Causalism is the traditional attitude of disowning all noncausal categories of determination, holding dogmatically that every connection in the world is causal. The entirely negative attitude taken by indeterminism and by empiricism toward the principle of causation is inconsistent with the very goal of science, which is the search for the objective forms of determination and interconnection. This chapter deals with the question concerning the range of validity of the causal principle. The notion of causal range of the laws of nature will be clarified and illustrated, by analyzing in some detail a typical physical law with which every student of electricity is familiar. Science seems to show neither an enlargement nor a progressive shrinking of the domain of validity of the causal principle. Most scientists and philosophers of science believed that quantum mechanics had given causality the death blow, by showing that quantum phenomena are inherently random, hence only statistically predictable.
Causalism is the traditional attitude of disowning all noncausal categories of determination, holding dogmatically that every connection in the world is causal. The entirely negative attitude taken by indeterminism and by empiricism toward the principle of causation is inconsistent with the very goal of science, which is the search for the objective forms of determination and interconnection. This chapter deals with the question concerning the range of validity of the causal principle. The notion of causal range of the laws of nature will be clarified and illustrated, by analyzing in some detail a typical physical law with which every student of electricity is familiar. Science seems to show neither an enlargement nor a progressive shrinking of the domain of validity of the causal principle. Most scientists and philosophers of science believed that quantum mechanics had given causality the death blow, by showing that quantum phenomena are inherently random, hence only statistically predictable.
In this chapter we introduce the postulate of causality, and derive the mathematical structure of a causal OPT. We show how the present definition of causality is equivalent to the Einsteinian one, and argue that it is the only possible notion once it is stripped from its spurious deterministic connotation. In addition, the notion of causality used here is compliant with the historical philosophical concept since David Hume, and with the idea used in common reasoning, inference, and modeling in human sciences. In brief, the present notion of causality can be stated as the requirement of no signaling from the future . This is also the only requisite for an OPT in order to satisfy the principle of no signaling without interaction . In mathematical terms in an OPT the causality postulate is equivalent to the uniqueness of the deterministic effect, which in turn is equivalent to the ability to normalize states. The notion of causality is so naturally embedded in our understanding of reality that it often remains unconsciously implicit in foundational research, even in recent axiomatizations. Causality: From Cinderella to Principle Causality has been the object of a very extensive literature encompassing hundreds of books and technical articles in a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from pure philosophy to economics, law, natural sciences, and obviously, physics. Also due to its involvement in such heterogeneous blend of disciplines, causality has long been a vexed notion. Perhaps the most natural connection between concepts of causality in different branches of knowledge is the one at the borderline between physics and philosophy, since the early work of Aristotle, up to the cornerstone of Renée Descartes, who broke the ground for the modern view of David Hume and Immanuel Kant, through to contemporary works on physical causation. Causality has always remained in the realm of philosophy, staying only in the background of physics, without the status of a “law” or the rank of a “principle.” Most of the time causality creeps into physical theories in the form of ad hoc assumptions based on empirical evidences, as when we discard advanced potentials in electrodynamics or when we motivate the Kramers–Kronig relations. In other cases, causality is embodied in the “interpretation” of the theory, as for the Special Relativity of Einstein.
This chapter focuses specifically on the notion of causation. Unless a causal interpretation can be given of quantum mechanics, there is a fundamental discontinuity between the quantum realm and everything else in the world. The quantum-theoretical dualism of waves and particles makes the same entity appear both as matter and as force. There are of course challenges to other basic ontological categories that come from quantum physics, such as to notions of continuity and identity. Both in philosophy and physics, there is a frequent assumption that causation is the provider or vehicle of determinism, via causal necessitation. The indeterminism of quantum physics leaves people with a more practical concern about causation. A feature of causation that makes predictions fallible is that causal processes are extremely sensitive to a change in context. The genuine interaction of multiple factors should therefore be seen as a symptom of causation rather than as something that needs to be analysed away by theoretical abstraction.
In a recent number of Blackfriars (July, 1949) Dr A. W. Gledhill has discussed very competently some aspects of the statistical method as used in modern physics. He has tried to show there ‘that modern physical theory does not contradict the principle of causality’. Having made a study of this subject over quite a number of years, the writer, while agreeing with some of Dr Gledhill’s conclusions, feels nevertheless that there are a few points which have not been covered as adequately as the importance of the subject for modern philosophy seems to warrant. In order to understand the controversy about the validity or non-validity of the principle of causality, which has been initiated by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it is necessary to realise, first of all, that when a physicist speaks about causality, he usually does not mean the same thing as a scholastic philosopher. In scholastic philosophy one distinguishes different kinds of causes, such as the material, the efficient, the final, as well as the formal and exemplary causes. The classical physicist, on the other hand, since the time of Galileo, admits only efficient causes. Let us therefore give a brief sketch of the development of this concept of scientific causality and show the reasons for this limitation. The purpose of a scientific theory is the prediction of events among the natural objects which form the field of enquiry of the particular science concerned. Evidently, the more certain the prediction, the better the theory on which it is based.
This chapter analyzes some theses on causation that are characteristic of empiricism. The principle of antecedence and the causal principle are independent of each other. Most positivists have held that the concept of causation should be replaced by or actually reduced to invariable succession in time. The identification of cause with constant antecedent, of causation with invariable succession, has been criticized many times by philosophers. The identification of causal laws with differential equations that can be made to represent an unlimited variety of types of continuous evolution in time has led to a widespread naive solution of the puzzle of quantum mechanics. The validity and usefulness of the field concept are demonstrated, at least in the macroscopic domain, in an indirect way, as is usual with elaborate theoretical concepts, namely, by the far-reaching testable consequences to which field theories lead.
Abstract Uses a historical approach to explore the extent to which quantum theory mandates indeterminism. Drawing on important examples in the history of physics, it discusses explicitly the crucial distinction – often overlooked in the philosophical literature – between indeterminacy of physical quantities and causal indeterminism. It pursues at a more sophisticated level, issues raised in Ch. 2 concerning determinism and indeterminism in modern science. It concludes that quantum indeterminacy is an objective feature of the world, but that the jury is still out regarding quantum indeterminism.
Classical science and in fact Post-Newtonian science up till the early twentieth century were mired in a deterministic interpretation of realities. The deterministic hypothesis in science holds that everything in nature has a cause and if one could know the antecedent causes, he could predict the future with certainty. But quantum mechanics holds that sub-atomic particles, though the ultimate materials from which all the complexity of existence in the universe emerges, do not obey deterministic laws, hence, their activities are causally indeterminate and could only be understood with probability. This paper argues that quantum mechanics can not totally be free from determinism, for it has subtly conceded to determinism in holding that the sub-atomic particles are the building blocks of the macro world, and that there is interconnection between entities in the universe, even at the nonmanifest level. The probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics only betray our human limitation of the knowledge of nature, which, I believe still have lots of tricks in our sleeves over mankind. Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8(1) 2005:72-79 Keywords: Keywords: