What an Efficient Cause Is
I. Preliminary Remarks
A. Suarez and the moderns
- Unlike Hume's analysis of causality, and unlike most of the prominent
contemporary analyses (e.g., those of Lewis, Mackie, Tooley, etc.), Suarez's
definition is not meant to be reductive. That is, he does not mean to analyze
causality in non-causal terms. Thus, he is not trying to replace causality
with some philosophically more tame or less metaphysical concept like constant
conjunction, regularity, counterfactual dependence, change in probability,
etc. Indeed, it is precisely in order to avoid the notion of action, which
stands at the heart of Suarez's analysis, that these modern theories have
been developed. Hume's analysis was self-consciously aimed at avoiding
the metaphysical implications of the notion of action and also of what
he (perhaps mistakenly) saw to be the intimately related notion of causal
or natural necessity.
- In giving his analysis, Suarez presupposes that what we ordinarily
take to be instances of causality in nature are just that. He argues for
this presupposition in section 1 of Metaphysical Disputation 18, but for present purposes
he is assuming that we have enough paradigmatic instances clearly in mind
in order to construct an illuminating definition or, better, explication.
B. Creation ex nihilo
- At a certain point in his discussion Suarez makes adjustments that
are conceptually required in order for creation ex nihilo to count
as an instance of efficient causality. Notice that these moves do not by
themselves assume that creation ex nihilo is indeed metaphysically
possible. Rather, they assume simply that if there is or can be
such a thing as creation ex nihilo, then it should count as an instance
of efficient causality. This seems rather modest and wholly acceptable.
- This concern with creation explains, by the way, why Suarez talks about
the communication of esse rather than about the communication of
form. If every instance of efficient causality involved an agent acting
on a patient, then we could simply speak of the communication of form to
the patient that serves as matter of the change in question. However, creation
is an action but not an action on an antecedently existing patient or matter.
In the case where the effect of creation is a material substance, creation
brings into being both the form and the matter. Hence, Suarez uses the
more general term esse for the perfection communicated in efficient
causality, rather than the more specific term form. However, whenever
a created efficient cause acts (at least naturally), the terminus of its
action is always esse qua form, be it a substantival form,
or an accidental form, or (perhaps) a mode.
II. Reworking Aristotle's Definition
- What we have in this section is a carefully crafted reworking of Aristotle's
characterization of an efficient cause as that 'whence there is a first
beginning of change or rest'. At each step Suarez makes an emendation and
then raises a problem that leads to a further emendation.
- Step One:
- Proposal: An efficient cause is that whence there is a first
beginning of change or rest.
- Problem: This definition does not contain a proper genus.
- Solution: Replace 'whence' with the term 'per se principle'.
'Principle' defines a general category under which all the various sorts
of causal or explanatory notions fall. Literally, it means 'source' or
'beginning'. (Later on in section two Suarez will distinguish a principle
quod from a principle quo. This amounts to a distinction
between (a) the substance which (quod) is the agent in a given
case of efficient causality and (b) the power or habit or faculty by which
the substance acts. However, this distinction does not come into play at
present.) The particle per se is meant to exclude anything (or any
description) which is only accidentally related to the effect produced.
For instance, if a doctor builds a house, he does so as a human being or
as a builder, but not as a doctor. That is, his being a doctor is accidental
or per accidens with respect to this particular instance of efficient
causality. The term 'doctor' connotes a human being as having a certain
set of powers, habits, and dispositions which define the medical art he
possesses and is irrelevant to his house-building activity. So the principle
quod here is best captured either by a natural kind term which leaves
open just what the relevant principle quo is ('human being') or
by a term which connotes the relevant powers ('builder').
- Step Two:
- Proposal: An efficient cause is a per se principle
from which a change first exists or comes to exist.
- Problem: The definiens here is common to causes other than efficient
causes, in particular the matter or material cause, since the matter, like
the agent, exists antecedently to the change or exercise of efficient causality.
It is not enough to point out that the matter itself must first be made
to exist by an exercise of efficient causality, since the same holds for
all secondary (i.e., non-divine) efficient causes as well.
- Solution: The efficient cause is at least conceptually prior
to the matter, in that the matter receives because the agent acts,
but not vice versa. So this is a legitimate sense in which the efficient
cause is first and the matter is not. Further, the efficient cause
is an extrinsic principle, unlike matter and form, which are intrinsic
principles or causes. Later on, Suarez clarifies this further by pointing out that the
matter and the form communicate their own esse to the composite,
whose own esse derives from or includes that of the matter and the
form. By contrast, the efficient cause communicates an esse that
is numerically distinct from its own -- and this whether we are speaking
of the principle quod or the principle quo.
- Step Three:
- Proposal: An efficient cause is a per se and extrinsic
principle from which a change first exists or comes to exist.
- Problem: The definiens seems to apply to the final cause or
end rather than to the efficient cause, since the end is that for the sake
of which an efficient cause acts and is thus prior to the latter. In short,
an efficient cause 'aims at' a certain terminus. Note that the Aristotelian
picture has a dynamism packed into it that later anti-Aristotelians found
fit to reject. Some of them (Descartes) limited change to local motion,
where finality is perhaps least evident; others (Hume) simply rebelled
against metaphysics in general; still others (Malebranche, Berkeley) saw
the connection between finality and efficiency and limited agency to God
alone or to God and rational agents alone. What they all deny--or at any
rate are agnostic about--is dynamism and real action in nature.
- Solution: The efficient cause is first in execution and it alone
has a real moving influence. The particle 'from which' is already sufficient
to mark this difference, since the end is that for the sake of which
a change exists, but not that from which a change exists. So no
emendation is called for.
- Step Four:
- Proposal: An efficient cause is a per se and extrinsic
principle from which a change first exists or comes to exist.
- Problem: (1) This definition applies only to the First Cause,
since no other cause is first, strictly speaking. (2) This definition does
not apply to creation, since creation is not a change.
- Solution: (1) By 'first' we mean first within a given genus
or order of causes. So it can apply to any principal cause, and indeed
to any instrumental cause, advising cause, or disposing cause--in short,
to any cause that acts and thereby contributes to some effect. So each
genuine efficient cause will be 'first' with respect to some effect or
other within some order or genus of efficient causality. (There is some
question here about instrumental causes, but this will be dealt with in
the next section.) (2) This objection is well taken, and to accommodate
it we should speak of action instead of change.
- Step Five:
- Proposal: An efficient cause is a per se and extrinsic
principle from which an action first exists or comes to exist.
Alternative 1: An efficient cause is a first per se and
extrinsic principle from which an effect flows forth, or on which an effect
depends, by means of an action.
Alternative 2: An efficient cause is a first per se
and extrinsic principle from which an effect receives its own distinct
esse by means of an action.
- Problem: What an action is is just as obscure as what an efficient
cause is.
- Solution: At the level of generality at which we are now operating,
it is sufficient to understand by the term 'action' the effect's emanation
from and dependence on its extrinsic cause. Thus, we need not make explicit
mention of the effect in the formula, although we may ala the second alternative.
Later, in Disputation 18, Section 10, we will say more about what an action
is. (It will turn out that an action is a mode of the effect that has an
essential relation to the agent as actually acting -- and it is this mode
which is the agent's causality.)
- Lingering questions:
- How are we to 'picture' the causal relation? Is some entity transferred
from the agent to the patient?
- How can an action be a real modification of the patient or effect and
not of the agent? Does this make sense?
- How is this conception of causality related to notions such as constant
conjunction, spatial continguity, regularity, counterfactual dependence,
and variations in the probabilities of the effect-events?
- Isn't it events, rather than substances, powers, and esse, that
are the relata of the causal relation?
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