“What we call a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact (unlike the bird). Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”
“Our tendency to perceive –to impose—narrativity and causality—are symptoms of the same disease: dimension reduction.”
“We have to accept the fuzziness of the familiar ‘because’ no matter how queasy it makes us feel (and it does make us queasy to remove the analgesic illusion of causality). I repeat that we are explanation-seeking animals who tend to think that everything has an identifiable cause and grab the most apparent as the explanation. Yet there may not be a visible because; to the contrary, frequently there is nothing, not even a spectrum of possible explanations. But silent evidence masks this fact. [….] Note here that I am not saying causes do not exist; do not use this argument to avoid trying to learn from history. All I am saying is that it is not so simple; be suspicious of the ‘because’ and handle it with care—particularly in situations where you suspect silent evidence. [….] We have seen several varieties of the silent evidence that cause deformations in our perception of empirical reality, making it appear more explainable (and more stable) than it actually is. In addition to the confirmation error [or bias] and the narrative fallacy, the manifestations of silent evidence further distort the role and importance of Black Swans.”— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2nd ed., 2010)
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“It is perfectly possible that certain psychological phenomena cannot be identified physiologically, because physiologically nothing corresponds to them. Why should there not be a psychological regularity to which no physiological regularity corresponds? If this upsets our concepts of causality, then it is high time they were upset.”— Ludwig Wittgenstein
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I often forget (and thus neglect) how incredibly complex the notion of causation (i.e., cause and effect, including companion notions of ‘causal relata’ and ‘causal relations,’ ‘constant conjunction,’ ‘necessary connection,’ ‘determination,’ ‘over-determination,’ ‘relations,’ ‘dependence,’ ‘interdependence,’ ‘contiguity,’ ‘mechanisms, ‘chains,’ ‘feedback loops,’ etc.) can be and often is. It came to mind again while learning about “psychic determinism” in Freudian metapsychology and theory (see the two references in ‘E’ below). I will say more about that later. For now, I think it helps to begin with a taste of the myriad sources that might convey—and enable—us to deeply appreciate the aforementioned complexity of causality. In this instance, the sources are conspicuously idiosyncratic insofar as I’ve not made any systematic investigation of this concept in either philosophy or science. Some of the entries under “causation” in the (online) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy are rather intimidating for non-philosophers, so I’ll avoid those but that should not prevent you from satisfying your curiosity or interest (if only because you might not find them intimidating!). For the philosophically inclined or curious, I recommend beginning with the entry on “The Metaphysics of Causation.” The sources I’ve selected to guide further explorations are (A) Indian Philosophy, (B) the philosophy of Hume, (C) Criminal and Tort Law, (D) Natural and Social Sciences, and (E) Freudian Psychoanalysis.
(A) I start in a non-standard fashion, with notions of causation (beginning with the concepts of satkāryavāda and asatkāryavāda) in Indian philosophy. Perhaps the best (‘perhaps’ because I cannot claim mastery of the relevant literature) introduction is found in Karl H. Potter’s classic work, Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies (Motilal Banarsidass, 1991 [1963]), in particular, the four chapters that commence with chapter 6, “Freedom and Causation” (pp. 93-185). For the Buddhist tradition in particular, see (i) David J. Kalupahana’s Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (University Press of Hawaii, 1975), (ii) Amber D. Carpenter, Indian Buddhist Philosophy (Acumen, 2014 [see ‘causation’ in the Index]), (iii) Jay L. Garfield, Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2015 [again, see ‘causation’ in the Index]), and (iv) Padmasiri de Silva, An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology (Palgrave Macmillan, 4th ed., 2005).
(B) For Western philosophy, I will limit myself to David Hume, because many of the arguments here revolve around what philosophers have written—and argued—about Hume’s ideas on causation. Once more, idiosyncrasy is the rule: (i) Jay Garfield, The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s Treatise from the Inside Out (Oxford University Press, 2019), (ii) Paul Russell, Freedom and Sentiment: Hume’s Way of Naturalizing Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 1995), (iii) Constantine Sandis, Character and Causation: Hume’s Philosophy of Action (Routledge, 2019), (iv) Galen Strawson, The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity (Oxford University Press, 2011), (v) Galen Strawson, The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume (Oxford University Press, 2014 ed.), and (vi) Barry Stroud, Hume (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
(C) Causation is also of course prominent in law and legal theory and philosophy, especially in the areas of criminal and tort law. Here is a very limited—but I hope representative—sample of the literature: (i) Peter Cane, Responsibility in Law and Morality (Hart Publishing, 2002), (ii) Peter Cane and John Gardner, eds., Relating to Responsibility: Essays in Honour of Tony Honoré on his 80th Birthday (Hart Publishing, 2001), (iii) John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, S.J., Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 1998), (iv) H.L.A. Hart and Tony Honoré, Causation in the Law (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1985), (v) Michael S. Moore, Causation and Responsibility: An Essay in Law, Morals, and Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2009), (vi) Moore’s Placing Blame: A General Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 1997), and (vii) David G. Owen, Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law (Oxford University Press, 1995).
(D) For the natural and social sciences there is, not surprisingly, a fairly large body of literature one might cite, so once more I highlight titles I’m fond of for one reason or another: (i) Nancy Cartwright, The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (Cambridge University Press, 1999) [She signed my copy of this book at a conference at our college some years ago!], (ii) Nancy Cartwright and Eleonora Montushci, eds., Philosophy of Social Science: A New Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2014), (iii) John Dupré, Human Nature and the Limits of Science (Oxford University Press, 2001), (iv) Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2007), (v) Peter Galison and David J. Stump, eds. The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power (Stanford University Press, 1996), (vi) Ronald N. Giere, Science without Laws (University of Chicago Press, 1999), (vii) Richard W. Miller, Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation and Reality in the Natural and the Social Sciences (Princeton University Press, 1987), (viii) John D. Norton, “Causation as Folk Science” (2003), (ix) John D. Norton, “How Not to Think About Causation,” (2019), (x) Nicholas Rescher, Nature and Understanding: The Metaphysics and Method of Science (Oxford University Press, 2000), and (xi) Paul Thagard, How Scientists Explain Disease (Princeton University Press, 1999).
(E) Here I will cite but two titles, the first, because it so thoroughly treats—and well defends—Freud’s oft-misunderstood notion of “psychic determinism” and the related charges of strict or hard determinism frequently levied against him; and the second, because it has excellent essays about the larger background and context of this topic in psychoanalysis with regard to philosophy and science: (i) Ernest Wallwork, Psychoanalysis and Ethics (Yale University Press, 1991) [see chapters 3, “The Determinism—Free Will Problem,” and 4, “Reconciling the Paradox: Psychic Determinism and Moral Responsibility,” pp. 49-100], and (ii) Simon Boag, Linda A.W. Brackel, and Vesa Talvitie, eds. Philosophy, Science, and Psychoanalysis (Karnac Books, 2015/Routledge, 2018).
I want to conclude first by noting the fact that “psychic determinism” (wherein, for example, drives, motives, passions, and reasons have causal powers) is common to both Buddhism and Freudian psychoanalysis, hence one reason for the many works that compare the two with regard to philosophy of mind, psychology, and therapy. It is also central to Pātañjala Yoga (especially as it involves guna theory and karmic dispositions), but this is provocative material for another day. Finally, I am not encouraging any unifying or tidy inferences from these disparate domains as to the nature of causation, or anything necessarily common to the manner in which it is conceived in our sources. Indeed, perhaps a contrary and preliminary conclusion would suggest there are different kinds of causation, with each more or less suited to its particular domain, hence a number of pragmatic conceptions of cause and effect, cause and consequence.
Addendum: I thought to share one example of a doctrine in Buddhism that illustrates the cause-and-effect links in a chain (from birth to death to rebirth...) so as to account for the several causes of “suffering.” The Buddhist Doctrine of Dependent Origination* (P.) paticca-samuppāda / (S.) pratītya-samutpāda
“That being given, this comes to be; from the birth of that, this is born. That not being given, this does not come to be; from the cessation of that, this ceases.” — The Buddha
Conditioned by (1) ignorance [avidyā/avijjā] are (2) formations or karmic predispositions [samskāras], conditioned by formations is (3) consciousness [vijñāna/viññāna], conditioned by consciousness is (4) mind-and-body or name-and-form [nāma-rūpa/skandhas/kandhas], conditioned by mind-and-body are (5) the six sense fields (6 organs, 6 objects, and 6 kinds of sense consciousness) [sadāyatana/salāyatana], conditioned by the six sense fields is (6) sense-contact [sparśa/phassa], conditioned by sense-contact is (7) feeling [vedanā], conditioned by feeling is (8) craving, or inordinate or improper desire [trsna/tanhā], conditioned by craving is (9) grasping [upādāna], conditioned by grasping is (10) becoming [bhava], conditioned by becoming is (11) birth [jāti], conditioned by birth is (12) decay and death [jarāmaranam].
There are thus (in this version) 12 links to this chain of causal conditioning. Nos. 1 and 2 assume a past life and karmic process; nos. 3 through 9 refer to the conditioning of the present existence; nos. 8 – 9 to the “fruits” of the present existence that assure the production of karma for most of us, and nos. 10—12 (future ‘fruit’) to a life to come. Nos. 11—12 could be said to “contain” or are shorthand for nos. 1 – 9 or 10. The conditions in the chain are representative and significant—thus not an exhaustive list of—causes. Minimally, therefore, there are at least 3 lifetimes depicted by this schema, although it has also been understood to imply or suggest more than 3 lifetimes, as a fourth life begins anew after no. 12 and then….
What, from a Buddhist perspective, are the two “strongest” (or ‘master’) links of the chain—insofar as they assure the solidity or continuity of the chain of rebirth? At the same time, albeit from another vantage point, they might also be described as the “weakest” links—at least insofar as the Buddhist concentrates on overcoming these by way of ethical conduct, meditation, and wisdom (the triune structure of the Eightfold Path)?
An individual person’s physical and mental make-up comprises five groups of conditions and functions: (1) “form” (rūpā), physical objects, here, a body; (2) “feelings” (vedanā), pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, what in contemporary philosophy might be termed cognitive qualia; (3) “perceptions” (samjña/saññā), recognition of sensory/mental objects and qualia, and which, as in empiricism, allow for ideas and concepts to be formed; (4) “mental fabrications” (samskāra/sankhārā), thoughts, volition, intentions and desires, personality traits; and (5) “consciousness” (vijñāna/viññāna), awareness of objects specific to each sensory or mental modality. These five “heaps” or “aggregates” are known as skandhas (khandhās). It is just this that we typically infer to be the “self,” mistakenly conceived of as permanent, an enduring substance that underlies experience:
“Thus Buddhist thought suggests that as an individual I am a complex flow of physical and mental phenomena, but peel away these phenomena and look behind them and one just does not find a constant self that one can call one’s own. My sense of self is both logically and emotionally just a label that I impose on these physical and mental phenomena in consequence of their connectedness. In other words, the idea of a self as a constant unchanging thing behind the variety of experience is just a product of linguistic usage and the particular way in which certain physical and mental phenomena are experienced as connected. “—From Rupert Gethin’s The Foundations of Buddhism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998
The individual subject’s tendency to identify (separately and collectively) with—or get their sense of personal identity from—the skandhas (khandhās) stems from ignorance (avidyā/avijjā) and gives rise in the first place to inordinate desire or even desire simpliciter (trsna/tanhā).
One helpful exposition in English of the “no-self” anātman (anattā) doctrine is Steven Collins’ Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravāda Buddhism (Cambridge University Press, 1982). I think the best philosophical discussion of the doctrine, however, is Miri Albahari’s Analytical Buddhism: The Two-Tiered Illusion of Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
The five skandhas are in effect conditioned by the (‘Kantian’) parameters or modalities of space, time, quality, and relation. Nirvāna (nibbāna), on the other hand, is unconditioned by these parameters, as it is untouched by the “three marks of existence” (trilaksana): anitya (aniccā) or impermanence, duhkhā (dukkhā) or suffering, and anātman (anattā) or no-self.
The Doctrine of Dependent Origination implies several different propositions insofar as it claims that any object of experience depends for its existence or occurrence on the necessary and sufficient presence of its cause:
- that all conventional phenomena have an origin;
- that their existence depends on causes;
- that causes operate in networks;
- that causes operate inevitably, uniformly, and spontaneously
[The following quotations and paraphrased material is taken (with some editing) from G.C. Pande’s essay, ‘Causality in Buddhist Philosophy,’ in Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe, eds. A Companion to World Philosophies (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997): 370-80.]
Thus the Principle of Dependent Origination refers not only to the general theory of causation, which is intimately bound up with the dialectical negation of the metaphysics of substance, but also to its application to the chain of human suffering ultimately grounded in the illusion of substance—especially the illusion of the ego-substance. Believing in its own individual and enduring reality, the ego invests the objects of experience with a similar reality and thus engages in action of desire and aversion for what is unreal.
- Logically, the theory explains causality as a functional relation in which the presence and absence of the cause imply the presence and absence respectively of the effect.
- Metaphysically, it denies the substantiality of cause and effect, affirming that they are no more than sequentially ordered functional composita.
- Psychologically, it replaces the notion of a permanent individual soul-substance with that of a stream of consciousness determined by immanent causality rooted in the concatenation of conative (karmic impulses or inclinations/predispositions) factors culminating in volition.
- Ethically, it affirms the moral quality of volition or free will, as voluntary action determines the hedonic (i.e., painful pleasurable, or neutral) quality of subsequent experience.
Sangharakshita says this doctrine is the “primary formulation of the Buddha’s Enlightenment on the intellectual plane, it is the historical and logical basis of all later developments in Buddhist philosophy.” In the Mahāyāna Buddhist schools, dependent origination is characterized by “emptiness” (śūnyatā) meaning the lack of “inherent” existence or essential being (among other things). This emptiness is not “nothingness” but the real mode of being of things, as cause and effect, identity and difference, entity and non-entity function within a cohesive system or complex, interconnected world of dependent origination. As Thupten Jinpa says, dependent origination and emptiness might be thought of as two sides of the same coin. We might ask ourselves at this point how all of this relates to the possibility of nirvāna/nibbāna, defined as the subject’s experience of a liberated or unconditioned mind, the phenomenal character of which is characterized in terms of immeasurable peace and true happiness, “completely untainted by the presence or possibility of mental duhkhā/dukkhā.”
* The term “dependent origination” can be misleading for, as Buddhaghosa, one of the early and great philosophers of Buddhism pointed out, the emphasis of this doctrine is “not on origination (uppāda) but on conditions and relations.”
See too the entry on pratītyasamutpāda in Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton University Press, 2014): 669-670.
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