CONSERVATION,
PROVIDENCE AND OCCASIONALISM
or
THE OCCASIONALIST
PROSELYTIZER: A BRIEF CATECHISM
Theists believe that
God sustains the entire universe at every instant of its existence, and that He
providentially cares for that which He has created and presently sustains. A fundamental feature of His providence is
His control over the direction of history.
The world is not left to its own devices, to work out in some unthinking
fashion what its telos is.
Rather, God Himself has prescribed the goal of history, and His
providence insures that events in times interact so as to achieve that
goal.
We have defended
elsewhere that God could not have but sustained the universe at every instant
if He chooses that it continue to exist.[i] If that is so, the doctrine of conservation
is implied by the doctrine of providence.
For if God controls the direction of history and that direction involves
the continued existence of that which He has created, He cannot do otherwise that
to sustain the universe at every instant of its existence. The doctrine of providence, then, implies at
least some direct involvement in the ordinary course of things in virtue of
implying the doctrine of conservation.
Yet, theists have
regularly thought that God's involvement in the ordinary course of things is
more substantial than that of merely sustaining things in existence. The motivations for thinking that a deeper
involvement is required come from the two doctrines mentioned above. On the one hand, the doctrine of conservation
has been thought to imply occasionalism, at least when it is given a continuous
creation interpretation.[ii] For, as Malebranche puts it, a painter can
conceive in his mind an incomplete object when determining what to create, but
he cannot paint on the canvass an incomplete object. Instead, if creation is to occur, the object
must be fully determinate: for every
property P, the object must either have P or lack P.[iii]
So if God's conservation of the world
amounts to a continuous creation of it at every moment of its existence, then
it might seem that God could only conserve the world by creating it anew at
every instant in all its robust determinateness. If He does so, however, there is no role left
for secondary causes in nature; God has, as it were, satiated the world with
His own causal power so as to make secondary causes otiose.
The other motivation
comes from the doctrine of providence.
In order to display His governance over history, God, at the very least,
must be disposed to adjust the course of things should they begin to stray from
the chosen path. Speaking from a
temporal perspective, perhaps the chosen path can be ensured by picking the
right initial conditions at the original creation, but then again perhaps
not. Perhaps no initial creative activity
could ensure of itself that God's chosen telos will be the natural end
toward which all creation points even if left to its own devices.[iv] So perhaps a minimal level of miraculous
involvement in the course of nature is required in order for God to display His
governance over the direction of history.
However, God's
providence is not exhausted by some cold, unfeeling ordering of the course of
nature. Rather, it is of the essence of
His governance that it display his unbounded love for that which He governs. His providential guidance of things is not
something independent of His love for what He has created, but instead is
subservient to it. He guides the course
of nature precisely because He loves and cares for the offspring of His
creative activity. At the very heart,
then, of the doctrine of providence is unfathomable love; instead of a
calculating manager, driven by efficiency considerations concerning maximal
governance from minimal involvement, God lavishes on His children His attention
and concern in the process of ordering and directing His creation. Further, the display of His love is not any
emaciated, truncated attention only in terms of conservation; it is not only
our being, but our well-being, which concerns Him.
Such love is not compatible
with the ordering of things from afar; instead, it requires direct and
immediate involvement, the kind of direct and immediate involvement humans know
only indirectly in moments of true intimacy.
The events and situations in which we find ourselves must be a part of
this direct and immediate involvement; they cannot be hindrances or obstacles
to the Divine intention, but must instead issue from the very hand of God as
part of His active love for us. Yet,
such direct and immediate and active involvement on the part of God threatens,
too, the contribution of the nature of things in the course of events. For if God's involvement is so direct,
immediate, and active, what is left which can be attributed to the nature of
things in explaining why the course of events proceeds as it does?
Thus, from the
direction of the doctrine of conservation and from the direction of the
doctrine of providence, considerations converge toward something at least very
close to occasionalism. Most problematic
here is the threat occasionalism seems to offer to the integrity of
science. If God is really the sole cause
of all that is, it would seem that our attempt to determine the nature of
things through scientific investigation is doomed to failure. For the nature of things, it might seem, has
nothing to do with how things happen as they do; instead, it is only the hand
of God at work.
Thus is the task of
our paper set. The questions we wish to
address are: what amount of activity by
God in the ordinary course of things is required by an adequate understanding
and defense of the doctrines of conservation and providence, and what impact
does this conclusion have on the integrity of science? Our goal will be to show that the integrity
of science can be maintained in the face of a proper appreciation of God's
activity in the world. Let us begin by
considering more carefully what the doctrine of occasionalism claims.
1. The
Nature of Occasionalism
Occasionalism is
often understood as involving a denial of some rather obvious truths: that heating the water makes it boil,
for example. On this understanding,
occasionalism is committed to a denial of the existence of causal relationships
in nature, or to a denial of relationships in nature explicable in terms of
scientific laws, or both. This
understanding should be resisted. Some
versions of occasionalism affirm (some of) the above claims; there may even be
arguments to show that the best versions of occasionalism maintain the above
claims. Before we can decide these issues,
however, we must find the heart of occasionalism.
At bottom,
occasionalism makes a claim about the intimacy of the relationship between God
and His creation. Occasionalism implies,
first, that God is not deistic in character.
He not only brought the universe and all that is in it into existence,
He also sustains these things at every moment of their existence. Occasionalists go further, however, than
affirming the doctrine of divine conservation.
They also hold that God is ultimately responsible for whatever changes
occur within the created realm. They
hold, that is, that it is due to the power of God that water boils when it is
heated, and this in no indirect fashion but rather in virtue of the immediate and
direct activity of God in bringing about the boiling in the presence of
heat. The heart of occasionalism is to
be found, we claim, in a religiously motivated desire to preserve the most
radical intimacy possible between God and a universe of things distinct from
Himself. Not only is it "in Him
that we live and have our being," it is also through Him and by His power
that the universe and the things in it have their own distinctive character at
each instant.
This picture of
occasionalism leaves room for many varieties of occasionalism, depending on
one's attitude toward science (whether realist or instrumentalist, for
example), toward the nature of causation (whether it is analyzable in terms of
conditionals, for example), and toward laws of nature and their connection with
the notion of causation (whether, for example, "enlightened" physics
has no need of the notion of causation).
Which of the standard criticisms of occasionalism are telling, if any at
all are, depends on which version of occasionalism is offered. For example, one standard criticism of
occasionalism claims that it is incompatible with the integrity of
science. The idea here would seem to be
that science purports to be uncovering the underlying mechanisms which explain
our experience of the world, and if occasionalism is true, science is doing no
such thing. However, if the brand of
occasionalism being offered involves an instrumentalist view of science, this
criticism has no force.[v]
Regardless of the
force of criticisms against the view, one might wonder what reasons there are
to affirm it. Our statement of the view
above perhaps explains the underlying motivation for claiming that all that
exists is the result of the direct activity of God, but it does little to
explain the theoretical grounds for believing that claim. We turn then to the argument for
occasionalism.
2. From
Divine Conservation to Occasionalism
The usual argument
for affirming occasionalism arises from the doctrine of divine
conservation. According to this
doctrine, God not only created the universe and all that is in it, these things
continue to exist at each instant only by the direct sustaining activity of
God. Since the doctrine of divine
conservation is a firmly entrenched piece of theological orthodoxy, an
implication from it to occasionalism would be a significant justification of
occasionalism.
However, Philip Quinn
has recently argued against the view that conservation implies occasionalism,
and it will be worth our efforts to consider his view of the matter. His account of conservation is in terms of
continuous creation, and according to the account, for God to conserve the
world is for the following axiom to be true:
(A) Necessarily, for all x and t,
if x exists at t, God willing that x exists at t
brings about x existing at t.
Quinn's denial of the inference from
conservation to occasionalism rests on distinguishing (A) from:
(B) Necessarily, if x is F at t,
God willing that x is F at t brings about x's being F at t.
Quinn denies (B);
according to him, God's conservation of the universe amounts to His being
responsible for the existence, but not the character, of things.[vi] In
order to evaluate the attempt to affirm (A) and avoid (B), we need some account
of what is involved in God's willing the existence of a thing at a time, and what
it is for the existence of a thing to be brought about by such a willing. One approach to this issue is through the
metaphysical issue of the nature of substance.
For example, one might defend the independence of (A) from (B) by
defending a theory of substance on which there is a radical independence of
substance from attribute. On a Lockian
view, for instance, a substance is the thing of which predication is made, and
hence the substance is that property-less thing in which properties
inhere. God might, then, bring about the
existence of the substance in which properties inhere, leaving the issue of
which properties are to inhere in that substance to other causes. The
difficulty with this defense of the independence of (A) and (B) concerns the
notion of substance on which it depends.
The difficulty is that the notion of a property-less substance is
inconsistent, for everything has at least some essential properties. At the very least, then, the metaphysical
approach to the question of the relation between (A) and (B) must allow some
occasionalist encroachment in virtue of requiring that the bringing about of
existence by God involves some property ladenness. Full-blown occasionalism would be implied by
a theory of substance on which substance can be clarified in terms of
properties, as is true on phenomenalist theories of substance. But there is a continuum of theories of
substance from those that posit no involvement by properties in the nature of
substance to those that posit full reducibility of substance to
properties. How far one goes on this
continuum toward full reducibility determines how much occasionalist
encroachment is implied by God's continuous creation of the universe at each
instant of its existence. In any case,
it appears that there is some support from the theory of substance for denying
that full-blown occasionalism follows from the doctrine of continuous
creation.
One can also approach
the issue from the semantic side.
Suppose, for example, that Frege is right about existence: that existence is a second order property,
the property another property has of having an instance. In that case, for God to bring about the
existence of a thing is for God to bring it about that some property has an
instance. What property might this be in
order to allow God's responsibility for existence but deny his responsibility
for character? Perhaps the essence of
the thing.
But what is the
essence of the thing? And what content
does the essence of the thing involve?
On the one hand, there are the at least apparently circular accounts of
essences, accounts which identify the essence of, say, George Bush with the
property of being, or being identical to, George Bush.[vii] On the other hand, there are accounts which
impute more qualitative character to the essence. Plantinga, for example, holds that an essence
is a world indexed version of a property a thing has uniquely.[viii] Thus, if George Bush is the one individual
with 3800 hairs on his head in 1990, then an essence of Bush is the property of
having 3800 hairs on his head in 1990 in alpha, where alpha names the actual
world.
The apparent
circularity of the non-qualitative conception of essence arises from
considering whether the essence of a thing is ontologically dependent on the
thing itself. At first glance, at least,
the property of being identical with Bush has Bush as a constituent, and hence
is ontologically dependent on Bush. If
we imagine the construction of the universe in terms of levels of complexity,
one cannot get elements of complexity n without having all the
subelements occur at some level lower than n in the heirarchy.[ix] In this sense, Bush himself would seem to be
logically prior to his essence and hence one could not appeal the the
instantiation of Bush's essence in explaining Bush's existence.
The same argument is
not quite as clear when one conceives of Bush's essence as the property of
being Bush. For one thing, the property
of being identical with Bush is clearly to be represented employing a constant whose
semantic value is Bush himself. However,
when representing the property of being Bush, the proper representation is not
one which clearly involves such a constant.
In fact, it may be that the property of being Bush is a non-complex
property best represented by a single predicate letter. If so, the circularity which apparently
plagues the non-qualitative conception of essences does not clearly plague this
particular non-qualitative conception of an essence.
Yet, the advantages
of this conception seem to be won only at the expense of clarity. If the property of being Bush is of a
metaphysically different status than the property of being identical to Bush,
so that the first but not the second can be involved in an explanation of God's
bringing about Bush's existence, we are in metaphysically murky waters
indeed. Further, the non-qualitative
character of this property makes it inherently suspect as an explanatory device
concerning the existence of that which has it.
If Bush himself could not participate in property-less existence, it is
far from clear how the property of being Bush could fail to involve quite a
number of other properties. If it does
involve these other properties, some occasionalist encroachment results, yet
the unanalyzability of the property of being Bush prevents us from any
reasonable estimate of how much encroachment results. Hence, at the very least, some degree of
dissatisfaction is warranted regarding this conception of how (A) is
independent of (B).
The character-laden
notion of an essence makes any willing of the existence of a thing by God quite
complex. For if God wills that Bush be
the only individual with a certain number of hairs on his head in 1990 in
alpha, He will also have to will, of every other individual, that it not have that
number of hairs. Plausibly, however, God
cannot will de re negatively in such a case without willing de re
something else positively. Thus, to will
of Reagan that he not have 3800 hairs on his head in 1990 is to will positively
that Reagan have some number, or range of numbers, of hairs on his head in 1990
either greater than or less than 3800.
Further, this will hold for any instantiated essence, and hence the
willing of the existence of a thing will be subject to a great deal of
occasionalist encroachment. There is, of
course, no argument here that every property of a thing will be the result of
God's will. However, any property
selected by God to use in willing the existence of a thing will require God to
will some property in everything else.
This conclusion would
seem to provide enough occasionalist encroachment to raise the worry about the
compatibility of even the most minimal occasionalism with the integrity of
science. For on the construal of essences
above, one would have to allow that some quite ordinary properties are not the
result of interactions in the natural world but rather by supernatural activity
alone. If so, one might begin to wonder
how we could ever be justified in concluding that a certain natural explanation
of observed phenomena is true.
Even worse, however,
is the conception of essence itself. The
difficulty concerns the existence of world-indexed properties themselves. If we think of the structure of the universe
in terms of a set theoretical building-up of the more complex from the less
complex, the important question to ask is at what level world-indexed
properties appear. One standard
conception of a possible world is in terms of sets or collections or very large
propositions (involving every other consistent proposition), but if so there is
never a level logically prior to the existence of possible worlds themselves at
which world-indexed properties are constructible. They would, in essence, have to be
constructed after the entire construction is in place.[x] Clearly, however, that account is
inconsistent. A defender of
world-indexed properties must then resort to some other account of how the
story of the complexity in ontology is to be told or to some other account of
possible worlds (perhaps to a Lewisian view on which possible worlds are
themselves primitive entities). It is
almost superfluous to point out that such a route to defending the independence
of (A) and (B) is not especially attractive.
The upshot seems to
be as follows. There are a variety of
attempts to understand what it is for God to will the existence of a thing
which imply directly the logical independence of (A) and (B). Each such account has its own variety of
difficulty, but there is no reason in principle to think that all such accounts
collapse.
Most important for
our purposes, however, is not the question of whether (A) implies (B) directly
given only an account of what it is for God to will something into
existence. The lack of such an
implication is compatible with the existence of an implication from (A) to (B)
depending on information beyond what it is for God to will the existence of a
thing. Our above discussion suggests
that there may in fact be such information, for the above discussion shows that
any willing into existence of a thing by God will involve some active
participation by God not only in the existence of the thing but in some of its
character as well. This feature alone is
not problematic unless the involvement is maximal, for it would have to be
maximal in order to deny the independence thesis concerning (A) and (B) given
only the information about God's willing things into existence. Nonetheless, our discussion shows that at
least partial occasionalism follows, for one cannot affirm the
conservation doctrine without allowing some encroachment into the character of
things.
This, however, is an
intrinsically volatile theory, unacceptable to both science and theology. To science, it is unacceptable because
whatever properties are left within conservation's scope must now be held to
escape natural explanation. Yet surely
the reach of scientific laws is not normally understood to be thus
limited. Certainly there is no empirical
argument for such a limitation, nor is it obvious that any argument, scientific
or otherwise, could fix the supposed boundary in a fashion that, to our
empirical sensibilities, would appear anything but strictly arbitrary. As for theology, the view under consideration
appears to introduce an unreasonable complexity into God's attitude toward His
creatures, and His ways of dealing with them.
For some of their characteristics He is held directly responsible, and
for others only indirectly, through the operation of natural causal processes. But what could be the reason for such a
dualism? Nothing of theological
importance is gained by it. Unlike the
case with the free will defense against the problem of moral evil, there can be
no hope of exempting God from the consequences of natural processes by placing
Him at one level of causal removal from them.
Furthermore, His providential love for all that He has created seems to
demand that God be intimately involved with all creation, in all of its
fullness. He should not be less
concerned, say, with acceleration than with inertial motion, or less
responsible for a thing's physical features than for its biological or
psychological ones, or more involved in producing its essential properties than
its accidents.
There are, then,
theological as well as scientific reasons for rejecting partial occasionalism: the view that the occasionalist implications
of the doctrine of conservation extend to some of the properties of created
things but not others. If, as we at
least suspect, conservation has occasionalist implications, then either the
conservation doctrine must be rejected, or some other accommodation with the
scientific view of nature must be found.
Let us, then, assume the suspicion is correct, and consider what sort of
accommodation may be available. That is,
we shall assume that when heating the water results in its coming to a boil,
and when the cue ball's striking the object ball issues in the object ball's
motion, the existence of the events regarded as effects (as well, of course, as
that of their causes) is directly owing to the creative activity of God. Whatever processes, causal or otherwise, may
be operating in these cases, none of them counts as an intervening process by
means of which God's creative power is exercised. He is directly responsible for the existence
of all the events in the sequence. The
question is whether it is possible to square this position with the view that
the sequences count as examples of "natural causation," or the
"operation," as it is sometimes put, of scientific laws.
3. The
Nature of Occasionalism and the Basic Issue of Causality
As noted earlier,
whether occasionalism undermines the integrity of science depends on a number
of considerations apart from the precise character of occasionalism
itself. As noted earlier, for example,
if one takes an instrumentalist viewpoint on science, it is difficult to find
any grounds for sustaining a charge against occasionalism on the basis of the
integrity of science.
However, many
philosophers are convinced that an instrumentalist view of science cannot
succeed, and in order to present the strongest case possible here, we shall
assume a realist position on the nature of science and scientific
theories. That is, we shall assume that
when our best scientific theories quantify over certain kinds of entities that
gives us good grounds, perhaps the best grounds, for thinking that entities of
that kind really exist. Science is in
the business of telling us what there really is, not telling a just-so story to
enable prediction of the course of experience.
The realist/instrumentalist
debate is not the only position with implications regarding the status of
occasionalism. There are two other
considerations which need to be addressed in order to evaluate the apparent
tension between occasionalism and the integrity of science. A first consideration has to do with the
nature of scientific laws and the connection between laws and causation. The ordinary view of the matter is that
scientific laws are true or false because they are generalizations of actual
causal relationships between events.
Some philosophers, however, have come to question whether the notion of
causality plays any role at all in sophisticated science.[xi] If science has no use for the notion of
causality, however, the tension between occasionalism and the integrity of
science is greatly decreased. For the
doctrine of occasionalism would then be a metaphysical addendum to the
scientific story, one which competes in no way with the scientific account of
things at all.
Again, our interest
is in addressing the strongest considerations against occasionalism that can be
made on the basis of the integrity of science, so here we shall assume that
scientific explanation and the laws employed in such explanations have
something to do with causality. We shall
assume, that is, that the notion of causality is not eliminable.
Even so, a further
consideration arises, one having to do with the nature of causality
itself. The issue here is whether
causation is analyzable or not. The
attempts at analysis which are thought to provide the best hope of an analysis
are in the form of conditionals: either
material (the constant conjunction view), counterfactual, or necessary
conditionals. If causation is
analyzable, the tension between occasionalism and the integrity of science
would seem to be minimal. For if
causation can be reduced to series of conditional statements, the occasionalist
would then claim that the truth of these conditionals is owing to the activity
of God. Such a view, assuming causation
to be analyzable in terms of conditionals, would not affect the integrity of
science in the least; once again, occasionalism would simply amount to a
metaphysical addendum to the physical story told by science.[xii]
Many philosophers,
however, are impressed by the failure of the multitude of attempts to analyze
causation. Perhaps, then, some would be
tempted to think that the diminution of the tension between occasionalism and
science outlined above arises in virtue of failing to take "real"
causation seriously enough.
"Real" causation, it might be held, is simply unanalyzable,
and so any reconciliation of occasionalism with science on the assumption that
it is analyzable is illusory.[xiii]
What of the tension,
then, between occasionalism and science if we assume that causation is not
analyzable in the fashion suggested above?
There are some attempts to avoid the tension which ought to be rejected
immediately. For example, it will not do
to claim God is responsible only for the existence of events, whereas the
operation of natural causality is what endows them with their descriptive
features. The concept of a featureless
event is no more plausible than that of a featureless substance, and even if it
were there would be no reason to limit God's direct creative involvement in the
world to the production of such insipid entities. Furthermore, the onset in such events of
their descriptive aspects, which is here supposed to be owing to natural
causation, would itself have to count as a type of event, and that would simply
raise the same problem all over again.
If the doctrine of conservation makes God responsible for the occurrence
of events, then, he has to be held responsible for their nature as well as
their existence. Equally unsatisfactory
would be an attempt to solve the problem simply by calling for wholesale
overdetermination of natural events, making natural causation as well as the
direct action of God responsible for their existence. In effect, this is not a solution but a
restatement of the problem. There is no
reason for God to create a world in which natural causes bring events to pass
if in fact His very creation of that world includes bringing about the
existence of those events Himself.
This last point makes
it possible to frame our problem in an especially pressing way: if the doctrine
that the world's continuing existence is owing to the sustaining creative
activity of God is to have teeth, there has to be something about the world the
reality of which is not owing to natural causation, something the production of
which is not described by scientific law.
Short of this, a theory of sustaining creation reduces to mere verbal
obeisance: God's creative sustenance of
the world is held to be a fact, but one that makes no visible difference. What could it be, then, about the world the
existence or reality of which is owing to the operation of scientific law? The
occasionalist answer is:
Everything. And if the view of
creation and conservation we are presupposing is correct, that has to be the
right answer.
Our task, then, is to
argue that this picture of occasionalism, contrary to appearances, does not
undermine the integrity of science. In
the context of the preceding discussion of this section, this task amounts to
the task of showing that the unanalyzability position on causation is not, in
the end, troubling to occasionalism. The
issue is what an acceptable, yet unanalyzable, notion of causation might come
to, and our task in the next section is to answer this question.
4. Why
Causality Cannot be Diachronic
We can begin by
noting how strong the tension appears to be between science and occasionalism,
given the last few paragraphs above. How
can it be that God is really responsible for everything, given that scientific laws
may be used to predict and control the course of events? The laws of heat transfer, vapor pressure
<I think?>, etc. assure us
that the water will boil if heated sufficiently, and the laws of dynamics are
what we exploit when, by controlling the motion of the cue ball, we determine
that of the object ball. And surely the
natural way to understand this is in terms of a model of causation on which
events that occur at one time are responsible for the existence of those
that follow. Indeed, if we ignore for
the moment such phenomena as quantum indeterminacy, then the operation of
scientific laws seems to settle all questions as to how the future will
go. The event of the water's being
heated makes it boil, and by controlling the motion of the cue ball we bring
it about that the object ball moves in a certain way. What is it to make such claims, if not to say
that given the way they are acted upon, the water and the object ball must
react as they do? And what is this if not to say that the events we count as
causes are responsible for the reality of their effects? In short, the very idea that what occurs in
the world is to be explained by the operation of scientific laws appears to
carry with it the implication that to the extent any sequence of events is
governed by such laws, the later events in it owe there existence to the causal
activity of earlier ones.
Upon scrutiny,
however, this conception turns out to be fraught with problems. Central to it is the idea that causation is
diachronic: that any event which serves to cause another occurs earlier than
its effect. Perhaps the leading exponent
of this idea was Hume, who held that any cause must be temporally contiguous
with its effect. But temporal contiguity
is difficult to secure if we follow the usual practice of understanding time as
densely continuous. Consider a pair of
events, e and e', and suppose the former occurs before the
latter. One way to interpret this
supposition is understand e and e' as point events, the first
occurring at an instant t and the second at t'. Now either there
is an interval between t and t' or not. If there is, then e occurs before e',
but the two are not contiguous; if there is no interval, then the density of
time requires that t=t', so that e and e' become
simultaneous. If causation is
diachronic, therefore, only the situation in which there is a temporal interval
between e and e' would permit a causal relation between the
two. Yet this seems impossible. For if
we take the relation to be direct, so that e is held to be responsible
for the existence of e' without the assistance of any intervening
events, we are calling for e to do something--i.e., bring e' into
existence--at a time when e no longer exists. Such temporal action at a distance is even
more offensive than the spatial variety.
Nothing can exercise direct causal efficacy if it does not exist at the
time of the exercise. So if e and
e' are point events occurring at different times, there is no direct
causal relation between them.
Perhaps, then, the
supposed causal relation is indirect:
perhaps, that is, the causal efficacy of e with regard to the
existence of e' is mediated through intervening events. But this supposition simply raises the same
problem again, at least if the events that are thought to intervene are
themselves point events. For any pair of
these will either be separated by a temporal interval or not. If so they cannot share a direct causal
relation, and if not they must be simultaneous.
In short, no pair of point events that occur at different times can
enter into a direct relation whereby one is responsible for the existence of
the other. If such a productive relation
obtains between point events at all, it has to count as simultaneous, not
diachronic, causation. Furthermore, even
if there are simultaneous causal relations between point events, that would
still provide no reason for thinking our temporally separate events e
and e' share any causal relation, even an indirect one. For indirect causation is here conceived
simply as a situation where the causal efficacy of e is, as it were,
transmitted to the time at which e' appears by the supposed diachronic
causal efficacy of intervening point events.
But there is no such thing as the latter. Hence we have as yet no reason
for thinking even that there is such a thing as indirect, diachronic causation
among point events.
If diachronic
causation between events is to find metaphysical acceptability, it will require
events which are understood to exist for more than an instant: that is, events
which endure or last through the time of their occurrence, or which occupy
stretches of time. And there is every
reason to think events must have some such feature. There is no harm in thinking of the states
of entities--for example, this paper's being white--as events, but events in the
strict sense are changes. And for
a change to occur, something has to go from having one property to having a
contrary one: this paper could fade from
white to yellow, the velocity of a billiard ball could change from 3 ft./sec.
to 2 ft./sec.[xiv] Since contrary properties cannot be held
simultaneously, this means point events are in reality abstractions. Anything properly referred to as an event
must involve temporal transition.[xv] Is it possible that events conceived as
involving temporal transition could enter into diachronic causal
relations? We think not, but the issue
is complicated. One complication arises
from the fact that there are two entirely different ways of understanding the
relationship between events and temporal transition. Events may be conceived either as enduring
through time, or as spread out in it, and it is important not to confuse these
conceptions. Let us consider them in
turn.
Conceived as enduring
through time, events turn out to be a type of abstract particular: that is, they are individual accidents of
change.[xvi] Examples are things such as the motion of a
billiard ball, the increase in temperature of a pot of water, someone's singing
of a song. Abstract particulars are
instantiations of universal properties, and are incapable of existing
independently: rather, an abstract
particular belongs to or exists in the entity of which its corresponding
universal is predicated. Thus the motion
belongs to the billiard ball, the singing to the singer, etc. Now the peculiar thing about events conceived
as abstract particulars is that even though change requires a transition
between properties, and hence "takes time," the event which is the
abstract particular belongs in its
entirety to its subject throughout the interval of the transition.[xvii] If John sings, there is nothing of the
property of singing that is lacking to him at any point during the interval of
his activity, even if the song he sings takes five minutes. Rather, the singing is fully there throughout
the interval. One sign of this is that
the singing itself can change during the interval: it can become louder or softer. And it would be impossible for it to change
in this way--to have one volume at one time and another at another--were it not
present at those times. Similarly, the
movement of a billiard ball has to be entirely present during the interval of
movement, even though the ball cannot, in one instant, traverse any space. That is, the ball can be moving at a
point in time, even though it does not cover any distance at that time.[xviii] That is why its motion can be said to begin,
last and end, to change velocity, etc.
In short, individual accidents of change relate to time in the same way
as the entities in which they inhere:
they endure or last, being entirely present at each moment of their
duration.
Unfortunately,
however, events that are abstract particulars offer little help with the
problem of diachronic causation. For
suppose we now that e and e' to be such events. Despite the fact that neither will now count
as instananeous, any effort to postulate a cuasal relation between them appears
to encounter the same difficulty that occurs with point events. For the temporal intervals during which e
and e' endure must either overlap or not. Suppose they do not, and let e be the
earlier event. If we now let t
and t' be, respectively, the last instant of the duration of and the first of that of e', then t<t',
since only then will it be the case that the events do not overlap. But then given the density of time there is
again an interval between t and t', which again requires that any
productive relationship between e and e' be either at a distance
or indirect. The former is impossible,
and the latter can obtain only if intervening events are postulated to occupy the
interval between t and t'.
But of course these will only raise the same problem yet again, as long
as they are held always to occupy distinct temporal intervals.
Consider, then, our
other alternative: that the durations of
e and e' overlap. And let and t now be the first and last
instants of the interval during which both events exist. Nothing said so far rules out a relationship
wherein e might be held responsible for the existence of e'. But neither do we have any reason for
thinking such a relationship would count as an instance of diachronic
causation. Certainly we would not think
so if, as it turned out, e and e' were not just overlapping but
identical in their duration, e and e' marking the beginning and
end of both. But suppose we try to
ignore this possibility. Let it be the
case that e began before t, and hence before e'; and let
us have e' go on existing after t', and hence after e has
ceased to be. Now we might wish to claim
some diachronicity here, inasmuch as e' does persist after the cessation
of e. But even if this is
conceded, it should not be taken to mean that the latter stages of the
existence of e' are owing to causal efficacy that is directly exercised
by e after it has ceased to exist.
Any direct productivity of e with respect to e' has to
cease with the cessation of e, at t'; nor could it be accorded
ontological reality before t, when e' begins to exist. To deviate from this would only raise the
difficulty of action at a temporal distance all over again. So even if the
durations of e and e' are merely overlapping, any ontological
relation wherein the former could be held responsible for the existence of the
latter would have to be confined, as far as its own reality is concerned, to
the interval during which both exist.
Obviously, such a situation has the look not of diachronic but of
simultaneous causation.
The picture changes
little if, instead of thinking of events as enduring through time, we think of
them as extended in it. On this
conception of events, time is analogized to space, and events are viewed as
occupying segments of time in much the way physical substances occupy volumes
of space. As thus conceived, events do
not endure in the proper sense--i.e., in the sense which involves temporal
passage--for endurance requires that the entire entity be present at each
instant of the stretch of time through which it endures. A temporally extended entity can no more be
present in its entirety at each instant of the stretch of time it occupies than
a physical body can be wholly present at each point within its own spatial
volume. It is wholly present only within
a segment of time, the segment whose boundaries measure the change that
constitutes the event. The world of
temporally extended events is a world without temporal passage, one concerning
which all truths are eternal.
It is not, however, a
world more congenial to the idea of temporal contiguity, for time does not lose
the characteristic of density by virtue of being analogized to space. Hence if we now take e and e'
to be temporally extended events, their temporal boundaries will either have to
overlap or not. If not, then there will
be a temporal interval between e and e', and any relationship
whereby one could be responsible for the existence of the other will again have
to be either indirect or at a distance.
If, for example, we let e be the event of a cue ball moving from
position pl to p2 on a billiard table, and let e' be the object ball's
moving from p3 to p4, then if t is the first instant when the cue ball
is at p2 and t' the last instant when the object ball is at p3, we will
be able to have the cue ball's movement end before that of the object ball
begins only by having an interval between t and t'. And this will
rob any claim of a direct causal relation between the two movements of
plausibility. If on the other hand we
postulate overlapping temporal intervals for the two movements, the claim that
the causal relation is diachronic will lose plausibility, since only during the
period of overlap does it seem plausible to postulate a relation whereby e
could in any way be considered responsible for the existence of e'.
Finally, we should
note that the situation is not significantly improved if, instead of treating
the temporal boundaries of events as internal to them, we treat their
boundaries as external. The first of these viewpoints, which has guided our
discussion thus far, is the more normal.
On it, events are understood to have first and last instants, and these
temporal boundaries belong to the duration of the event in question. This is the conception we follow when we take
t to be the first moment of the cue ball's being at its new position p2,
and t' to be the last instant the object ball is at p3' and then take
the two balls' being in these positions as parts of their respective
movements. Now it can be argued that it
is only because we insist on treating events in this way that we fail to find
any that are temporally contiguous. For
once we treat a pair of events as externally bounded we cannot even speak of
the termination of one and the onset of the other without specifying the
instants t and t' as belonging to the durations of e and e',
and once this is done the density of time entails that e and e'
must either overlap or occur at a temporal distance. But, the argument continues, it is not
necessarily to treat the temporal boundaries of events as internal. We could take t, the first instant the
cue ball is at p2, as external to its movement from pl to p2, and similarly for
t', the last instant the object ball is at p3. The price of so doing is that we may no
longer say the movement of the cue ball has a last instant, or that the
movement of the object ball has a first. But, it is claimed, we can now
hold that the events are contiguous. For
we can now let t=t' without danger of temporal overlap, since
this instant now belongs to neither event. Yet, since all the times surrounding this
instant are times at which one or the other ball is in motion, there will now
be no temporal interval between the two events.
Hence we can now take the first event to cause the second without danger
of the causal relation being either simultaneous or at a distance.
One way of responding
to this suggestion is to point out that the assumption on which it is based--that
events are externally bounded--is implausible. It may be acceptable to treat
intervals of time, considered abstractly, as externally bounded by
instants. But events are supposed to be
real changes in the world, in which an entity goes from having some property to
having a contrary one. It seems
unreasonable to define events as transitions between contrary properties and
then exclude the having of either property from participation in the
ontological makeup of the event.[xix] But the proponent of event causality need not
be deterred. As long as we understand
the externally bounded entities described above as the true participants in
causal relations, she might argue, it doesn't matter what they are called. The point is just that they are bound together
in a relation wherein one gives rise to the other.
We would, however,
question whether such a relation could exist.
It must be remembered here that this relation is supposed to be
direct: the prior event must be
responsible for the existence of the later one without intermediaries, without
its causa efficacy being transmitted through intervening events. With this in mind, consider again the motions
of the cue ball and the object ball, understanding these to be
"separated" by the temporal discontinuity t (=t'). It is true that this separation introduces no
interval between the events. But it is
also true that neither the motion of the cue ball nor that of the object
ball exists at t. And the
directness of the supposed relation between them precludes there being some
other event whose duration includes t, by means of which the supposed
causal efficacy of the first is transmitted.
But then, we claim, the first event cannot cause the second, for there
is a point in time at which neither exists, and yet nothing else occurs which
may bind the two. That is, we hold that
a temporal discontinuity like t is, as far as the ontology of causation
is concerned, the same as a temporal interval.
It renders any productive relation between the events it separates
impossible. Furthermore, even if there were such a relation it could not, on
the present supposition, extend to the states like those which terminate the
supposed cause and effect--i.e., the state of the cue ball's first being at p2'
and the object ball's first being at p4.
Yet causality is usually taken to be responsible for the existence of
states like these, along with the transitions by which they are reached.
There is one last
resort that might be suggested at this point:
perhaps we should understand events to be bounded internally at one
terminus and externally at the other.
For example, we could take the first instant the cue ball is at p2 as
internal to its moving to that position, but then take the last instant of the
object ball's presence at p3 as externally bounding its motion. On this
account the two instants can be allowed to be identical without
postulating a temporal discontinuity between the events. The instant in question is the last of the
duration of the cue ball's motion, and the motion of the object ball is
understood to have no first instant.
Here at last, it might be thought, we have a pair of events that are
temporally contiguous, and so can be causally related. We cannot, of course, think of the productive
relation as obtaining between the last instant of the cue ball's motion and the
first of that of the object ball, since the motion of the object ball cannot
now be said to have a first instant of duration. However, it might be claimed, we can treat
the causal efficacy of the cue ball's motion as extending ahead to nearby
instants: that is, it may be held to
operate from the last instant of the first movement's duration to some
arbitrarily close point in the future, enough to get the object ball's motion
underway. Presumably, the latter would
then continue inertially, so that the causal efficacy of the cue ball's motion
would no longer be needed to explain it.[xx]
We think, however,
that any initial plausibility this view may have disappears under
scrutiny. In part, the position is
objectionable for its shear arbitrariness.
One could as easily have made the reverse claim, for example, about how
the two events are bounded, specifying a first instant for the object ball's
motion and no last one for that of the cue ball. Causal efficacy would then be held to extend
from the final stages of the first motion to the first instant of the
second. There does not appear to be a
way of deciding between these interpretations, and that in itself is reason for
thinking the supposed productive relation is bogus. A further point of arbitrariness lies in the
claim that the causal efficacy of the first event extends to some nearby point
in the future. The reason for this seems
clear. There is, on the one hand, no
conceivable reason for assigning one specific duration rather than another to
causal efficacy; yet to deny it any limit at all would be to allow events
direct causal efficacy as far into the future as one might like--the very sort
of thing we have been at pains to reject.
And this is where the decisive failure of the view emerges. The truth is that to claim a direct
productive relation extends from some point t--in this case the final
instant of the cue ball's motion--to all temporal points in the arbitrarily
near future is to make nothing but a claim that there is direct causal
action at a temporal distance. What
makes it possible to convince oneself otherwise is the supposition that as long
as the productivity extends to all points in the near future it must
extend to whatever point is adjacent to t, thence to the next, and so
forth, so that no real action at a distance will have occurred. But that is wrong. The fact is, rather, that
once t is specified, there is no adjacent point. Each and every point in time to which
the causal efficacy of the cue ball's motion might be held to extend is at a
distance from t. The supposed
efficacy cannot be manifested except at a temporal distance, and that is
precisely what is we have denied is possible.
We conclude that
there is no direct, diachronic relation of productivity between events. Internally bounded events cannot be
temporally contiguous, and so cannot share direct productive relations except
on pain of there being causation at a temporal distance, which is impossible.
The introduction of external boundaries can, if mixed with the internal
variety, produce a situation in which pairs of events might be considered
temporally contiguous, but the resulting picture of events seems arbitrary, and
despite initial appearances the problem of temporal distance remains. So if there are any productive relations
between events, they have to be simultaneous, not diachronic.
So, suppose that
causation is understood, not as some diachronic process between events, but
rather as a simultaneous relation between events. This picture of unanalyzable causation makes
it quite easy to reconcile science with occasionalism. For any relation presupposes the existence of
its relata, rather than accounting for the existence of them, so if
causation is a simultaneous relation between events, it simply cannot be
appealed to in order to account for the existence of the events
themselves. And without this capacity to
explain the existence of the events, science must give up any last pretensions
about what it is capable to doing that might be in tension with the
occasionalist view that God is ultimately and directly responsible for
everything.
5. Conclusion
What to say here,
we'll have to see.
NOTES
[i]See
Kvanvig and McCann, "Divine Conservation and the Persistence of the
World," in Divine and Human Action:
Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, Thomas V. Morris, ed., (Notre
Dame, 1988), pp. 1-37.
[iii]Indeterminacy
issues aside, that is. When
indeterminacy issues arise, an object is complete only if it is indeterminate
with respect to both P and its complement.
[iv]Christians,
for example, are committed to the active intervention by God in the course of
human history in the person of Jesus Christ.
[vi]Philip
Quinn, "Divine Conservation, Secondary Causes, and Occasionalism," in
Thomas V. Morris, ed., Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism,
(Ithaca, 1989), pp. 50-73.
[vii]For
a discussion of the purported circularity of these accounts, and an attempt to
draw philosophical conclusions from the purported circularity, see Robert M.
Adams, "Time and Thisness," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11
(1986), pp. 315-29.
[xi]See,
for example, Bertrand Russell, "On the Notion of Cause," in Mysticism
and Logic, (Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, ????); Mark Steiner,
"Events and Causality," The Journal of Philosophy 83.5 (May
1986), pp. 249-264; and Alexander Rosenberg, "Discussion: Russell Versus Steiner on Physics and
Causality," Philosophy of Science, 56 (1989), pp. 341-347.
[xii]For
a defense of the claim that any analysis of causation in terms of conditionals
is compatible with occasionalism, see Philip Quinn, "Divine Causation,
Secondary Causes, and Occasionalism."
[xiii]It
is interesting to note that historic occasionalists, such as Malebranche and
Berkeley, have no use for the position that causation is analyzable. Their view, instead, is that the only real
causation there is results from the hand of God, and that any regularities in
nature, expressed by whatever conditional formulation one might like, always
fall short of the stuff of which causation is made.