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Causal Imputation and Purposes of Investigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Lewis A. Dexter
Lewis A. Dexter*
Affiliation:
Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida
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Extract

There is a considerable literature about causation. A great many investigators constantly employ the notion of causation in some form. But with the exception of a very few items, these investigators will find little of use in this literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 1939 , pp. 404 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

∗

I am grateful to Professors J. S. Bixler and T. Parsons, and to Messrs. R. Bierstedt and N. Demareth for criticisms of this paper which have at least helped me towards clearer statement.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Dewey, op. cit., and Morris, op. cit., are required reading. The above article will appear more significant to anyone who is familiar with the different tenatives towards semiotic made by K. Burke, F. Schiller, H. Reichenbach, H. Lasswell, R. Carnap, I. Richards, A. Korzybski, etc. M. J. Adler and J. Frank, Crime, Law, and Social Science, explicitly discuss what kinds of propositions may be taken as causal and what as recording concomitant variations. H. Oliphant and A. Hewitt, Introduction to J. Rueff, From the Physical to the Social Sciences, Baltimore, 1929, show the relationship of causal assumptions and formal deduction in the judicial process.Google Scholar
J. Woodger's three articles in the Quarterly Review of Biology, 1930-1, “Concept of Organism” deal with the causal postulate (esp. 5; 12-21) and define cause as “the one element essential to the result observed.” This definition may be coordinated with the present article; ‘essential’ and ‘result observed’ can only be judged in terms of some sort of purpose. See also E. Nagel, Principles of the Theory of Probability, Chicago, 1939, 25-6.Google Scholar
Somerville, J. in Philosophy of Science, 2 (1935) 246-54, “Aims in Social Science” and Weber, M., “Die Objektivität” Archiv f. Sozialwissenschaft, 1904 (19) 22-78, Supplement the points made above about purpose. Several studies of the notion of cause and effect in children have appeared of which the latest is from Cornell, by Lacey, J. and Dallenbach, K., Am. J. Psych, 41 (1939) 103-10.Google Scholar
Barnard, Chester I., The Functions of the Executive, Cambridge, 1938, presents a conception similar to the one here given. “The limiting (strategic) factor is the one whose control in the right form at the right place and time will establish a new system which meets the purpose,” 202-3.Google Scholar

As for the rest:

In the whole of philosophy, there is scarcely any subject in such utter confusion as as causation. … Hume got it into a tangle which has been worse and worse entangled, by subsequent writers, until the latest contributors have essayed to cut the knot by denying altogether that there is such a thing as causation. … Few writers treat the subject without contradicting themselves and none without outraging common sense. …Google Scholar
This from Charles Mercier's amusing and often pointed Causation and Belief, London, 1916, 1, is too true to be funny. His shafts are especially directed against Mill, J. S., A System of Logic, (8th ed. esp.) who is the source of most show-window quotations on the matter, and who, he claims, uses “cause” in eighteen irreconcilable ways.Google Scholar
More recent writings include Hawkins, D., Causality and Implication, London, 1937, a (not very) neo-Aristotelean refutation of Hume, Margenau, H., Philosophy of Science, 1 (1934) 133-48, “Meaning and Scientific Status of Causality,” and Bohr, N., Philosophy of Science, 4 (1937) 289-96 “Causality and Complementarity” or Bridgman, P., The Intelligent Individual and Society, New York, 1938, esp. 33-5, who concludes that “The assumption [cause]… is not necessary because physicists have been doing valid thinking without it.” (viz. statistical thinking).Google Scholar