display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
15253 | If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concept of cause may come to include the concepts of its usual effects. Concepts of this character are used in science, and in common language, to ascribe powers. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: See Theme 8|c|3 in Theme/Structure for more ideas about powers. It's hard to see how you could specify a cause at all if you weren't allowed to say what it does. I love powers, and want to make them the key idea in all of metaphysics. |
15278 | Humean accounts of causal direction by time fail, because cause and effect can occur together [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The Humean effort to ground the intuition of causal directionality on temporal priority of cause alone fails, because in fact some causes and effects are simultaneous. The moving of the knife and separation of the orange occur together. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: Since I take causation to be largely concerned with movements of 'energy', this idea that cause and effect might be simultaneous sounds more like a matter of pragmatics and convention. Moving the knife and moving the orange are different. |
15246 | Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The exercise of causal power is not a force or power that has some existence of its own but refers to forceful objects at work. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a behaviourist account of causation, which should make us a bit suspicious. Powers differ from one another. Does all causation have something universally in common? 'Energy' is a stab at the missing ingredient. |
15213 | Causation always involves particular productive things [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Causation always involves a material particular which produces or generates something. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: I agree with this. My bete noire is the idea that causation somehow results from laws or general truths. That gets the whole thing the wrong way round. This idea is based on the notion of 'powers'. |
15217 | Efficient causes combine stimulus to individuals, absence of contraints on activity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Efficient causes comprise both the presence of stimuli which activate a quiescent individual, and the absence or removal of constraints upon an individual already in a state of activity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.B) | |
A reaction: This is part of an account of causation in term of 'powers', with which I agree. Before you object, there is always going to be something about causation which is mind boggling weird, and probably leaves even God bewildered. |
15277 | The cause (or part of it) is what stimulates or releases the powerful particular thing involved [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: We can unambiguously differentiate the cause from the effect in that whatever stimulates or releases the action of the powerful particular involved in the causal production is the cause or part of the cause of that effect. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: I have doubts about distinguishing stimulus from release, and they sensibly don't say they have a test for 'the' cause, but I roughly agree with this idea. I take 'the' cause to also be tied in with explanation. |
2594 | A true cause must involve a necessary connection between cause and effect [Malebranche] |
Full Idea: A true cause as I understand it is one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effects. | |
From: Nicolas Malebranche (The Union of Body and Soul [1675], p.116) |