1

Most people and most philosophers seem to strongly believe in causation. I would like understand what philosophers have to say about how to go from believing in just patterns to causes too.

Are the main reasons because we all personally feel so strongly we can cause things and things can cause our feelings/reasonings to change? If I look at a patterned rug, I would hesitate to say any patch causes another patch to follow the pattern. Yet we don't seem to expand this rug analogy to the entire world with all our inner feelings in it, and I guess that is due to our strong inner feeling of will and feeling we can act to cause things. And feeling that things cause us to reason.

Why I am focusing on these feelings and not others like the perceptual ones like audition is, feeling a voice in my head after my eardrum is vibrated does not allow me to say this inner feeling is applicable to the whole world. Or that colors exist beyond minds. It seems like we are doing something a little egocentric with causation in comparison.

I know causation is useful. We might lose a ton of explanatory pattern to give up causation at the metaphysical level. Are there any philosophers who think we may have to though, or are open to it?

J Kusin
  • 2,052
  • 1
  • 7
  • 14
  • 1
    Do most people believe it? It is hard to extract what exactly is believed from the talk of "causation", and when people are specifically asked if they believe in "causing" over and above physical events they rarely embrace it. As for philosophers, believing in Aristotlelian causal powers, which would be a close approximation, is not that widespread, at least in the analytic camp. Cartwright comes to mind, but not many others. Most subscribe to the causal laws of nature picture, which is indifferent to the cause/pattern distinction. It is vaguely used only to mark realism/empiricism divide. – Conifold Oct 18 '21 at 20:37
  • The problem of induction, points to the impossibility at the fundamental level of distinguishing between cause & pattern. But we use cause in lots of different ways that aren't physics, like expressing psychological insights, or our interpretation of history. 'Cause' even in physics, is really a way of narrating things, that fits our intuition of persistent subjects. Discussed here: 'Is the idea of a causal chain physical (or even scientific)?' https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/70930/is-the-idea-of-a-causal-chain-physical-or-even-scientific/72055#72055 – CriglCragl Oct 19 '21 at 12:03

0 Answers0