p.135
A Reaction
A nice explanation of why, if causation is fundamentally about single instances, people seem so interested in generalisations and laws. We want to predict, and we want to explain, and we want to intervene.
| 8367 | Causation is defined in terms of a single sequence, and constant conjunction is no part of it [Ducasse] |
| 8368 | A correct definition is what can be substituted without loss of meaning [Ducasse] |
| 8369 | Causes are either sufficient, or necessary, or necessitated, or contingent upon [Ducasse] |
| 8370 | A cause is a change which occurs close to the effect and just before it [Ducasse] |
| 8371 | Recurrence is only relevant to the meaning of law, not to the meaning of cause [Ducasse] |
| 8373 | When a brick and a canary-song hit a window, we ignore the canary if we are interested in the breakage [Ducasse] |
| 8372 | We see what is in common between causes to assign names to them, not to perceive them [Ducasse] |
| 8374 | We are interested in generalising about causes and effects purely for practical purposes [Ducasse] |