"Air Tòir an Èisg Dheirg" le Steven Campbell 1983
§ 5 - LEANTAINN: SGRÙDADH AIR PRIONNSABAL NA CÚISÍOCHTA MAR CHRITÌG AN EISPÉIRIS.
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§ 5 - CONTINUATION: THE CRITICISM OF THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSALITY AS A CRITIQUE OF EXPERIENCE.
At the outset the principle of causality had been elevated by the metaphysics of the mathematical science-ideal to the rank of an eternal logical truth. LEIBNIZ broke with this purely logical conception, and conceived of causality as a "factual verity". But he, too, held to its ideal logical foundation (viz. on the principium rationis sufficientis) in our judgment.
HUME'S criticism of this principle became a critique of experience in the sense later on ascribed to it by KANT. It aimed at an investigation of the ground of validity of all theoretical synthetic judgments which claim to be universally valid and necessary, and this on the supposition that experience has no other data than sensory impressions.
Like KANT, HUME did not make any fundamental distinction between naïve experience and natural science!
According to HUME, all "experience" goes beyond the sensory impressions which alone are given. We can only speak of experience when epistemological judgments of supposed universal validity and necessity are given with reference to the sensory impressions and when from a sensorily given fact we conclude to another fact that is not given.
This is only possible with the aid of the principle of the connection of cause and effect. Through this principle alone can the relations of identity and of time and place transcend that which is given in sense data. "Here then it appears, that of those three relations which depend not upon the mere Ideas, the only one that can be trac'd beyond our senses, and inform us of existences and objects which we do not see or feel, is causation" (1).
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(1) Treatise I, Part III, Sect. II (p. 377).
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If the principle of causality with its kernel, the necessity in the relation of cause and effect, is really to possess an established validity, then a basis in the sensory impressions must be indicated for the Idea of causality. The foundation in question can only be sought in the relations of impressions.
An analysis of the Idea of causality shows that two relations, viz. that of contiguity and that of the priority in time of one event before an other, are essential elements of the relation of causality. And these relations are in fact sensorily given (2).
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(2) Ibid., p. 397.
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But the Idea of causality very decidedly goes beyond this sensory relations. For the judgment of causality does not state a mere post hoc, but pretends to be able to indicate a propter hoc, a necessity.
The problem pertaining to the necessary connection of cause and effect is to HUME the problem of the origin of natural laws as such.
To HUME the problem with respect to the foundation of the relation of cause and effect becomes in the final analysis the problem of the origin of natural laws as such.
Mathematical physics had based the certainty of its results upon the law of causality as a functional law of physical relations. DESCARTES called this law an "innate idea". LEIBNIZ saw in it the foundational principle of all judgments of experience, an ideal rational ground by means of which we can give an account of empirical phenomena, but which remains bound to the "factual verities". To HUME, however, this very principle of causality became problematical, insofar as it was conceived of as the principle of a necessary connection between a prior and subsequent event in the outer world.
HUME rejected as sophisms the attempts made by HOBBES, CLARKE and LOCKE to demonstrate the logical necessity in the inference from cause to effect. There is no object that as a "cause" would logically imply the existence of any other object. The denial of a necessary connection between cause and effect does not lead to a single logical contradiction.
Only by experience can we conclude from the existence of any object to the existence of another. With respect to this experience the situation is as follows: We remember that, after certain sorts of facts in space and time, we have constantly seen other facts follow. For instance we remember that, after the sensory perception of fire, we have regularly experienced the sensation of warmth. Thereby, a new relation is discovered which constitutes an essential element of the connection between cause and effect, namely, the constant connection of two sorts of impressions which follow each other in time (3).
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(3) Treatise I, Part III, Sect. VI (p. 389).
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In this relation there is nothing that in itself implies a necessity which would possess an objective validity: "From the mere repetition of any past impression, even to infinity, there never will arise any new original Idea, such as that of a necessary connexion; and the number of impressions has in this case no more effect than if we confin'd ourselves to one only" (4).
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(4) Treatise I, Part III, Sect. VI (p. 389).
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According to HUME, the law of causality is only to be maintained as a psychical law of association. Nevertheless, every legitimate foundation for the ideal of science in a mathematical physical sense is lacking. HUME thought that he could only maintain the law of causality in the sense of a psychical law of association, which through habit compels the mind to proceed without any reasoning from that which is given to that which is not given. In his Treatise he still took the trouble to indicate an impression as the psychological origin of the concept of causality. Here his argument is as follows: It is of course true, that from the mere repetition of similar events subsequent to previously perceived similar antecedents, nothing objectively new arises which is in fact sensorily perceived in each instance. But the constant resemblance in the different instances does raise a new subjective impression in the mind, namely, a tendency to pass over from an instantly given impression to the Idea of another impression which in the past repeatedly occurred after the former. This is then the impression which corresponds to the Idea of causality (5).
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(5) Treatise, Part. III, Sect. XIV (p. 459: "Tho' the several resembling instances, which give rise to the Idea of power, have no influence on each other, and can never produce any new quality in the object, which can be the model of that Idea, yet the observation of this resemblance produces a new impression in the mind, which is its real model."
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In his Enquiry HUME no longer took the trouble to bring his theory of the concept of causality in agreement with his doctrine concerning the relation between "impressions" and "Ideas". In fact this was impossible, because repetition can by no means give a new impression. Therefore HUME immediately introduces habit in connecting Ideas as a natural law.
The way in which HUME's Critique finally undermines the foundations of his own psychological science-ideal.
It is only habit which compels us to join the Idea of an event B, which repeatedly followed the same event A, with the Idea of the latter. Habit, in the constant perception of like consequences after like antecedents, is the only foundation for the judgment of causality. The subjective sequence of Ideas is incorrectly interpreted as an objective necessity in the relations between the contents of the Ideas.
The "propter hoc" — and with that the entire necessary coherence of phenomena — can never be demonstrated or understood rationally. It can only be believed (6).
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(6) "All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent." Enquiry, Sect. V, Part. I.
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This faith is only "some sentiment or feeling" that accompanies our Idea. But implicitly, this acknowledgement destroys the foundation of the psychical laws of association, as psychical laws of "human nature". For in these laws, too, there is implied a necessary connection between Ideas in temporal sequence: "nature by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel" (7).
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(7) Treatise, Part IV, Sect. II, p. 487/8.
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HUME even admits that he cannot account for these psychical laws of nature and he appeals to them in a purely dogmatic fashion as to "a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well-known by its effects" (8).
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HUME even admits that he cannot account for these psychical laws of nature and he appeals to them in a purely dogmatic fashion as to "a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well-known by its effects" (8).
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(8) Enquiry, Sect. v, Part. 1. It is true, that again and again in the Enquiry the insight appears, that the law of causality must be postulated as the foundation for all events. (See WENTSCHER, Geschichte des Kausalproblems, 1921, p. 102). But HUME'S psychologism compels him to seek the ground of the Idea of causality exclusively in subjective associations.
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Thus he not only undermined the Humanistic metaphysics of the rationalistic mathematical science-ideal and of the ideal of personality with its three themes: deity, freedom and immortality, but through his psychologistic epistemology he also shook the ground-pillars of the ideals of personality and of science as such.
HUME disregards the synthesis of logical and psychical meaning in his psychological basic denominator.
In keeping with the postulate of continuity of the ideal of science in its psychologized sense, HUME levelled the modal boundaries of meaning between the law-spheres, and thereby involved himself in evident antinomies. He was not conscious of the fact that his reduction of the entire given reality to a psychological basic denominator rests upon a fundamental rational abstraction; he did not understand that only theoretical thought, by synthesizing analytical and psychical modal meaning, is in a position to isolate the psychical aspect of reality. That he failed to acquire this insight is evident from his attempt to obliterate, in the face of the psychical aspect of sensation, the original sense of the logical aspect and to reduce the concept to a mere copy of the psychical impression of feeling.
HUME had sharply recognized the antinomy (previously analyzed by BAYLE and BERKELEY) of the metaphysical concept of substance, an antinomy which originates from the fact that a product of thought is proclaimed to be absolutely independent of thought, and to be a "thing in itself" (9).
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(9) This antinomy is excellently characterized by FICHTE in his Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre (Sämtl. Werke 1, S. 491), when he remarks in opposition to those wbo have accepted the "Ding an sich": "Ihr Ding ist durch ihr Denken hervorgebracht; nun aber soll es gleich darauf wieder ein Ding an sich, d.i. nicht durch Denken hervorgebracht seyn. Ich verstehe sie wahrhaftig nicht; ich kann mich weder diesen Gedanken denken, noch einen Verstand denken, mit welchem man diesen Gedanken denkt..." ["Their "thing" has been produced by their thought; nevertheless it should immediately after that again be conceived of as a "thing in itself", i.e. as not being produced by thought. Truly, I don't understand them; I can neither think this Idea, nor can I think of an understanding by means of which this Idea is thought..."].
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But he did not see the inner antinomy which lay in his own absolutizing of the psychical (feeling-) aspect of reality. He was unconscious of the antinomy which arises from the attempt to reduce the meaning of the logical aspect to the psychical "in itself". In truth his basic denominator for all given reality was a psycho-logical one, and not merely psychical.
In empirical reality the psychical aspect of meaning only exists in the full coherence of all the modal aspects. Only theoretical thought can abstract it, and within its modal cadre isolate the objective sensory impressions, the subjective emotions and the images of sensory phantasy. How then can the logical concept itself be comprehended as a mere image of a sensory impression? Whoever attempts to do so is guilty of undermining the logical criterion of truth, and necessarily involves himself in logical contradiction. Where only psychical laws of association rule, there is no room for a veritable normative criterion of truth, there every concept of natural law becomes meaningless. Thus, in his naturalistic psychologized system, HUME has also undermined his own theory 's claim to truth.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I/ Part 2/ Chapt 3/§5 pp 297-302)
