That the coin we flip comes up heads is supposedly explained as "the will of God"; but that explanation will work equally well if the coin had come up tails. Regardless of what happens, the explanation is "God caused it to happen that way", and so we never learn why this happened and not that; this is no explanation at all. — Banno

There's no doubt that "God wanted it to happen" is empty, as it stands. But if our framework is that God controls everything, we can produce different explanations according to what happens. If the coin lands tails and I lose the bet, I can say "God is punishing me for my sins". If the coin lands heads and I win the bet, I can say "God is rewarding me for my virtues". My reason for rejecting these explanations as empty is that neither explanation will stand up to standard scientific experimental scrutiny.

If presenting a cause is to function as an explanation, it must say why this even happened and not some other event. Saying that "Things/events have causes" is trivial, indeed frivolous. — Banno

I don't think it is as bad as that. Surely "every event has a cause" is not really an assertion. It is a methodological decision. It is not that we can always identify the cause of an event, but that we will approach every event on the basis that there is a cause to be found. It is a presupposition that the world is not disorderly. If we do not find one, we attribute that to our failure, not the failure of the principle. We would file such a case in the "pending" tray.

See the summary I provided above for Moliere. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where?

You appear here to have gone to great lengths to explain what your argument is not, without explaining what it is. Your reply is in such broad terms as to say very little.

Added: links and citations are conducive to clarity. It might be helpful if you did not remove them.

Ok. The move to considering the issue as methodological is worthwhile. "Every event has a cause" is one of Watkins' "haunted universes" doctrines, neither provable nor disprovable. I think the idea of claiming such principles as methodological rather than as ontological truths comes from Watkins. That's certainly were I learned it.

Causation, generally, is perhaps another idea that has hung around well past it's use by date. It made sense to Aristotle but suffered badly under Russell and continues to be difficult to characterise.

Science doesn't look to causes so much as to predictability. It's not about event A causing event B but about the relation between A's and B's, especially when that relation is expressed in an equation.

From my point of view, what we call reality does not validate our theories. In science, we work with phenomena and references, not with the aim of adapting our thinking to something we call reality. In scientific work, theories already work with phenomena and references, and this work is a kind of large mechanism in which phenomena and references function, for example, thanks to our technology and the operational practices of scientists that form the background to theories. A scientific theory is not something that is first created and then expected to be validated by something called reality; a theory is already involved in historical phenomena and references that give it a kind of validation and legitimacy.

In this sense, competing theories are not absolutely distinct from one another, since they have a historical foundation of other already legitimized theories that support them. This historical foundation is the work of scientists that precedes the creation of new theories. This historical foundation is also a practical-technical foundation in which new theories are embedded.

We must set aside the belief that our theories describe reality, but rather that they function with it, like the great machinery mentioned above. Thus, two competing theories can receive legitimacy and validation for different reasons, which may simply be socio-historical, but neither is more true than the other; rather, they may simply mesh better or worse with the entire historical and technical-scientific apparatus.

We must see science as just that, as a gigantic device of increasingly specialized practices carried out by human beings, and not simply as theories that fit reality. This device contains operations, references, phenomena, norms, legalities, practices, technologies, etc., where the theory/reality division has no place and is a mistaken and simplistic view.

"Every event has a cause" is one of Watkins' "haunted universes" doctrines, neither provable nor disprovable. — Banno

It seems to me that "neither provable nor disprovable" is the beginning of the story, rather than the end. I mean that proof of the kind we require for specific causal explanations is inapplicable. The proposition is not in the business of asserting truths, but of articulating the conceptual structure in which specific causal connections are discovered and asserted. If you are looking for some sort of justification, that lies in the success of our attempts to find causes - and more than that, our determination to find what order we can in the world, so that when full causal explanations are not available, we wring from the data whatever order we can. So we switch models and go for statistical explanations.

Science doesn't look to causes so much as to predictability. — Banno

There is a reservation here, because statistical laws don't really predict anything about individual cases. I've never quite worked out what probability statements say about them. It certainly isn't what I would call a prediction. However, they do come in very handy when it is a case of making decisions in a risk/reward context. Betting may be a bit iffy, but insurance is perfectly rational.
But perhaps more important in a philosophical context is that predictability is not enough. Plato, at least, would insist that the goal is understanding, not mere prediction. I think he has a point.

It's not about event A causing event B but about the relation between a's and B's, especially when that relation is expressed in an equation. — Banno

I hadn't thought that the move to equations amounted to actually abandoning causal explanations. But I can see that it is a very different model from the Aristotelian model.

Science doesn't look to causes so much as to predictability. It's not about event A causing event B but about the relation between a's and B's, especially when that relation is expressed in an equation. — Banno

@Ludwig V It could be the case that the CONCEPT of Causation is still useful and practical to actually figure out what those relations are or how important/significant they are. In the modern age we've seemingly, as has been made clear too many times with recent posts, made the case that realism/anti-realism distinction has sort of killed itself. Becoming too speculative or un-interesting (forms of instrumentalism or philosophical quietism). HOWEVER, the new era and REINCARNATION of this debate is upon us. . . if we no longer feel its necessary for science to make clear or obvious what its realist about and we feel its irrelevant then it becomes a competition of METHODOLOGIES.

You can still play a make-believe game of REALISM if it. . . to you. . . feels more intellectually useful in deriving the results you desire for whatever means. It may even prove more useful in TEACHING the next generation of physicists.

Some of those reasons could include looking for further technological advancements, empirical adequacy, unifying power, simplicity, aesthetic appeal, counterfactual restrictions on what is possible, etc.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Ontology has been superseded by empiricism in a wide mark but empiricism is. . . as a result of the many unfalsifiable notions that we can create ourselves. . . also proves to be limited. What is after empiricism?

Perhaps its a study in normativity. The choices in logical frameworks we make and the theories we prefer to continue research in even if those haven't found a leg up on others.

BECAUSE THESE DEBATES DO NOT DIE and they probably just transfer themselves to the new popular domain of philosophical discussion within the confines of the previous but with the ability to do things the previous domain could not settle.

...statistical laws... — Ludwig V

I wasn't so much thinking of statistical laws as the basic equations of physics.

Some folk tend to think of F=ma as setting out how the force causes the acceleration. But what's actually happening here is that Newton defined the very notion of force as change in velocity times mass. F=ma is not a description of a cause and effect so much as the presentation of a new way of talking about motion. He didn't find a hidden cause - force - he set up a way to calculate changes in motion and mass. He found a new way to talk about the stuff around us, not a new thing in that stuff. It was a change in semantics, not in ontology.

But I can see that it is a very different model from the Aristotelian model. — Ludwig V

Yep.

That underdetermination stuff is a feature, not a problem. It's about being unhappy with a determinate causal answer such as "God willed it" and looking for more, doing the experiments, using your imagination, seeing what happens when you do this or that...

If we followed Tim we would still be in the monasteries.

Some folk tend to think of F=ma as setting out how the force causes the acceleration. — Banno

Yes, I get that point. Are you saying that we should stop talking about causes altogether, or that we need to re-think the concept of causation?

That underdetermination stuff is a feature, not a problem. It's about being unhappy with a determinate causal answer such as "God willed it" and looking for more, doing the experiments, using your imagination, seeing what happens when you do this or that... — Banno

Setting aside the local issue about God, I understand you to be saying that underdetermination is the space for research and discovery, rather than a prison of doubt and uncertainty. Is that fair?

we've seemingly, as has been made clear too many times with recent posts, made the case that realism/anti-realism distinction has sort of killed itself. — substantivalism

I would be inclined to agree with you. But then I find that it is still alive and kicking.

You can still play a make-believe game of REALISM if it. . . to you. . . feels more intellectually useful in deriving the results you desire for whatever means. — substantivalism

If you want to argue with someone, it is best to start from where they are at.

BECAUSE THESE DEBATES DO NOT DIE and they probably just transfer themselves to the new popular domain of philosophical discussion — substantivalism

Too right. That creates an interesting, and difficult, field of understanding what's really going on.

Are you saying that we should stop talking about causes altogether, or that we need to re-think the concept of causation? — Ludwig V

I'd favour the more humble point, that cause is overrated if it is considered to be the only, or even the most important, explanation. When causation is master, non- causal explanations are forced into casual form, as when ethics is seen as mere biology, or maths aw psychology; Non-causal structures and patterns are missed; or worst case, folk mistake the absence of a causal explanation for the absence of any explanation at all.

...underdetermination is the space for research and discovery — Ludwig V

Yep. That willingness to live with and investigate the precariousness inherent in the absence of deductive certainty is more than just science; it's the human condition" "I don't know, buy I'll take a look"

Somethgn like that, anyway.

I'd favour the more humble point, that cause is overrated if it is considered to be the only, or even the most important, explanation. — Banno

OK. It's just that causal explanation, along with the metaphor of the machine, has been such an icon of what science is about that I find it hard to grasp the alternatives (apart from statistical explanations).

That willingness to live with and investigate the precariousness inherent in the absence of deductive certainty is more than just science; it's the human condition — Banno

That sounds good. Actually, there are reasons for thinking that deductive certainty is not all that it is cracked up to be.

an icon of what science is about — Ludwig V

Oh, yes. But when one looks closely, it turns out to be difficult to say what sort of thing a cause is, and to describe actual science in causal terms. Like the scientific method, we know what it is until we try to say how it works.

there are reasons for thinking that deductive certainty is not all that it is cracked up to be. — Ludwig V

Yep. TheOP's framework assumes that genuine explanation must bottom out in metaphysical causes. But this misses how much successful science operates at other explanatory levels entirely.

OK. It's just that causal explanation, along with the metaphor of the machine, has been such an icon of what science is about that I find it hard to grasp the alternatives (apart from statistical explanations). — Ludwig V

That seems right. Efficient or proximal causation is the basis of mechanistic modeling. That kind of modeling tends to isolate the subject from its environment. For any event or change to occur there is presumably a whole network of conditions that constrain the ways in which that event or change can unfold. The most universal global condition seems to be entropy.

That seems right. — Janus

Cheers.

The mechanistic model is a great example of a case taken far beyond it's context. We seem to understand how causation functions in a game of billiards; the picture gains such a hold on us that we presume the same sort of causation is at work in thermodynamics, or quantum mechanics or psychology or sociology or even ethics.

True, although it may be that there are elements of efficient causation in all those contexts, but that it is far from being the whole story.

Sure. Someone will be along soon to remind us of the other three Aristotelian causes, and claim to be agreeing that efficient cause is but one and so not the whole of explanation. We also have logical structure, linguistic and semantic relations, normative and evaluative judgements, Constitutive rules... "counts as", emergent properties... And so on.

I don't think 'material cause' and 'formal cause' are particularly interesting, but I do think there is a valid distinction between proximate and global cause. I prefer to think of the latter as conditions rather than causes, as I said.

I think logical structure, linguistic and semantic relations, normative and evaluative judgements and so on all come into how our explanations are structured. However, I still think that when it comes to explaining any natural event, efficient cause and general conditions form the backbone that carries the flesh of "structure, linguistic and semantic relations".

Also I am addressing only explanations of natural non-living phenomena― I acknowledge that explanations of animal and human behavior may be given in terms of reasons instead of causes. The overall set of conditions under which actions are taken by animals and humans will also obviously come into play in any explanation. Reasons as well as causes are constrained by global conditions.

Here you go:

"Arguments from underdetermination are extremely influential in contemporary philosophy.

They have led to many radical, and seemingly skeptical theses.

These theses are perhaps more radical than we today recognize, when seen from the perspective of Enlightenment and pre-modern prevailing opinion.

These types of arguments were not unknown in the [ancient] past, and were indeed often used to produce skeptical arguments.

The tradition most associated with these arguments, ancient Empiricism, sought skepticism on purpose, as a way to attain ataraxia.

Thus, we should not be surprised that borrowing their epistemology leads to skeptical conclusions.

Hence, if we do not like the skeptical conclusions, we should take a look at the epistemic starting points that lead to them.

Indeed, if an epistemology leads to skepticism, that might be a good indication it is inadequate.

The Thomistic response is given as one example of how these arguments used to be put to bed. I use it because I am familiar with it and because the Neoplatonist solution is quite similar. (But the Stoics also had their response, etc.).

I do think that solution is better, but the point isn't to highlight that specific solution, but rather the genealogy of the "problem" and how it arises as a means of elucidating ways it might be resolved or else simply understanding it better."

Now, the term "skeptical" here is a tricky one. I would call many, but certainly not all forms of anti-realism and eliminativism vis-á-vis core subjects such as consciousness, truth, causality, "skeptical" in a broad sense. But skepticism is not epistemic or moral nihilism. There are "skeptical solutions," which is pointed out. So, just as @Ludwig V rightly points out, Hume is a sort of skeptic, but he is hardly a nihilist. Most skeptics aren't nihilists. The ancient skeptics generally weren't, and neither were the Indian skeptics in general.

But I would question whether or not some modern forms of skepticism that appeal to "pragmatism" as a sort of panacea solution actually avoid a sort of nihilism. That's a broader topic.

Added: links and citations are conducive to clarity. It might be helpful if you did not remove them

It would be rather silly to remove them. As I believe I have pointed out before, I have to run an antiquated browser for other purposes and the pop up quote button doesn't work on it. I'll be honest though that I also forget that it's there on other devices out of habit.

That underdetermination stuff is a feature, not a problem. It's about being unhappy with a determinate causal answer such as "God willed it" and looking for more, doing the experiments, using your imagination, seeing what happens when you do this or that..

Again, this lies on the unsupported claim of an essential dichotomy of: "either causes need to be abandoned or else there is only ever one cause, 'God willed it.'"

It should be obvious that this is a straw man. Nonetheless, the history is interesting here because the rise of the "New Science," nominalism, and empiricism was very much an effect of a new theology that positively wanted to make "God wills it" the proximate cause of all things. The idea of self-determining natures was originally rejected on the theological grounds that anything being any thing in a strong sense (i.e., "God cannot make a cat to be a frog while being a cat"), or the notion of final causes, violated absolute divine freedom. Historically, the theological case comes first, and then later arguments are developed explicitly to support it. This view is adopted by the advocates of secularism later. In part, the demand for secularism comes from skepticism about human ends that is generated by the reduction towards a wholly inscrutable divine will. This sort of skepticism was a corner stone of liberal theory for instance.

Even the language of the New Science reflects this. The appeal "natural laws" and the "obedience" of all things to them (rocks as much as men) is motivated by a volanturist theology of sheer divine will. It's from a theology of command and obedience. God makes the law, things must follow. This is why the sort of occasionalism you are referencing, while long popular in Islam (which had already turned to volanturism), only became popular in the West in the early modern period.

The huge gap between Anglo-empiricist and Continental thought is in some ways a continuation of this earlier theological division.

OK. It's just that causal explanation, along with the metaphor of the machine, has been such an icon of what science is about that I find it hard to grasp the alternatives (apart from statistical explanations).

Well, here we run into one of the great difficulties of any genealogical account in this area. What is meant by "cause" varies considerably. I'd argue that it is precisely the empiricist epistemic presuppositions, and the metaphysics that tended to go along with them in the early modern period, that deflate causation into nothing but mechanism (there has been a push in philosophy and physics to restore notions of formal causality on this point, e.g., Max Tegmark's ontic structural realist account or Terrence Deacon's approach to biology). The empiricist reduction of causes to mechanism or mere temporal patterns is not how I intend the term.

I think Hume, as he so often does, provides a devastating diagnostic account of what causation amounts to given these suppositions, which is "not much." But as per the point made above, this shift on causes was not made on the grounds that "otherwise, God is the direct cause of everything and all causation must reduce to 'God wills it.'' Quite the opposite, particularly in the Reformed tradition influential in Scotland.

I do think that solution is better, but the point isn't to highlight that specific solution, but rather the genealogy of the "problem" and how it arises as a means of elucidating ways it might be resolved or else simply understanding it better." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure whether you mean the Aristotelian solution or the Neoplatonist one. Either way, I don't think we can assume that we can lift one part of a coherent system of thought and make it work in our context. More than that, there are, in my book, two versions of empiricism. One of them has been popular in philosophy and leads to the empiricism of appearances, ideas or sense-data. The other is mostly unspoken but is the foundation of science; this version understands experience in a common-sense way and doesn't posit theoretical objects that boast of being irrefutable and turn out to prevent us from understanding the stars or anything else.

Thus, we should not be surprised that borrowing their epistemology leads to skeptical conclusions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A fair point. It looks as if we need to be a bit careful what we take from those times if we want to avoid the same sceptical conclusions.

More than that, there are, in my book, two versions of empiricism. One of them has been popular in philosophy and leads to the empiricism of appearances, ideas or sense-data. The other is mostly unspoken but is the foundation of science; this version understands experience in a common-sense way and doesn't posit theoretical objects that boast of being irrefutable and turn out to prevent us from understanding the stars or anything else.

Ah yes, I mention this. But I think this leads to an unfortunate and common conflation where the second sort of "empiricism" is appealed to in order to justify the first sort, such that all scientific progress is called on as evidence for the superiority of the first sort of empiricism, and a rejection of empiricism is said to be a rejection of science.

As noted in the OP, if we go with the second version, then Hegel is an empiricist and figures like Aristotle or Albert Magnus, and Archimedes would be more "empiricsts" than the original Empiricists.

This way of justifying the first sort of empiricism isn't just flawed on the grounds that it equivocates. As far as I am aware, it has no good empirical support either. The Great Divergence whereby Europe pulled dramatically ahead of China and India in economic and military development doesn't track well with the (re)emergence of empiricist philosophy. Areas where rationalists dominated did not lag behind in military and economic might. Many famous inventors and scientists did not hold to the first sort of philosophy. And I have never heard of an experimental study finding that having more empiricist (first sense) philosophical views makes one a more successful scientist or inventor.

It's easy to see how the two often become mixed together though. I think this is especially actue in metaethics, where empiricsts epistemic presuppositions essentially amount to metaphysical presuppositions. "Examine the sense data; there are no values (or universals, or facts about meaning, etc.) to be found." But of course, our lives are full of apparent universals (wholes) and values. The critic can rightly claim that these, in fact, seem to be everywhere. Phenomenology seems to find them, as did the philosophy of the past. So all the heavy lifting seems to be done by what is assumed to be admissable from experience.

At any rate, in arguments such a J.L. Mackie's "queerness argument" against values, I think it's clear that the epistemological presuppositions do all the work, and essentially assume the conclusion. But the conclusion that all prior talk about ethics, goodness, beauty, etc. is a sort of "error" is a radical, and in a sense, skeptical conclusion. Yet to my point in the OP, if our epistemology leads us to this—to dismiss claims as seemingly obvious as "it is bad to have my arm broken," or "it is bad for children to be poisoned at school" as lacking any epistemic grounding (i.e., not possibly being facts)—then I'd say this is an indication that we simply have a bad epistemology. Doing science does not require such views. But this is particularly true as the same basic arguments once used to dispatch goodness and beauty have since been leveled at truth. With the deflation of truth into emotivism, such an epistemology becomes straightforwardly self-refuting.

The same sort of thing that happens with "empiricism" happens with "naturalism." Both have been equated with accepting or rejecting science to such a degree that virtually no one says that they aren't an naturalist. Yet this just leads to a huge amount of equivocation, where "naturalism" can be either extremely expensive, or "only reductive, mechanistic materialism." I think it is, in general, an increasingly useless term. It's also subject to Hemple's Dilemma, where "natural" just comes to mean "whatever there is good evidence for."

Naturalism is about causation. It posits that we should proceed with the assumption that natural causes are there to be found.

And British empiricism died a long time ago

If we explain naturalism in terms of "natural" we need to explain what "natural" means, and this is generally where there is equivocation. What makes a cause "natural?" (Also, it seems to me that people who are on board with eliminating causation still consider themselves naturalists; yet if there are no causes this definition won't work).

When naturalism is defined as the view that "the natural is all there is," then for something to be "natural" is just to say it exists. If ghosts and spirits and magic exist, then they must be natural. It's the same issue as Hemple's Dilemma.

You could say Augustine was a naturalist because he warned not to go around explaining everything with miracles, but to look for natural causes. If he understood what natural causes are, I don't know why it would be strange to you?