Dummett on Retrospective Prayer

DUMMETT ON RETROSPECTIVE PRAYER* In his paper, "Bringing About the Past,"1 Michael Dummett attempts to render intelligible "the idea of doing something in order that something else should previously have happened ."2 If we can affect the future by our actions, "why can we not by our actions affect the past?"3 Since retrospective prayers ask only that God should have done something in the past, and not that He now do something, Dummett concludes that retrospective prayers do not "mock God by asking Him to perform a logical impossibility."4 Just as we can affect, but not change, the future in prospective prayer, we can affect, but not change, the past in retrospective prayer. In order to assess Dummett's argument about the intelligibility of retrospective prayer, we must examine his views on backwards causation and causal efficacy. The two principal sources of Dummett's views on backwards causation are his contribution to the Aristotelian Society symposium "Can an Effect Precede Its Cause?"5 and his later paper "Bringing About the Past." We shall see that the question of backwards effectiveness or efficacy hangs on the issue of causal processes. In a passage which has a direct bearing upon Bertrand Russell's notion of "mnemic causation," Dummett remarks that * I am extremely grateful to Professor Antony Flew for his many helpful remarks on an earlier version of this paper. I am also appreciative for the kind assistance which I received from Dr. John Beloff, Dr. Geoffrey Madell, Dr. Vincent Hope and Mr. Stig Rasmussen. 1 Michael Dummett, "Bringing About the Past," The Philosophical Review 73 (1964): 338-59. 2 Ibid., 341. 3 Ibid., 340-41. 4 Ibid., 341. 5 Michael Dummett and Antony Flew, "Symposium: Can an Effect Precede Its Cause?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 28 (1954): 27-62. 310GERALD GILMORE TAYLOR the supposition that there is a lapse of time between the occurrence of the cause and its fruition in its effect appears irrational ; for if the effect does not take place immediately, what makes it come about when, eventually, it does?6 The lapse in time which Dummett refers to presumably contains no relevant, causally efficacious events. The Humean dilemma is that, if all causes are contemporaneous with their effects, we will be unable to trace causal ancestry beyond the present moment. In his attempt to outline "the picture which we have of causation ,"7 Dummett draws upon a version of the idea of the persistence of effects. He maintains that "A cause operates upon a thing, and once it stops operating, the thing then (i.e., subsequently ) goes on in the same way until some further cause operates upon it."8 Rather than causes operating over causallyimpotent , temporal gaps, bringing about, as it were, at a distance , causes are simultaneous with their effects, and effects then persist in time, retaining some sort of causal inertia until acted upon by other causes. Dummett's talk of Newtonian mechanics naturally encourages this inertia! interpretation of causation. Distinguishing between "immediate" and "remote causes," Dummett states that "causes operate to bring about their immediate effects without any lapse of time."9 In a crucial passage, he claims that a cause may initiate a process, which will be terminated when it reaches an assignable point, and will then in its turn have some further effect. The temporal direction of causation, from earlier to later, comes in because we regard a cause as starting off a process: that is to say, the fact that at any one moment the process is going on is sufficiently explained if we can explain what began it. Causes are simultaneous with their immediate effects, but precede their remote effects.10 Since the earlier to later direction of causation is wholly a function of causes starting off processes with a forwards temporal direction, Dummett believes that something like causation in a 6 Dummett, "Can an Effect Precede Its Cause?" 28. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 29. 10Ibid. Emphasis here and throughout is in the original. Dummett on Retrospective Prayer311 reversed temporal direction would be possible provided that it was not the sort of cause which started off processes. Dummett considers and then...