An Eighteenth-Century Critique of Productive Cause Explanations

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Author: Aaron D. CobbAaron D. Cobb
Affiliation: Saint Louis University
Source: Causation 1500-2000, 2008
Keywords: causation, Berkeley , Hume, Reid [edit]

@inbook{cobb2008a,
    author = "Cobb, Aaron D.",
    title = {An Eighteenth-Century Critique of Productive Cause Explanations},
    booktitle = "Causation 1500-2000",
    year = "2008"}

Synopsis

Eighteenth-century philosophers, including George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid, reject the view that the proper aim of natural philosophy is to discover the productive causes of natural phenomena. They argue that productive cause explanations are neither necessary nor warranted in natural philosophy. In the place of this account of explanation they offer a revisionary conception which holds that a proper explanation of some phenomenon consists in showing that it can be subsumed under an experientially-grounded law. They derive this novel approach to scientific explanation primarily from their reflection upon the discussions of methodology in Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia MathematicaPhilosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton’s explicit disavowal of causal hypotheses concerning the underlying productive causes of gravity in the General Scholium combined with Newton’s achievements suggested that natural philosophy could dispense with inquiry into underlying productive causes. Rather than speculating about the causes of gravity, Newton considers this task unnecessary for establishing the mathematical principles of physics.

But the eighteenth-century rejection of productive cause explanations was not based solely upon their interpretative understanding of a Newtonian methodology. It was also predicated upon a common critique of the legitimacy of specific kinds of causal inquiry. Berkeley, Hume, and Reid all contend that inquiry into the underlying productive causes of phenomena is not warranted within the legitimate scope of natural philosophy. This critique does not undermine all forms of causal inquiry, but it does require a specification of the proper understanding of causal inquiry and use of causal terminology in natural philosophy. Following the Lockean analysis of the evidential grounds of one’s ideas concerning causal powers, they argue (i) that there is no clear evidence indicating that physical substances or their qualities are capable of acting as productive causes of phenomena and (ii) that the methods and sources of justification proper to natural philosophy cannot warrant ascribing effects to the productive powers of agents. Furthermore, they contend that all other explanatory entities (e.g., forces) are either reducible to physical substances, their qualities, or agents, in which case they are not legitimate explanations of phenomena, or they are occult entities and, hence, are not genuinely explanatory. If Newton shows that one can dispense with inquiry into productive causes, this eighteenth-century critique shows that one should dispense with this form of causal inquiry.

In this paper, I reconstruct the eighteenth-century criticism of productive cause explanations and discuss the philosophical motivations underpinning their revisionary conception of scientific explanation. I argue that a central assumption of this novel understanding of scientific explanation is an underlying pragmatism concerning the aims of a theory of scientific explanation. Berkeley, Hume, and Reid argue that one of the most important aspects of scientific understanding produced by nomological explanations of phenomena is its utility in directing human action. Knowledge of the productive causes of phenomena is not necessary for the goal of successful action.