CAUSALITY (Fr. causality, from Lat. causatis, eausal, from causa, cause). The rela tion in which cause stands to effeet and effect to cause. Causation is the relation of cause to effeet.
Of cause, causation, and causality, ninny views have been held. Aristotle was the first to de vote much attention to the nature of causality, whereas many of his predecessors had spent much time on trying to discover particular causes for particular effects or some one general cause for the universe as a whole. But even Aristotle's contribution to the subject consisted rather in classification of various kinds of eausality than in any satisfactory discussion of the ultimate nature of the relation between cause and effeet. IIe enumerated four different kinds of causes, which have ever since had a place in philosophy. These are the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. The first, or material, cause is what anything is made of, e.g. brass or marble is the material ea use of a given statue. The formal en use is the form, type, or pattern, according to which anything is made; e.g. the style of archileeture would he the formal valise of a house. Again, the efficient cause is the power acting to produce the work, e.g. the manual energy of the workmen. The final cause is the end or motive for the sake of which the work is produced, e.g. the pleasure of the owner. Aristotle mentions the case of a physician curing himself, as exemplifying all the causes in one and the same subject. Important as this classification has proved itself to he in the subsequent development of thought on the subjeet, it does not toneh upon the problem of causality as it presents itself to the modern mind. This was due to the march: that in so many ways characterized the Creek thinkers. Ile assumes that there are causes and that they produce effeets; but he does not help us to con ceive the nature of the power—if power there be —exercised by the cause in the production of the effect. Sextus Empirieus, probably following ..Ene sidenms, raised some of the problems that have ever sineehusied the thoughts of philosophers. First of all he pointed out the relativity of the notion of cause, since cause has no meaning apart from effect. lIut, he argued, the relation has no real existence, hut is merely a thought-product. We think eausalit into things which are themselves free from any such relation. Furthermore. there is a difficulty about the temporal relation of cause and effect. Cause cannot lie prior to the effect, for it is not cause till the effect arises. It cannot be simultaneous with, nor subsequent to, the effect, for in either ease it would not be what we mean by cause. This is evidently a sophism to be discussed further on hut it is a subtle one that has puzzled many thinkers even to the present day. and has con (bleed much to a clearer understanding of the time relation involved in causality.
In early modern philosophy there were two rival notions of cause. Descartes and his school made cause identical with substance, while the physical scientists reduced cause to a motion or change followed by other motion or change with a mathematical equality between measures of motion. But it was "Ionic who first in modern times took up the problem of causal ity where the skeptics had laid it down. Ile carried out to its logical conclusion the con tention of Sextus Empirieus that causality is not a real relation, but a fiction of the mind, and he used the doctrine of association to ac count for the origin of the fiction. Any tie binding cause and effect, he pointed out, is undiscoverable by the senses: and as ideas are merely copies of sense-impressions. we have no idea of causality. . But we hare a fiction of the imagination in regard to causality, and the fie tion arises from the ease with which we pass from one perception to another perception, which in past experience has been constantly and un varyingly associated with it. "We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoined to gether, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. tVe only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the object. acquire a union in the imagination." Hence "a cause is an object precedent and clinth.mous to another. and so united with it, that the idea of the one deter mines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other," Hume's explanation of cause as a fiction which has no discoverable objective correlate led Kant to the position that the only knowable objective world is, so fax as all the relation, obtaining with in it go, the product of mind's creative activity.
Kant accepted El nine's skeptical result as far as it concerned itself with the world of thing, in-themsel•es; but not being satisfied that ex perience is only a succession of perceptions without any discoverable coherence. lie made causality one of the principles of coherence ob taining in the world of phenomena, and uni versally present there because always put there by thought as a part of its contribution to the nature of that world. (See KANT, and CATE Thus both Hume and Kant agree in denying absolute objectivity to causality: they disagree in that the former denies also a relative objectivity to causality, while the latter asserts such objectivity. The difference is due to the fact that for Hume the ideal world (the bundle of perceptions) is comparatively unorganized and chaotic: for Kant it is so thoroughly or ganized that it is regarded as a universe with relative objectivity and the relations obtain ing therein as thoroughly knowable, inasmuch a, they are contributions by the knower. Hegel, denying outright a transcendent world beyond experience. and recognizing, as Kant did. the uni versal preudence of causality within experience. made causality thoroughly objective. But the question arises, How is it known that. causality is universal within the world of experience? We have not always experienced a cause for every experienced of eet: in fact, the whole problem of physical science is to discover valises for known events. How do we know they have any causes at all? Kant, as we have already seen, answers: We know, because we have made our world in such a way that everything has a cause. Ilegel's answer to this question cannot he given here, as it would require too minute a discussion. .1. S. Mill took up the problem here; denying the fundamental postulate of Kant's transcendental ism, viz. that the order of this world is thought made, he seeks to justify our belief in universal causation by tracing it back to an induction (q.v.) which rests upon a larger experience than any other induction can have. The difficulty with this view is that for Mill all induction rests upon the principle of causality. and it is a circular procedure to make causality rest on induction. But circularity is the last resort in evitable in all reasoning. (See KNowrEDGE. THE ORY OF ; and Lode.) But the difference be tween valid logical circularity and vicious cir cularity is the difference between a systematie support given to each part of experience by all other parts. and an attempt to make t WO meats support each other while neglecting the eonerete experience upon which all judgments must rest. Mill's circularity in the present in stance is fundamentally sound, but the form in which he presents his reasoning is inadequate. and hence has led to severe criticism. Perhaps it would answer all purposes concerned to say that the tendency to make induction from ob served fact is natural to a thinker. But whether any partieular induction is valid is another ques tion. to be answered only by carefully studying all the inductions that have reaehed satisfactory re sults and finding what characteristics they have in common and wherein they differ from indue t ions admittedly erroneous. Such a study shows that satisfactory inductions, i.e. induetions upon which we hare learned that we can rely, have in common the assumption of the principle of causality as obtaining within the sphere covered by the induction. This assumption, at first and for a long time, was not consciously made, but none the less me can now see that it was made. Gradually, in certain spheres, the prin ciple of causality came to be clearly recognized as obtaining, but still not as supporting the induc tions formerly made. As time went on, the prevalence of causality in still other and other spheres was ascertained. Then the natural ten dency of thought to generalize caused men to make inductions to the universal prevalence of causality. Then when the question arose as to the foundation of induction, it was filially dis covered that it rested upon an unrecognized as sumption of causality, even in the case where the universal prevalence of causality was the subject matter of induction. Is this vicious? No, unless it can be shown that the assumption has led to results that are untenable. On the contrary, in this case the assumption lies at the foundation of every valuable structure raised by thought, and the tenability of the assumption is guaran teed by the validity of all that follows from the assumption and that would be invalidated were the assumption unjustifiable. See INDUCTION; ENOWLEDGE, TIIEORY OF.