Causation , Physics , and the Constitution of Reality : Russell ’ s

This is an outstanding anthology. It contains extended reflections on Russell’s idea that our notion of causation is a relic of stone-age metaphysics, which fails to fit contemporary physics and thus deserves elimination (‘On the Notion of Cause’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 13, 1913, pp. 1–26). It will be of interest to anyone interested in causation or the physical image of the world, and to anyone interested in reconciling the manifest and scientific images. The question of fit : Virtually every contributor agrees with Russell that folk causation does not fit the scientific image, though for different (albeit compatible) reasons. For some the problem is that causal relations are local while laws are global, concerning entire hypersurfaces of back light cones. For others the problem is that causation is asymmetric while laws are time symmetric. Still others take the problem to arise for reasons internal to causation and independent of the physical details: causal modelling techniques are said to require the notion of an intervention from outside, and thus not apply to the cosmos; also causal discourse is said to be context-sensitive. The consequences of a poor fit : Virtually every contributor disagrees with Russell that folk causation should be eliminated for lack of fit, though different (seemingly incompatible) preservative claims are made. For some, folk causation remains a decent heuristic akin to concepts like Newtonian gravity. For others, folk causation is viewed as a perspectival notion developed from our agential viewpoint, which remains real from that perspective. I will offer very brief summaries of the contributions (Sect. 1), followed by discussion of both the question of fit and consequences of a poor fit (Sect. 2).