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EFFICIENT CAUSALITY

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2015.

Efficient Cause

An efficient or agent cause

1 is the primary principle or origin of an action which makes

something simply to be, or to be in a certain way. The (secondary) efficient cause in the example of Michelangelo sculpting the Pietà would be Michelangelo himself. Alvira, Clavell and Melendo explain that “the intrinsic causes found in corporeal creatures require the action of an external agent. Since matter and form are two distinct principles by themselves, they cannot bring about the formation of a thing; they need an external cause that has to put them together. Besides, experience shows that a corporeal being only acquires a new substantial or accidental form by virtue of an actual extrinsic principle whose precise role is to make matter acquire a new form.

“From this point of view, the efficient cause is by nature prior to the material and formal

causes. The latter cannot exert their causal influence on one another without the prior influence of the efficient cause. Therefore, the study of matter and form alone is not sufficient; it should naturally lead to a consideration of the efficient cause.2

“In corporeal beings, the efficient cause always acts by altering some (secondary) matter

so as to educe a new form from it. Hence, it can also be called a moving cause (causa movens). ‘The efficient cause is the cause of the causality of matter and form, since by its motion or movement it makes the matter receive the form, and makes the form inhere in matter.’3 In the case of created causes, the agent always requires a potency upon which it exerts its activity, or, in other words, a subject on which it acts in order to obtain a new effect. God alone causes without any need for a pre-existing reality, since He produces the totality of the effect.”4

Distinctive Characteristics of Efficient Causality

Alvira, Clavell, and Melendo give us some the features of the efficient cause: “a) Unlike

the material and formal causes, the efficient cause is a principle extrinsic to the effect…

1 Studies on efficient causality: O. LA PLANTE, The Traditional View of Efficient Causality, “Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association,” 14 (1938), pp. 1-12 ; F. X. MEEHAN, Efficient Causality in

Aristotle and St. Thomas, Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1940 ; R. O. JOHANN, Comment on Secondary Causality, “The Modern Schoolman,” 1947-1948, pp. 19-25 ; E. GILSON, Avicenne et les

origines de la notion de cause efficiente, in Atti del XII Congresso internazionale di filosofia, vol. 9, pp. 121-130 ; E. GILSON, Pour l’histoire de la cause efficiente, “AHLDMA,” 1962, pp. 7-31 ; C. FABRO, La difesa critica del

principio di causa, in C. Fabro, Esegesi Tomistica, Libreria Ed. della Pontificia Università Lateranense, Rome, 1969, pp. 1-48 ; M. L. COLISH, Avicenna’s Theory of Efficient Causation and Its Influence on St. Thomas Aquinas, in Atti del Congresso internazionale (I): Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo settimo centenario, 1974, pp. 296-306. 2 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, Metaphysics, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 1991, p. 201. 3 In V Metaphysicorum, lect. 3. 4 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 201-202.

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“b) The efficient cause imparts to the subject the perfection which makes it an effect of

the agent, a perfection which the agent must actually have. A teacher, for instance, is the efficient cause of the knowledge of the student, because he imparts to the student a portion of his own actual knowledge.

“In this respect, the efficient cause is always an exemplary cause, since no one can give

another a perfection which he does not have. Thus, only an actual being can impart actuality to an effect, and it can only do so to the extent that it is itself actual (every agent acts insofar as it is

in act). “c) The effect always pre-exists in its cause in some way. The perfection transmitted may

be found in the cause either in a more eminent manner or at least in the same degree. A man, for instance, can engender another man. To warm another body, the warming body must have a higher temperature.

“Consequently, when an agent acts, it always produces something like itself. The likeness

does not refer to any perfection whatsoever, but precisely to that perfection by virtue of which the agent acts in the given instance. Fire, for instance, does not warm insofar as it is actually luminous, but insofar as it is actually hot. Producing an effect means imparting to matter a form which is like that possessed by the cause. Since this form may be possessed in either of two ways, either naturally or intellectually, the likeness of the effect may refer to either. A colt is like the horse with respect to the form which is possessed by both in a natural way. A cathedral, however, is not like the architect, but like the model which the architect conceived in his mind.

“Furthermore, the principle by virtue of which something acts in producing an effect is its

form, and not its matter, since it is by virtue of the form that it is actual. This is true both in the case of the substance and of the accident: 1) The specific actions of a substance stem from its substantial form and from its consequent operative powers. If man can think and will, this is because he has a spiritual soul, which is endowed with intelligence and will. 2) Acquired perfections in the sphere of activity stem from operative habits. Thus, only a person who has the knowledge and skill of the architect can design houses.”5

Types of Efficient Causes

There are various types of efficient causes, namely: the primary cause and the secondary

cause; the principal cause and the instrumental cause; the total cause and the partial cause; the coordinated cause and the subordinated cause; the universal cause and the partial cause; the physical cause and the moral cause; the ‘per se’ cause and the ‘per accidens’ cause; the proximate cause and the remote cause; the necessary cause and the free cause; the univocal

cause and analogical cause; the natural cause and the rational cause. “1. Primary Cause and secondary cause. God is the sole First or Primary Efficient Cause,

for the definition of primary efficient cause is this: a cause which is wholly independent of other things; a cause which has, in no sense, a cause of its own. Creatures are secondary efficient

5 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 202-203.

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causes; they depend upon the First Cause for their existence and their equipment and their function.”6

6 P. J. GLENN, Ontology, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1957, p. 318. The Causality of the First Efficient Cause (God) and

the Causality of Secondary Efficient Causes (Creatures): Explaining the limits of created causality and how, in the final analysis, secondary causes (creatures) have need of a First Cause, God, Who is the cause of the act of being (esse), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo write: “‘Becoming’ and Forms Constitute the Proper Object of the Efficient Causality of Creatures. The action of a

created agent is the cause of the coming into being (‘fieri’) of the effect; however, it does not produce the being of

the effect as such. It effectively brings about the production of a new reality, (in the case of generation and corruption) or the acquisition of a new mode of being by an already existing being (in accidental changes). However, once the action of the natural agent ceases, the effect remains in its being, which reveals the effect’s actual independence with respect to the cause which produced it. When an architect builds a house, for instance, he imparts a new accidental form to already existing materials, making them suitable for dwelling. In this way, he effectively brings about the construction of the building or its coming into being (becoming). Once the construction activity is finished, however, the house preserves its being by virtue of certain principles which no longer depend on the builder in any way. The same thing happens in the case of a new animal begoten by its progenitors. “The proper terminus of created causality, in the processes of generation and corruption, is the form, which is the primary act of a corporeal substance. In the case of accidental changes, the terminus is a new accident of the substance. The proper effect of the causality of creatures is always the eduction of a form. We can see this clearly if we recall that a substance is a cause to the extent that it really influences its effect, or, in other words, to the extent that the latter cannot exist if the former is suppressed. It is obvious, however, that what disappears when a created efficient cause is removed is the process of ‘in-forming’ some matter or the production of a new form, which is where the influence of the agent of itself ends. The very reality of the effect, which continues in its own being, is not eliminated. “Consequently, the created agent is not the sole or the absolute cause of its effect; rather, it is the cause of the

production of the effect. Generation, which is the most profound type of causality in material things, has to be considered as a via in esse or as the way by which an effect comes to be, namely, by receiving a new substantial form. Consequently, ‘when the action of the agent in generation is removed, the transition from potency to act, which is the coming into being (fieri) of the begotten, ceases, but the form itself, through which the begotten has the act of being, does not cease. Hence, when the action of the agent in generation ceases, the being of the things produced persists, but not their becoming (De Potentia Dei, q. 5, a. 1, c.). “Creatures are Particular Causes of Their Effects. The finitude of created causes becomes even more manifest as we take into account the way in which they act: “a) Natural agents always act by transforming something. Both in the case of accidental changes and the production of a new being, creatures act by merely altering an already existing reality. “b) Hence, in their activity, created causes presuppose a preexisting object. If they are bringing about an accidental change, they need an actually existing subject that will be affected by this modification. If they are generating a new substance, they also need prime matter from which they can educe the new substantial form, while divesting it of the form it previously had. Fire engenders fire in another material substance; plants grow from seeds, with the help of some other elements provided to them by their material surroundings. Animals beget their offspring by means of their own bodies. “c) The efficient causality of finite beings is limited by their own active capacity and by the conditions of the

subject on which they act. It is evident that one cannot produce more perfection than what he himself possesses (no one can transmit knowledge which he does not have or generate a substantial form different from his own). Besides, the efficient power of a cause is restricted by the potentiality of the matter which it transforms or influences. No matter how intelligent a scientist may be, he can never transmit more knowledge than what his students are able to grasp. Similarly, the skill of a sculptor is hampered by the poor quality of the marble be carves. “d) Consequently, the act of being of their effects is not the immediate and proper effect of the causality of

creatures. The causality of a creature cannot account for the effect in its totality; it can do so only for some of its perfections, which the efficient cause is able to impart, and the subject, because of its conditions, is able to receive. Consequently, no created cause produces the total being of its effect. Even in the case of generation, it does not produce being from absolute non-being (from nothingness); rather, it produces this thing from something which was not this thing. This is how a new plant grows from seed.

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“What the created cause immediately and directly influences is the effect’s manner of being, (as a substance or as an accident), rather than its act of being. Strictly speaking, its causal influence ends in the form. A horse, for instance, is the immediate cause, not of the colt’s being (its having the act of being), but of its being a colt. “This does not mean that the created cause does not influence the being of the effect (otherwise it would not really be a cause). It truly does, but in an indirect and mediate fashion, that is, through the form, which is its proper effect. No creature can be a cause of being as such, since its activity always presupposes something which already is or has the act of being (esse). Created agents ‘are not the cause of the act of being as such, but of being this – of being a man, or being white, for example. The act of being, as such, presupposes nothing, since nothing can preexist that is outside being as such. Through the activity of creatures, this being or a manner of being of this thing is produced; for out of a preexistent being, this new being or a new manner of being of it comes about’(Summa Contra

Gentiles, II, 21). “Hence, it must be said that in relation to the act of being, created causes are always particular causes; in other words, they attain their effect not insofar as it is being but only insofar as it is a particular kind of being. Besides, everything acts to the extent that it is actual, and since creatures possess a limited act of being (they are not pure act of being), they necessarily have to cause limited effects in the ontological order. “Created Causality Requires a First Cause Which is the Cause of the Act of Being. Summarizing the conclusions of the two preceding sections, we can say that the efficient causality of creatures is not sufficient to explain the being of an effect. We have underlined the fact that it extends only to the latter’s ‘coming into being’ or becoming. “At the same time, we have also emphasized that the created cause is a real cause. Hence, to say ‘a created thing causes a new substance’ is perfectly valid. Even though the form is the end of the act of generation, the effect is a new substance. But it is also evident that this new substance proceeds not only from the active power of the agent, but also from the preexistent passive potency of matter (ex materia). “Therefore, all causality of creatures necessarily demands the act of being that is presupposed. The cause of this act of being (esse) is God, the Subsistent Esse, the First and Universal cause, in contrast to which other beings are merely secondary causes. Only divine causality can have esse as its proper object. “God has the act of being as the proper object of His causality, both in terms of creation and the conservation of all things in being. Creation is the act of giving the act of being (esse) to creatures out of nothing. In God, creation is an act co-eternal and one with Himself (ab aeterno), but from man’s point of view, creation is carried out in time. The duration in time of that divine act is known as conservation, which is not really distinct from the act of creation. As a consequence, if God had not created, nothing would exist; seen from the angle of conservation (which is the same as creation), everything would fall into nothingness if God would not maintain in being what He had created. “To give the act of being ex nihilo is exclusive of God, for only God is the Subsisting Act of Being, as well as the only universal and omnipotent Cause. Let us consider this briefly: “a) He is the Subsisting Act of Being and Being by essence. Only the Absolute and Unlimited Being, the Fullness of Being, can have the act of being of creatures as its proper effect. In contrast, a particular manner of being, with a finite and participated esse, lacks the power to reach anything which transcends that restricted mode of being. “b) He is omnipotent. We have already seen that creatures presuppose some substratum on which they act. To the extent that this substratum is more or less distant from the act which it is to acquire, a more or less powerful efficient cause is required to actualize the potency. For instance, to make a piece of iron red-hot, a thermal power greater than what suffices to set fire to a piece of wood is needed, since the latter, compared to iron, is in much more proximate potency to ignition. Since the act of being does not presuppose anything, an infinite power is needed to cause it. It is not simply a matter of bridging a great gap between act and potency, but of overcoming the infinite chasm between nothingness and being. Omnipotence is an attribute of God alone, since He alone is Pure Act which is not restricted by any essence. “c) He is the only universal cause. The act of being is the most universal effect, since it embraces all the perfections of the universe in terms of extension and intensity. It includes the perfections of all beings (extension) and all the degrees of perfection (intensity). Hence, no particular cause immediately affects the act of being; rather, esse is the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, namely, God, who has all perfections in their fullness. “God alone, then, is ‘the agent who gives being (per modum dantis esse), and not merely one that moves the agent or alters (per modum moventis et alternantis)’(In IV Metaphysic., lect. 3). “This does not mean that God creates continuously out of nothing. It means rather that in His creative act, God created all being – whether actual or possible. This act gave rise not only to those beings God created at the beginnning of time, but also to those that would come to be through natural and artificial changes in the course of time”(T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 234-239).

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Characteristics of the Causality of the First Cause (God):

Explaining the characteristics of the causality of the First Cause (God), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo write: “The terms First Cause (God) and secondary causes (creatures) are equivalent to others which are also often used: cause

of being (esse) and cause of becoming (fieri); universal cause and particular cause; transcendental cause and predicamental cause. “The cause of the act of being is the first cause since it is presupposed by any other cause, just as being is prerequisite to every other effect. It is an absolutely universal cause since it embraces each and every created perfection, whereas particular agents only influence a certain type of effect. It is a transcendent cause for the same reason, since its proper effect, being, transcends all the categories; in contrast, predicamental causes only produce determinate modes of being. “In contrast to secondary causes, the First Cause can be defined by the following characteristics: a) It is the cause

of the species as such, whereas secondary causes only transmit them. A man, for instance, cannot be the cause of human nature as such, or of all the perfections belonging to it, ‘for he would then be the cause of every man, and, consequently, of himself, which is impossible. But this individual man is the cause, properly speaking, of that individual man. Now, this man exists because human nature is present in this matter. So, this man is not the cause of man, except in the sense that he is the cause of a human form that comes to be in this matter. This means being the principle of generation of an individual man…Now, there must be some proper agent cause of the human species itself ; …This cause is God’(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 65). “b) It is also the cause of matter, whereas creatures only give rise to successive changes of the form. As we have seen, in the production of any new effect, creatures presuppose a prior subject, which in the case of generation is matter. Matter, which is the ultimate substratum of all substantial changes, is the proper effect of the causality of the supreme cause. “c) It is the most universal cause, in contrast to creatures, which are only particular causes. Acting, by way of transforming, all secondary causes produce a type of particular effects, which necessarily presuppose the action of a universal cause. Just as soldiers would achieve nothing for the final victory of the army without the overall plan foreseen by the general and without the weapons and ammunition provided by him, no creature could exist or act, and consequently produce its proper effects, without the influence of the First Cause, which confers the act of being both on the cause and on the subject which is transformed. “d) It is a cause by essence, whereas creatures are only causes by participation. Something has a perfection by essence when it possesses it in all its fullness. In contrast, the perfection is only participated if the subject possesses it only in a partial and limited way. Since everything acts insofar as it is actual, only that which is Pure Act or

Subsisting Act of Being can act and cause by essence. Any creature, however, which necessarily has the act of being restricted by its essence, can only cause by participation, that is, by virtue of having received the act of being and in accordance with the degree it is possessed. “Consequently, God alone has causal power in an unlimited way, and for this reason He alone can produce things from nothing (create them) by giving them their act of being. Creatures only possess a finite and determinate causal capacity proportionate to their degree of participation in the act of being. Besides, for their proper effects, they presuppose divine creative action which gives the act of being to those effects. “Creatures produce their proper effects, which are only ‘determinations of being,’ insofar as they are conserved

by God. ‘That which is some kind of thing by essence is the proper cause of what is such by participation. Thus, fire is the cause of all things that are enkindled. Now, God alone is Being by essence, while other beings are such by participation, since in God alone is Esse identical with His essence. Therefore, the act of being (esse) of every existing thing is the proper effect of God. And so, everything that brings something into actual being does so because it acts through God’s power’(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 66)(T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 239-241). The Relationship Between the First Efficient Cause (God) and Secondary Efficient Causes (Creatures):

Illustrating the relationship between the First Efficient Cause (God) and secondary efficient causes (creatures), Alvira, Clavell and Melendo write: “The being and the causality of creatures are, as we have seen, based totally on God who is the First Cause and the Cause by essence. This entails a relationship of total subordination, and not merely of parallel concurrence in which God’s power and that of creatures would combine to produce a single effect. To illustrate the relationship between God’s efficient causality and that of creatures, we can recall the relationship between the principal cause and an instrumental cause, instead of that between two partial causes which are extrinsically united to attain a single result (as two horses joining forces to pull a carriage). Just as a paint brush would be unable of itself to finish a painting, a creature would be devoid of its being and its power to act if it were to be deprived of its dependence on God.

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“Nonetheless, some clarification has to be made regarding this matter: a) A created instrumental cause is truly dependent on the agent only with respect to the action of the instrument, whereas the creature is also subject to God with regard to its own act of being. “b) A creature possesses a substantial form and certain active powers which truly affect it in a permanent way; these are the root of its activity, to such an extent that in natural activity, the actions of secondary causes are proportionate to their causes. In an instrument, however, in addition to the form it has, by which it can produce its own non-instrumental effects, there is also a new power present in a transient manner, capable of producing an effect disproportionate to the instrumental cause. Hence, in the stricter sense, creatures are called instruments when they are used by God to produce effects which exceed their own capacities, especially in the realm of grace. They are called secondary causes when they act in the natural order. “Three consequences can be drawn from the total subordination of secondary causes to the First Cause: a) Compared with the secondary cause, the First Cause has a greater influence on the reality of the effect. Analogously, a painting is more correctly attributed to the artist than to the paint brush or palette which he used. ‘In the case of ordered agent causes, the subsequent causes act through the power of the first cause. Now, in the order of agent causes, God is the first cause…thus, all lower agent causes act through His power. The principal cause of an action is that by whose power the action is done, rather than that which acts; thus, the action springs more strictly from the principal agent than from the instrument. Therefore, compared with secondary agent causes, God is a more principal cause of every action’(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 67). “b) Both the First Cause and secondary causes are total causes of the effect in their own respective order, since the effect is entirely produced by each of them, and not partly by one and partly by another. ‘The same effect is not attributed to a natural cause and to divine power in such a way that it is partly done by God, and partly by the natural agent; rather, the effect is totally produced by both, in different ways, just as the same effect is wholly attributed to the instrument and likewise wholly attributed to the principal cause’(Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 70). “As we have seen, the proper and adequate effect of a secondary cause is the form (substantial or accidental), and creatures receive a particular degree of participation in the act of being through the form. The immediate proper effect of God, however, is the act of being of all things, and through the act of being, His own power influences all the perfections of creatures. The all-encompassing character of divine causality arises from the special nature of esse as the act of all acts and the perfection of all pefections of a created substance. ‘Since any creature as well as everything in it shares in its act of being…every being, in its entirely, must come from the first and perfect cause’(In

II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2). “Therefore, divine Providence embraces everything which exists in the universe. It includes not only the universal species but also each individual, not only the necessary or predetermined activity of inferior beings but also the free operations of spiritual creatures. It extends not only to the most decisive actions of free creatures (those which alter the course of mankind’s history) but also to their seemingly unimportant daily activities, since both kinds of actions share in the actuality of the esse of the person doing them. This act of being is the immediate effect of divine efficient causality. “c) The subordination of secondary causes to God does not diminish the causal efficacy of creatures; rather it

provides the basis for the efficacy of their activity. God’s action increases and intensifies the efficacy of subordinate causes as they progressively get more closely linked with God, since a greater causal dependence entails a greater participation in the source of operative power. This is somewhat like the case of a student who faithfully follows the instructions of the professor guiding him in his studies, or that of the apprentice who conscientiously does what the accomplished artist tells him. They experience greater efficacy in their activity. “Secondary causes have an efficacy of their own, but obviously they have their power by virtue of their dependence on higher causes. A military officer, for instance, has authority over his subordinates because of the power invested in him by higher officers of the army; the chisel transforms the marble because of the motion imparted to it by the artist. “Hence, ‘the power of a lower agent depends on the power of the superior agent, insofar as the superior agent gives this power to the lower agent whereby it may act, or preserves it, or even applies it to the action’(Summa

Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 70). Since God not only confers operative power on secondary causes but also maintains them in their being, and applies them to their effects, their efficacy is multiplied as they become more submissive to divine action. “The great significance of this profound reality can be seen in practical activity, especially in the sphere of human freedom. Submission to God’s law does not in the least diminish the quality of men’s actions. On the contrary, it invigorates them and confers on them an efficacy that surpasses natural standards”(T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 241-244).

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“2. Principal cause and instrumental cause. The principal efficient cause exercises its own activity with the aid of another cause which subserves that activity. The writer, for example, exercises his activity with the aid of pen or pencil. The instrumental efficient cause operates (exercises its causality) under the movement and direction of a principal cause. The pen or pencil which serves the writer is an instrumental cause. Notice that the whole effect (in our example, the finished piece of writing) is attributable to both the principal cause and the instrumental cause, but in different respective ways. The writer wrote the whole letter; so did the pen. But the letter is, first and foremost, the writer’s; as an expression of thought it must be attributed to the writer alone; no one would praise the pen for high sentiments or graceful phrasing. But the letter is attributable to the pen as used by the writer, and as having a fitness or suitability to serve the writer in the activity of writing. The instrument thus has its efficient causality in its disposition or fitness to serve a certain use, and this causality is actually exercised only under the transient application of the instrument to its use by the activity of the principal cause.”7

Regarding the principal cause and the instrumental cause,8 Alvira, Clavell, and Melendo

state: “We have so far stressed that the efficient cause is always superior to its effects. Experience clearly shows, however, that there are certain effects which surpass the perfection of the causes which produce them. A surgeon’s knife, for instance, restores health to a patient; a combination of uttered sounds enables a man to convey his thoughts to another man. As we can easily see, the enormous efficacy of these causes stems from the fact that they are employed as instruments by some other higher cause.

“An instrumental cause is a cause which produces an effect not by virtue of its own form,

but on account of the motion or movement conferred on it by a principal agent. A principal

cause, in contrast, is a cause which acts by its own power. “A distinction has to be made between two effects of an instrumental cause, namely, that

stemming from the instrument’s own form (proper effect) and that arising from the influence of the principal cause (instrumental effect). The proper effect of a paint brush, for instance, is the transfer of paint to the canvas; its instrumental effect, however, is the landscape scene impressed on the canvas by virtue of the skill of the painter, who is the principal cause.

“The action of the instrument as an instrument is not different from the action of the

principal agent, since the power which permanently resides in the principal agent is acquired in a transient manner by the instrument insofar as it is moved by the principal agent. The skillful painter always has the ability to do an excellent work, but the paint brush only has it while it is being used by the artist.

“Consequently, the effect of the instrumental action has to be attributed to the agent

rather than to the instrument. Strictly speaking, miracles are not attributed to saints but to God, just as literary work is not attributed to the author’s typewriter but to the author himself.

“It is quite obvious, however, that in order to obtain certain effects the agent needs

suitable tools. To cut something, for instance, a sharp hard instrument is required. One should

7 P. J. GLENN, op. cit., pp. 318-319. 8 Cf. J. S. ALBERTSON, Instrumental Causality in St. Thomas, “The New Scholasticism,” 28 (1954), pp. 409-435.

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keep in mind that the instrument achieves the instrumental effect through its proper effect. Once a saw has lost its sharpness, it will not anymore be suitable for cutting and cannot be utilized for furniture-making.

“Instrumental causality has considerable importance not only in daily life, but also in the

supernatural dimension of human life in relation to God, who makes use of the natural actions of creatures as instruments to obtain supernatural effects. This is why instrumental causality is dealt with quite extensively in Theology.”9

“3. Total cause and partial cause. By reason of the scope of their influence, efficient

causes may be either total or partial. A total cause is the complete cause of the effect in any given

order, whereas a partial cause only produces a portion of it. For this reason, partial causes are always coordinated. Each of the horses in a team, for instance, is a partial cause of the movement of the carriage or of the plow. Men are partial causes of peace in society, since it is attained through the good will of individuals.”10

“4. Coordinated cause and subordinated cause. A coordinated cause is the same as a

partial cause and thus accounts for only part of the effect. A subordinated cause is a cause which depends upon another cause. If such a cause depends upon another cause in the very exercise of its causality, it is called an essentially subordinated cause. Such a cause produces the whole effect, but in dependence upon the other cause. For instance, the chisel of a sculptor is a cause which exercises influence upon the whole statue, but is dependent upon the sculptor in the very exercise of its causality. If a cause depends upon another cause, but not in the exercise of its causality, it is said to be accidentally subordinated to this cause. For example, a man depends on his father as upon upon a superior cause for his existence, but in the act of begetting a son he does not depend upon him; hence he is only accidentally subordinated to his father, insofar as the act of begetting a son is concerned.”11

“5. Universal cause and particular cause. This classification refers to the coverage or

extension of the causal influence or the set of specifically distinct effects to which it extends. A

cause is universal if it extends to a series of specifically distinct results; it is particular if it is

restricted to a single type of effects. In the strict sense, God alone is a universal cause, since He alone is an efficient cause who creates and sustains in existence every kind of creature. In a wider sense, however, a cause is universal if its causal efficacy extends to all the specifically distinct effects within a given sphere. In the construction of a building, for example, the architect is a universal cause with respect to the many other agents (carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, etc.), who work together to build the structure.

“In a different sense, a universal cause is a cause which produces a given effect from a

more universal point of view. God, for instance, produces all things from the supremely universal point of view of being. A particular cause, in this sense, is a cause which achieves its effect from

a more limited point of view. A man, for example, produces a cabinet in so far as it is a cabinet, but not insofar as it is a being.

9 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 205-207. 10 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., p. 204. 11 H. J. KOREN, Introduction to the Science of Metaphysics, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1965, pp. 247-248.

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“The more actuality a cause has (that is, the more perfect it is), the greater its operative power is, and the wider the field of influence it has. As we ascend in the hierarchy or degrees of being in the universe, we find a greater causal influence. The causal influence of plants goes further than that of inanimate things. In the case of man, through his intelligence, he achieves a wide span of effects inconceivable in the world of lower living things and of inanimate things, which are rigidly directed towards a determinate kind of effect. God, who is supremely Perfect Act and is, therefore, at the peak of efficient causality, infinitely transcends all causal influence of creatures as regards both intensity and extension.”12

“6. Physical cause and moral cause. A physical efficient cause is one that produces an

effect by its own physical activity. A moral efficient cause (which is not an efficient cause properly so called, but as such by an extension of meaning) is one that exercises an influence on a free agent (that is, a free actor, doer, performer) by means of command, persuasion, invitation, force of example. The free agent who is moved to action by such influences is the physical efficient cause of the action; the one who exercises such influences over the physical cause is the moral efficient cause of the action.”13

“7. Per se cause and per accidens cause. A per se efficient cause is one that tends by

nature or intention to produce the effect that actually is produced. Fire is the per se efficient cause of light and heat; it tends by its nature to produce light and heat. A hunter who shoots a rabbit is the per se efficient cause of the killing, because he intends it. A per accidens efficient cause is one that produces an effect ‘by accident,’ since it is either not such a cause as naturally produces this effect, or the effect is not intended. A man drilling a well for water strikes oil; the drilling is not by nature calculated to bring up oil in each case, but, in this case, it does so per

accidens. A man digging a grave uncovers buried treasure per accidens. A hunter shoots a dog, mistaking it for a rabbit; he is the per accidens cause of the killing of the dog, because he did not intend it. The term per se means ‘of itself’; and the term per accidens means ‘by accident.’ A cause which of itself (that is, by its nature, or by the intention of a free agent) produces an effect is the per se cause of that effect; a cause which happens to produce an effect, although the cause is not naturally ordinated to the producing of this effect, or – in case of a free agent acting as physical or moral efficient cause – is not intentionally directed to the producing of this effect, is the per accidens, or the accidental cause of the effect.”14

“8. Proximate cause and remote cause. A proximate (or ‘next door’) efficient cause

admits no medium between itself and its effect. A remote (or ‘farther off’) efficient cause has one or more mediate causes between itself and the effect. A thief is the proximate cause of the theft; the man who ordered the thief to steal, or showed him how to do it, is the remote cause. A

12 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 204-205. 13 P. J. GLENN, op. cit., p. 319. Koren observes that “a physical cause produces its effect by direct action towards this effect; e.g., the carpenter is the physical efficient cause of the table he produces. A moral cause produces an effect by proposing a purpose to the physical cause; e.g., a customer, by offering money, induces the carpenter to make a table”(H. J. KOREN, op. cit., p. 248). 14 P. J. GLENN, op. cit., pp. 319-320. Koren states: “A cause is called direct (per se) if it tends to produce a certain effect either naturally or freely. For example, the act of digging naturally tends to produce a hole, and the digger freely intends to produce a hole. By an accidental cause is usually meant a cause which produces some effect other than that which was freely or naturally intended. For instance, the act of digging a hole may be the accidental cause of a treasure trove”(H. J. KOREN, op. cit., p. 248).

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disease may be the proximate cause of death; the contagion or infection which induced the disease is the remote cause. There is here an axiom of value for philosopher and moralist: causa

causae est causa causati which is translated literally as, ‘The cause of a cause is the cause of what the latter produces.’ We may translate the axiom freely thus, ‘The remote cause is a true contributor to the effect of the proximate cause.’ Of course, the degree or measure of the contribution will depend upon the actual influence which comes through to the ultimate effect from the remote cause. A moral efficient cause is always a remote cause of the ultimate effect. Our little Catechism lists the ‘nine ways of being accessory to another’s sin,’ and therein presents for our consideration a series of moral and remote efficient causes, and indicates that responsibility for the ultimate effect rests upon the remote cause as well as upon the proximate cause: causa causae est causa causati. Another way of expressing the truth of this axiom (as touching free agents) is this: qui facit per alium, facit per se, ‘He who does a thing through an agent or proxy or representative, does it himself.’”15

“9. Necessary cause and free cause. A necessary cause is one that is compelled by nature

to produce its effect when all conditions for it are fulfilled. Fire under dry chips is the necessary cause for flame. The sun is the necessary cause of daylight. A free cause is one that can refrain from producing its effect when all conditions for it are fulfilled. A hungry man with appetizing food before him may still refuse to eat.”16 Concerning determined cause and free cause, Alvira, Clavell and Melendo state the following: “A determined cause is a cause which produces its

proper effect as the result of the mere ‘vitality’ of its nature. These causes are sometimes called necessary causes, in another divergent sense. A plant, for instance, spontaneously produces its flowers and fruit. Consequently, in the absence of any impediment, these causes necessarily produce their effects and can never act in a different way.

“In contrast, a free cause is a cause which produces its effect with mastery over its own

operation, thus being able to produce it or not, by virtue of its own decision. A man, for instance, can decide to go for a walk or refrain from doing so. Free causes have mastery over the goal which they seek, because they know it and tend towards it by their own will.

“The effects of determined causes somehow pre-exist in their respective causes in such a

way that the movement of the cause of itself allows one to foresee its effects. The study of the nature of a living organism enables a person to know how it will act subsequently, taking into account its contingency. Free causes, in contrast, are not determined towards a single end. They may or may not act, and they may act in a particular way or another. Knowledge of their nature does not enable one to foresee their effects. This is true in the case of the activity of men and of angels, and of God’s activity with regard to the created world.”17

10. Univocal cause and analogical cause. “A univocal cause produces an effect of the

identical species to which itself belongs. Human parents are the univocal causes of their children. 15 P. J. GLENN, op. cit., pp. 320-321. Koren writes: “The proximate cause is the cause from which the effect proceeds immediately. The remote cause acts upon another cause and thus produces the effect mediately. For instance, if I boil water, the proximate cause of the boiling is the heat of the kettle, and the fire applied to the kettle is a remote cause”(H. J. KOREN, op. cit., p. 248). 16 P. J. GLENN, op. cit., p. 321. Koren: “A necessary cause is determined by its very nature to act in a definitive way, whereas a free cause has control over its actions”(H. J. KOREN, op. cit., p. 248). 17 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 208-209.

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An equivocal cause produces an effect which belongs to a different species than that to which the cause belongs. Thus, ‘April showers bring May flowers’; the human sculptor produces a non-human statue.”18 Regarding the difference between univocal cause and analogical cause, Alvira, Clavell, and Melendo state the following: “This classification of causes refers to the degree of likeness of the effect to its cause. A univocal cause produces an effect of the same species as

itself. One tree produces another tree, etc. An analogical cause produces an effect of a different

and lower species than itself, although there is always some likeness to itself. God is an analogical cause of creatures: the act of being which He gives them does result in a likeness to God, since it is a participation of that act which He has by essence. However, since the creature’s act of being is restricted by an essence, the created esse is infinitely distinct from that of God. Man is an analogical cause of the artifacts he produces (a bed, a poem, a car), since these are of a species different from man. Artificial things are subdued likenesses of the human spirit, since their forms (received in matter) are similar to the spiritual forms which the artisan conceives in order to do his work.”19 Clavell writes in Metafisica (2006): “Causa univoca e causa analoga. Tale distinzione considera il tipo di somiglianza degli effetti rispetto alle loro cause. Il puledro assomiglia al cavallo – causa univoca – per la forma posseduta naturalmente da entrambi, che le fa avere la stessa essenza ed appartenere alla stessa specie. Una cattedrale, invece, non assomiglia all’architetto – causa analoga –, ma all’idea esemplare che questi ha concepito nella propria mente.

“La causa univoca è quella che produce un effetto della sua stessa specie, un albero ne

genera un altro, ecc. La causa analoga produce un effetto di specie diversa e inferiore alla causa, anche se ad essa somigliante. L’uomo è causa analoga degli artefatti che costruisce – un letto, una poesia, un torchio –, poiché questi ultimi non sono della stessa specie umana. Tuttavia, le cose artificiali sono similitudini – sebbene degradate – dello spirito dell’uomo, dato che sono oggetti la cui forma materializzata assomiglia alle forme spirituali concepite dall’artista per realizzare la propria opera.

“L’intera attivita naturale del mondo fisico è determinata ad un tipo di effetti e alle volte

è univoca, mentre l’azione originata dallo spirito è analoga. Questi diversi tipi di causalità, però, possono darsi in uno stesso agente. Di fatto, l’uomo per natura genera sempre un altro uomo e ne è causa agente univoca; e può al contrario produrre effetti diversissimi in quanto artista o artefice, e in questo modo è anche causa analoga.

“Dio è causa analoga delle creature, poiché dà loro un essere che, in quanto

partecipazione di quello che Lui possiede per essenza, è simile a Dio ma allo stesso tempo, in quanto contratto dall’essenza, si distingue infinitamente dall’essere divino.”20

“11. Natural cause and rational cause. A natural efficient cause (called agens per

naturam, that is, ‘Acting by its nature’) is any necessary cause in the physical order. A rational efficient cause (called agens per intellectum, that is, ‘Acting with understanding’) is a free cause, a cause which acts with knowledge and free choice.”21

18 P. J. GLENN, op. cit., p. 321-322. 19 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., p. 205. 20 L. CLAVELL and M. PÉREZ DE LABORDA, op. cit., pp. 291-292. 21 P. GLENN, op. cit., p. 322.

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Impossibility of Infinite Regress in a Per Se Essentially Subordinated Series of

Efficient Causes

The second way (secunda via)22 a posteriori quia demonstration of the existence of God

in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3 starts from our experience of an order of per se essentially subordinated efficient causes among the sensible things of this world (e.g., a soccer player moves his foot to hit the soccer ball which moves the ball ten meters in front of him); the conclusion will be the affirmation of the existence of God as the Uncaused First Efficient Cause: “The second way is from the nature of efficient cause. In the world of sensible things we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself, for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause whether the intermediate cause be several or one only. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate, cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes, all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.”23

The starting point for the secunda via is the experience that we have of an order of per se

essentially subordinated efficient causes among the sensible things that we see around us (e.g., an author uses a fountain pen to write down his thoughts on a blank sheet of paper), essentially subordinated per se efficient causes, causes being ordered per se whenever the virtue of the first cause influences the ultimate effect produced through the intermediary causes. Here the causal influx of the first cause reaches to the ultimate effect by means of other causes. Let us give an example of a subordinated per se order of efficient causes: Harry is playing tennis. In this case, Harry’s expertise moves his right hand, and his right hand moves the tennis racket, and the tennis racket moves the tennis ball to the other end of the tennis court, which is the ultimate effect. In this series of causes the causal influx of Harry’s expertise influences the ultimate effect, the moving of the tennis ball to the other end of the tennis court, by means of other causes like his hands and his tennis racket. The Angelic Doctor explains: “…two things may be considered in every agent, namely, the thing itself that acts, and the power whereby it acts. Thus fire by its heat makes a thing hot. Now the power of the lower agent depends upon the power of the higher agent, in so far as the higher agent gives the lower agent the power whereby it acts, or preserves 22 Studies on the Second Way: R. GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, La deuxième preuve de l’existence de Dieu proposée

par Saint Thomas, “Doctor Communis,” 7 (1954), pp. 28-40 ; R. LAUER, The Notion of Efficient Cause in the “Secunda Via,” “The Thomist,” 38 (1974), pp. 754-767 ; J. R. T. LAMONT, An Argument for an Uncaused Cause, “The Thomist,” 59 (1995), pp. 261-277 ; R. L. CARTWRIGHT, The Second Way, “Mediaeval Philosophy and Theology,” 5 (1996), pp. 189-204. 23 Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, c.: “Secunda via est ex ratione causae efficientis. Invenimus enim in istis sensibilibus esse ordinem causarum efficientium, nec tamen invenitur, nec est possibile, quod aliquid sit causa efficiens sui ipsius; quia sic esset prius seipso, quod est impossibile. Non autem est possibile quod in causis efficientibus procedatur in infinitum. Quia in omnibus causis efficientibus ordinatis, primum est causa medii, et medium est causa ultimi, sive media sint plura sive unum tantum, remota autem causa, removetur effectus, ergo, si non fuerit primum in causis efficientibus, non erit ultimum nec medium. Sed si procedatur in infinitum in causis efficientibus, non erit prima causa efficiens, et sic non erit nec effectus ultimus, nec causae efficientes mediae, quod patet esse falsum. Ergo est necesse ponere aliquam causam efficientem primam, quam omnes Deum nominant.”

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that power, or applies it to action. Thus the craftsman applies the instrument to its proper effect, although sometimes he does not give the instrument the form whereby it acts, nor preserves that form, but merely puts it into motion. Consequently, the action of the lower agent must not only proceed from the lower agent through the agent’s own power, but also through the power of all the higher agents, for it acts by the power of them all. Now just as the lowest agent is found to be immediately active, so the power of the first agent is found to be immediate in the production of the effect; because the power of the lowest agent does not of itself produce this effect, but by the power of the proximate higher agent, and this by the power of a yet higher agent, so that the power of the supreme agent is found to produce its effect of itself, as though it were the immediate cause.”24

As regards the difference between the prima via ex parte motus and the secunda via ex

ratione causae efficientis, Renard observes that “there are essential differences which place each proof under a distinct formality. The first way considers the passivity of beings, their becoming as they are moved; it considers motion. The formal aspect of the second way, on the contrary, is activity. This proof studies a limited being in so far as it is a cause, that is, in so far as by its action it is the efficient cause of another. This limited efficient cause of another, we find, cannot be its own cause, because it is not its own act of being (esse); and therefore, we must rise to a higher cause.”25 Concerning the difference in starting points between the first way and the second way, Gerard Smith writes: “It is the activity, the operation, of causes which is the datum of the second way: causes causing. The datum of the first way was beings-being-moved; the datum of the second way is beings-moving-something else. A vast difference is here. Beings-being-moved are patients. Beings-moving-something else are agents. Agents are acting. Patients are acted upon. Patients are becoming something; they are in fieri. Agents are causing something else to become something; they are in agere.”26

The secunda via deals with essential or per se subordinated efficient causes, not per

accidens ordered causes where the causal influx does not reach down to the ultimate effect, but only to the proximate effect.27 That the proximate effect manages in turn to cause some other

24 Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 70. 25 H. RENARD, The Philosophy of God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1952, p. 37. 26 G. SMITH, Natural Theology, Macmillan, New York, 1951, p. 118. 27 Per Se Essentially Subordinated Series of Efficient Causes and Per Accidens Accidentally Subordinated Series of

Efficient Causes. Contrasting an essential efficient causal series from an accidental efficient causal series, Aquinas states in the second article of the forty sixth question of the Prima Pars: “In efficient causes it is impossible to proceed to infinity per se – thus, there cannot be an infinite number of causes that are per se required for a certain effect; for instance, that a stone be moved by a stick, the stick by the hand, and so on to infinity. But it is not impossible to proceed to infinity accidentally as regards efficient causes; for instance, if all the causes thus infinitely multiplied should have the order of only one cause, their multiplication being accidental; as an artificer acts by means of many hammer accidentally, because one after the other may be broken. It is accidental, therefore, that one particular hammer acts after the action of another; and likewise it is accidental to this particular man as generator to be generated by another man; for he generates as a man, and not as the son of another man.”(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 46, a. 2, ad 7). Commenting on the difference between a per se essentially subordinated series of efficient causes and a per

accidens accidentally subordinated series of efficient causes, Dougherty observes the following: “An effect can be related to a series of efficient causes in either an essential or accidental way. Let us consider first the meaning of an essential, efficient causal series. An effect can be produced by a series of primary and secondary causes in what is called an essentially (per se) subordinate series of proper causes. There are certain definite attributes of this series: 1. The secondary causes cannot act except as members of the series notwithstanding their own natures which are the

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effect is not due to the causal influx of the first cause in such a series. The latter effect is obviously outside the influence of the first cause in this type of causal series (the per accidens series). Here is an example of a per accidens series of ordered causes: A camper lights a primed torch in the woods with his flaming torch. The fact that the torch that was lit is then used to light another primed torch and yet another can only be outside the influx of the efficient causality of the original flaming torch that lit the first primed torch. In this series of one torch lighting another, the influence of the first cause extends only to the proximate effect (the first primed torch lit) but not to the last or ultimate effect (the last primed torch lit). Since the last primed torch lit is outside the influence of the first cause this series of causes is ordered only accidentally, for what is beyond the virtue of a cause is by accident (per accidens).

In the per se ordered series of efficient causes, on the other hand, the influx of the first

cause extends to the production of the ultimate effect through the instrumentality of the intermediate causes.

Distinguishing between a per se essentially subordinated series of efficient causes and a

per accidens accidentally subordinated series of efficient causes, Grenier writes: “Essentially subordinated efficient causes are causes which are subordinated to one another in virtue of their causality in such manner that the causality of the inferior cause actually depends on the causality of the superior; v.g., when a bat sets a ball in motion because it is set in motion by the hand, and the hand by another cause.

“Accidentally subordinated efficient causes are causes which are subordinated to one

another not because of their causality, but because of some other nexus; v.g., if in his work an artificer successively uses several hammers because he breaks one after the other, these hammers are subordinated to one another not because of their causality, but in time. Similarly, a son who engenders is an efficient cause subordinated to his father, not essentially subordinated, i.e., because of causality, but accidentally, in virtue of his origin.”28

principles of their own movement ; 2. Each member of the series influences the total effect ; 3. Each member of the series has a true causality proper to its nature; 4. There must be a first in the series which is independent and the others are dependent upon it. “If there were no first cause in the essential series there would be no effect. The secondary or intermediary causes cannot by themselves produce the effect, since intermediary causes produce not only by their own nature but as influenced or moved by the first cause. If all causes were only intermediate there would be in the series no sufficient reason for the effect. The primary cause is the universal source of the causal series terminating in the effect of the series. “…An accidental, efficient, causal series is a series in which the causal influence of the primary and every secondary member does not reach to the last effect but only the proximate effect. For example: a chicken lays an egg which is hatched into another chicken, which lays an egg hatched into another chicken, and so on. Any one member of the series can be dropped without effecting the last result so long as the members are cojoined. The following attributes describe such a series: 1. Its causality is necessarily univocal. In other words all the members cause in the same way. Every hen produces an egg. There is no hierarchy of causes, namely, a superior primary cause and inferior secondary causes as in the case of the essential series ; 2. The members need only be cojoined in the series ; 3. There need not be a first in number in the accidental series. The series as accidental need not be terminated from a primary cause since multiplication of its members is accidental. It is theoretically infinite – the potential infinite or indefinite. There is no limit to the possible number of eggs and chickens as antecedents to this last effected egg. It is called an accidental series because the multiplication of its members is accidental.”(K. DOUGHERTY, Metaphysics, Graymoor Press, Peekskill, NY, 1965, pp. 152-154). 28 H. GRENIER, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 3 (Metaphysics), St. Dunstan’s University, Charlottetown, 1950, p. 270.

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While all the causes involved in our per se series are efficient causes, each one of them is of a different nature or species. In our per se essentially subordinated and simultaneous series of causes “si tratta di causalità di ordine diverse: la volontà comanda il braccio in un modo diverso da come il braccio muove il bastone e questo sposta la pietra. Questo ci permette di capire che Dio non è il primo anello di una catena, ma ciò che sostiene l’intera catena.29 Parlare di causalità divina, dunque è compatibile con la difesa della trascendenza di Dio, poiché Egli non agisce nel mondo come una causa fisica.”30 Smith writes: “Clearly the members of such a series must differ in nature; no one is like any other in nature. If the members did not differ in nature one from the other, the sameness of their nature would destroy the necessity of a plurality. If two members of a per se series were alike, one of them could do what the other does, and so there would be no need for one of them. For example, light one candle; with the lit candle light another; the first candle, which is like the second, was unnecessary to the lighting of the second. No need of a series there. Causes, however, which are all operating together are so related to their effect that if you pull one of them away from the complex, the rest effect nothing. For example, sun, soil, vine, water are so related to grapes.”31

“Since there are many causes in a per se series, the essential determinant of their

operation, though present in the totality of their agency, is not present in all in the same way. This is to say that the causes in a per se series must differ in kind, else there would be no need for there being many: of two like causes, one could do what the other does. Their individual difference in kind, however, leaves intact their same essential determination as a total agent. A man driving a nail with a hammer – these are different causes, because they are many. Yet they all act from the propria virtus of one, the principal agent; each one’s proper power as an instrument participates in the power proper to the principal cause.”32

Now, it is impossible for a thing to be its own efficient cause, for then it would have had to exist before it existed in order to efficiently cause itself to exist, which is absurd, a violation of the principle of non-contradiction. Finite beings are not the efficient causes of themselves: non

est possibile quod aliquid sit causa efficiens sui ipsius. Gilson observes that “if we consider sensible things, which are the only possible point of departure for a proof of the existence of God, we observe in them an order of efficient causes. But we never find, nor can we find, a being that is its own efficient cause. Since a cause is necessarily prior to its effect, a being would have to be prior to itself in order to be its own efficient cause, which is impossible.”33 Neither is the Infinite Being causa sui. Non est possibile quod aliquid sit causa efficiens sui ipsius. God is not Causa Sui (as the rationalists Descartes and Spinoza erroneously maintained) but is rather the Uncaused Cause. “Severing the principle of causality from experience, and considering it as an a

priori principle which applies to being (ens) as such, led some rationalist philosophers to apply the principle of causality indiscriminately both to creatures and to the Creator. Hence they considered God as ‘the Cause of Himself’(Causa sui), rather than as the ‘Uncaused Cause.’ Accepting the same assumptions, other philosophers (like Hegel) ended up subordinating the

29 Cf. J. DE FINANCE, En balbutiant l’indicibile, Gregorian University Press, Rome, 1992, p. 19. 30 M. PÉREZ DE LABORDA, La ricerca di Dio. Trattato di teologia filosofica, EDUSC, Rome, 2011, p. 103. 31 G. SMITH, op. cit., p. 117. 32 G. SMITH, op. cit., p. 96. 33 É. GILSON, Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, a translation of Le thomisme, sixth and final edition, by Lawrence K. Shook and Armand Maurer, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 2002, p. 62.

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First Cause to its effects (God to creatures) and claimed that God would not be God if he did not produce the world.”34 “The error of Rationalism in this matter is that of identifying cause with ratio: ‘we must look for the cause, that is, the reason of any given reality (Spinoza, Ethica, I, prop. 11, aliter).”35 “…la nozione di ente in quanto ente non implica né l’essere causato né il causare. Essa significa semplicemente ciò che è. La nozione di ente, dunque, è prioritaria rispetto a quella di causa, e di conseguenza il principio che esprime la non contradditorietà dell’ente è anche prioritario rispetto a quello di causalità.

“L’essere causato non è proprio dell’ente in quanto tale, poiché altrimenti tutta la realtà

sarebbe causata,36 anche quella divina, e non ci sarebbe una causa incausata. Ora, ciò è impossibile, poiché esigerebbe un processo all’infinito – una causa esigerebbe un’altra, e questa a sua volta un’altra, ecc. – il che non si può ammettere, poiché tutto sarebbe infondato. Ci deve essere dunque qualcosa che non sia causato da un altro, ma neanche da se stesso: la prima Causa incausata, Dio. D’altra parte, la pienezza dell’essere della Causa prima si oppone in modo radicale ad essere causata, poiché l’effetto è per forza imperfetto e insufficiente a se stesso.

“Il sistema razionalistico invece, per la sua identificazione di causa e ratio, sostiene che

Dio è causa sui, causa di se stesso, e non invece l’Incausato. Partendo dagli stessi presupposti, altri autori, come ad esempio Hegel, hanno finito per subordinare in qualche modo la Causa prima ai suoi effetti, affermando che Dio non sarebbe Dio se non producesse il mondo. L’equivoco razionalista su questo argomento sembra dipendere dalla sua identificazione di causa e ratio, e dalla conseguente affermazione: «ad ogni realtà bisogna assegnare una causa, cioè una ragione».37 In realtà, si dovrebbe dire che Dio dà ragione di se stesso, ma non è causa di se stesso, non è causa sui.”38

There is then a reference to the impossibility of an infinite regress in a per se essentially

subordinated series of efficient causes.39 An infinite regress would mean no first efficient cause. But if there would be no first efficient cause then there could be no ultimate effect because there would be no causal influx which produced the effect. “In all ordered efficient causes, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, whether one or many, and this is the cause of the last cause. But, when you suppress a cause, you suppress its effect. Therefore, if you suppress the first cause, the intermediate cause cannot be a cause. Now, if there were an infinite regress among efficient causes, no cause would be first. Therefore, all the other causes, which are intermediate, will be suppressed. But this is manifestly false.”40 Grenier writes: “If there is regress into infinity in essentially subordinated causes, there is no first cause. But there must be a first cause in a series of essentially subordinated causes; for the first is the cause of the intermediary, and the intermediary, whether one or many, is the cause of the last. To disallow the first cause is to disallow intermediary causes and effects. Therefore regress into infinity in essentially subordinated causes is impossible.”41

34 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., pp. 183-184. 35 T. ALVIRA, L. CLAVELL, T. MELENDO, op. cit., p. 183. 36 Cfr. Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 52. 37 B. SPINOZA, Ethica, prop. 11, aliter. 38 L. CLAVELL and M. PÉREZ DE LABORDA, Metafisica, EDUSC, Rome, 2006, pp. 313-314. 39 Cf. P. CAROSI, La serie infinita di cause efficienti subordinate, “Divus Thomas,” 46 (1943), pp. 29-77, 159-175 40 Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 13, no. 33. 41 H. GRENIER, op. cit., p. 271.

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Miguel Pérez de Laborda observes the following regarding the impossibility of an infinite regress in a per se essentially subordinated series of efficient causes: “Non è possibile che si dia un processo all’infinito nel secondo tipo di serie (cause essenziali e simultanee). In questo secondo caso, quindi, ci deve essere un inizio nella serie delle cause. Come una catena di ferro non può restare salda se non c’è un primo anello che non sia ben ancorato nel soffitto, così una pietra mossa non può dipendere da infinite azioni simultanee, poiché dovrebbero essere tutte quante attualmente esistenti. Nel loro causare (sostenere o muovere), gli anelli o i motori intermedi dipendono da un motore o un anello precedente, che a sua volta non dipende da un altro. E, secondo san Tommaso, questa prima causa (Motore immobile, Causa incausata, Essere necessario) è Dio.

“Possiamo ora comprendere che Tommaso non sta cercando un motore immobile o una

causa incausata che abbia mosso o causato nel passato, ma adesso non continui più ad esercitare il suo influsso causale. Il Dio di cui Tommaso è alla ricerca, non agisce nel mondo come il piede che ha dato un calcio ad una palla, ma poi non deve più intervenire perché essa cada rotolando per il pendio della montagna; una volta ricevuta la spinta iniziale, la palla si rende autonoma, e si muove ormai per una causa (la forza gravitazionale) diversa dal calcio iniziale. Ciò che sta cercando Tommaso è invece una causa che nel presente (simultaneamente all’effetto) sia la fonte continua dell’essere, del cambiare e della capacità di causare degli effetti. Non una causa dell’inizio dell’essere, ma dell’essere attualmente.”42

Renard explains why an infinite series of per se essentially subordinated and

simultaneous series of causes is impossible because contradictory, writing: “The proof for the existence of God depends upon the truth of the following statement: in a series of per se essentially subordinated efficient causes in which each member has an influx here and now upon the ‘to be’ of the next cause, and in turn, in the same manner depends on the preceding cause, an infinite number of causes is impossible because contradictory. We must conclude, therefore, to the existence of a first uncaused cause.

“…in a series of per se essentially subordinated and simultaneous series of causes, the

influx of the first cause looks to the ‘to be’ (that is to say, it has an influx on the ‘to be’) of all the intermediate members, reaching even to the last effect. The reason is that the intermediate causes are actuated here and now by the first cause. If, then, there were no first cause, these intermediary causes would not be able to act. Now in an infinite series there is no first cause and, therefore, no sufficient reason for the actuation of the intermediate cause, no causing of the last effect, and therefore no effect. This is contradictory, since the effect is there: it exists. Therefore, the series cannot be infinite.”43

Luigi Bogliolo states the following concerning the impossibility of an infinite regress in a

per se essentially subordinated series of efficient causes in the secunda via: “To go to infinity in the search for conditioned causes would not resolve the problem at all…The action of sculpting of the sculptor does not find its reason for being if we do not go beyond all the agents and causers that are conditioned and dependent, so as to reach an absolutely independent and unconditioned Cause that leads to no others. Non autem est possibile quod in causis efficientibus

42 M. PÉREZ DE LABORDA, op. cit., p. 102. 43 H. RENARD, The Philosophy of God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1952, pp. 22-23.

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ordinatis procedatur in infinitum (it is not possible to proceed to the infinite in subordinate causes). Since this dependent cause exists, then there must exist an Independent Cause having within itself all that is necessary to cause, because it is the absolute fullness of perfection and thus the principle of every perfection communicated to any existent. It is a cause whose causing and action coincide with His essence itself. It is not a communicated and participated causality, but completely autonomous, which coincides with the nature itself of the Cause…This absolutely independent Cause we call God.”44 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange also states that “apart from and transcending the series of mundane and efficient causes, there is a first cause that is not caused, or an unconditioned cause that is absolutely independent of the others. But the unconditioned cause must be its own action, and even its own being, because operation follows being, and the mode of operation the mode of being. In fact, this cause is the self-subsisting Being…”45

Ángel Luis González writes the following concerning the impossibility of an infinite

regress in a per se essentially subordinated series of efficient causes: “Una serie infinita di cause essenzialmente subordinate nella loro causalità non spiegherebbe la realtà dell’effetto. Infatti, se ciò che è in questione è la realtà della causalità, è necessaria una prima causa, dato che, per il punto di partenza, le cause causano in atto in quanto dipendono, ovvero sono causate da altre cause. Se si elimina la prima, si eliminano tutte le altre; così come se si eliminano quelle intermedie o l’ultima si rende inesplicabile l’effetto; senza prima causa, non vi saranno né le cause intermedie, né l’effetto, né nulla, in quanto le cause essenzialmente subordinate non causano se non ricevono la forza per causare. È necessario, allora, arrivare ad una prima causa incausata.”46 “Una serie infinita de causas esencialmente subordinadas en su causalidad no explicaría la realidad del efecto. Efectivamente, si lo que está en cuestión es la efectividad de la causalidad, se requiere una primera causa, ya que – por el punto de partida – las causas están causando en tanto que dependientes o causadas por otra. Si se elimina la primera, se eliminan todas; al igual que si se eliminan algunas intermedias o la última se hace inexplicable el efecto; si no hay una primera causa, tampoco habrá ni causas intermedias ni efecto, ni nada, puesto que las causas esencialmente subordinadas no causan a no ser que reciban el influjo para causar. Es necesario, pues, llegar a una primera causa incausada.”47

The conclusion of second way is the affirmation that an Uncaused First Efficient Cause

(God) exists. The ultimate application of efficient causality in the secunda via, which leads to the affirmation of the existence of God as the Uncaused First Efficient Cause, is that of transcendental metaphysical efficient causality, which is analogous, not univocal. “L’obiettivo della metafisica qui, non è tanto descrivere come avviene l’una o l’altra modalità del processo causale, ma di individuare l’origine ultima di ogni causalità. Se una causa finita rinvia ad un’altra causa finita, l’espediente di differire indefinitivamente la serie delle cause causate si rivela infondato, in quanto le cause causate saranno, singolarmente e nel loro insieme, qualitativamente non autosufficienti da un punto di vista ontologico, e per tanto necessiteranno di un fondamento. L’origine radicale dei processi causali può risiedere soltanto in un essere incausato che sia principio assoluto dell’essere finito e della sua causalità: Dio.

44 L. BOGLIOLO, Rational Theology, Urbaniana University Press, Rome, 1987, p. 39. 45 R. GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, The One God, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1943, p. 144. 46 Á. L. GONZÁLEZ, Filosofia di Dio, Le Monnier, Florence, 1988, pp. 101-102. 47 Á. L. GONZÁLEZ, Teología natural, EUNSA, Pamplona, 2008, pp. 106-107.

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“…L’Essere-Causa prima al quale ci riferiamo, e che la religione chiama Dio, causa in modo ontologicamente diverso rispetto al modo di causare delle cause causate. In altri termini, non si può equiparare il causare di Dio con il causare del finito, così come non si può equiparare il suo Essere infinito con l’essere finito e causato, senza perciò annullare l’analogia.

“Quest’ultima osservazione è imprescindibile per comprendere correttamente in cosa

consistono le vie tomiste. Con la prima via si accede a Dio come Atto puro, origine di tutto il reale dinamico, ma trascendente rispetto ad esso. L’attualità assoluta di Dio lo distingue infinitamente dall’essere finito e dinamico che implica potenzialità. Dio, come Causa incausata, al quale giunge la seconda via, non è un elemento – il più importante – di un ingranaggio, ma un essere trascendente rispetto a tutto il causato, sia perché il suo essere è, da un punto di vista ontologico, infinitamente distante dal causato, sia perché il suo causare è frutto della sua libertà, e non conseguenza di una necessità. Le vie tomiste non parlano di un Dio che è parte di un sistema nel quale sarebbe inglobato come culmine dello stesso, ma di un essere trascendente ed assoluto, origine ultima di tutto il finito.”48

Regarding analogous transcendental metaphysical efficient causality, Sanguineti writes:

“Esiste anche un principio di causalità metafisica, non limitato alla serie – forse indefinita – di cause ed effetti sensibili, un principio che consente di porre validamente le domande causali più profonde: perché esiste il mondo? perché la realtà è contingente? perché le cose sono mutevoli? perché esiste ciò che è finito? Tali domande sorgono spontaneamente quando non vediamo nel mondo, nel finito, nel contingente e nel mutabile la spiegazione della loro esistenza. Alla domanda causale «perché esiste l’aqua?» si potrà rispondere col ricorso ai processi chimici che portano alla formazione della struttura fisica acqua. Ma è anche valida la domanda: perché esiste

il cosmo, con tutte le sue leggi? dal momento che non esiste nel cosmo alcun aspetto che renda necessaria la sua esistenza. Se ogni evento del cosmo è causato e causa, esso è sempre una causa causata. Il principio del cosmo, invece, dovrebbe essere una causa incausata – causa dell’essere finito – e un essere necessario in modo assoluto. Di conseguenza, non potrà essere un principio immanente al cosmo. È questa la base delle argomentazioni cosmologiche che portano all’affermazione dell’esistenza di Dio come principio creatore del cosmo.

“Il principio di causalità metafisica non è così ovvio nella conoscenza ordinaria, in

quanto richiede una particolare riflessione sulla contingenza, caratteristica essenziale che riguarda tutte le dimensioni dell’essere materiale circostante e anche noi stessi. Non possiamo, tuttavia, dilungarci su questo tema. Il principio si potrebbe formulare in questi termini: Ciò che

nel suo insieme è mutevole, contingente, causato e finito, richiede una causa non mutevole,

necessaria, incausata e infinita. “Forse si obietterà che questo principio ha un’unica applicazione e un’unica risposta:

Dio. Tuttavia esso è sostenuto dal principio di causalità fisica. Nel mondo materiale tutto è causato ed è mosso. Quindi la mente è naturalmente condotta ad affermare il passaggio ad una causalità prima e trascendentale, radice di tutta la natura nel suo dinamismo e nella sua mutabilità.”49

48 L. ROMERA, L’uomo e il mistero di Dio, EDUSC, Rome, 2008, pp. 168-169. 49 J. J. SANGUINETI, Introduzione alla gnoseologia, Le Monnier, Florence, 2003, pp. 188-189.

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Regarding analogous transcendental metaphysical efficient causality in the secunda via González writes: “Nell’approfondimento della riflessione intorno alle cause seconde (cause soltanto del fieri, del divenire) si può e si deve passare dalla causalità predicamentale a quella trascendentale. Mentre le cause seconde spiegano il fieri dell’effetto, la causa incausata dà ragione dell’essere della causa, dell’attività causale e dello stesso effetto. Pertanto, se una causa esiste, è necessario riferirsi ad una Causa Prima che la fa essere: causa dell’essere delle cose e di ogni effetto creato. Come si vede, è questo il passagio decisivo e metafisicamente più profondo presente in tutte le vie: esso ci porta dall’ente all’essere e dall’essere all’Essere.”50 “En la profundización sobre las causas segundas, que son causas sólo del fieri, del hacerse, puede y debe pasarse de la causalidad predicamental a la trascendental. Mientras las causas segundas explican el fieri del efecto, la causa incausada da razón del esse de la causa, de la actividad causal y del mismo efecto. Por tanto, si una causa existe es necesario remontarse a una Primera Causa que le hace ser: causa del ser de las cosas y de todo efecto creado. Como se ve, es el paso decisivo y metafísicamente más profundo que se da en todas las vías, que nos lleva del ente al ser y del ser al Ser.”51

The Denial of the Objective Validity of Efficient Causality

Hume

Hume’s Sensism. With the empiricist pan-phenomenalism of David Hume (1711-1776),

human knowledge undergoes a reductionism to the level of sense knowledge (sensism). For Hume, man’s knowledge consists of perceptions, which can either be strong (impressions) or weak (ideas).52

Perception is the collective name he gives for all the contents of our mental states. Impressions would be perceptions that are intense, forceful and very vivid. Ideas, on the other hand, would be perceptions that are weak, pale and less vivid, copies or faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning. Impressions are perceptions that are more lively and forceful and they include sensations and emotions like love, hate and desire. The faint images, pale and cold compared to impressions, are the perceptions called ideas. The distinction between ideas and impressions lies in the greater degree of force, intensity, and vivacity accompanying impressions. Such is the case because ideas, which are faint images of sensations and emotions, are the work of the imagination and the memory, and only mediately of direct impressions.

If one looks at one’s room, what one receives is an impression of it. And “when I shut my

eyes and think of my chamber, the ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions I felt; nor is there any circumstance of the one, which is not to be found in the other…Ideas and impressions appear always to correspond to each other.”53 It is clear from this passage that Hume reduces ideas to that of images.

Describing the difference between impressions and ideas in terms of vividness, Hume

writes in his Treatise: “The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and

50 Á. L. GONZÁLEZ, op. cit., p. 103. 51 Á. L. GONZÁLEZ, op. cit., p. 108. 52 Cf. D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I (Of the Understanding), Part I, Section I (Of the Origin of Our Ideas). 53 D. HUME, op. cit., Book I, Part I, Section I.

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liveliness with which they strike upon the mind and make their way into our thoughts or consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence we may name impressions; and, under this name, I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion.”54

Hume also distinguishes between simple and complex perceptions, a distinction which he

applies to both impressions and ideas. The perception of a yellow petal is a simple impression and the thought (or image) of the yellow petal is a simple idea. But if I am at the top of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral and, gazing out, survey the city of London, I receive a simple impression of the city, of the roofs, the chimneys, the various towers, the many streets, and the various persons hurrying by the sidewalks and inter-sections. And when I afterwards think of the city of London and recall this complex impression I have a complex idea. In this case the complex idea of the city of London corresponds to a certain degree to the complex impression of the city of London that I received gazing out of the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, but not so exactly and adequately. But Hume gives us another example: “I can imagine to myself a city as the New Jerusalem, whose pavement is gold, and walls are rubies, though I never saw any such.”55 In this case one’s complex idea does not correspond to a complex impression.

Hume states that it is not true that to every idea there is an exactly corresponding

impression. But he observes that the complex idea of the New Jerusalem can be broken down into simple ideas. And to the question as to whether every simple idea has a corresponding simple impression and every simple impression a corresponding simple idea, Hume replies: “I venture to affirm that the rule here holds without any exception, and that every simple idea has a simple impression which resembles it, and every simple impression a correspondent idea.”56

Hume’s Laws of Association. Hume acknowledges three different forms of association;

he maintained that the contents of consciousness are connected together in accordance with the laws of resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and causality. For him, the process involved in association is always purely mechanistic. In the law of similarity we know, for example, that a portrait painting naturally leads our thoughts to the original person represented by the painting. In the law of contiguity the mention, for example, of a specific hotel room in a hotel naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning others. And in the law of causality, when we think of a bad wound on our knee, for example, we can scarcely refrain from reflecting on the pain which resulted from it.

In a subsequent development of his laws of association Hume reduces the idea of cause to

that of an orderly succession of two happenings in time and place. Consequently, he retains only the first two laws of association (resemblance or similarity and contiguity in time and place). Of the two laws, the association of resembance or similarity would be limited in extent to a mental comparison of ideas, and therefore to the mathematico-geometrical sciences, while the sole law

54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid.

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that would be applicable to the entire spectrum of the physical sciences would be the law of contiguity in time and space. The success of the law of contiguity is determined by our experience and habit. So for Hume, all order in the world and in science is reduced to this purely psychical element.

With regard to science, Hume distinguishes between ‘truths of reason’ and ‘truths of

fact.’ ‘Truths of reason’ express the various relations of ideas and to this class belong the truths of geometry, algebra and arithmetic, in short, to every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. Truths of fact, in contrast, do not demand or contain the so-called logical necessity as to the truths of reason. Hume writes in section IV of his An Enquiry

Concerning Human Understanding: “the contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction…That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, it will rise.”57

And what is experience for Hume? Nothing other than the association of ideas on the

basis of a space-time contiguity. One specific event (e.g., the billiard cue stick hitting the billiard ball) is followed by another specific event (e.g., the billiard ball moving across the billiards table), and so both ideas are associated. If we see and hear the first event occur a second time, having acquired this experience previously, we would naturally wait for the second event to occur. Hume writes: “If a body of like color and consistency with that of bread of which we have formerly eaten be presented to us…we forsee with certainty like nourishment and support.”58 This experience, Hume holds, is nothing more than a custom or habit: according to him, experience does not deal with thought-acts or reasoning, or with other processes of the understanding, but rather with feeling, or habit, or familiarity which makes us expect and believe that something similar to what we experienced previously is happening and, therefore, that a second is about to follow the first.

Hume’s Immanentism. The core of Humean empiricist epistemology is that what we

know are our perceptions, not external, extra-mental reality. What the human mind knows is not something existing outside consciousness, but merely facts of consciousness. What is known are not real things but only our subjective perceptions. “Now since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are derived from something antecedently present to the mind, it follows that it is impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of anything specifically different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can we conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions which have appeared in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produced.”59

Critique of Hume’s Sensist Immanentism. The problem with the phenomenalist Hume is

that he is a gnoseological (epistemological) immanentist, which logically leads to ontological immanentism (agnosticism or atheism). Hume is trapped within the phenomenal prison of his mind, unable to access and know things in extra-mental reality. Being unable to access the extra-

57 D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV. 58 D. HUME, op. cit., Section V. 59 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 2, 6.

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mental world of real things, of real beings endowed with their respective acts of being (esse as actus essendi), he is unable to demonstrate the existence of God using objective causality.

The solution to the problem of immanentism lies in a vigorous and healthy philosophical

realism open to gnoseological and ontological transcendence. But what exactly is immanentism and what exactly do we mean by realism and transcendence? In philosophical usage, the term immanentism is derived from the concept immanence, which means to remain within oneself, which is opposed to transcendence, which means to go beyond oneself. In immanentism, what man knows in the first instance is that which remains enclosed within the sphere of human consciousness (e.g., ideas), and not the extra-mental real thing, which is either only mediately known (Descartes’ mediate “realism,” a pseudo-realism, unsuccessful in its attempts at reclaiming reality) or is simply unknowable (Humean and Kantian phenomenalism). Realism, on the other hand, retains that what is known in the first instance is the extra-mental thing which really exists (e.g., that real pine tree to the right of me, or that particular brown cat in front of me). For the immanentist, who is incarcerated within the cell of his mind, unable to escape to a knowledge of noumenal reality, thought is prior to being. Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), that famous Cartesian dictum, is the name of the immanentist state penitentiary. Realism, instead, maintains that being is prior to thought. The actual dog that exists in reality is prior to the universal concept “dog” that exists in the mind in an intentional manner. Dobermans and dachshunds are out there in reality and will continue to exist there whether we think of them or not. What is known in the first instance is the real dog and not the idea “dog.” What is known in the first instance is the extra-mental sensible thing itself really existing in the world. For the immanentist, then, thought is the starting point of philosophical investigation, whereas for the realist it is real sensible being, leading to the affirmation res sunt (things are).

In his book Methodical Realism, the great twentieth century philosopher-historian

Étienne Gilson explains that “when St. Thomas tells us that the intellect reaches objects, things, no one can misunderstand what he means by that: ‘Could we not say that the res St. Thomas talks about, and which the judgment should conform to, although something objective and independent, is nevertheless in the mind? Anyone who thought that would be thoroughly wrong. If St. Thomas does not feel it necessary to be explicit on the subject, it is probably because he never dreamed that anyone could misunderstand him. For him, the thing is plainly the real thing posited as an entity existing in its own right and outside human consciousness.’60

“Exactly so, and it could not be better put. But if that is the way things are, how can one

maintain that in Thomism one can start from a something apprehended prescinding from its reality? Whatever object I apprehend, the first thing I apprehend is its being: ens est quod

primum cadit in intellectu.61 But this being which is the first object of the intellect – ens est

proprium objectum intellectus, et sic est proprium intelligibile62 – is, in virtue of what has just

been said, something entirely different from ‘an apprehended’ without the reality; it is reality itself, given by means of an act of apprehension no doubt, but not at all as simply apprehended. In short, one could say that if the block which experience offers us for analysis needs to be

60 L. NOËL, Notes d’épistémologie thomiste, p. 33. 61 Being (ens) is what first strikes the intellect. 62 Being (ens) is the proper object of the intellect, and thus it is specifically intelligible. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 5, a. 2, resp.

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dissected according to its natural articulations, it is still an ‘apprehended reality’ which it delivers us, and unless we are going to alter the structure of reality, no method authorizes us to present it merely as a ‘reality apprehended’(italics added).

“Besides, one only has to reread the text of St. Thomas to realize that the order he follows

is not an accidental one, or something one can modify simply as a temporary expedient. The order lies at the heart of the teaching. For an intellect like ours which is not its own essence, as God’s would be, and whose essence is not its natural object, as with the finite pure spirits, that object must necessarily be something extrinsic. That is why the object which the intellect apprehends must be something extrinsic as such. The first thing it grasps is a nature inhabiting an existence which is not its own, the ens of a material nature. That is its proper object: etideo id

quod primo cognoscitur ab intellectu humano est hujusmodi objectum.63 It is only secondarily that it knows the actual act by which it knows the object; et secundario cognoscitur ipse actus,

quo cognoscitur objectum.64 And finally it is the act that the intellect itself is known: et per

actum cognoscitur ipse intellectus.65”66 Gilson also writes that, for St. Thomas Aquinas, “all existence is individual and singular.

As he said again and again, when we grasp the singular as such it is the work of our sense faculty: id quod cognoscit sensus materialiter et concrete, quod est cognoscere singulare

directe; – similitudo quae est in sensu, abstrahitur a re ut ab objecto cognoscibili, et ideo res

ipsa per illam similitudinem directe cognoscitur.67 Unquestioningly the intellect does more and better, since it grasps what is abstractly intelligible, but it has another function: universale est

dum intelligitur, singulare dum sentitur.68 But the singular is the concretely real. So one must consign the task of solving the problem to viribus sensitivis quae circa particularia

versantur.69”70 Against immanentism, realism holds that epistemology (gnoseology) is founded upon the

metaphysics of being; being is prior to thought, and thought is dependent upon being. The act of being (esse as actus essendi) is the radical act of a being (ens); it is, in every being (ens), the internal principle of its reality and of its knowability, and therefore, the foundation of the act of knowledge.

In philosophical immanentism, transcendence (first gnoseological, then ontological) is

first emarginalized, then debilitated, and in the end, eliminated. In realism, on the other hand, both gnoseological and ontological transcendence is respected. There is a difference between gnoseological transcendence and ontological transcendence. The former regards the possibility

63 And therefore what the human intellect knows first is an object of this kind… 64 And what is known secondarily is the act itself by which the object is known… 65 And through the act, the intellect itself is known…Summa Theologiae, I, q. 87, a. 3, resp. 66 É. GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 74-76. 67 What the sense faculty knows materially and concretely, it knows directly as singular; – the likeness which is in the senses is abstracted from the thing as from a knowable object, and therefore the thing itself is directly known through that likeness. 68 The universal is grasped while things are being understood, the singular while they are being sensed. 69 …to the powers of sense which relate to particular objects. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 86, a. 1, ad 4; De Veritate, q. 2, a. 6, resp., et q. 10, a. 6, sed contra and resp. 70 É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 78-79.

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of knowing realities distinct from consciousness and its representations; transcendence here is intended as extra-subjective. Ontological transcendence, on the other hand, regards the existence of realities that surpass the factual data of empirical experience, the most eminent of these realities being God, the absolutely transcendent Supreme Being. The history of modern philosophy, beginning with Cartesian rationalism, has shown that the refusal of a gnoseological transcendence (though not always in a direct and immediate way, as was precisely the case with the mediate “realism” of Descartes) impedes recognition of an authentic ontological transcendence.

The starting point of philosophy is not the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito,

ergo sum), but rather: “things are” (res sunt). That “I think” is surely evidence, but it is not the first evidence. It is not the point of departure for doing philosophy. That “things are,” that “things exist,” on the other hand, is the first in the order of all evidence. This is the correct starting point. “Realism accepts reality in toto and measures our knowledge by the rule of reality. Nothing that is validly known would be so if its object did not first exist…The first thing offered us is the concept of a being thought about by the intellect, and given us in a sensory intuition. If the being, in so far as it can be conceived, is the first object of the intellect, that is because it is directly perceived: res sunt, ergo cogito (things are, therefore, I think). We start by perceiving an existence which is given us in itself and not first of all in relation to ourselves. Later, on inquiring into the conditions which make such a fact possible, we realize that the birth of the concept presupposes the fertilization of the intellect by the reality which it apprehends. Before truth comes the thing that is true; before judgment and reality are brought into accord, there is a living accord of the intellect with reality…”71

Gilson defended methodical realism against the immanentism underlying much of

modern philosophy in many of his works, such as Thomist Realism and the Critique of

Knowledge72 and Methodical Realism.73 In Methodical Realism he points out that it was in the

thought of Descartes, and not Kant, where the “Copernican Revolution” took place for the first time: “Critical idealism was born the day Descartes decided that the mathematical method must henceforth be the method for metaphysics. Reversing the method of Aristotle and the medieval tradition, Descartes decided that it is valid to infer being from knowing, to which he added that this was indeed the only valid type of inference, so that in his philosophy, whatever can be clearly and distinctly attributed to the idea of the thing is true of the thing itself: when we say of

anything that it is contained in the nature or concept of a particular thing, it is the same as if we

were to say it is true of that thing, or could be affirmed of it…Indeed, all idealism derives from Descartes, or from Kant, or from both together, and whatever other distinguishing features a system may have, it is idealist to the extent that, either in itself, or as far as we are concerned, it makes knowing the condition of being…With Descartes the Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) turns into Cogito ergo res sunt (I think, therefore, things are)”74 Once trapped within the immanent sphere of one’s thoughts, initially doubting the extra-mental reality perceived by the

71 É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 120-121. 72 É. GILSON, Réalisme thomiste et critique de la connaissance, Vrin, Paris, 1939. English: Thomist Realism and

the Critique of Knowledge, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986. 73 É. GILSON, Le réalisme méthodique, Téqui, Paris, 1935. English: Methodical Realism, first published in English in 1990 by Christendom Press and now available in the edition published by Ignatius Press of San Francisco. 74 É. GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 18-19.

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senses, and commencing from the cogito as the first certainty, we become unable to recuperate reality itself. All we will be able to do with the immanentist method is to conjure up a thought of

reality, all the while remaining locked up within the prison of our minds. From mere mental representations we cannot reach the thing-in-itself which is doubted at the outset by the Cartesian universal doubt. If you have a hat stand painted on a wall, the only thing you will ever be able to hang on it is a hat likewise painted on a wall. Neither the principle of causality nor belief or assertion can get us out of the immanentist domain of the mind once we have initially doubted the existence of reality, and then commence from the cogito as the primal certitude.

Gilson describes for us the futility of those pseudo-realists who make their starting point

of knowledge the cogito and then attempt a recuperation of reality by means of the principle of causality: “He who begins as an idealist ends as an idealist; one cannot safely make a concession or two to idealism here and there. One might have suspected as much, since history is there to teach us on this point. Cogito ergo res sunt is pure Cartesianism; that is to say, the exact antithesis of what is thought of as scholastic realism and the cause of its ruin. Nobody has tried as hard as Descartes to build a bridge from thought to reality, by relying on the principle of causality. He was also the first to make the attempt, and he did so because he was forced to by having set the starting point for knowledge in the intuition of thought. It is, therefore, strictly true that every scholastic who thinks himself a realist, because he accepts this way of stating the problem, is in fact a Cartesian… If the being I grasp is only through and in my thought, how by this means shall I ever succeed in grasping a being which is anything other than that of thought? Descartes believed that it was possible, but even apart from a direct critique of the proof he attempted to give, history is there to show us that his attempt ends in failure. He who begins with Descartes, cannot avoid ending up with Berkeley or with Kant…It won’t do to stop at the man who took the first step on the road to idealism because we shall then be forced to go the whole of the rest of the road with his successors. The Cartesian experiment was an admirable metaphysical enterprise bearing the stamp of sheer genius. We owe it a great deal, even if it is only for having brilliantly proved that every undertaking of this kind is condemned in advance to fail. However, it is the extreme of naïveté to begin it all over again in the hope of obtaining the opposite results to those which it has always given, because it is of its nature to give them.”75

“The absolute being that the Cogito immediately delivers to me can only be my own and

no other. In consequence, whether the operation by which I apprehend the object as distinct from myself be a process of induction and therefore mediate, or an immediate grasp, the problem remains the same. If one’s starting point is a percipi, the only esse one will ever reach will be that of the percipi…‘Can we, or can we not arrive at things if we make our standpoint that of the Cogito?’ No, we can’t, and if the fate of realism depends on this question, its fate is settled; it is impossible to extract from any kind of Cogito whatsoever a justification for the realism of St. Thomas Aquinas.”76

The way for us to promote an authentic methodical realism in philosophy (and in doing

so be once again in a position to validly demonstrate God’s existence, departing from the things that we see in the world, an a posteriori, quia effect to cause demonstration) is to “free ourselves from the obsession with epistemology as the necessary pre-condition for philosophy. The

75 É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 21-23. 76 É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 27-28.

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philosopher as such has only one duty: to put himself in accord with himself and other things. He has no reason whatever to assume a priori that his thought is the condition of being, and, consequently, he has no a priori obligation to make what he has to say about being depend on what he knows about his own thought…I think therefore I am is a truth, but it is not a starting point…The Cogito is manifestly disastrous as a foundation for philosophy when one considers its terminal point. With a sure instinct as to what was the right way, the Greeks firmly entered on the realist path and the scholastics stayed on it because it led somewhere. Descartes tried the other path, and when he set out on it there was no obvious reason not to do so. But we realize today that it leads nowhere, and that is why it is our duty to abandon it. So there was nothing naïve about scholastic realism; it was the realism of the traveler with a destination in view who, seeing that he is approaching it, feels confident he is on the right road. And the realism we are proposing will be even less naïve since it is based on the same evidence as the old realism, and is further justified by the study of three centuries of idealism and the balance sheet of their results. The only alternatives I can see today are either renouncing metaphysics altogether or returning to a pre-critical realism. This does not at all mean that we have to do without a theory of knowledge. What is necessary is that epistemology, instead of being the pre-condition for ontology, should grow in it and with it, being at the same time a means and an object of explanation, helping to uphold, and itself upheld by, ontology, as the parts of any true philosophy mutually will sustain each other.”77

Hume on Causality. Hume attacks the objective validity of efficient causality operating in

extra-mental reality: he denies the affirmation that objective, universal and necessary efficient causality is truly operative in the extra-mental world.78 It is simply not objectively, universally,

77 É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 34-35. 78 Studies on Hume’s views on causality: H. W. JOHNSTONE, Hume’s Arguments Concerning Causal Necessity, “Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,” 16.3 (1956), pp. 331-340 ; J. W. LENZ, Hume’s Defense of Causal

Inference, “Journal of the History of Ideas,” 19.4 (1958), pp. 559-567 ; J. A. ROBINSON, Hume’s Two Definitions

of ‘Cause,’ “The Philosophical Quarterly,” 12 (1962) ; T. J. RICHARDS, Hume’s Two Definitions of ‘Cause,’ “The Philosophical Quarterly,” 15 no. 60 (1965), pp. 247-253 ; J. A. ROBINSON, Hume’s Two Definitions of ‘Cause’

Reconsidered, “The Philosophical Quarterly,” 15 (1965), reprinted in Hume: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by V. C. Chappell, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 1966 ; C. J. DUCASSE, Critique of Hume’s

Conception of Causality, “The Journal of Philosophy,” 63.6 (1966), pp. 141-148 ; D. W. LIVINGSTON, Hume on

Ultimate Causation, “American Philosophical Quarterly,” 8.1 (1971), pp. 63-70 ; D. GOTTERBARN, Hume’s Two

Lights on Cause, “The Philosophical Quarterly,” 21 no. 83 (1971), pp. 168-171 ; J. ARONSON, The Legacy of

Hume’s Analysis of Causation, “Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2.2 (1971), pp. 135-156 ; T. L. BEAUCHAMP, Hume’s Two Theories of Causation, “Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie,” 55 (1973), pp. 281-800 ; G. E. M. ANSCOMBE, ‘Whatever Has a Beginning of Existence Must Have a Cause’: Hume’s Argument

Exposed, “Analysis,” 34.5 (1974), pp. 145-151 ; M. MANDELBAUM, The Distinguishable and the Separable: A

Note on Hume and Causation, “Journal of the History of Philosophy,” 12.2 (1974), pp. 242-247 ; P. GOMBERG, Coherence and Causal Inference in Hume’s Treatise, “Canadian Journal of Philosophy,” 6.4 (1976), pp. 693-704 ; A. PARUSH, Is Hume a Sceptic About Causation?, “Hume Studies,” 3.1 (1977), pp. 3-16 ; B. STROUD, Hume on

the Idea of Causal Necessity, “Philosophical Studies,” 33.1 (1978), pp. 39-59 ; T. L. BEAUCHAMP and A. ROSENBERG, Hume and the Problem of Causation, Oxford University Press, New York, 1981 ; J. BROUGHTON, Hume’s Scepticism about Causal Inferences, “Pacific Philosophical Quarterly,” 64.1 (1983) pp. 3-18 ; A. J. JACOBSON, Does Hume Hold a Regularity Theory of Causality?, “History of Philosophy Quarterly,” 1.1 (1984), pp. 75-91 ; P. RUSSELL, Hume’s ‘Two Definitions’ of Cause and the Ontology of ‘Double Existence,’ “Hume Studies,” 10.1 (1984), pp. 1-25 ; B. ENÇ, Hume on Causal Necessity: A Study from the Perspective of Hume’s

Theory of Passions, “History of Philosophy Quarterly,” 2.3 (1985), pp. 235-256 ; A. D. KLINE, Humean Causation

and the Necessity of Temporal Discontinuity, “Mind,” New Series 94 no. 376 (1985), pp. 550-556 ; H. O. MOUNCE, The Idea of a Necessary Connection, “Philosophy,” 60. no. 233 (1985), pp. 381-388 ; D. R. SHANKS,

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and necessarily true, he argues, that every effect has a cause in extra-mental reality, since in human perception cause and effect are in fact two phenomena with two separate existences, one following after the other. We cannot therefore conclude that the latter phenomenon is due to the causality of the former just because it comes after it. The only conclusion that we can come up with is that, owing to the laws of the association of ideas,79 it is believed (felt) that a certain phenomenon is caused by another, because, by habit, we have grown accustomed to believe it.

For Hume, one cannot affirm that objective efficient causality truly occurs in extra-

mental reality (what occurs in extra-mental reality is, for him, unknowable); rather, efficient causality, for him, is a subjective phenomenal complex idea, a creation of the human mind. With this doctrine Hume dismisses the traditional a posteriori demonstrations of the existence of God as being devoid of demonstrative capacity.80

Hume on the Perception of Causality, “Hume Studies,” 11.1 (1985), pp. 94-108 ; A. J. JACOBSON, Causality and

the Supposed Counterfactual Conditional in Hume’s Enquiry, “Analysis,” 46.3 (1986), pp. 131-133 ; T. F. LINDLEY, David Hume and Necessary Connections, “Philosophy,” 62 no. 239 (1987), pp. 49-58 ; G. STRAWSON, The Secret Connexion-Causation, Realism, and David Hume, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1989 ; A. SCHWERIN, The Reluctant Revolutionary: An Essay on David Hume’s Account of Necessary

Connection, Peter Lang, New York, 1989 ; M. J. COSTA, Hume and Causal Realism, “Australasian Journal of Philosophy,” 67.2 (1989), pp. 472-490 ; J. BROACKES, Did Hume Hold a Regularity Theory of Causation?, “British Journal for the History of Philosophy,” 1 (1993), pp. 99-114 ; D. GARRETT, The Representation of

Causation and Hume’s Two Definitions of ‘Cause,’ “Noûs,” 27.2 (1993), pp. 167-190 ; M. BELL, Hume and Causal

Power: The Influences of Malebranche and Newton, “British Journal for the History of Philosophy,” 5.1 (1997), pp. 67-86 ; M. BAÇ, Is Causation ‘In Here’ or ‘Out There’?: Hume’s Two Definitions of ‘Cause,’ “History of Philosophy Quarterly,” 16.1 (1999), pp. 19-35 ; K. LEVY, Hume, the New Hume, and Causal Connections, “Philosophy,” Hume Studies,” 26.1 (2000), pp. 41-75 ; P. K. STANFORD, The Manifest Connection: Causation,

Meaning, and David Hume, “Journal of the History of Philosophy,” 40.3 (2002), pp. 339-360 ; H. BEEBEE, Hume

on Causation, Routledge, London, 2006 ; F. W. DAUER, Hume on the Relation of Cause and Effect, in A

Companion to Hume (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy), edited by E. S. Radcliffe, Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 2008 ; P. MILLICAN, Hume, Causal Realism, and Causal Science, “Mind,” 118-Issue 471 (July 2009), pp. 647-712. 79 “A prominent part of Hume’s philosophy is his theory of associationism. We speak, for example, of the principle of causality, and consider it to be a universally and necessarily valid axiom that ‘Every effect must have a cause.’ Hume claims that this axiom is derived from experience. What we perceive is an invariable sequence of events: one thing invariably follows an antecedent event, and from this sequence we conclude that the antecedent event ‘causes’ the one that follows as an ‘effect.’ We do not perceive anything like the ‘production’ of one thing by another. From his phenomenalistic, sensationalistic standpoint, Hume could not admit real ‘causation.’ Whenever we observe one event to occur, we feel the mental compulsion to assert that the other will follow. But whence the mental compulsion to conjoin just these two events as ‘cause’ and ‘effect’? Hume gives as the reason that ‘the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant and to believe that it will exist.’ In other words, it is the association of ideas which compels us to formulate necessary and universal judgments, axioms, and principles. Such judgements, axioms, and principles have no objective value, but are mere associations of impressions derived from the succession of phenomena”(C. BITTLE, The Whole Man: Psychology, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1945, p. 317). 80 “Having eliminated an objective origin for the idea of active power and the causal bond, Hume had to trace them to purely subjective conditions within the perceiver. The objects of perception are atomic, unconnected units which may, nevertheless, follow one another in a temporal sequence and pattern. Through repeated experience of such sequences, the imagination is gradually habituated to connect antecedent and consequent objects in a necessary way. The necessity does not arise from any productive force or dependence on the side of the objects so related but comes solely from the subjective laws of association operating upon the imagination to compel it to recall one member of the sequence when the other is presented. The causal bond consists entirely in our feeling of necessity in making the transition, in thought, from one object to the other. The philosophical inference from effect to cause is abstract and empty until it is strengthened by the natural relation set up by the workings of habit and association upon the imagination. Given this all-embracing psychological basis, however, causal inference can have nothing stronger than

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For Hume, causality “is nothing but a complex idea. It is fabricated by the human subject and is not an extramental reality. One can never know a priori what will eventuate. Experience shows the movement of two billiard balls but never any causal action, any transmission of movement: nothing is observed but the succession of two things moving. Then Hume makes his sweeping extrapolation and generalization: therefore, the principle of causality is nothing but an association of successive impressions. Through habit and custom, those telling words that Sextus Empiricus used long ago, men come to expect that the succession will take place; in reality, however, there is no necessary connection. Once the habit is acquired, one cannot think any other way.”81

So, what is this efficient causality that the scholastics boast about? Simply a subjective

product of habit. We have gotten so used to seeing fire burn that, by habit, we say that fire causes the burning; but since Hume states that we cannot sense this causing, this causing can be but a subjective product of the imagination.

The common man in the street observes a ‘constant conjunction’ of A and B in repeated

instances, where A is contiguous with B and is prior to B, and so he calls A the cause and B the effect. Hume writes in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: “When one particular species of events has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other, and of employing that reasoning (casual inference) which can alone assure us of any matter of fact or existence. We then call the one object cause, the other effect.”82 “Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are

followed by objects similar to the second. Or, in other words, where, if the first object had not

been, the second never had existed.”83 For Hume, causation can be considered either as a philosophical relation or as a natural

relation. Considered as a philosophical relation, he defines cause as follows: “A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all the objects resembling the former are placed in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects that resemble the latter.”84 As a natural relation, Hume defines cause thus: “A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.”85 Hume observes that “though causation be a philosophical relation, as implying contiguity, succession

a probable import. Absolute certainty cannot be achieved, since the mind is not dealing with dependencies in being, on the side of the real things, but is confined phenomenalistically to its own perceptions and their relations. It is very likely that our habitual connection among ideas corresponds to some causal link among real things, but this can never be verified. Hence causal inference can yield only probability and belief, not certainty and strict knowledge. Hume rigidly applied this conclusion to the a posteriori argument for God’s existence, maintaining that it is, at the very most, a probable inference and nowise a demonstration”(J. COLLINS, God in Modern Philosophy, Regnery, Chicago, 1967, p. 117). 81 R. CHERVIN and E. KEVANE, Love of Wisdom, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988, pp. 243-244. 82 D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, VII, 2, 59. 83 Ibid. 84 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 3, 14. 85 Ibid.

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and constant conjunction, yet it is only so far as it is a natural relation and produces a union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it or draw any inference from it.”86

It is thus that Hume gives an answer to his question “why we conclude that such

particular causes must necessarily have such particular effects, and why we form an inference from one to another.”87 Our pan-phenomenalist empiricist gives us a psychological reply, referring to the psychological effect of observation of instances of constant conjunction. This observation produces a custom or propensity in the mind, an associative link, whereby the mind passes in natural fashion from, for example, the idea of a flaming torch to the idea of heat or from an impression of a flaming torch to the lively idea of heat.

In keeping with his immanentist phenomenalism, Hume denied the affirmation that

objective efficient causality truly operates in the extra-mental world, reducing efficient causality affirmed by methodical realism into nothing but a mere succession of phenomena put together by the associative force of habit, a mere product of our imagination. When we observe, for example, a lighted torch and then feel heat we are accustomed to conclude a causal bond. But in fact, Hume points out, it is the imagination, working by habit, that conjures up this causal bond from what is in fact a mere succession of phenomena: “We have no other notion of cause and effect but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoined together…We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing and always find that from the constant conjunction the objects acquire a union in the imagination.”88 Attacking the objective validity of efficient causality in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he states: “When we look towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connection; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequent of the other. We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other. The impulse of one billiard-ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects: consequently, there is not, in any single, particular instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connection.”89

Hume denied the affirmation that there exists a valid, objective cause and effect

relationship in the extra-mental world. In the pan-phenomenalist theory of knowledge of Hume, man learns to associate the glaring noonday sun with heat, in our assocation among ideas, but according to Hume, man is mistaken in affirming that the sun really, objectively, causes heat, or possesses the power which produces heat, in the extra-mental world apart from our states of consciousness. For this empiricist there is merely a repetition of two incidents so that the effect habitually attends the cause but is not a necessary cause of it. Describing Hume’s attack on objective efficient causality operating in the extra-mental world, Thonnard writes: “At first, it was by means of the principle of causality that philosophers flattered themselves into thinking that they could attain objects beyond experience. Thus, Locke and Berkeley elevated themselves by its aid to God’s existence as the foundation of religion and of morality. Hume, in the name of

86 D. HUME, op. cit., I, 3, 6. 87 D. HUME, op. cit., I, 3, 3. 88 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 3, 6. 89 D. HUME, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, VII, 1, 50.

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empiricism, begins by reducing their pretentious thoughts to nothingness. How can the principle that everything which began has a cause, be justified? It is not evident by intuition or by demonstration. Sensible intuition does not certify a necessary connection between two facts, but only their succession; for instance, one perceives the visual impression of a flame, then the tactual impression of a burn. But the causal link totally escapes the senses. Rational demonstration of this principle, by the method of the clear idea, is impossible. For, in looking for all the simple ideas which are constitutive of an effect, one does not find therein that of the cause, or, in the cause, that of the effect. ‘It will be easy for us to conceive any object to be non-existent this moment, and existent in the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or a productive principle.’90 Consequently, it is impossible to demonstrate, a priori, through the simple analysis of ideas, the necessity of a cause to explain that which happens. This relation, Hume concludes, through which one infers to the existence of a distinct cause from the existence of an effect, or through which the presence of the same cause makes us admit the necessary existence of the same effect, has no speculative value, since it is beyond experience…One should not, however, proscribe it completely, but delimit its value by explaining its origin.

“By psychological analysis we are aware of a triple element in the relationship of

causality which we employ. a) There are two successive facts of experience intuitively known through an actual impression or at least reproduced by memory; for instance, the movement of a billiard ball, followed, after contact, by the movement of another. b) One can then certify that the same experiences repeat themselves and one acquires a habit of association which makes the succession constant and practically necessary, so that the sight or the memory of one of the facts invariably invokes the attention to the other, even in the future. When we see the player hit the first ball, we are sure, that if it meets the second, this one will, in turn, move. c) Finally, we consider this second fact so grasped not only as an idea, but as having real and independent existence, due to a transfer of assent or of belief. It is by this final element that the relation of causality is distinguished clearly from any other association of ideas; as re-enforced by habit, it becomes not only a constant succession, but a necessary bond in virtue of which one real object produces another. There but remains a determination of the value of this belief in order to know the value of causality.

“Belief, for Hume, is nothing else but the assent given to the existence of the object of a

perception. This assent or judgment of existence is attached to certain ideas which are thus distinguished from fictions of the imagination; it always accompanies our impressions of sensation. But, according to the principle of empiricism, we have no right to admit anything real but perception itself. We do not have infallible certitude of the existence of a reality distinct from the fact of consciousness. ‘The idea of existence, then, is the very same with the idea of what we conceive as existing. To reflect on any thing simply, and to reflect on it as existing, are nothing different from each other.’91 If then, we admit by belief to a double existence, one of ideas or impressions, then that of exterior objects, this latter is but an uncontrollable hypothesis. But belief has no need of this hypothesis in order to be explained; it is engendered by the especially high degree of vividness which a perception enjoys. ‘The incredulous and the believing have the same ideas in their spirit; but, in the believer the ideas have more force, vividness, solidity,

90 D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, I, 3, 3. 91 D. HUME, op. cit., I, 2, 6.

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firmness and stability.’92 For this reason, it is normal that every impression is accompanied with belief.

“Now the impression has this property of communicating to ideas which are in

connection with it, something of its own vigor and vividness…more precisely, causality establishes between the impression and the idea a more narrow connection; thus, aided by this very strong association, the belief which determines the ‘reality’ of one of two facts is spontaneously transported to the other…

“As a consequence, the total necessity of the principle of causality is referred to the

stability of a psychological habit, often strengthened by heredity, but which could, without absurdity, actually change. This habit, for Hume, justifies the usage of the notion of cause in daily life, but not in the sciences. That which remains speculatively indubitable and definitively true is, uniquely, the fact of consciousness, the subjective phenomenon taken either in itself, or as an element of various groups. Every attempt to go beyond this object is condemned…”93

B. A. G. Fuller explains that, for Hume, “the causal tie and the necessary connection

supposed to subsist between cause and effect exist, so far as knowledge is concerned, entirely in the mind. They cannot be said to exist in the external world, because, in the first place, we have no certain knowledge that such a world exists and no knowledge of what it is like if it does exist. Nor are they in themselves impressions or qualities of impressions, as we have already pointed out. Our ideas of them are drawn from a feeling, which arises from a custom or habit of association. But it guarantees nothing. We cannot know for certain that in the past or in the future given antecedents will have the consequences they now have.”94

Critique of Hume’s Attack on Objective Efficient Causality Operating in the Extra-

Mental World. Kreyche explains that “it is primarily by Hume that the major attack is launched upon efficient causality. According to Hume, man knows only his ideas and images directly, and not the world of reality. Mind is, for him, simply a state of successive phenomenal impressions, and judgment is replaced by association. In asking whether causality can be justified, Hume requests that one show how its most important characteristic, necessary nexus, is grounded in experience. Not finding it rooted there, he concludes that the necessary connection between cause and effect is psychological, having its ground in custom and the association of ideas. Cause thereupon becomes a relationship among ideas, and no longer an influence of one thing upon the other in the real world…The principal shortcoming of Hume’s view stems from his empiricism and nominalism. He attemped to have the senses detect, in a formal way, causality and necessity per se – something that those powers are incapable of doing. Aquinas had himself observed that not even substance is sensible per se, but only per accidens. Since he did not admit abstraction of an intellectual nature, Hume was consistent within his own system in rejecting causality and substance. And, unable to justify causality ontologically, he did the next best thing in justifying it psychologically.”95

92 E. BRÉHIER, Histoire de la philosophie, vol. 2, Paris, 1932, p. 410. 93 F.-J. THONNARD, A Short History of Philosophy, Desclée, Tournai, 1956, pp. 636-639. 94 B. A. G. FULLER, A History of Philosophy, Book II, Henry Holt and Co., New York, p. 100. 95 G. F. KREYCHE, Causality, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967, p. 346. Benignus’s Critique of Hume’s Rejection of the Affirmation that Objective Efficient Causality Truly Operates in

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Extra-Mental Reality: “1. Sensism. Hume’s original error, which led to his rejection of substance and causality as valid philosophical concepts, was sensism. He considered experience as the sole ultimate source of valid human knowledge, which it is, but by experience he meant pure sensation, or at very best perception, and nothing more. Impressions of sense and their less vivid relics in the mind, namely, ideas, are the only data of knowledge for which experience vouches, according to Hume. We have no impression of causality or substance; therefore, he argues, these are not given in experience. “Hume mistakes an analysis of the factors in perception for an account of the perceptive act. The data of pure

sensation are, as he says, fragmentary and intermittent sense impressions. But the act which he is analyzing is not an act of pure sensation. What I perceive is not these fragmentary impressions, but the things of which they are accidents. It is doubtful that even animals perceive merely sensory qualities. Substances (i.e., particular, concrete) are the data of perception. They are incidental sensibles immediately perceived by means of internal sense co-operating within external sense. In his analysis Hume takes as the immediate datum of perception something which is actually known only as a result of a difficult abstraction, namely, the pure sensation. Then his problem is to discover how, starting from pure sensations, we come to believe in objective substances which exist unperceived and permanently. It is a false problem. “2. Human Experience Includes Understanding. Hume is right in saying that we never have a sensory impression of causality or substance. But he is wrong in saying that we never experience causes or substances. Efficient causes are immediately experienced every time we observe anything physically influencing anything else, every time, for example, we see a hammer driving a nail. But the cause qua cause is never sensed directly; cause, like substance, is only sensed per accidens. The cause as a sensible object, its movement, and the subsequent movement of the object acted upon are the immediate data of sense. But to limit experience to the sensible data perceived is to imply that man perceives without ever at the same time understanding what he perceives. When I perceive a hammer descending upon a nail and the nail moving further into the wood, I also understand that the hammer is something and is driving the nail into the wood. Both perception and understanding are equally parts of the experience. To exclude the understanding is to reduce all human experience to uncomprehending sense awareness. Not only is this not the only kind of human experience, but, at least in the case of adults, it never normally occurs at all. We simply do not perceive without some understanding of what we are perceiving; we do not perceive phenomena without perceiving them as the phenomena of something; nor do we perceive one thing acting upon another without at the same time understanding the former as a cause of the effect produced in the latter. “3. Understanding in Perception. There is surely a crystal-clear distinction between mere perceiving and understanding. The domestic animals of the battlelands of Europe are no more spared the bombing and the fire, the hunger and the cold, the noise and the stench, than are their human owners. But they have no understanding of what is going on; no reason for what is happening is known to them, and none is sought. Their minds do not grope for reasons the way their parched tongues crave for water. The darkness that their eyes suffer when they are driven in the midst of the night through strange lands is matched by no darkness of intellect seeking a reason which it cannot find – that awful darkness which is so often the lot of man. Failure to understand could no more be a privation and a suffering in man if his intellect were not made for grasping the reasons and causes of things, than blindness would be a suffering if sight never grasped the visible. A man who does not understand feels frustrated, because his mind is made for understanding; he suffers when he cannot grasp the reason, because he knows that there is a reason. Perception is not understanding; but normally some understanding occurs together with perception: we could not possibly have the experience of failing to understand what we perceive, if we did not have the prior experience of understanding what we perceive. “4. Cause is ‘Given’ to the Intellect. Cause is something that we grasp intellectually in the very act of experiencing action – whether our own action or another’s. We understand the cause as producing the effect: the hammer as driving the nail, the saw as cutting the wood, the flood as devastating the land, the drill as piercing the rock, the hand as molding the putty, ourselves as producing our own thoughts, words, and movements, our shoes as pinching our feet, a pin as piercing our finger, our fellow subway travelers as pressing our ribs together. We do not think that the nail will ever plunge into the wood without the hammer, the marble shape up as a statue without a sculptor, the baby begin to exist without a father, the acorn grow with no sunlight; if something ever seems to occur in this way, we do not believe it, or we call it a miracle (i.e., we attribute it to a higher, unseen cause). In a similar manner, substance is given directly to the intellect in the very act of perception; the substance is grasped as the reason for the sensible phenomena. “5. The Subjectivistic Postulate. The arguments of Hume are based on the subjectivistic postulate, namely, that we know nothing directly except our own ideas. From this starting point, certitude about real causality can never be reached. The only causality that could ever possibly be discovered if the primary objects of our knowledge were our

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Against Hume: The Objective Existence of Efficient Causality Operating in the Extra-

Mental World. Contrary to the deniers of the affirmation that objective efficient causality operates in the extra-mental world, we instead maintain the objective validity of efficient causality operating in extra-mental reality. A mere invariable sequence of antecedents and consequents is not sufficient to account for cause and effect; instead, there really are efficient or own ideas would be the causal relations among the ideas themselves. No such relations are as a matter of fact found, since none exist and since the subjectivistic postulate is false to begin with. Causal relations exist between objects and the mind, and between the mind and its ideas, but not between ideas and ideas. Hume places causality in our mind, as a bond between ideas, when he accounts for our idea of causality by attributing it to mental custom. Whatever his intention, he actually presents similar successions of ideas as the cause of our ideas of causality and the principle of causality. As a matter of fact, such causality would not account for our belief in causality, because it would never be an idea, but only an unknown bond connecting ideas. It is only because Hume is already in possession of the concept of causality gained through external experience that he is able to formulate the theory that invariable succession of ideas produces mental custom, which in turn gives rise to the idea of cause. “6. Imagination and Causality. It is, perhaps, this locating of causality among our ideas that leads Hume to a very peculiar argument against the principle of causality: ‘We can never demonstrate the necessity of a cause to every new existence, or new modification of existence, without showing at the same time the impossibility there is that anything can ever begin to exist without some productive principle…Now that the latter is utterly incapable of a demonstrative proof, we may satisfy ourselves by considering, that as all distinct ideas are separable from each other, and as the ideas of cause and effect are evidently distinct, it will be easy for us to conceive any object to be non-existent at this moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or productive principle. The separation, therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of existence, is plainly possible fot the imagination; and consequently the actual separation of these objects is so far possible, that it implies no contradiction nor absurdity; and it is therefore incapable of being refuted by any reasoning from mere ideas; without which it is impossible to demonstrate the necessity of a cause’(D. HUME, Treatise of Human Nature, I, 3, 3). “This argument, even if we overlook the flagrant petitio principii in the statement that ‘all distinct ideas are separable from each other,’ is no argument at all. What Hume says is nothing more than that he can imagine a thing beginning to exist without a cause, and that consequently no argument from mere ideas can ever prove the necessity of a cause. We can agree with him that no argument from mere ideas can ever prove real causality; but we will add that that is why Hume could never prove it – he started with mere ideas, or rather images. Aside from this, the argument is utterly unrelated to the subject of causality. Imagination has nothing to do with causes or with beginnings of existence. I never imagine anything as beginning to exist, or even as existing; I simply imagine the thing, and in my image there is no reference to existence. The thing which I imagine may as easily be a fire-breathing dragon as my own brother. The reference to existence lies in thought, not in imagination. The words of Hume, ‘The separation, therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of existence, is plainly possible for the imagination,’ have no real meaning, because the imagination never possesses the idea of a beginning of existence. Thought judges whether a thing conceived exists or not, and thought (even Hume’s ‘natural belief’) judges that nothing begins to exist without a cause. Surely, I can imagine a situation in which a certain thing is not an element and then a situation in which it is. To do this is not to conceive the thing as beginning to exist; it is merely to imagine it after not imagining it. Such imaginative play has no connection with causality, except in the obvious sense that I could not imagine anything, to say nothing of making imagination experiments, if I had not the power of producing, that is, causing images in my mind; and presumably that is not the sense in which Hume intended his illustration to the interpreted. “7. Loaded Dice. The subjectivistic postulate prejudices the whole issue as to the reality of causes before examination of the question even begins. If knowledge cannot attain to anything real and extramental, it cannot attain to real, extramental causes. The only causality it could possibly discover would be causal relation among images in the mind. If the object is read out of court by the postulate that we know only our ideas, objective causality is read out with it. It is not surprising that sensism and subjectivism should lead to the explicit denial of the principles of causality, sufficient reason, and substance, since they begin with their implicit denial. Sensations, impressions, images, separated from any being arousing them must be viewed by any intelligent mind as so many phenomena without any sufficient reason for existing. Normal men cannot abide sensory experiences without objective reasons. They regard a person who has such experiences as a psychopathic case; they say, ‘He imagines things,’ and suggests a psychiarist”(B. GERRITY, Nature, Knowledge, and God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1947, pp. 337-341).

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agent causes in extra-mental reality that are the primary principles of actions which make things either simply to be, or to be in a certain way.96

96 Bittle writes: “In proving the existence of efficient causality among things, it will be necessary first to show that the assumptions which underlie the position of the opponents are unwarranted; then it will be necessary to adduce the positive evidence which supports the view that efficient causality actually is present in nature. “The opposition against the existence of efficient cause is based primarily on an adverse theory of knowledge, and not on the facts themselves. As such, the denial is made primarily on epistemological grounds. Kant, since he maintained that we can have no knowledge of things-in-themselves, naturally had to deny any knowledge of efficient causality as existing among these things-in-themselves. It is the purpose of epistemology to vindicate the sources of our knowledge, among them being sense-perception, consciousness, and reason. In this connection we will restrict ourselves to one consideration. If Kant’s fundamental assumption were correct, we could know nothing of the existence and activity of other minds beside our own, because these ‘other minds’ are evidently things-in-themselves. But we have a knowledge of other minds. This is proved conclusively by the fact of language, whether spoken or written or printed. We do not use language to converse with ourselves; conversation is essentially a dialogue between our mind and ‘other minds.’ Hence, we can and do acquire knowledge of things-in-themselves, as they exist in themselves, through the medium of language. Kant’s fundamental assumption is, therefore, incorrect. Consequently Kant is wrong, when he asserts that we could know nothing of efficient causality, if it existed among things. If we can show that efficient causality exists in ourselves, we prove that efficient causes exist in nature, because we ourselves are a part of nature. “Hume, Mill, and others, denied efficient causality because of their phenomenalism. According to their assumption, all we can perceive are the phenomena, and phenomena are revealed to us in our senses merely as events in ‘invariable sequence.’ Whenever, then, we perceive phenomena as invariably succeeding each other in place and time, we are prompted by habit and the association of ideas to imagine a causal connection to exist between them, so that the earlier event is the ‘cause’ and the later even the ‘effect.’ This is, in their view, the origin within our mind of the concept of efficient causality. “This is a deplorable error. The fact is, we clearly distinguish between mere ‘invariable sequence’ and ‘real causality.’ We notice, for example, an invariable sequence between day and night every twenty-four hours, and we are convinced that this sequence has been maintained throughout the ages; at any rate, we have never experienced a single exception in this sequence. We also notice, when the day is hot and humid, and a sudden, decisive drop in temperature occurs, that a rainstorm develops; this sequence, however, is by far not as invariable as the sequence between day and night. No one, however, dreams of considering day and night as being in any causal connection, as if the day ‘produced’ or ‘caused’ the night. On the other hand, we certainly are convinced of the existence of a causal connection between the states of the weather, although the occurrence has by no means the invariability of the sequence we observe between day and night. Hence, the fundamental assumption of the phenomenalists, that our observation of ‘invariable sequence’ is the basis of our concept of ‘efficient causality’ is opposed to fact. In accordance with their principle, the phenomenalists must maintain a parity in all cases of invariable sequence. We, however, do not judge the cases to be the same. There must, then, be some other reason why we judge a causal connection to exist between phenomena, between things and events. “Besides this, we clearly distinguish between conditions and causes, even if there be an invariable succession between them. We know by experience that we are unable to see objects except in the presence of light. In the dark all objects are invisible; light must first be admitted before we can see. There is an invariable sequence between the presence of light and the seeing of objects. According to the phenomenalists’ principle, therefore, we should judge that light is the ‘cause’ of vision, because its presence invariably precedes vision. But we do not so judge. We consider light to be the condition, not the cause, of vision, although vision must always ‘follow after’ the admission of light in sound eyes. And so it is with all ‘conditions.’ “It is entirely untrue to assert that we obtain our concept of cause and effect from the observation of the frequency of an occurrence through habit and the association of ideas. We judge of the presence of causality even in

single cases. When the first steam engine, or the first telephone, or the first automobile, went into operation, no one waited for the hundredth or thousandth appearance or operation in order to apply the principle of causality; this was done immediately. Similarly, when an accident or disaster occurs, we do not wait until it occurs frequently before we think of cause and effect; we look for the causal connection as soon as it occurs. On the other hand, though we see a million automobiles follow each other down the highway, we never think of the one being the cause of the other, due to association of ideas or habit.

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“Hence, mere sequence, no matter how frequent and invariable, is not the principle which forces us to accept the concept of efficient cause and causal connection as valid in nature. The facts themselves compel our reason to judge that the relation of cause and effect exists between things. “Our experience proves causality. Critical analysis of our internal states and of external nature convinces us of its reality. Internal consciousness is an indubitable witness to the fact that our mental activities not only take place in us, but that they are also produced by us. Such are the activities of thinking, imagining, desiring, willing. They are clearly observed to be ‘produced’ by ourselves, and this production is observed to be due to our own action, so that their existence is intrinsically dependent on this productive action. Thus, we are conscious that we deliberately set about to solve a certain mental problem by combining ideas into judgments, judgments into inferences, and a whole chain of inferences into an extended argumentation. With the help of our imagination we work out poems, essays, melodies, pictorial scenes, machines, etc., before they ever appear outside the mind. We desire certain things and consciously will them; and we are fully aware that we are the responsible agents of these desires and acts of the will, because we produce them by direct action. No one can deny these facts; they are present for everyone to observe. But if the conscious knowledge of ourselves as the active agents in the production of these internal activities is unreliable and false, all our knowledge, of whatever character, must be adjudged an illusion, because knowledge rests ultimately on the testimony of consciousness. In that case, however, universal skepticism is the logical outcome, and that means the bankruptcy of all science and philosophy. Hence, our consciousness is a trustworthy witness to the fact of efficient causality within us. “External experience proves the same. We speak. Language is an external expression of our internal ideas. It is impossible for us to doubt that we actually produce the sounds of language which express our own thoughts. We intend to express these thoughts in conversation, and we actually do; and we are conscious of the fact that we are the agents in this process. If I am a painter, I set up my canvas, mix the paints, apply the colors, and with much effort project my mental images upon the canvas in form and color; I know that all this is not a mere ‘sequence of events,’ but a production of something in virtue of my own actions. So, too, if I take pen and ink and write something on paper, I not only perceive one word following the other, but I am also convinced beyond the possibility of any rational doubt that I am the ‘author’ of the words appearing on the paper. Neither Hume, nor Mill, nor any other phenomenalist, disclaimed the authorship of the books which appeared in their name, nor would they refuse to accept royalties from their publishers on the plea that they were not the efficient causes of these books. “Again, we are convinced that many bodily actions are of a voluntary nature. I move my hand, my arm, my head, and I know that these members move because I make them move. If I am set for a sprint, and the gun goes off, I jump into action. But I am conscious that there is not a mere sequence between the shot and my running; and I am also conscious that the shot does not make my limbs move so rapidly: it is I myself who decides to run and who deliberately produces this action of running. This is all the more obvious to me, when I compare this sort of action with the action of the heart or of the liver, etc., over which I have no control. I clearly distinguish between ‘sequence’ and ‘causality.’ Hume, as we have seen, claims that we cannot know of this causal connection between our will and our bodily movements, because we cannot ‘feel’ the energy involved in this operation. This merely proves that we do not observe the whole process. Of the fact of causation itself we are most assuredly aware, and we are also aware of the exertion and fatigue involved in producing these effects; but if we ‘produced’ nothing, of if there were no energy expended in the production (for instance, in walking, working, running, making a speech, etc.), why should we feel exertion and fatigue? And thus our external experience also testifies to the fact that we ourselves are efficient causes which produce definite effects. “In order to disprove the opponents’ contention, no more is required than to prove a single case of causality. We could, therefore, rest our case with the above argument taken from the internal and external experience of our own selves. However, we contend that the existence of other efficient causes in nature is also capable of proof. “Reason demands efficient causality in nature. If reason demands that we admit the existence of efficient causes acting in the universe, the philosopher cannot refuse to accept the verdict of reason, because science and philosophy are based on the operations of reason. Now, if I am convinced beyond doubt that I am the cause of the picture I paint, what am I to conclude, when I see someone else paint a picture? I must conclude that he is doing what I did, when I went through the same series of actions. Of course, all that my senses can observe is a ‘sequence’ of actions; my reason, however, demands that he, too, must be the ‘producer’ of his picture, just as I am of mine. This is common sense and sound logic. And the same principles applies to all actions performed by others, when I observe them doing the same things that I do or have done: if I am the efficient cause, they must be efficient causes for the same reason. There is a complete parity between my actions and their actions, and so I know, through a conclusion of reason, that real causality exists in nature in these and similar cases.

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Critique of Hume’s Pan-Phenomenalist Sensism. Hume’s main errors lie in his epistemological and ontological immanentism, as well as in his reductionism of human knowledge to the level of sense knowledge (sensism or sensationalism). Hume is a thorough immanentist: all that we could ever hope to know are phenomena, our own internal mental states and not the beings (entia) of extra-mental reality (pan-phenomenalist immanentism). Thus, thrown out together with metaphysics are substance as well as objective efficient causality operating in the extra-mental world. Having done this he remained agnostic concerning God’s existence, a natural consequence of his immanentist, pan-phenomenalist sensism.

Criticizing Hume’s pan-phenomenalist sensism, Celestine Bittle notes a number of

things: “First, Hume’s explanation of ideas as faint images of sense-impressions is totally inadequate. Since both are of a sensory character, they are concrete and individualized. Our ideas, however, are abstract and universal. There is, as we have shown, a radical difference between ‘sensations’ and ‘images’ on the one hand and ‘intellectual ideas’ on the other. To ignore or deny these differences is a serious error. Second, Hume’s explanation of universal

ideas is totally inadequate.97 The process of forming universal ideas is not at all the way Hume pictures it. We acquire them by a process of abstraction, taking the objective features common to a number of individuals and then generalizing the resultant idea so that it applies to the whole class and to every member of the class. It is not a question of merely labeling objects with a common name. Intellectual insight into the nature of these objective features, not ‘custom’ or habit, enables us to group them together into a class. Third, Hume’s explanation of the origin and nature of the necessarily and universally true axioms and principles, such as the principle of causality and the principle of non-contradiction, is totally inadequate. He explains their necessity and universality through association. Now, the laws of association are purely subjective laws with a purely subjective result. Consequently, the ‘necessity’ which we experience relative to the logical connection between subject and predicate in these principles would not be due to anything coming from the reality represented in these judgments, but solely to the associative

force existing in the mind. It is a subjective and psychological, not an objective and ontological, necessity. The mind does not judge these principles to be true because it sees they cannot be otherwise; it cannot see them to be otherwise because the mind in its present constitution must judge them to be true. So far as objective reality is concerned, 2 + 2 might equal 3 or 5 or any other number; and there might be a cause without an effect, or an effect without a cause. If Hume’s contention were correct, that our observation of ‘invariable sequence’ is the reason for assuming an antecedent event to be the ‘cause’ of the subsequent event, then we should perforce experience the same psychological necessity of judgment in all cases where we notice an “It is only a short step from instances of such activities to productive activities in the world at large. A farmer places seed into the soil. After a period of time it sprouts, grows, and eventually matures into an abundant harvest. Here something new has originated. And so with animals and men. We were not here a hundred years ago; but we are here now. We perceive new living beings coming into existence daily. They are new realities. But if they did not exist always and do exist now, they must have received existence. Their existence is a ‘produced’ existence, a ‘caused’ reality, because they were brought from non-existence to existence. That, however, which exerts a positive influence through its action in the production of another, is an efficient cause. Efficient causes, therefore, exist in nature. We must, then, reject phenomenalism as false and accept efficient causality as the only adequate interpretation of the facts as observed”(C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 343-349). 97 Describing Hume’s nominalism, Bittle writes: “Relative to universal ideas, Hume maintains that we find a resemblance between objects and apply the same name to them; then, after a ‘custom’ of this kind has been estblished, the name revives the ‘idea,’ and the imagination conceives the object represented by the ‘idea’(C. BITTLE, op. cit., p. 317).

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invariable sequence in successive events. Experience, however, contradicts this view. For instance, day follows night in an invariable sequence; but nobody would dream of asserting that the night is the ‘cause’ of the day. In an automobile factory one car follows the other on the belt line in invariable sequence; but this association does not compel us to think that the preceding car is the ‘cause’ of the one following. Reversely, when an explosion occurs but once in our experience, we search for the ‘cause’ of this ‘effect’ and are convinced there must be a cause present; here, however, there can be no question of an ‘invariable sequence’ of events. Fourth, Hume’s theory, if accepted as true, must destroy all scientific knowledge. The very foundation of science lies in the principles of non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality. If these principles are valid only for our mind and do not apply with inviolable necessity to physical objects in nature, the scientist has no means of knowing whether his conclusions are objectively valid. His knowledge is nothing but a purely mental construction which may or may not agree with extra-mental reality. But science treats of physical systems and their operations, not of mental constructions. Since, according to Hume, we can know nothing but our internal states of consciousness, we could never discover whether the external world and other minds exist at all; driven to its logical conclusions, such a theory can end only in solipsism or in skepticism.”98

Kant

In the Transcendental Analytic, Kant affirmed a subjective view of causality as an a

priori form, a category of the mind. The mind, says Kant, expresses the a priori form by means of a judgment and unifies it with a conglomeration of phenomena. Consequently, causality has a subjective validity, not an objective, noumenal one. Causality, therefore, is not valid in the noumenal sphere in order to prove, say, the existence of God. The causal connection which we place between things and events is actually manufactured by the mind, says Kant, and therefore, has value only for the mind and its operations. Causality, he says, is not derived from our experience of things and events as they actually exist in the extra-subjective noumenal world as the realists naively maintain.

Kantian transcendental idealism dictates that “man knows but the order of appearance or

phenomena, not the order of things-in-themselves or noumena. Now, to know means to change the datum by locating it within a spatio-temporal relationship, which structure is supplied by the knower through the a priori forms of sensibility. Next man must impose upon this spatio-temporal datum certain other categories that are also rooted in the knower a priori. These are the categories of the understanding (Verstand): quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Causality is contained as a subdivision of relation. Together with the forms of space and time, these categories are constitutive of experience, as opposed to the ideas of reason (Vernunft), which can only be regulative of experience. Previous philosophy erred in confusing the regulative function of ideas with the constitutive functions of the categories. The categories (including causality) are valid when applied to the phenomenal order, but not valid when applied beyond this to the noumenal order. To attempt the latter is to court transcendental illusion (or metaphysics, as Kant understood it). Nevertheless, such a tendency is natural to man, and he must always be wary lest he give in to it.

98 C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 317-319.

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“Since Kant allowed a valid but restricted use of causality and other categories within the phenomenal order, he felt that he had preserved the legitimate character of the positive sciences. But maintaining the inapplicability of such categories to the noumenal order led Kant to conclude that metaphysics was impossible as a science. For Kant, then, man does not discover causality in the order of things; rather, he prescribes it and imposes it upon the phenomena in order to render them intelligible.99 Interestingly enough, Kant himself refers causality to the noumenal order, an error he specifically warns against.100”101

Describing the erroneous subjectivist explanations of causal necessity in Hume and Kant,

Charles Hart writes: “Various purely subjective explanations are offered to explain the necessity or invariability of the cause-effect sequence. For Hume it was due entirely to force of habit or custom, which it would be entirely possible to set aside. We could indeed conceive an absolute beginning of being from nothingness. He says: ‘As all distinct ideas are separable from each other, and as the idea of cause and effect are separable from each other, it will be easy for us to conceive any object as non-existent this moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea of cause or producing principle.’102 For Kant it is due to an a priori form or category of necessity innate the intellect which imposes the note of necessity on certain sequences presented by the senses. On others, the innate form of contingency or nonnecessity is imposed.103

“Hume and Kant have this in common: They reject the intellect’s metaphysical report of

efficiency in terms of being simply as existing and communicating existence. They accept only the sense report of causality as a sensible sequence of events in time and place. Any necessity whereby the intellect declares this effect must have an adequate cause comes entirely from the mind’s own action, from the force of habit or custom according to Hume, from the imposing of an innate form according to Kant. But such an explanation is quite evidently unsatisfactory. If the intellect itself is the sole source of the necessity, how are we to account for the distinction the mind makes between necessary or causal sequences and nonnecessary, and therefore noncausal or casual sequences?

“In either the Humean or the Kantian explanation the distinction must be attributed to the

arbitrary action of the mind since from the standpoint of sense data alone both the causal and the noncausal or casual sequences are quite similar. This common-sense distinction thus becomes a complete mystery for empiricism and Kantianism. On the other hand, from the metaphysical standpoint of a realistic philosophy such as that of St. Thomas, the distinction is based on the compulsion, not of the mind itself, but from that of the realities involved. Going beyond the sense data and considering the various sequences from the standpoint of the existence of the beings concerned, the intellect is compelled to say that certain sequences are causal and others noncausal, or casual, because the different realities involved compel such distinction.”104

99 Cf. I. KANT, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, a. 36. 100 Cf. I. KANT, op.cit., a. 13, remark 2, and Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, 1. 101 G. F. KREYCHE, op. cit., p. 346. 102 D. HUME, Treatise on Human Nature, p. 381. 103 Cf. I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, Part II, Transcendental Logic, 1, 1. 104 C. HART, Thomistic Metaphysics, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1959, p. 293-294.