14 - Singular causation

Summary

INTRODUCTORY

The hypothesis now to be defended is that in a token causal sequence, this causing that, the causal relation that holds between cause and effect is a non-relational attribute of the sequence. The existence of the relation, furthermore, is independent, in the sense spelt out in our discussions of the hypothesis of Independence, of anything that is the case elsewhere. The concept of singular causation is, moreover, conceptually primitive. It is not to be further analysed conceptually. All this is matter for the present chapter.

At the same time, in opposition to those such as Anscombe (1971) for whom causation is essentially singular, singular causation is not ontologically primitive. It can be given an ontological analysis, or so it will be argued, as the instantiation of a law of nature. Laws of nature, the truthmakers of true law statements, the truthmakers of nomic truths, are not to be conceived of as mere regularities. Indeed, amazing as it may seem, the nomic nature of a singular causal sequence is itself a non-relational property of the sequence. This turns out to be a happy consequence of the idea that laws are relations of universals, where these universals are conceived of in a Fregean-Aristotelian manner as state-of-affairs types. But the nature of law is largely a matter for the two chapters that succeed this one.

One of the many unfortunate results of a Humean account of causation is that confusion is engendered between causes and laws.