Do Events Exist?

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Do Events Exist?

We have become accustomed to the idea of an “ontology of events”, either as a total world ontology or as part of our ontology. Are events all there is (no objects or substances), or are they just a part of what there is? Events exist—we think. Donald Davidson was a great proponent of a robust ontology of events, making use of them in the philosophy of mind (“Mental Events”) and philosophy of language (adverbs as predicates of events). Philosophers talk unhesitatingly about physical events. We quantify over events, commit ourselves existentially to them, treat them as ontologically on a par with physical objects. We think vaguely of them as beads on a string, ripples in water, notes in a tune. But are they real existents? Are they genuine particulars or individuals? Do they exist alongside ordinary objects as separate but co-equal constituents of reality? I am going to argue that their ontological credentials have been greatly exaggerated—there are no such things as events as commonly construed by philosophers. Not that no events ever occur—they happen all the time (see below)—but they are not the robust ontological baubles philosophers have supposed. There exists no such metaphysical category. The way philosophers use the word “event” is a misuse of that term, standing for nothing. The set of events in this sense is the empty set. The term “event” as a philosophical term of art is a meaningless term.

How is the word “event” used by non-philosophical speakers? The OED gives us this: “a thing that takes place—a public or social occasion”; it then cites contests in sports (athletic events). We are familiar with the phrases “event planner” and “It will be a great event”. Events are things like weddings, christenings, graduations, and birthday parties. They are not just anything that happens no matter how trivial and unnoticed. A tap dripping is not an event. Generally speaking, an event in this vernacular sense is something of human significance—something that matters (to us). Events are part of the human world, not the mind-independent objective world. Nothing is an event in the “absolute conception”—the world as it is independently of us (or other intelligent beings). This should set off alarm bells: philosophers have lifted this word from ordinary speech and tried to imbue it with a wider metaphysical meaning. The ordinary speaker would be bemused by the way philosophers have come to use the word. This linguistic move borrows a meaning from ordinary language but then stretches it beyond what it can bear. The fact is that we have no term of ordinary language with the extension intended by philosophers. The plain truth is that an event, properly so called, is something that happens that has meaning for humans. So, there are plenty of events, but they are not what philosophers have in mind—those things are not events at all.

We must then ask what philosophers mean by the term (they don’t generally tell us). Here we get no univocal answer; the alleged ontology has no clear definition. This comes out in two ways. First, theories of the nature of events differ: are they simply the instantiation of a single property at a time by an object, or are they autonomous particulars instantiating a range of properties? That debate has raged (or trickled) for years and I won’t go into it. Is it true that being red at time t is an event? Hardly. Do events simultaneously instantiate the range of properties that objects do? Nope. Second, no criterion of identity for this alleged class of particulars has been proposed that does the job; identity of causes and effects is patently circular. So, the class of events in the philosopher’s technical sense is ontologically ill-defined and theoretically elusive. The indicated conclusion is that that ontology is spurious. It survives because of examples like explosions and wars, but these are events in the vernacular sense, since they are of human significance. Of course, stuff happens all the time, most of it of no human interest or account, but this doesn’t warrant application of the word “event”; it is just things coming to have properties or changing properties. It was an event for me when I graduated or got married, but not when I took a breath at noon yesterday or buttered a piece of toast this morning. The big bang was an event, as was the extinction of the dinosaurs, because these strike us as momentous; they are not events for the universe objectively considered. Then too, an object changing its properties at a time is nothing over and above the object, its properties, and a time; there is not some further entity, an “event”, on top of these. Being an event in the ordinary sense is a projected property, an anthropocentric property; there are no objective events. The universe was not eventful before humans (or other intelligent beings) came along; it was just shit happening, or less than shit (since shit can be an event—but I digress).

These reflections prompt a striking (even scintillating) thought: there are only mental events—there are no physical events. For physical events, considered objectively, are not events at all, since they have no significance for us (think of stuff happening in some remote unknown galaxy). But many mental events really are events, because our minds matter to us—weddings are events because the emotions that go with them matter to us (they are the true events of the day). We might even venture to say that what happens to us mentally is always an event, so focused are we on our own mental life. That pain yesterday was an event because it really got my attention. Thus, we might be persuaded that every mental change is an event, though these events may vary in their salience or “eventitude”. But there are no physical events, i.e., mind-independent events that matter to no one. Physical events don’t exist while mental events are only too existent. We can be ontologically committed to mental events, as events, and commit no linguistic or conceptual solecism; but we cannot do the same with physical events, there being none. Not even a massive explosion on an unknown star is an event (event for whom?). There is a well-defined ontology of events (weddings, graduations, etc.), but it isn’t what philosophers need for their theories, viz. uneventful events. Thus, there can be no identity theory of mental events and physical events (types or tokens), no general event ontology, no causal relations between events, no behavioral events, no metaphysical theory of events, no quantum events—not in any robust sense anyway. Stuff happens, but this doesn’t consist in things called events coming and going. The lion sleeps in the jungle, but there is no event of the lion sleeping there; that was really a non-event. There are jungles, lions, and sleep, but no additional entity of lion-sleeping. It always felt odd to speak of an event of buttering the toast in the bathroom (Davidson); now we see why. The alleged ontology of events reifies property instantiation under cover of ordinary language.[1]

[1] Suppose we have an ontology of sense-data and nothing else. We then assume that sense-data are significant events in someone’s life, as is not unreasonable. Then we will think that the world consists of events in something like the ordinary sense. It will then be easy to pick up on this use of “event” and transfer it, illegitimately, to the physical world. Hence, a world consisting of physical events. Things no doubt change, but there is no event of changing, as this is understood by philosophers. Events are not an ontological category which we have only recently recognized by reflecting on the logical form of action sentences. They carry a strong whiff of Meinong, or of possible worlds.

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Song Therapy

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Song Therapy

The therapeutic power of music is well-attested (see Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia). But we don’t hear much about song specifically—that is, singing. With no scientific basis whatsoever, I am going to assert that singing is therapeutic (and I will brook no dissent). Oddly enough, I think this is particularly true for the vocally challenged. I won’t go into my philosophical and psychological reasons for asserting this—they are at least as good as Freud’s—but will skip immediately to practicalities. Here’s what you do: you pick a song you are particularly fond of, which you would like to be able to sing—as it might be (I speak autobiographically) This Boy by the Beatles. Try not to pick an easy song, but go for one with a challenging section (usually high-pitched). Now learn the lyrics till you have them down without thinking. You can do this just by memorizing them cold or by listening to a recording of the song and singing along till you have absorbed the lyrics. Now begin to concentrate on the melody and rhythm, a bit at a time, going over them repeatedly. Do this by listening to the song and singing along to it. Repeat this for about a week every day, possibly a few times a day. You may have to repeat a particular passage many times, and it may sound horrible, but keep at it. If you choose, say, Over the Rainbow, be prepared to repeat the first word many times—”Somewhere!” There is a big pitch jump in there and you need to work on it. Now just keep on singing the song over and over again (a hundred times will do) till you can do it without thinking. Keep trying to improve technically. Now here is the vital point therapeutically: do everything in your power to inject emotion into your voice. Ideally, you should feel teary at some point; songs are designed to do that. Really lay it on thick. Don’t be afraid to be syrupy if the song calls for it (you might want to tackle Love Me Tender). If you feel brave, sing it in front of someone you trust. If you are very committed, try to learn Mother by John Lennon—it’s extremely emotional and difficult to sing. When you have learned your chosen song, you can move on to another song; repeat the procedure with this song. Don’t settle for a mediocre half-hearted performance. Do this for a few months and keep note of the therapeutic benefits. I will be interested to learn about your progress, vocally and emotionally.

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Causal Reality

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Causal Reality

Consider Michelangelo’s statue of David: heavy, large, made of marble, beautifully shaped. Aristotle would say that it consists of matter and form—its composition and shape. According to him, these are both causes of the statue—material cause and formal cause. Together, they make the statue what it is; they cause it to be what it is (making is causing). It is because of them that the statue exists. In general, Nature gives things a nature in virtue of matter and form.[1] Matter and form are ontologically basic. But what antecedent facts produced the statue? What is its efficient cause? Whatever that is it must cause the matter and the form of the statue, so what caused the matter and what caused the form? The cause of the matter is not immediately obvious and took some science to discover–geological science. It goes back to what caused the matter of the earth—the minerals, metals, etc. We can certainly report that matter was not caused by man; Michelangelo didn’t cause it. He found it ready-made. No one thinks that Michelangelo had the power to cause (create) the piece of marble that constitutes the statue. So, we can say that the matter of the statue was efficiently caused by nature, geologically understood. It is a product of nature not man. But what about its form, its shape? That was not caused by nature but by man, a specific man. The efficient cause of the form of the statue was the actions of Michelangelo.

In virtue of what was Michelangelo the cause of the form of the statue? What was it about him that made the statue have the shape it has? An old-fashioned answer would be his substantial body and soul; a modern answer would be the atoms of his body and the workings of his brain. That is, his physical and psychological characteristics. These fall under Aristotle’s scheme: matter and form (stuff and morphology). The efficient cause of the statue’s shape consists of a combination of the matter and form of an antecedent object, fact, or event—and nothing else. There isn’t some third attribute that figures in the causal story over and above the material and formal cause of the causing agency (a particular sculptor). An efficient cause has its causal powers in virtue of its matter and form; there is not some third causal factor exemplified by the so-called efficient cause. In other words, efficient causation reduces to the other two kinds of causation; they are what is basic to causal reality. They are the true causes not some indefinable “efficient” cause. There are no efficient causes, though there is a relation labelled “efficient”: all causes are constituted by matter and form. This is why we have that peculiar label “efficient”; there is no distinctive causal reality corresponding to it. We could equally call it antecedent causality, or sequential, or temporal. It isn’t a further type of causal factor, just one way in which the other factors operate—across time (as well as at a time). Aristotle was wrong to include it as a fourth type of cause on all fours with the other three. Causal reality consists of the material and the formal, and that’s it.

We can generalize from Michelangelo’s David; it exemplifies a general pattern. Whenever you have a causal sequence, the operative factors are material and formal. Births and deaths are the same: some antecedent combination of matter and form brings about an effect; there is nothing additional to these (something called efficiency). Atoms in certain configurations, as we would put it today—arrangements of stuff, basically. Because that is fundamentally what nature is. This applies also to mental causation, even when not construed in materialist terms: the “matter” might be an immaterial substance—this is still the “material cause” of the mind. Similarly, the form of the mind is not necessarily a geometric concept; it can be any mode of arrangement or structure (“architecture”). Cartesian substances act causally in the same way as material substances; their causal powers depend on their composing stuff and their structure. Causal efficacy is always a matter of matter and form. There are thus two factors operating in any causal interaction, both individually necessary and taken together sufficient, which we are calling by their Aristotelean names. Sometimes one predominates over the other in a causal interaction: sometimes it is only the matter that counts, sometimes form is the important factor. Mass matters in gravitational interactions, shape matters in house building. What I want to emphasize is that efficient causation is not itself a causal power, or the basis of one; this is just a way of talking about the other two. The cement of the universe consists of the actions of matter and shape (roughly); there is not also a third element, efficiency. It matters that there is a duality here—that causation divides into two components. It isn’t a unitary thing: we have matter and form, form and matter. Pure form can’t cause anything, and pure matter can’t either; each needs the other to power the universe. God had to install both in order to get the universe up and running, but he didn’t need to add something called “efficiency”. We might even say that necessarily causation exploits two and only two ingredients: for how could a third ingredient change the course of history, as dictated by matter and form? What else could nature consist of? How could causation be fixed by anything other than matter and form? Everything has to be made of something, and everything has to have some sort of form—and there can’t be anything else. Even God must fall under this metaphysical duality (divine substance and divine form)—he has a material cause and a formal cause that fix his causal powers. He engages in efficient causation, as in creating the universe, but he has no attribute corresponding to “efficiency”. A modern-day Aristotle would say there are two types of cause, material and formal, and leave it at that. What is called an “efficient cause” is really one manifestation of a material cause and a formal cause; these are the bedrock of the cement.[2]

[1] I won’t discuss Aristotle’s notion of final cause, which is really too antiquated to survive the passage of time. But his notions of matter and form are still relevant today, suitably updated. This is one dualism we can’t do without—which is not to say it doesn’t raise difficult questions. It might even be said to be deeply mysterious.

[2] Historically, at least since Hume, efficient causation has been the focus of attention, with material causes and formal causes relegated to Aristotelean antiquity. I am inverting that priority, seeing efficient causation as resting on the other two. It is material and formal causation in action, so to speak; it is nothing without them. The causal structure of the universe is determined by its material and formal nature, with efficient causation superimposed. We tend to take this basic structure for granted, our attention being grabbed by the passing show (one damned thing after another); but it is really the foundation of the whole causal set-up. Events in time are just substances (matter and form combinations) strutting their stuff (while keeping excellent form). Event metaphysics has ruined the philosophy of causation; and event metaphysics is the result of empiricist assumptions—so, we must reject those assumptions in order to get our causal house in order. Aristotle, happily, was not hampered by empiricism. In the beginning was the material-formal thing not the deed. Actions depend on actors.

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An Identity Theory of Causality

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An Identity Theory of Causation

Let causal dualism be the doctrine that cause and effect are separate things, one following the other in time: first the cause, then the effect.[1] There is no overlap between the two; they are quite distinct events. The short circuit caused the fire: one event (or state of affairs) caused another event (or state of affairs), period. The billiard ball striking another billiard ball made it move away–the striking and the moving being different occurrences. This is opposed to the view that talk of cause and effect is really talk of the same thing: we have a dualism of descriptions not a dualism of objects. Logically, the case is like mind and body: do we have a dualism of objects or a dualism of descriptions (senses, perspectives)? Granted we have causal interactions, but do these consist of a cause-effect pair, discrete and asymmetric, correlated but not identical?

One billiard ball strikes another billiard ball and that ball moves away—the former causes the latter. These seem like distinct existences. But consider: the second ball causes the first ball to slow down, perhaps stop in its tracks; it impedes the motion of that ball, which would have gone on in a straight line if not obstructed. We can imagine someone putting the impeding ball there on purpose so as to secure the result in question—to get that effect. One ball causes the other to move away (acceleration), but that ball causes the other to slow down (retardation). The causation was reciprocal. How many things happened? Can’t we say there was just one, a collision of billiard balls? There are two ways of describing it, but only one thing was done—sending one ball into another. The moving away and the stopping are aspects of the same event. What we call the effect (moving) actually caused a change in the cause (stopping). The effect had an effect on the cause. The stopping and the moving were aspects of the same basic event—the collision. Collisions affect both parties—the impact is mutual. There was an event of collision and it can be described as causing a ball to move or causing a ball to slow down. Something happened between the two balls, and that is the fundamental causal reality. That something was highly localized: momentary contact between parts of the surfaces of the two balls. The rest of the balls is strictly irrelevant to the causal nexus. There was a localized touching event and that is what led to the two effects of moving away and slowing down. The touching event was the core of the causal interaction; it can be described in cause language or effect language—a touched b or b touched a. The fact is that a and b touched each other. This symmetrical touching is the causal reality. It isn’t that the cause is a separate thing from the effect—as if the moving ball were merely an effect and not itself a cause. The touching is both cause and effect; it is both what caused the moving and what caused the stopping. It isn’t that causes are active and effects passive; both are active and passive. Every causing is a case of being affected and every being affected is a case of causing. It isn’t that some things are intrinsically causes and some things are intrinsically effects, and never the twain shall meet; all causation is both. One man’s cause is another man’s effect, and one man’s effect is another man’s cause. There could be a game of billiards in which the sole purpose is to block the other player’s balls: you score points when you force your opponent to make contact with your balls, while he tries to sink his balls into the pocket without touching your balls. The effect you are seeking is his ball making contact with yours. What we call the effect is relative to the point of the game. As far as nature is concerned, everything is both a cause and an effect; you are talking about the same thing from different points of view. Objectively, there are just symmetrical collisions—mutual touching. A cause is a touching and an effect is a touching—the same touching. Hence, the identity theory.

Suppose you press your finger into a piece of soft rubber. You cause it to deform into a dent; the dent, we say, was an effect of your finger pressure. But the rubber also put up some resistance to your pressure and caused your flesh to shift a bit; the shift was an effect of the rubber’s resistance. The effect caused an effect on the cause. Yet there was only one thing going on—finger and rubber being pressed together. You pressed and it pressed. The cause was the effect: the finger pressing down was the rubber pressing back. The purpose of the act could have been to exercise the finger, in which case we would have described this as the effect and the rubber the cause; while if we wanted to make a dent in the rubber, we would have said that the finger was the cause. There is causing and effecting, and these are the same. There are causal nexuses, and that’s all. Causal relations are not one damn thing after another, causes asymmetrically preceding effects; they are simultaneous reciprocal interactions, symmetrical links. When Newton said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, he was expressing much the same point: causation always cuts both ways and is essentially an action-reaction nexus. It is better to speak of causality not of cause-effect relations. Effects arecauses, as the mind is the body (for an identity theorist). Our customary talk of cause and effect is pragmatically shaped; metaphysically, there is no such sharp division. Does the Sun cause plants to grow via photosynthesis? You can talk this way, but remember that plants cause the Sun’s rays to be absorbed and used in photosynthesis (they affect the Sun’s light). These are part and parcel of the same interaction: photon absorption. Causal dualism imposes a spurious dichotomy on causality, forcing causes and effects into exclusive categories; in reality, causality consists of multiple causal nexuses that can be variously described. Thus, I prefer to speak of causal monism—a causal identity theory.

If we switch our attention to objects (substances) and causality, we get a clearer picture of the metaphysics of causation. The ontology of events in discussions of causality is only part of the causal picture. For it is clear that there are no intrinsically cause objects and intrinsically effect objects; there are just interacting objects. The Sun warms the Earth and the Earth absorbs the Sun’s energy. Objects interact with their environment all the time, acting and being acted on. If you cut down a tree, it blunts your blade; the saw is both a cause object and an effect object. There is no sense in trying to classify it as one or the other. An identity theory of object causation is the indicated position. Neutral monism about causation is the way to go. The world is not inherently divided into causes and effects; it isn’t the totality of these. The causal cement of the universe is not a compound of causes and effects (like H2O), i.e., distinct ontological categories; it is a totality of causal nexuses. We carve these up in various ways, using the concepts of cause and effect; but it is a mistake to project this division onto reality, as if we had hold of distinct metaphysical natural kinds. What we call cause and effect is merely the appearance of causal reality.[2]

[1] I think causal dualism is endemic to philosophy, especially analytical philosophy, and perhaps to human thought generally. It may help the reader to keep in mind Davidson’s treatment of causal statements, which crystalizes the doctrine in question; also, the positivist way of thinking about causality, biased as it is towards epistemological considerations (how we experience causality). I am trying to peer into the deep metaphysics of the subject, not the logical form of causal statements or how we experience and know causal truths. I want to grasp the ding an sich.

[2] This paper was difficult to write. It required me to think hard about matters that are difficult to grasp and even more difficult to express; I felt always on the brink of saying something strictly false, but essentially true. I won’t be surprised if my readers react with bemusement. It really isn’t easy to see into a reality that differs from our ordinary ways of talking and thinking. Causality has always been a very tricky subject. As Hume realized, it taxes our intellectual resources. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything on the subject I found intellectually satisfying. Most philosophers wisely steer clear of the subject. It ought to be easier.

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Science and Philosophy

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Science and Philosophy

Many scientists have got it into their head that the purpose of philosophy is to help them with their science. They then complain that it isn’t much help, if any. The complaint would be reasonable if their assumption were correct. But it isn’t. Philosophy is a different subject entirely. Their attitude is like philosophers thinking that the aim of science is to help them with their philosophical problems. These scientists are like lawyers who think the job of philosophers is to help them with their legal cases, or farmers who think philosophers should be helping with the farming. The idea seems to be that philosophy used to be an adjunct of religion, but science took over from religion, so philosophers should switch their interests accordingly. Or else they just think science is the only thing worth knowing (who taught them that?). They appear to believe they are the gentlemen and philosophers their manservants (“handmaidens”). Jeeves to Wooster, as it were, but with a less spectacular Jeeves. The fact is that the philosophical Jeeves is off doing his own thing, far removed from Bertie’s scientific endeavors. The two subjects are miles apart. Of course, it is good to know a wide range of things—philosophers should know some science and scientists should know some philosophy, just to be well-educated. In my experience the educational lack is greater on the science side, since science is taught in schools and philosophy isn’t. I know many philosophers who are quite good scientists, but virtually no scientists who are even halfway decent philosophers. I myself was trained as a scientist (psychology) initially, and the scientists I knew were generally completely ignorant of philosophy and had no interest in it. If a philosopher chooses to do philosophy of science, he isn’t trying to do science in some amateurish fashion; he is doing philosophy. How philosophy could help one design experiments beats me, let alone analyze their results. Science is one thing, philosophy quite another. In my brain, psychology and philosophy occupy different compartments, rather as tennis and music do. The purpose of philosophy is not to help scientists think more clearly, or some such worthy (and dreary) aim; it is to solve philosophical problems—or at least understand them better. I am not today trying to explain what philosophical problems are, or how to set about solving them; I am simply asserting that philosophy is not the manservant of science. Nor has it ever been since the time of Plato. Philosophy is not concerned with finding out the center of the universe or how animals evolved or what matter is made of—or helping scientists find out those things (how?); it has its own subject-matter and methods. If a scientist wants to find out what these are, he or she could have a look at the curriculum of a typical philosophy degree—or even more onerous, take a philosophy course. It’s not that hard.

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Identity, Causality, and Caterpillars

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Identity, Causality, and Caterpillars

Suppose you don’t know the true relationship between caterpillars and butterflies: you don’t know that the former turn into the latter by metamorphosis. You notice the two are often found in the same vicinity, but you don’t know that they are really the same organism at different stages of its life. You assume they belong to different species. You decide to investigate these creatures: you place five butterflies and five caterpillars in a sealed container to see what happens. Lo and behold, when you return some time later you find there are now ten butterflies and no caterpillars—but you never witnessed the transition through the chrysalis stage. You form the hypothesis that caterpillars cause butterflies—without being butterflies. For some reason the one causes the other, as if a flea could cause an elephant; it seems miraculous but you feel driven to accept it. Things cause other very different things all the time. Now suppose you conduct more diligent observations and come to the conclusion that actually they were the same organism all along, but with a different appearance at different times; you have discovered metamorphosis. Question: would you conclude that you were wrong earlier to suppose that caterpillars cause butterflies? I think not: you would hold that the causal claim is true despite the identity—that the two propositions are logically (metaphysically) compatible. And you would be right to do so, in my opinion. Isn’t it just straightforwardly true that caterpillars are the cause of butterflies (not flowers or bees or hummingbirds)?

Now suppose you are an alien visiting Earth and you observe babies and adults, but you don’t know that babies grow into adults while retaining their identity. You think these are creatures of different species that are often found in the same vicinity. After some experiments (see above), you conclude that babies cause adults but are not the same as them (they look so different). Then later, after more careful observation, you reach the startling conclusion that babies and adults are the same creatures at different stages of a single life. Do you revise your earlier causal judgment? No, you conclude that there is a causal relationship between them and that they are identical. Identity does not preclude causality. You would be right to do so, in my opinion.

Now imagine you are an astronomer investigating the planets, about whose nature you know very little; you vaguely suppose they are big fireballs in the sky. One you call “Hesperus” and another you call “Phosphorous”; you get it into your head that Hesperus causes Phosphorus—one fire in the sky ignites another fire in the sky (you don’t know how). Then you find out these two objects are actually the same hunk of rock hurtling through space. Well, I never, Hesperus is Phosphorus! Do you abandon your earlier causal judgment? You see no reason to; it has merely turned out that Hesperus and Phosphorus stand in both relations—identity and causality. The thing you see in the evening is the cause of the thing you see in the morning (what it does during the day you have no idea). Nothing else does—not the Moon or the Sun or Mars.

You have seen Superman and Clark Kent around and you begin to suspect a connection. Is one of them the cause of the other? It seems unlikely that Clark is the cause of Superman, given the former’s rather unimpressive persona, so you conjecture that Superman is the cause of Clark. No way they can be identical, given their very different abilities and sartorial style. Then one day you see Superman actually changing into his Clark Kent clothes and you decide, rightly, that the two are identical. Not only does Superman cause Clark Kent but the latter is the former, surprisingly enough. Again, you feel no inconsistency—correctly, in my view. You also note that causal contexts are not always referentially transparent (you can’t say “Clark Kent is the cause of Superman”, even though the two names have the same reference).

You are a budding physicist and chemist interested in heat, light, and water. You have been reading about molecules, photons, and gases, and you form some hypotheses: heat is caused by molecular motion, light is caused by streams of photons, and water is caused by molecules of oxygen and hydrogen. These hypotheses have notable explanatory virtues; you are hoping for a Nobel Prize. On reflection and further experimentation, you arrive at the view that heat is molecular motion, light is a stream of photons, and water is H2O. Does that mean you were wrong in your causal claims? I don’t think so: identity and causality are compatible. Water is causally explained by H2O and water is identical to H2O.

Finally, you are a neuroscientist interested in the brain-mind connection. You are convinced that the brain causes the mind and you assume they are distinct things (you might even be a Cartesian dualist). Later, you become persuaded that the mind-brain identity theory is true—should you give up your causal claims? Again, why should you—the two things are compatible. Believing the identity theory does not rule out believing the causal theory, both of which seem eminently defensible. We can have theoretical identification and causal relations. Pain can be an effect of C-fiber firing as well as being identical to it.

It is true that these doctrines are contrary to the way philosophers have talked of identity and causality for many years, but these ways of talking seem not to fit the intuitive facts. Causal relations don’t always require numerical distinctness.[1] We have to get used to new ways of talking.

[1] See my “Causality and Identity”. The present paper is intended to provide some intuitive data in support of that earlier paper. It doesn’t substitute for it.

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Dolphin Phenomenology

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Dolphin Phenomenology

Dolphins have a highly sophisticated echolocation sense as well as high intelligence (and amazing motor abilities).[1] They can spot the location of fish buried under sand on the sea floor using this sense. They insert their snouts in the appropriate place and dig out the fish. What is going on in their minds? That we don’t know, minds being what they are (they are not detectable even by echolocation). Evidently, dolphins construct a mental map of the terrain and store it in memory; this guides their actions. It is very tempting to think of this map in visual terms. Three theories suggest themselves: the dolphin’s echolocating mind contains only auditory sense data, or it contains only visual sense data, or it contains neither but a new kind of sense data not known to us. I want to suggest a fourth theory: it contains both auditory and visual sense data, but nothing radically new. More specifically, auditory sense data elicit visual images of the layout of the ocean floor and the position of the fish buried beneath it. They have a visual representation of the environment caused by the sounds they produce and hear. Their state of mind is like ours when we hear a sound and it prompts a visual image in us—for example, hearing the sound of a motor car and forming a visual image of a motor car. That is the nature of dolphin phenomenology; it is a combination of the auditory and visual.

Thus, it is a phenomenology familiar to us, if not in exactly the same form (we don’t use echolocation). Imagine walking through a room and hearing sounds emanating from behind things, these eliciting visual images of the hidden objects. You can see a certain amount of the room with your eyes, but you can also “see” things not with your eyes, but with the aid of your ears and your ability to form visual images based on auditory inputs. The dolphin mind has in it (limited) visual information about its environment conveyed by its eyes, auditory information conveyed by its ears (caused by itself or other sources), and visual information derived from images generated by the auditory information. The last is of particular interest because it involves cross-modal information processing: the dolphin’s brain can synthesize a visual map based on auditory inputs and add it to the visual map that derives from its eyes. It sees the surface with its eyes and the sub-surface (where the fish are hiding) with its ears, this being fed into a device for constructing a visual map of the sub-surface. In short, the phenomenology is both auditory and visual—with two layers of visual, one superimposed on the other. It really does see what its ears reveal, because it constructs a visual map (an image) of the sub-surface terrain. It visually images the underground fish, like X-ray vision. There is no third sense involved with different qualia. So, we do know what it’s like to be a dolphin—roughly, anyway. It’s like hearing the sound of a bird and picturing the bird in one’s mind’s eye. Dolphins are just really good at this.[2]

[1] My main source for this paper is a documentary by David Attenborough on sound in the animal world on Netflix, which I enthusiastically recommend.

[2] You might think the ear-caused visual representations are more in the nature of percepts than images, but I think it is unlikely that this is the case; the representations are really in the nature of mental images, though they could be very detailed and vivid. For the distinction, see my Mindsight.

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Identity and Causality

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Identity and Causality

It is generally supposed that an object cannot cause itself; causation only holds between distinct things. I will question this orthodoxy. The argument will take the form of nudging intuitions in the direction of the target thesis. The claim will be that every object causes itself (among other things); every object is an effect of itself (inter alia). The causal relation is (or can be) reflexive. I am both a cause and effect of myself. For any x, x causes x. First consider what Aristotle calls the material cause of a thing: the stuff that composes it. This is contemporaneous with the object composed, yet they are not identical objects (according to most views). I am caused (materially) by the cells in my body and the atoms in the cells: they produce me, constitute me, bring me into existence. We are not stretching the concept of cause very far in accepting Aristotle’s notion of material cause. There is more to causation than efficient causation by events spread out in time. We can also add causation by parts: a whole object can be said to be caused by its parts; together they produce or yield the object. The parts are the reason the whole exists, as the material of a thing is. But this doesn’t yet imply self-causation. How can we take the next step?

Propositions entail other propositions, but they also entail themselves—p implies p. So, entailment is compatible with identity; indeed, it might be viewed as the primary case of entailment. Propositions are self-entailing. But isn’t entailment a type of causation? It is productive, generative, a type of power; a proposition is a logical consequence of itself—a conclusion of which it is also the premise.[1] We could call entailment “logical causation”. The premise is sufficient for the conclusion; it guarantees the conclusion. Yet they are identical. But why not extend this way of thinking to objects? An object is sufficient for itself, a guarantor of itself, an upshot of itself. Like a proposition, it acts as a premise to itself as conclusion. If you know that x exists, you can infer that x exists: every object suffices necessarily for itself. Every object causes itself. It causes other things too, but among them is itself. It is a kind of limit case. Why not say this? Surely, it is reasonable to say that a property suffices for itself: if F is satisfied, then that property is satisfied. It will cause other properties to be satisfied, but it also causes itself to be satisfied—trivially, one might say. It is causally sufficient to satisfy the property of being red by being red—being red is enough to make a thing red, obviously. What is this “making” relation if not a type of causation? We don’t normally mention this case because it is so painfully obvious—it adds nothing to the conversation—but it is true nevertheless. If every object is trivially self-causing, we won’t have any need to assert that fact; but it is still a fact—as is the identity of every object with itself. Self-identity is a truism scarcely worth noting, and so is self-causation. If someone were to assert, “This table is a cause of itself”, we would reasonably (and sarcastically) respond, “So, what else is new?”

If your intuitions are now moving in the desired direction, let me politely nudge them further. Can’t we say that type identity is compatible with causation? If an object replicates itself, producing an identical copy, doesn’t it cause the same type to exist elsewhere? True, there are two tokens, but doesn’t the type do the causal work? The type causes itself to appear elsewhere. When a cell divides, the new cells come to have the type they have in virtue of the type of the original cell, but now in a different place. The causal relation operates at the level of the type, and it is the same type in another location. The type is causing an identical type in another token. Types cause themselves to replicate. We say, “This type came to be because of that type”, referring to two token instances of the same type. Now consider identity through time: an object at one time causes itself to have certain properties at a later time—say, in the development of an organism (e.g., a butterfly). The object is causing a change in itself not in some distinct object: x at t1 causes x at t2 to be F. The causation is reflexive and cross-temporal. There is no conceptual problem about this. So, why not allow that an object can cause itself at a time? It can cause itself to be F at a time, to exist at a time, and to be itself at a time. To be sure, it can’t efficiently cause these effects, i.e., by being antecedent to itself, but not all causation is efficient causation. Once we loosen the concept up a bit, we can see our way clear to self-causation. I am the reason for my own being—not the sole reason, but a reason. I am me because of me: how could that fail to be true? I don’t go around excitedly announcing this to all and sundry, because it is insultingly obvious, but it is a metaphysical truth (like “numbers are objects” or “events happen”). It is puzzling that Aristotle never included this in his list of causes, but he could have—call it “identity causation”. Just as we say that every object is identical to itself, so we can say that every object causes itself. Neither proposition will make the evening news (“Scientists have discovered that not only is every object self-identical but every object is self-causing. For more on this over to…”).

The metaphysics of causation has long debated the extension of the concept cause, with narrow and wide interpretations proposed. For some reason, so-called efficient causation (isn’t all causation efficient?) has recently held pride of place, with Aristotle’s four types reduced to one. I am suggesting we up the tally to five. In time it may even seem to people as if this was the right place to start: the first and most obvious category of causation is that between an object and itself; everything else is an extension of that basic idea. We thus have identity cause, formal cause, material cause, teleological cause, and efficient cause—in that order. The most internal cause is identity cause: causation begins at home, as a relation between a thing and itself. And isn’t it nice to think of oneself as one’s own cause? I am literally a self-made man (and I did it my way).[2]

[1] See my “A New Metaphysics”, “Causal and Logical Relations”, and “Because”.

[2] It is customary to think of one’s parents as the proximate cause of one’s existence, but on the present conception there is another link in the causal chain (or structure)—you yourself. And notice that you are indubitably sufficient for your own existence, but nothing else is—the causal chain might have been interrupted at any point before your glorious self popped into being. Only you guarantee you. Granted you are the product of other things too, but at least you play a causal role in bringing about your existence. Everything, in fact, is a self-caused cause—and effect.

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