iwpoe wrote:

Re maths aren't they merely using a very narrow sense of causation? No one thinks numbers are *proximate* causes: they don't bump into each other. When I had to write a paper on Parfit (I think?) I was basically unable to proceed without introducing a classical account of causation, since I took him to be trivially correct on the point on his own terms.

They're probably using "cause" is a quasi-Humean sense, which would trivally make their account true (causation is a temporal relation of cause to effect in proximity of location, abstract object are outside space-time, therefore, etc)

Could it be possible that just like Aquinas talked about a foot and the footprint existing forever that Abstract objects are the same in relation to God? or am I missing something?

One of the usual analytic accounts of causation I hear is one event causes another event: the event of the ball hitting the window, causes the event of the window shattering, or something like that. This usually rides off the back of some kind of commitment to the idea that what we have is events and their relations, which is the core of any given event ontology. The usual idea is to deny that we know anything about substances and their powers.

It occurred to me that if that's what you think about the world, then you are either necessarily going to think that causation is temporal relations of proximity, or else you're going to strongly be led to think that. But I hadn't considered it before just now.

Last edited by iwpoe (3/06/2016 8:01 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

One of the usual analytic accounts of causation I hear is one event causes another event: the event of the ball hitting the window, causes the event of the window shattering, or something like that. This usually rides off the back of some kind of commitment to the idea that what we have is events and their relations, which is the core of any given event ontology. The usual idea is to deny that we know anything about substances and their powers.

It occurred to me that if that's what you think about the world, then you are either necessarily going to think that causation is temporal relations of proximity, or else you're going to strongly be led to think that. But I hadn't considered it before just now.

Yeah, I think you have it quite right; given that sort of event ontology, one is definitely going to at least tend towards a Humean stance on causation.

I wonder if we might need to distinguish though between an indirect event ontology (which would really be an event epistemology, but I digress) and a event ontology proper, the difference of course being that the indirect form would allow one to infer from events/relations to substances/powers, whereas the later would not.

The reason I bring this up is because the best contemporary critique of Hume, in my humble view at least, and probably the best ever, again my view, was penned by Lady Mary Shepherd, and she seemed to have held to a form of what I have entitled a indirect event ontology,

Thus, on her view, all that we directly know about is events and relations; we infer from causal reasoning to the existence of a cause, which would give us knowledge of substances and of the hidden powers of nature. To defend this view, she gives a really strong argument for the Principle of Causality, which Brandon over at Siris helpfully summarized here: http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2012/03/this-isnt-really-meant-to-stand-alone.html

Once she has the Principle of Causality, she uses it to infer the Principle of Induction, that in the same circumstances the same causes will produce the same effects, and from there, she infers the existence of the hidden powers of nature and the existence of the things producing the qualities that one, on her view, knows directly.

If you're interested, you can find her critique of Hume here: https://archive.org/details/essayuponrelatio00shepiala

OTOH, I think it would be hard, on an event ontology proper, to be able to deny a Humean account on causation; it seems the best one could do at that point is go the quasi-Malebranchian route (which Malebranche himself never quite took, but one 19th century critic of Hume that I've seen did) and model our knowledge of causation on our volition.

Then, instead of a search of nature for generalities to ground expectations, we search nature to ascertain the Divine will; Humean moderate skepticism then becomes a trust in the Divine will behind all things, etc.

In other words, we get an enthusiasm, in the 18th century technical theological sense, and it seems to me to be the only viable way out to a classical conception of causality on the Event Ontology view. (And also, this is where I think Hume's view should actually lead one, since Hume has, by his skepticism, given up anything besides our will to ground causation on by the time he's considering it in his works; but that's my possibly mistaken and quite controversial point O'view.)

In a classical philosophical view would abstract objects instead be formal causes or posses this causality? Does anyone know where to find an explanation for the differences between abstract objects and Platonic forms(is the theory of the forms still plausible today?)