causality

philosophy

cause

ology (the study of)

is a completely useless concept which, linguistically, we do not know how to rid ourselves of.

At length we grasp that things-consequently atoms, too-- effect nothing: because they do not exist at all-that the concept of causality is completely useless. a necessary sequence of states does not imply a causal relationship between them (-that would mean making their effective capacity leap from 1 to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5). There are neither causes nor effects. Linguistically we do not know how to rid ourselves of them. But that does not malter. If I think of the muscle apart from its 'effects,' I negate it (nietzsche 'will to power' : 296).

is a counterfactual which means that the statement 'x causes y' is equivalent to 'y would not have happened if x did not'.

Finally, yet other theorist defined causality as a counterfactual which means that the statement 'x causes y' is equivalent to 'y would not have happened if x did not'. This kind of definition of causality is the basis of Pearl's formalization of the Structure Equation Model (SEM) (Pearl 2000). All of the three definition agree on the time asymmetric nature of causality.

is a fiction, an idea which finds no support in experience or in rationality. So our mind must add the idea which arises from our own subjective habits of thinking that he calls 'customary conjunction'.

should not be considered as based on reason, as a rational intuition into real connections in the world, but as arising from our own habits of thinking (Matthews 2006: 31)

is a mere product of the rational mind, a result of the epistemological method, and therefore lacks ontological support.

For Hume, causality is a mere product of the rational mind, a result of the epistemological method, and therefore lacks ontological support: '[We] never can, by our utmost scrutiny, discover anything but one event following another, without being able to comprehend any force or power which that cause operates or any connection between it and its supposed effect. [Hume 1975: 74-5]

is a mistaken notion. The idea that the first of two phenomena generates the next is like saying that a rabbit is the cause of the dog simply because it comes before it.

EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other -which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog.

is a non-scientific concept which underpins all science. It is established on the basis of an original wager.

He argues that the concept of causality, which underpins all science, is itself a non-scientific concept... 'the very notion of cause. . . is established on the basis of an original wager' (S2, 192). (Evans 1999: 24)

is a primary feature of linear, progressive history, which attempts to control or domesticate the past in the form of knowing it.

For Foucault causality is a primary feature of linear, progressive history be it Marxist, liberal, positivist, even empiricist in its attempt to control or domesticate the past in the form of knowing it. He wishes to challenge the concept of 'continous history' because it: 'is the indispensable correlative of the founding function of the subject: the guarantee that everything that has eluded him may be restored to him: the certainty that time will disperse nothing without restoring it in a reconstituted unity... the promise that one day the subject in the form of historical consicousness will once again be able to appropriate, to bring back under his sway, all those things that are kept at a distance by difference, and find in them what might be called his abode' .

is a regular succession of event-types: One thing invariably following another.

For Hume, causality is a regular succession of event-types: one thing invariably following another.

causality, n.All

causality