Metaphysics: The Principle of Causality & Causal Series

An example of a hierarchal causal series

The Principle of Causality

Previously, we established the principle of causality (PoC), which states, potential being can only be actualized by some already actual being.  Potential being, by virtue of merely being potential, cannot do anything in and of itself. In other words, the PoC accounts for how potential being becomes actual being. The potentiality of a car’s movement is actualized by something already actual, namely a foot stepping on the pedal; a mirror’s potential to reflect my self is actualized by my standing in front of it; a pot of water’s potential to boil is actualized by heat underneath it. In all these cases, something actual – a foot, a person, a source of heat – brings something potential – locomotion, reflection, boiling water – to actualization. The PoC is the explanatory foundation of how being goes from potential to actual.

An effect (i.e., an actualized potential) cannot be self-caused, but, as we said, must rely on something else already actual. The idea that a potential could bring itself to act - pulling itself up by its metaphysical bootstraps - is necessarily impossible. An example showing this impossibility would be the incoherent statement, “I caused my own existence”. If I caused my own existence, then I existed before I caused my own existence since for me to cause my own existence presupposes my existence. The very thing I am claiming to cause is in fact already in effect before I cause it, an incoherent absurdity. Furthermore, causation is intimately connected by simultaneity. For instance, it would be imprecise to say “throwing the baseball caused the window to shatter”; rather, it is the pressing of the thrown baseball into the window, as the cause, and the window buckling, as the simultaneous effect, which account for the causal story in such an example.

The PoC is one of four causes articulated by the ancient philosophers; all four provide an exhaustive account of what any substance. We will discuss the other three later. The ancients used “cause” more inclusively than us moderns. For them “cause” would be closely related to the word “explanation”. For us moderns, only one of Aristotle’s four causes would intuitively be tied to the word “cause”, namely the “efficient cause”, another term for PoC. We will discuss the other three "causes" - material, formal, and final - in later posts. 

Causal Series

There are two applications of the principle of causality: a linear causal series that deals with a temporal line of events and a hierarchical causal series that deals with any moment in time, independent of the past. An example of a linear causal series is a father, who at some point in time, begets a son, and that son, later in time, begets his own son and so on. From a philosophical analysis, this series could theoretically go on to infinity: there is simply nothing in this causal series that necessitates a first, most fundamental cause that all the other members in the series rely upon to actualize their potency. In the example used, the first son requires nothing from his father to beget his own son once the first son is begotten. After the first son is begotten, the father is irrelevant to the son continuing to exist and using his own causal powers to actualize the potential life of his own son.

However, in a hierarchical causal series a first cause is necessary for the other members of the series to have any causal efficacy. Additionally, a hierarchical causal series deals with simultaneity, and therefore not concerned with the past. I will provide three examples of a hierarchical causal series:

1. A stone’s potency to roll is actualized by a stick pushing it; however, the stick can only actualize this potency insofar as a moving hand actualizes the stick’s potency to move.

 2. A car’s potency to drive is actualized by a gas pedal in the forward throttle position; however, the gas pedal can only actualize this potency insofar as a foot pushed down actualizes the gas pedal’s potency to be in the forward throttle position. 

3. A mirror’s potency to reflect your likeness can only be actualized insofar as you stand in front of the mirror; otherwise, this potency of the mirror remains in potency until you, being in act by simply existing, walk in front of the mirror to bring the mirror’s potency to act.

In all three cases, there is simultaneity in the potencies being actualized: my body being reflected in the mirror is only there insofar as I stand in front of the mirror; as soon as I step away, the reflection ceases. Additionally, there is a “first member” who is necessary to the causal series since the secondary members’ efficacy in the causal series are contingent on receiving said efficacy from the first member. Notice two important considerations: 1) there is no reference to the past since the “first member” is first not temporally, but because it imparts causal efficacy to the other members at any given moment; 2) the point of these examples is not to make the literal claim the hand, foot, and body are all in fact the first members in these examples (that’s why I used quotes around “first member” at the beginning of the paragraph); there are more fundamental members in all three of these causal series. The point is to show what a hierarchical causal series looks like and the metaphysical work a first cause does in this series vis-a-vis its secondary members.

Next in the series: Teleology