Re: BHA:reasons as causes

[lynne engelskirchen <lhengels@xxxxxxx>]

6 weeks ago I wrote to ask what there was in CR or DCR that depended on a
strong concept of reasons as efficient causes, that is, as the agent of
change the way lightning is an efficient cause of fire.  I used the example
presented by Anthony Kenny in Freewill and REsponsibility: while not eating
is a cause of death, hunger is a reason, not a cause, of eating.  (Kenny's
example is better than his explanation -- he argues that reasons can't be
causes because they do not meet the requirements of a Humean "covering
law."  I also mentioned that no one, and not Kenny, would challenge the
idea that reasons were final causes capable of explaining the purpose
behind an action.)

Reading the following snippet from Marx, The HOly Family, CW 4, 129, raised
the issue for me again:

"Body, being, substance, are but different terms for the same reality.  It
is impossible to separate the thought from the matter that thinks.  This
matter is the substratum of all changes going on in the world."

Applying this insight:  hunger (in the sense of a reason to eat) cannot be
a cause of eating the way lightning is a cause of fire or not eating a
cause of death because it cannot be separated from matter that thinks.  Not
eating is something that matter that thinks *does.*  Hunger is something
that matter that thinks *thinks*.  Not eating is efficiently causal in that
it sets in motion the biological processes that lead to death.  It's
matter's "doing" that changes the world, though it's the intending that
makes the doing human.

?


Howard




     --- from list bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---