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Гілея ФІЛОСОФСЬКІ НАУКИ Випуск 138
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УДК 1:303.092.4
«RETURNING TO HUME». CRITICISM OF THE
ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CAUSALITY
AND CASUAL
«ПОВЕРНЕННЯ ДО ЮМА». КРИТИКА
ОНТОЛОГІЧНОГО ПІДХОДУ
ДО КАУЗАЛЬНОСТІ І КАЗУАЛЬНОСТІ
Diakovska H. О.,
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor of
philosophy, socio–political and law sciences
department of Donbass state pedagogical
university (Slavyansk, Ukraine)
Hontar V. E.,
Postgraduate student of philosophy, socio–
political and law sciences department of Donbass
state pedagogical university (Slavyansk, Ukraine)
Дьяковська Г. О.,
кандидат філософських наук, доцент кафедри
філософії, соціально–політичних і правових
наук, ДВНЗ «Донбаський державний педагогічний
університет» (Слов’янськ, Україна)
Гонтарь В. Е.,
магістр кафедри філософії, соціально–
політичних і правових наук, ДВНЗ «Донбаський
державний педагогічний університет»
(Слов’янськ, Україна)
The actuality of work for modern analytical philosophy is in the
philosophical analysis of the ontological approach to causality and casualism.
The purpose of the work is to attempt to logically analyze the
contradiction between determinism and indeterminism, as well as ontological
correctness of dichotomy «necessity / chance». The conclusion is that we must
understand that the reference to each of the concepts in the binary opposition
is legitimate only at the current moment of time, because all knowledge
of events that we mark as random or necessary are always inductive, as
derived from experience. Time can make corrections and in theory any event
with additional knowledge will be able to change its status to the opposite.
Therefore, we can not consider these potentially changing status concepts
of the ontological characteristic of the universe, but only the theoretical
descriptive models in our psyche, obtained by inductive empirical methods.
Keywords: causality, determinism, indeterminism, necessity, randomness,
inert demarcation, semantics of possible worlds, theory of causality of Hume.
Актуальність роботи для сучасної аналітичної філософії полягає
у філософській аналітиці онтологічного підходу до каузальності і
казуальності.
Мета роботи полягає у спробі логічно проаналізувати протиставлення детермінізму та індетермінізму, а також онтологічну
коректність дихотомії «необхідність / випадковість». Робиться
висновок, що ми повинні розуміти, що віднесення до кожного з понять
в бінарній опозиції легітимно тільки в актуальний момент часу, бо всі
знання про події, які ми маркуємо як випадкові або ж необхідні завжди
індуктивні, оскільки отримані з досвіду. Час може внести свої корективи
і в теорії будь–яка подія при додаткових знаннях зможе поміняти свій
статус на протилежний. Тому ми і не можемо вважати ці потенційно
мінливі статусні поняття онтологічної характеристикою світобудови,
але лише теоретичними описовими моделями в нашій психіці, здобутими
індуктивними емпіричними методами.
Ключові слова: каузальність, детермінізм, індетермінізм,
необхідність, випадковість, інертна демаркація, семантика можливих
світів, теорія причинності Юма.
(стаття друкується мовою оригіналу)
Statement of a problem and analysis of the
last publications. The modern world scientifc
community has the debate about what the world
really is. Is it predetermined, causally caused, or
there is an accident, spontaneity, and fundamental
non–determinism of purely probabilistic nature.
What is the right authenticity: Newtonian mechanics
with its deterministic causation, or the deeper level
of quantum mechanics that is fundamentally chaotic
and probabilistic? How to try on two levels of reality,
and what to do with the theories of chaos, which
suggest deterministic chaos? With the respect to the
achievements of modern science, the similar questions
about causality and casualty are considered by many
without preliminary conceptual reflection. The
problem is, as we see it, in the fact that people believe
that «necessity» and «causality» are ontological
categories of reality, and that the world is divided into
«deterministic» and «indeterministic» levels, which
are diffcult to associate with each other.
The authors do not share the belief that causality
events differ from the necessary on the ontological level,
and insist that «causality» and «necessity» are only a
way of theoretical description, and not something that
really exists in the world. This metaphysical position
is based on Hume’s analysis of causality relationships,
because, in our opinion, it is a meaningful, coherent
and reasonable concept in the feld of causal theories.
The analysis of literature shows the questions
about causality and casuality became the subject of
attention of R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, D. Hume [9],
I. Kant, and others. Modern consideration of the
basic characteristics of causality is implemented by
D. Chalmers [10], D. Dennet, J. R. Searle.
The nature of mental causation was investigated
by Jaegwon Kim, Donald Davidso and jthers. This
philosophical problem of «necessity» and «causality» is
represented the works of V. Vasiliev, Yu. Vinohradova,
I. Kasavin, E. Blinov, D. Prokopov, V. Polovnokov.
Despite the wide spectrum of consideration of causality
and casualty problem, there is no comprehensive
analysis these concepts in Ukrainian literature. So,
there is an objective necessity for further rethinking
of these categories, will contribute to their complex
understanding.
The aim of the article is trying to logically analyze
the opposition of determinism and indeterminism, as
well as the ontological correctness of the «necessity /
randomness» dichotomy.
Presenting main points and material. At the
life level and the scientifc community there is an
intuition, according to it the events are connected by
some necessity, that some events seem to cause others,
exactly what they cause. There is also the intuition
that everything is causally caused in the world and
that all properties of the physical world are explained
by the device itself of the physical world, as having
knowledge of the physical world can be exhaustively
explained what it is. They consider the world is
rationally arranged and logical, but we with D. Hume
would argue with such a positive attitude, having
in the modern scientifc paradigm. Can we really
state that every event has a cause that necessarily
causes it? What does this necessity mean, what is its
character and what is its nature? What is the reason
that certain physical structures are red? That is why the
particular color that appears, and not some other color,
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appears from a specifc electromagnetic radiation?
Of course, we can say that there is no red at all, there
are only properties of the physical world, and red is
an epiphenomenon that can be rightly eliminated,
private subjectivism should be thrown back, «qualia»
is generally an unscientifc concept, because it cannot
be objectively verifed. «The causal aspect cannot be
considered one–sidedly, because it has many sides and
variations. Question of causality is not simple, and
Hume clearly understood this» [5, p. 187].
Well, then we take this property of the physical
world as the ability to self–replicate. The ability to
self–replicate is inherent in organic structures that we
call living. This property is certainly physically and
objectively. Then we will put the question like this: what
is the reason that certain structured particles get the
ability to «self–copy» and produce the same structures
from themselves, while other structures do not have
such a property? Why does this physical property
appear in some interacting particles, while other
structurally organized particles do not possess such
a property? Why do structures of specifc complexity
with a certain order of organization of elements have
the ability to self–replicate, while others have no such
ability? The answer may be – we know that some
structurally organized objects have such properties
only because they observe them, the structure of the
world is the conclusions from observation, followed
by a description of what they saw.
According to Hume, we observe some events, and
we can see that after one type of A1 events, events
like B1 constantly occur, this is a correlation, but the
correlation is stable, which is constantly confrmed
by subsequent observations. We simply observe the
events occurring with the objects and extrapolate the
seen ethological tendencies to the objects, which we
fnd similar to those previously observed. However,
our observations are always inductive, we can only
state the stability of the correlation in our observations,
because we see, we observe it. If we have suffciently
repeated correlative changes of events, then we
attribute such events to a causal relationship, if some
observable event is unlike any of the previously known
observations and differs radically with them, then we
say that it is casually since it happened and nothing,
except that it happened, we cannot say. If events like
this once unique are repeated and observed by us, and
we can see their structure, put them into phases, isolate
their elements, then we will transfer such an event from
a class of causality events into a class of necessary,
and if such events will happen, then we will be able to
predict them based on early observations. In this way
that the status of an event changes from «causality» to
«predetermined», so how can we assert the ontological
nature of the concepts «causality / necessary» if
knowledge of them is inductive by defnition (always
is partially with respect to the supposed comprehensive
knowledge of the structure of the universe and always
admitting the possibility of error, and also suggesting a
change to the opposite when obtaining new knowledge,
which empirical science continuously gets). «Hume
tried to show that causality as a necessary relation
of objective generation, the cause of the effect is not
found in an experience in which phenomena such as
«force», «coercion» or «necessity» are not observed.
Only the regular sequence of similar events in nature
corresponds to the human concept of causality»
[6, p. 9].
But can we say that event–cause and event–result is
something more than our observation of the properties
of some objects to behave as they behave? No, we
cannot, and we cannot explain why this property is
what it is; we can only state that it is characteristic of
some type of objects to behave as we have observed. So
that’s what we have: we have an inert demarcation of
various states of the world, where events simply differ.
Some events in our psychological focus are presented
as very similar to others, therefore we can project our
expectations, by modeling expected changes which
are based on early observations and we call them
necessary events. The other events happen for the frst
time and have no precedents like themselves. We don’t
have knowledge about such events and the algorithm
of their manifestation, so we call them casualty.
However, causality and spontaneity are not something
that exists in the real world, in the real world there
is only a continuous distinction between the states
of the world, it is inert, permanent, and not ending.
«Causality as a fragment of the more general problem
of determinism is a central philosophical problem as
in metaphysics and philosophy of language, in the
philosophy of science and theory of activity. However,
numerous discussions do not lead to the formation of
a unifed approach to understanding the terms «cause»
and «consequence», but only give rise to many
interpretations» [6, p. 8].
Therefore, there is neither determinism, nor
indeterminism by an ontological sense. We can say,
that determinism and indeterminism are only a way
to describe the constantly changing flow of events
in the world. Determinism describes the expectation
of similarity in the behavior of already known non–
unique events, and indeterminism shows (at least at the
actual moment) unique events, knowledge of which
cannot be collected, systematized and disassembled
into structural elements (at least for the moment). But
these are only theoretical descriptions of incomplete
information about the world. The states of the world
are constantly different, some events are similar to
others, therefore, knowing the general similarity, we
can expect identical behavior. Other events are not
similar to any, therefore we cannot project on them
the expected behavior, the frst we call causal and
necessary, and the second – spontaneous.
But we can not explain why some events follow
others, and why some tend to «imitate the paths» of
previously occurring events, while others are unique.
We cannot logically deduce some events from others,
establish a stable logical necessity, we can only observe
and conclude – «some of the world’s differences
are similar to those that happened earlier, so we can
simulate their deployment algorithm, projecting
already known knowledge on them, and some that they
are not similar, therefore we can only conclude that
they just happen», and we can’t say anything more.
We always see only a correlation between the events,
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Гілея ФІЛОСОФСЬКІ НАУКИ Випуск 138
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there is no question of any logical necessity. It is quite
ironic that «correlation does not mean cause–effect
relationships», but cause–effect relationships are just
nothing more than a stable correlation. The events
correlate, and the correlation between such events
occurs earlier in an observable manner. It follows
that all causal relationships are only our way of fxing
the similarity in the behavior of similar objects, it is
logically impossible to prove such a connection, we
can only fx the correlation.
However, if the events are constantly replacing
each other, an inert demarcation of the states of the
world occurs, then how do we isolate in our psyche
these stable correlations, which are called cause–
effect relationships? Methodologically, it looks like
this: watching a continuous stream of events, we can
analyze individual connections of events, divide them
into elements and phases, focus on the objects. Then it
is necessary to recreate such events in order, gradually
and alternately diminishing the elements, to trace the
fnal result. Those objects, without whose participation
in the event the result remains the same as with them,
we simply exclude, and those objects, without which
the expected result does not occur, we consider causally
responsible for it. Thus, in our consciousness, models
of stable correlation are constructed, with the help of
which we predict the behavior of things in the world.
All events are different from each other, qualitatively
or at least numerically, and some events and objects
are similar, sometimes even qualitatively identical –
that’s all we know about the world.
It makes no sense to ask about the fundamental
property of the self–identity of any object, since to
conceive the truth of the opposite is logically impossible.
The fact that the universe is what it is considers self–
evident truth, since it is impossible to conceive the
truth of the opposite proposition, according to which
the universe would not be what it would be, because
this is a logical contradiction – the object cannot be
itself. Answering the questions, on the one hand, we
can say that this is causality, because it is conceivable
that objects would look different, the semantics of
possible worlds are just about that, but on the other
hand, we have never seen that it was any different than
this, as we are used to watching, so we can conclude
that it is necessary. But such a categorical apparatus
as the binary opposition «causality» / «necessity» is
simply not applicable to the metaphysical description
of the universe. «Causality» and «necessity» are only
a way to describe the presence or absence of a stable
correlation in the similarity or absence of such in
inertly demarcated states of the world.
There is only a demarcation of events with a certain
degree of stability of the correlation. We label events as
necessary or casualty including correlation behaviors.
There are no physical reasons for the fact that objects
and events are as they are, and not others, there is only
observation and the statement that everything behaves
the way it leads and does not otherwise.
We conclude that the fact that specifc events
are replaced by other specifc events has no reason,
because the dichotomy of «causality» / «casualty»
makes sense only if there are elements in both of these
concepts. The reason is the establishment of stability
of repetition of behavior in similar objects, but there
is no reason for it and why this behavioral model is
stable, why specifc models we know are stable, and
not some other, or why some objects and events have
similarity to others, and others – do not have. We
can extract from the binary opposition «causality»
/ «necessity», turning to language. Causality is what
happened. Necessity is that which in our experience
happened all the time. But all these labels are just our
ways to indicate the level of previous knowledge about
the behavior of objects. Such knowledge can either
be, then we will call the behavior of objects (event)
necessary, or not be, then we will call such behavior
of objects (event) causality. Therefore, «causality»
and «necessity» is only a degree of awareness about
the behavior of objects in a similarity, in the case of
causality this degree is zero, because the event has no
such thing, and it is impossible to predict anything, but
the need assumes information about a stable behavior
in all similar cases. If, at causality, such events begin
to appear and it will be possible to isolate the phases
in the formation of an event, then it will change its
status from «causality» to «necessity» as these events
repeat. And among all such events, whose necessity
has been established, a demonstration of behavior that
is not typical for objects, will begin, the event should
be considered causality by changing its causal status to
the opposite – casual. «An appeal to the innate idea of
causality is unacceptable for Hume; on the one hand,
the whole sense identity theory of Hume is destroyed;
on the other hand, there remains the need to explain
the connection between the innate idea of causality
and the real interaction of objects in the existential
world of things. Then should we interpret the innate
idea of causality as a factor in the generation of
causal relationships between individual things, or the
existing and non–existent in the diversity of the form
of communication of things, we interpret through the
a priori present in man the idea of causal relationship»
[8, p. 39–40].
We should understand that the assignment to each
of the concepts in this binary opposition is legitimate
only at the relevant moment, because all knowledge
about events that we label as causality or necessary
is always inductive, because it is obtained from
experience. Time can make its own adjustments and
in theory any event with additional knowledge can
change its status to the opposite. Therefore, we cannot
consider these potentially changing status concepts as
an ontological characteristic of the universe, but only
theoretical descriptive models in our psyche, obtained
by inductive empirical methods.
Conclusions. There is nothing in the world except
the constant discrimination of states, which are what
they are in fact of their being, strictly according
to the law of identity. Therefore, determinism and
indeterminism are just two different ways to describe
events that simply follow each other. Determinism
describes events that are structurally similar to
previously known events, and indeterminism describes
events whose similarity and algorithm for updating
them are not observed due to the unprecedented
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and unique nature of the event. And the fact that
indeterminism and determinism are only ways of
describing the change of states of the world, and not
facts of the real world, is further vividly demonstrated
by another dichotomy «chaos» / «order».
Both determinism and indeterminism with their
binary oppositions «causality» / «necessity», «chaos»
/ «order» are only ways of describing the world
according to the level of awareness of similarity and
difference of events, which can replace each other
with fatal inertness. The fact that some events have
their own kind, while others do not, has no causal
explanation and justifcation, except for the conclusion
that this is a fatal fact. All empirical knowledge is
inductive, we have no guarantee that we can even
correctly relate events in the similarity and uniqueness
in order to fnally determine what is truly «causality»
in our world, and what is defnitely «necessity». And
then, it would concern individual objects and events
of the world, but not the fundamental structure of the
universe itself. We can not fnd the reasons why the
uniqueness and similarity are so distributed among
objects and events, or why all events are not unique, or,
on the contrary, all events have no similarity, because
we could think of any options. And we could not fnd
any physical reasons for explaining why the actual
world has such a causal–casual distribution in events
that it has, then the notion of «causality» is canceled
for a fundamental explanation of such a world.
We also have a fundamentally insurmountable
methodological and epistemological barrier for
the correct distribution of labels «causal event» /
«necessary event» – this is the inductive nature of
scientifc and empirical knowledge. The only thing
we can know for sure is that our descriptive causal
dichotomies are conditional, relative, theoretical,
speculative, impermanent and changeable, they have
many variables, and therefore it is unacceptable to
write them in the fundamental characteristics of the
universe itself.
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