Socratic Logic - Induction

Causality

The following are the notes I have taken from Peter Kreeft's wonderful Socratic Logic textbook. I highly recommend you buy it. This is a book which deals with classical logic (as opposed to modern symbolic logic.) It is easily the best overall book on logic I have ever read and one of the few I have that are worth making notes from. I even have a small duotang with these notes in it I can carry around and reference on a regular basis.

Aristotle defined science as "explaining things by discovering their causes."

Before looking at causality need to make give distinctions:

A. Real causes from logical "becauses" (causes of a thing being from causes of our knowledge of it.)

B. Modern science seeks efficient and material causes, not formal or final causes.

C. Reasoning from cause to effect versus reasoning from effect to cause.  Science is usually effect to cause.

D. Distinguish necessary causes from efficient causes

1. Necessary causes are causes without which the effect could not happen.

2. Efficient / Sufficient causes are causes with which the effect must happen.

E. Distinguish between ultimate/remote/first causes and proximate/immediate/second causes

1. Ultimate cause of evolution is God.

2. Proximate cause of evolution is natural selection.

3. Science can only give proximate causes, need philosophy or theology to find ultimate causes.

 

Mill's Five Canons of Causal Induction

A. First Canon - Method of Agreement

1. If two or more instances of the phenomena under investigation have only one circumstance in common, that circumstance is the cause or effect of the phenomena.

B. Second Canon - Method of Difference

1. If an instance in which the phenomena under investigation happens, and an instance in which it does not occur, and they have every circumstance in common save one, the one in which the two differ is the cause or effect.

C. Third Canon - Joint Method of Agreement and Difference

1. If two or more instances of a phenomena occurs have only one circumstance in common, while in two or more has instances in which it does not occur, the lone circumstance in which they differ is the cause or effect.

D. Fourth Canon - Method of Residues

1. Subtract from any phenomena such part as known by previous inductions to the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomena is the effect of the remaining antecedents.

E. Fifth Canon - Method of Concomitant Variations

Whatever phenomena varies in any manner whenever another phenomena varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or effect of that phenomena OR it is connected with it through some fact of causation.

Limitations of Mill's Methods

A. The number of circumstances is potentially infinite, no case has 'only 1 circumstance in common."

B. Does not tell us how to judge which of the many circumstances are relevant.