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Full Idea
The arguments in favour of causation being observable appeal especially to the impression of pressure upon one's body, and to one's introspective awareness of willing, together with the perception of the event which one willed.
Gist of Idea
Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action
Source
Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 3)
Book Ref
'The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics', ed/tr. Loux,M /Zimmerman,D [OUP 2005], p.392
A Reaction
[He cites Evan Fagels] Anscombe also cites words which have causality built into their meaning. This would approach would give priority to mental causation, and would need to demonstrate that similar things happen out in the world.
| 8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
| 8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
| 8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
| 8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
| 8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
| 8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
| 8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
| 8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |
| 8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| 8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |