Strawson The Secret Connexion:
Galen Strawson The Secret Connexion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
10/01/07: There comes a point, within every man’s life, when after dealing with adversaries and digging in his heels to combat against them, he nonetheless realizes that his search for prosperity within any given domain may be for naught. Thus crushed and humiliated, he is left with two options: one, bear on headlong into a useless endeavor; or, second, to admit his propensity toward impetuousness and redirect his ambitious desires. After having knocked my head against the wall innumerable times in the last several weeks groping and grasping for traction within Hume to debunk this nemesis to Christianity, I have finally ceded my ambitious endeavor. Proverbially throwing my hands up in a sort of relief, I declare “nein”. Thus humbled, I seek to redirect my studies for this class. Instead of focusing on Hume exclusively, I plan to look at- in sort of a survey fashion- responses from Early Modern philosophers (including Hume) to the notion of a sort of vitalistic impulse, if you will, within the causal paradigm. Following below, after my tirade above, is the first installment of my reviews in this direction. Note that this too relates directly to Hume. More to come in the coming weeks…
Strawson defends a Skeptical Realist interpretation of Hume within this book. In fact, he states this book is principally concerned with examining Hume’s realist presuppositions (4). Strawson argues that Hume believes in real causal power, and does so not only in common life, but also as a philosopher (1). Strawson suggests that it never really occurred to Hume to question real causal power, i.e. that there is and must be something about nature and reality that enables it to be ordered and regular in the way that it is – even in his most skeptical mode (2). Instead, he was principally concerned with refuting contemporary philosophers who claimed that the causal power could be intelligibly known (2). Rather than denying causal power, Hume insists that we have no real grasp of its nature, despite our conviction to the contrary (3). Hume’s strictly non-committal skepticism rules out the assertion that causation in objects is nothing more than regular succession (12).
Hume’s position is not that true skepticism requires a refusal to accept and belief claim at all (13). Hume is insistent to assert the epistemological claim that “nature… conceals from us those powers and principles, on which the influence of… objects entirely depends” (ENQ, 32-33). However, he never denies that these powers or principles exist. And although Hume notes that “we are ignorant of those powers and forces, on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends” (ENQ, 55), it is nonetheless significant that he admits that they totally depend upon said powers and forces.
Hume could be said to advocate, then, that “causal powers” are “those powers and forces, on which [the] regular… succession of objects totally depends” (ENQ, 55). This description of causal power(s) allows one “to refer to it while having absolutely no sort of positive conception of its nature” (Strawson, emphasis in orig, 52). As a true and thorough skeptic, “Hume continually stresses the fact that there may exist aspects of reality which are not only unknown by us, but are also unknowable by us, beyond our powers of comprehension, and in that sense utterly unintelligible to us” (53).
Even considering some interpretations of quantum theory that entail an inherent indeterminacy at the primal levels of nature, one can still claim that there is something fundamental about nature in virtue of which the world is regular in its behavior (87). Strawson claims that there are “objective, ‘fundamental forces’ governing the behavior of the world”…And [t]hese forces are features of – they are essentially constitutive of – the nature of matter” (90-91). These forces are real, mind-independent, observable, and regularity-transcendent facts of nature. According to the Regularity theory of causation, the regularity of the world is a complete fluke. However, according to the causation that is posited by Strawson, it is a metaphysical fact that it is in the nature of things to be regular (92). In dialog with Strawson, I assert that the world cannot but be regular in the way that it is, given its nature and the fundamental forces that underlie it.
Given his non-committal skepticism, Hume cannot assert that there is no such thing as causation. Beliefs, after all, are not untenable in view of strict skepticism, as they could very well be true, but we simply cannot know them to be true. “[S]cepticism consists precisely in the fact that there is something there to be known which [we are] not in a position to know” (Annas and Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism, 97-98).
In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (GET FULL CITATION), Philo (who is Hume’s main representative in the Dialogues) syas,
“For aught we can know a priori, Matter may contain the Source or Spring of order originally, within itself… there is no more Difficulty in conceiving, that the several Elements, from an internal unknown Cause, may fall into the most exquisite Arrangement, than to conceive that their Ideas, in the great, universal Mind, from a like internal, unknown Cause, may fall into that Arrangement. The equal Possibility of both of these Supposition is allow’d” (Dialogues, 166).
Philo later queries within the Dialogues, “[h]ow could things have been as they are, were there not an original, inherent Principle of Order somewhere, in Thought or in Matter?” (200).