As Law of Universal Causation or Principle of Universal Causation (PUC) Even among epistemologists, the existence of such a rule is controversial. Thus the “Axiom of Causality” claims to be a universal rule that is so obvious that it does not need to be proved to be accepted. CriticismĪn epistemological axiom is a self-evident truth. ExampleĮxample for the axiom: if a baseball is moving through the air, it must be moving this way because of a previous interaction with another object, such as being hit by a baseball bat. Whewell writes that the first axiom is so clear that it requires no proof if only the idea of cause is understood. To every action there is an equal and opposed reaction.The magnitude of an effect is proportional to the magnitude of its cause.As axioms of causalityĪccording to William Whewell (hypothetico-deductivist view) the concept of universal causation depends on three axioms: Philosophers who do believe in exception-less, universal, fundamental laws of nature are in recent times more often referred to as “fundamentalists”, however these who present “anti-laws” efforts (for instance showing that in many cases laws of sciences are ceteris paribus laws) “pluralists” are in the minority.
In 1927 Russell writes that the notion of universal causation marks the beginnings of science and philosophy. However his position on universal causation evolved and “was not as naive as it may have appeared”. In contrast, Bertrand Russell argued (in 1912) that the law of causation as usually stated by philosophers is false and is not used in sciences (maybe with exception of their infancy).
Alexander Spirkin in “Dialectical Materialism”, 1984 Nowhere in the world can there be any phenomena that do not give rise to certain consequences and have not been caused by other phenomena. In addition, everything that becomes or changes must do so owing to some cause for nothing can come to be without a cause. The idea of universal causation is formulated in western philosophy similarly for ages, however the formulations contain some profound differences in methodology and philosophical assumptions. If an object is in a certain state, then it is in that state as a result of another object interacting with it previously. This means that if a given event occurs, then this is the result of a previous, related event. Universal causation is the proposition that everything in the universe has a cause and is thus an effect of that cause. The cosmological argument is closely related to the principle of sufficient reason as addressed by Gottfried Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, itself a modern exposition of the claim that “nothing comes from nothing” attributed to Parmenides.Ĭause Effect Causation Universal Causation The history of this argument goes back to Aristotle or earlier, was developed in Neoplatonism and early Christianity and later in medieval Islamic theology during the 9th to 12th centuries, and was re-introduced to medieval Christian theology in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas. The conclusion of these arguments is first cause (for whichever group of things it is being argued must have a cause or explanation), subsequently deemed to be God. The basic premises of all of these arguments involve the concept of causation. Whichever term is employed, there are three basic variants of the argument, each with subtle yet important distinctions: the arguments from in causa ( causality), in esse (essentiality), and in fieri (becoming). In the existence of God, Argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, or the causal argument.
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