Causal Reality

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.