Diversity in “Cause”

Abstract

This chapter applies the diagnostic lessons of the previous chapter to familiar philosophical controversies with respect to causation, in which the word “cause” appears to highlight different forms of physical circumstance depending upon the context in which it is employed. By examining the modeling of billiard ball behavior from a multiscalar point of view, it becomes easy to appreciate why “cause” must naturally adapt its referential attachments in a variable manner, for essentially the same “division in linguistic labor” reasons that lead the word “force” to distinct forms of applicational attachment. Often we fail to notice the tacit structural safeguards that render such context-sensitive patterns of usage effective within our everyday employments. This chapter then argues that conceptual analyses of this “division of labor” character supply better answers to many of the standard “small metaphysics” issues that arise whenever a natural language gradually increases it applicational scope. From this perspective, the standards of “ersatz rigor” associated with theory T conceptions of philosophical analysis rest upon a faulty diagnosis of how the conceptual tensions of everyday life should be remedied, in a manner analogous to Hertz’s mistaken embrace of single-leveled axiomatics.