Causation Assignment

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Porterville College *

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70499

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Philosophy

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Oct 30, 2023

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Fernando Palacios Causation Assignment When discussing causality, there are many philosophers who have different opinions on cause and effect. Philosophers like Hume believed, according to Anscombe, that cause and effect was determined by generalizations. (243) These generalizations were created by multiple causes having the same effect. An example of this is on page 231, where we see billiards as an example using Hume’s idea. After witnessing multiple times that if one strikes a ball into another it will always have the same effect every time. While Hume could not definitively say that a cause could have the same effect a hundred percent of the time, he called the recurring sequence, universal generalizations. Anscombe stated that while other philosophers like Aristotle and Hobbes had believed in a “logical connection” about causality, Hume believed more in constant conjunction. (243) Constant conjunction refers to Hume’s generalizations over recurring causes and effects which again relied more on people experiencing them and seeing the same conclusion over and over. Philosopher Kant also disagreed with Hume and instead believed that causality was based off evidence and fact rather than Hume’s experience ideas. (244) While Anscombe disagreed with other philosopher’s ideas, another thing she disagreed with was their approach to causality. Other philosophers mainly saw the effect and then tried to focus on the cause and made their basis off that. Anscombe believed the other way around and thought that the focus should be on the effect and its circumstances. Anscombe makes the statement “causality consists in the derivativeness of an effect from its causes” (245). What she basically means here is that

causality is caused more by the effect that came from a cause. Her main argument was that if cause makes an effect, that does not mean that it will always make that same effect. She wanted to put the focus on the small details in the cause that led to said effect. Anscombe’s view had more of a solid base because she believed that one should “observe causality in the individual case” which would let one be more precise instead of generalizing. She says that “You have got to describe the absence of circumstances in which an A would not cause a B.” This makes it harder to generalize causality and encourages to look deeper into the effect that was produced under the causes’ circumstances which is what Anscombe believed. (247-248) Works Cited Chapter 8- Causality

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