Q&A: Causality
Causality
Question
A question for the Rabbi: there’s something basic I haven’t understood. If causality is only a product of cognition, then why don’t things happen without a cause? Why don’t elephants or tables appear out of nowhere? Is the thought that there is a cause for something even when no cause is found (for example, a murder scene with no traces would not lead investigators to think that maybe it has no cause; at most they would think they hadn’t investigated well enough, or that the murderer covered his tracks successfully) just naive belief?
Or do we need to distinguish between a necessary connection between cause and effect, which really is a product of cognition, and the principle of sufficient reason, which says that there must be a reason for something, though its identity is not necessary either? (In the last paragraph maybe I made a conceptual muddle.)
Thanks in advance in any case
Answer
You’re assuming things and saying you don’t understand them. So why are you assuming them?
Discussion on Answer
That’s not sharpness but an answer. You’re raising all the arguments, so what did you expect me to say?
You yourself said that even if you don’t see a cause, maybe there was one. So then what is the question of why we don’t see things without a cause?
Beyond that, Hume agrees that there are correlations between events and only claims that the relation of causation is attributed to them by us. So how could you see an event with or without a cause?
Why are the relations between causes and effects regular? Kicking a ball creates a sound, and an elephant comes from a female elephant. For some reason these relations don’t change. If causality is a fiction, then why have we never observed a kick to a ball producing an elephant?
For that matter, an event without a cause would be an event preceded by a cause that has never been observed. I’m not even talking about an event without a cause in an essential sense, because that really can’t be tested. It could always be that we missed something.
And how does the cosmological argument still hold water after David Hume’s distinction?
When you ask why, you are expecting a cause. But if there are no causes, then the answer is: that’s just how it is. According to Hume there is regularity but not causation. And still, the regularity says that an event of type A always comes before an event of type B.
You can’t see what is the cause of what, and therefore there is no way to infer that there was an event without a cause.
Because Hume’s argument is wrong.
I only assumed that I understood Hume’s claim, and that’s why I asked. Isn’t that how questions of non-understanding work?
So I don’t understand Hume? I can appreciate sharpness, but I came to learn.