From Cause to Causation: A Peircean Perspective

269 Pages·2002·5.985 MB·English

by  Menno Hulswit (auth.)

FROM CAUSE TO CAUSATION
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
VOLUME 90
Founded by Wilfrid S. Sellars and Keith Lehrer
Editor
Keith Lehrer, University ofA rizona, Tucson
Associate Editor
Stewart Cohen, Arizona State University, Tempe
Board of Consulting Editors
Lynne Rudder Baker, University ofM assachusetts at Amherst
Radu Bogdan, Tulane University, New Orleans
Marian David, University ofN otre Dame
Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan
Denise Meyerson, University of Cape Town
Fran~ois Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod, EHESS, Paris
Stuart Silvers, Clemson University
Barry Smith, State University ofN ew York at Buffalo
Nicholas D. Smith, Michigan State University
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
FROM CAUSE TO CAUSATION
A Peircean Perspective
by
MENNO HULSWIT
Heyendaallnstitute,
University of Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA,B.V.
A c.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-0977-8 ISBN 978-94-010-0297-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0297-4
Printed on acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Origina1ly published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 2002
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Note on References Xl
Preface Xlll
CHAPTER 1: SOME KEY MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE
CONCEPT OF CAUSATION 1
1 Causation in Ancient Greece 2
1 Aristotle: Four Types of Explanation 2
2 The Stoics: Causation, Exceptionless Regularity, and Necessity 5
2 Causation in the Middle Ages 8
1 Thomas Aquinas 8
3 Causation in Modem Philosophy 15
1 The Metaphysical Systems from Descartes till Leibniz 17
2 Critical Philosophy from Locke till Mill 27
4 Conclusion: Important Changes in the Meaning of Cause 41
CHAPTER 2: CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO CAUSATION 47
The Contemporary Debate 47
1 Necessary and/or Sufficient Conditions 47
2 Causes and Counterfactual Dependency 54
3 The Instrumental Approach: Causes as Means-to-Ends 56
4 Probabilistic Causation 58
5 The Singularist Approach 60
v
vi CONTENTS
2 Basic Issues in the Contemporary Approaches to Causation 64
1 Five Fundamental Requirements 64
2 The Relata of the Causal Relation 67
3 Further Issues 71
3 Conclusion 73
CHAPTER 3: PEIRCE ON FINAL CAUSATION 75
1 Introduction 75
2 Peirce's Conception of Final Causation 76
1 The Nature of Final Causation 76
2 Final Causation and Efficient Causation 80
3 Teleological and Mechanistic Processes; Peirce's Rejection of
Dualism 82
4 Teleology and Objective Chance 84
5 Teleology as Creative; Developmental Teleology 85
3 A Peircean Critique of Ernst Mayr's Theory of Teleology 88
1 The Goal of Evolution 88
2 Mayr's Dualism 91
3 Mayr's Idea of a Program as 'Causally Responsible' for
Teleological Processes 93
4 Conclusion 95
CHAPTER 4: FINAL CAUSES AND NATURAL CLASSES 97
Natural Kinds and Causation in Contemporary Philosophy 99
2 Some Contemporary Interpretations of Peircean Natural Kinds 101
1 Susan Haack's Interpretation 101
2 Christopher Hookway's Interpretation 102
3 Sandra Rosenthal's Interpretation 103
3 Peirce versus Mill 104
1 Mill's Theory of Natural Kinds 104
CONTENTS vii
2 Natural Kinds and the Uniformity of Nature; Peirce's Earliest
Discussion of Natural Kinds 105
3 Peirce's Baldwin Definition of Kind 107
4 The PRE-Character 108
4 Kinds and Classes 109
5 Classification According to Final Causes 112
6 Criteria of Demarcation 116
7 Recapitulation: Definition of Peircean Natural Classes 119
8 Why Believe in Natural Classes? 121
9 Examples of Natural Classes 122
1 Examples from the Realm of Human Experience: Social
Classes, the Sciences, and Man-Made Objects 122
2 The Chemical Elements 123
3 The Biological Species 126
10 Was Peirce a Pluralist Regarding Natural Classes? 127
11 Conclusion: Natural Classes and Causation 131
CHAPTER 5: THE RIDDLE OF SEMEIOTIC CAUSATION 133
Some Fundamental Conditions of Signs as Such 134
1 Early Basic Insights 134
2 Later Developments 136
2 T.L. Short 139
3 Joseph Ransdell 144
4 Some Problems Generated by Short's and Ransdell's Views 147
5 The Causal Role of the Dynamic Object 148
1 Positive Evidence 148
2 Negative Evidence 150
6 Icon, Index, and Symbol 153
7 The Meaning of 'Determines' 160
Vlll CONTENTS
8 Conclusion 164
CHAPTER 6: A SEMEIOTIC ACCOUNT OF CAUSATION 167
1 Criticism of the Received View 167
1 Contemporary Approaches to Causation 168
2 Two Mutually Incompatible Conceptions of Cause 170
3 The Inadequacy of the Received View 171
4 Two Mutually Incompatible Categoreal Frameworks 176
5 Conclusion to Part 1: Criticism of the Received View 179
2 Necessary Conditions for a Theory of Causation 180
3 Peirce on Causality and Causation 181
1 Peirce's Critique of the Principle of Causality 181
2 Peirce's Conception of Causation 187
3 Causality and Causation: Facts versus Events 190
4 Events and Processes 192
5 Conclusion to Part 3: Causality and Causation 194
4 A Semeiotic Approach to Causation 195
1 Some Formal Characteristics of Semeiosis 195
2 The Problem of Semeiotic Causation 197
3 Semeiosis Provides the Formal Structure of Causation 198
4 A Semeiotic Approach to Causation 199
5 Conclusion: a Peircean Approach to Causation 213
219
Notes
Bibliography 233
243
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am happy to express my gratitude to a number of people who in some way
or other have contributed to the completion of this book. Prominent among
them are Guy Debrock, Herman de Regt, Andre De Tienne, Carl Hausman,
Nathan Houser, Kenneth Laine Ketner, Peter Kroes, Doede Nauta, Jaime
Nubiola, Joseph Ransdell, John F. Sowa, Jaap van Brakel, Shekar Veera, and
Rob de Vries.
I am especially grateful to Mijke Jetten, who prepared the camera-ready
version of the book and who helped making the index, and to Marianne
Stienen, who patiently supported me during most of the writing process.
I thank the department of Philosophy of Harvard University for
permission to quote from the unpublished manuscripts of Charles Sanders
Peirce, housed in the Houghton Library. I thank "The Institute for Studies in
Pragmaticism" (Texas Tech University, Lubbock) and the "Peirce Edition
Project (Indiana University, Indianapolis) for giving access to various sorts
of resources. lowe a special word of thanks to Kenneth Ketner (Lubbock),
as well as to Nathan Houser and the other members of the Peirce Edition
Project (Indianapolis) for their assistance and wonderful hospitality. One of
them I wish to mention by name: Andre De Tienne. Andre not only
incessantly stimulated me, but he became the zealous promoter of my work.
It is a great pleasure and privilege for me to have such an overseas
ambassador.
Finally, I would like to thank the editors of the Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy for
their permission to use four of the articles that I published in their journal. I
also thank the Foundation for Research in the Field of Philosophy and
Theology, which is subsidized by the Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research (NWO) , for funding my research, and the Heyendaal
Instituut Nijmegen for giving me the opportunity to prepare my work for
publication.
IX
NOTE ON REFERENCES
All references to sources are given in the body of this study. References to
writings other than those by Charles S. Peirce are given as follows: author,
date of work cited, and page of text cited - for example (Mackie 1974, 32).
The complete bibliographical data are given in the 'Bibliography' at the end
of this study.
References to writings by Peirce himself are also given in the body of the
text, following the standard procedures in Peirce scholarship. References to
the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Volumes I-VI, Ch.
Hartshorne and P. Weis, eds., and Volumes VII-VIII, A. Burks, ed.,
Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1931-1935 and 1968) are given
as follows: CP, volume number, decimal point, and paragraph numbers; for
example, "CP 4.321" refers to paragraph 321 in volume 4 of the Collected
Papers.
References to the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition
(Volume 1: 1857-1866; Volume 2: 1867-1871; Volume 3: 1872-1878;
Volume 4: 1879-1884; Volume 5: 1884-1886; ed. "The Peirce Edition
Project", Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1982,
1984, 1986, 1986, 1993) are given as follows: W, volume number, colon,
and page number; for example, "W4:321" refers to volume 4, page 321 of
the Writings.
References to The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings
(volumes I, 1867-1893; eds. N.Houser and C. Kloesel; Volume II, 1893-
1913; ed. "The Peirce Edition Project"; Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, 1992 and 1998) are given as follows: EP, volume number, colon, and
page numbers; for example "EP 11:300" refers to volume II, page 300 of The
Essential Peirce.
References to Reasoning and the Logic of Things (1998, Cambridge
Mass., Harvard University Press, 1992; ed. K. Ketner) are given by RLT
followed by the relevant page numbers.
References to The New Elements of Mathematics (I-IV, ed. C. Eisele, The
Hague, Mouton, 1976) are given as follows: NEM, volume number, colon,
and page number; thus NEM IV:200 refers to volume IV, page 200 of The
New Elements.
References to Peirce's letters to Lady Welby, in Hardwick, ed., Semiotic
and Significs: The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria
Xl