Thinking about Causes: From Greek Philosophy to Modern Physics (review)

This book contains sixteen essays, presented at the seventh Pittsburgh-Konstanz Colloquium in 2005. It includes historical topics, ranging from ancient Greek thought to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophy, and contemporary topics, including causal pluralism, epiphenomenalism, and causality in disciplines as different as physics and economics.

The concept of causation has been elaborated in many ways, with many different philosophical functions, including its problematic relations to the concept of explanation. The essays cover a variety subjects, and the results are quite disparate. McCord Adams's discussion of medieval philosophers on sacramental causation and Norton's challenge to "causal fundamentalism" in contemporary physics are both about "causes," but their concepts of cause are only tangentially related. Despite its stated aim of bringing "unusual aspects of the history of causality to contemporary attention," the book offers no hint of a historical narrative (although a few of the essays do). Even so, I find this book a valuable addition to a philosophical library. Most of the essays are interesting, although some suffer from lack of detail, probably because of editorial constraints (among the exceptions are Inwood's "Moral Causes" and Shapiro's and Sober's "Epiphenomenalism: The Dos and the Don'ts").

One of the most interesting essays is Marilyn McCord Adams's "Powerless Causes." Medieval philosophers attempted to use the conceptual apparatus of causation to explain how sacramental rituals have some real power to produce grace, in cooperation with divine agency. The attempts collapsed, McCord Adams shows, because of difficulties in making a supernatural event (grace in the soul) even partially dependent on the efficacy of created causes. Throughout the discussion, McCord Adams shows the interconnection, and sometimes confusion, between the causal and the explanatory role of sacraments. It is an interesting, clearly written and fascinating overview of a complex debate, which took place in terms quite different from debates about causation in contemporary metaphysics or philosophy of science.

In "From Scholasticism to Modern Physics—and Back?", Robert Schnepf argues that Descartes opens the door to a new argument for occasionalism by introducing a notion of cause that does the work of both formal and efficient causation. He does so by introducing what Schnepf calls the "epistemic approach": causes must meet the epistemic criterion of being clearly and distinctly perceived in their necessary relations to their effects. This is problematic because, as Malebranche remarks, no such necessity can be perceived except between an omnipotent will and its effects. Hence, the only real efficient cause is God. I wish that Schnepf had been more generous with textual quotes and references, and I found his discussion of the conflation between formal and efficient cause insufficient. However, the summary of the Scholastic background and the discussion of the Cartesian metaphysical shift between the Regulae and his more mature philosophy are interesting, and Schnepf's case for how Descartes helped revive occasionalism is persuasive.

Both Laura Snyder's "Freedom from Necessity" and Paolo Parrini's "Mill on Causation and Historical Turn in Philosophy of Science" start from a reading of Mill's theory of causation in the context of his anti-intuitionism and his political struggle for individual liberty against the tyranny of custom. Snyder concludes with an invitation to include historical considerations in interpretation, under penalty of reading an "artificial construction" rather than the actual philosopher. Parrini argues that the textual evidence is certainly compatible with Snyder's conclusion that Mill's discussion of causation was influenced by his political agenda, but it is also compatible with a different interpretation, i.e. that a political agenda initially influenced Mill's discussion of causation, which later took an autonomous turn. Parrini then warns against the excesses of the "historical turn": there is room for evaluating a philosopher's ideas outside of their immediate background, especially if we are to compare them to alternative systems or examine their internal coherence. Both discussions of Mill's concept of causation are very interesting...