Causality

CAUSALITY. The problem of causality. One of the most important problems of materialist dialectics is the problem of C. "Its importance stems from the role it plays in social practice, in the process of scientific cognition. This circumstance led to the fact that the problem of C. occupied a prominent place in the history of philosophy, the history of science. There were hardly any among prominent philosophers and natural scientists who did not pay due attention to it. The analysis of the problem of C. in almost all philosophers was connected with the development of the entire philosophical system as a whole. In our era, interest in the problem of C. manifested itself especially at the end of the last century and after the World War—both times in connection with social upheavals and the feverish development of the natural sciences. In recent years, we are witnessing abroad the struggle between Machist and spontaneously materialist trends on the question of C. Schrödinger, Frank, Winterstein and others in their works revive Mach's attempts. Schrödinger, in full accordance with Mach's theory, questions the possibility of a causal understanding of nature. In its place he puts forward an acausal one. The formulation of the question by Schrödinger caused a heated protest from Planck, who for decades fought—far from consistently—with Mach and his followers. Planck quite rightly asserts that Schrödinger's thought about an acausal understanding of nature is "heavy in its consequences", that it may have a "fatal effect", that without the premise that there exists an external world and that causality operates in it, no theory is possible. The general character of all modern theories of C. of bourgeois scientists and philosophers corresponds to the limitations of bourgeois thinking. The understanding of C. among them is idealistic. At best, they rise to a mechanical interpretation of it. No less attention is paid to the problem of C. by modern bourgeois sociologists, economists, etc. Their tendency is directed toward clarifying the regularity, causal conditioning of such complex social phenomena as war, crises, etc. A common feature of all these attempts, theories is idealism, eclecticism, metaphysics, sterility. Marxism alone provides the correct theory of C. In the works of the founders of Marxism we have a detailed, richest analysis and categories of cause. After Marx, Engels, the works of Lenin and Stalin are outstanding milestones, a new stage in the development of Marxism, in the elaboration of materialist dialectics. The analysis of the problem of C. must begin with clarifying the content of the problem. The basic question with which the researcher must begin is the question of the place of the problem of C. in philosophy and its history. Marxism in its resolution proceeds from the recognition that the basic question of philosophy is the problem of the relation of being and thought. The resolution of the basic question of philosophy also determines the solution of the problem of C. Therefore Lenin's words are understandable, that "the question of C. has especially important significance for determining the philosophical line of this or that newest 'ism'" (Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd ed., vol. XIII, M-L., 1928, p. 126). The resolution of this question leads to the analysis of C. in the light of the Marxist-Leninian theory of reflection. C. is considered by Marxism not as a subjective form of human consciousness, but as a reflection in human consciousness of the forms of connection of reality itself. Directly connected with this is the clarification of the place of C. in the system of categories of Marxist logic. The significance of this question is determined by the fact that the category of cause is one of the stages of cognition of the universal connection of reality, that it has no self-sufficient value, but only in a series of other categories. Further, the analysis of the content of the problem must have as its subject the question of the forms of C. in connection with the question of the forms of motion, clarification of the specificity of C. in individual areas of scientific knowledge. The uncovering of the specific character of C. in the natural sciences or in social life is connected with the resolution of a number of other questions: is cause a thing or a relation, does cause precede the action or is it simultaneous with it, is univocal correspondence between cause and effect established by the causal relation (Petzoldt), is cause understood as the totality of conditions (Mill and others), in what relation does C. stand to basis, condition, occasion, what is the interrelation between C. and chance, C. and purposefulness, C. and regularity, etc. A certain form of motion of matter determines and a concrete approach to the resolution of the question. Clarification of the essence of the causal connection in one or another sphere raises further the question of the ways of finding causal connections. Here we are faced with clarifying the comparative role of the method of scientific cognition—dialectics—and various auxiliary methods in general and the role of each technical method in particular. It is sufficient to recall that Mach considered the concept of functional connection and the method of concomitant variations as the basic method of scientific research, that Mill as basic methods of finding cause put forward the well-known four methods of inductive logic. The concluding problem of C. is the question of proving the found causal relation, the universality of the law of C. The entire analysis of the problem presupposes the study of the development of the concept of C. in the history of society, the history of philosophy and science. The roughly sketched content of the problem of C. speaks of its extraordinary complexity, breadth, depth, of its great importance for the researcher, the practitioner. In the history of modern philosophy, science we will not meet a single more or less prominent thinker who would have passed by the problem of C. Moreover, in almost all philosophical systems the problem of C. occupies an essential place. But it would be incorrect to assert, developed by some (Varlash and others), that the problem of C. is the basic one in philosophy and its history. The most important problem of philosophy, the basic question in the history of philosophy is the problem of nature and spirit, being and thought. Even among those philosophers who almost exclusively dealt with the question of C., for example Hume, it has an auxiliary character, contributing to the clarification of the basic theoretical-cognitive problem. Along this basic, decisive line and in the area of the question of C. we have idealistic and materialistic trends. Hume, Kant, Hegel and others—typical representatives of the first, Bacon, Hobbes and others—representatives of the second. "The really important theoretical-cognitive question dividing philosophical directions," writes Lenin, "consists not in what degree of accuracy our descriptions of causal connections have reached..., but in whether the source of our cognition of these connections is the objective regularity of nature or the properties of our mind, its inherent ability to know certain a priori truths and so on. This is what irrevocably separates the materialists Feuerbach, Marx and Engels from the agnostics (Humeans) Avenarius and Mach" (Lenin, Collected Works, 3rd edition, vol. XIII, M-L., 1923, p. 131). Hume reduces C. to the sequence of sensations. In him the negation of substantiality leads to the negation of objective C. The concept of C., according to Hume, is obtained as a result of the habitual transition from one phenomenon to another. According to Kant, C. is a subjective category, only a form of human consciousness, it is an a priori category of the understanding. For Hegel the demiurge is the idea. Reality is subsumed under the categories of logic. C. is a stage in the development of the concept. For Mach, a follower of Hume, "in nature there is neither cause nor effect," "all forms of the law of causality proceed from subjective tendencies, for nature there is no necessity to correspond to them." According to Bogdanov, "modern positivism considers the law of causality only as a way of cognitively connecting phenomena into a continuous series, only as a form of coordinating experience." Such is one trend in the question of C. The negation of the substantiality of C., of objective C., is characteristic of it. The other—materialist trend—proceeds from the recognition of the objective regularity of C. in nature. This recognition in materialists "is in an indissoluble connection with the recognition of the objective reality of the external world, of objects, bodies, things, reflected by our consciousness" (Lenin, Collected Works, vol. XIII, p. 127). This or that solution of the question of C. in the light of the basic problem of philosophy also determines the very understanding and elaboration of the essence of the causal connection. The idealistic point of view on C. leads its adherents in the specification of the concept of C. either to a metaphysical (most philosophers, sociologists, natural scientists), or to a dialectical interpretation of it (Hegel), or to an acausal understanding of reality (Frank, Schrödinger and others), or finally to its replacement by another (functionality—Mach, conditionality—Fervorn). Vulgar materialists (Vogt, Büchner, Moleschott), mechanical materialists (French materialists, modern mechanists: Varlash, A. Timiryazev and others) develop the metaphysical point of view on C. As a rule, metaphysical materialists adhere to a mechanistic understanding of causality. Only consistent materialism—dialectical materialism—develops the only correct theory of C.—dialectical-materialistic."

Mastering reality presupposes its cognition, which in turn presupposes a certain worldview, method, and a certain instrument of cognition. Logic has always been such an instrument. In order to be a valid methodology of scientific cognition, logic must be derived "from the development of the entire life of nature and spirit." Old logic, being formal, did not observe this basic condition. Real logic, the logic of Marxism, in Lenin's words, "is the doctrine not of the external forms of thought, but of the laws of development of all material, natural and spiritual things, i.e., the development of the entire concrete content of the world and its cognition, i.e., the result, sum, conclusion of the history of the cognition of the world" (IX Lenin Collection). The content of logic is enriched with the development of society, with the development of knowledge, and of the concrete sciences. Social practice, as Lenin said, is reflected in the figures of logic, in the categories and laws of logic. The categories of logic are not empty abstractions, but "contentful forms." The categories of logic are an expression of the regularity of nature and man; they must represent "steps of isolation, i.e., of the cognition of the world, conditional points in the network, helping to cognize and master it." But all categories are not conceived as being in a disorderly connection with each other. Lenin pointed out that "categories must be derived not by narrating, not by assuring, but by proving (and not arbitrarily taking them mechanically), starting from the simplest basic ones." The categories of logic must be presented in a certain system. The order of their arrangement expresses the path of our cognition. "The task of science," according to Marx, "consists in reducing the visible, surface movement to the real inner movement." Lenin develops the same thought: "From phenomena to essence, and from less deep to deeper essence... From coexistence to causality, and from one form of connection and interdependence to another, deeper, more general" (IX Lenin Collection, p. 277). The task of cognition consists in finding laws. "Any real, exhaustive cognition," says Engels, "consists only in the fact that we in thought extract the individual from its individuality and translate it into a particular, and from this latter into universality; it consists in the fact that we find the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transient. But the form of universality is the form of self-enclosedness, and therefore of infinity; it is the connection of many finite things into infinity... The form of universality in nature is law" (Dialectics of Nature, 4th ed., M.-L., 1930, p. 105; or Marx and Engels, Works, vol. XIV, M.-L., 1931, pp. 353-354). Just as cognition proceeds from the quality of the given and, deepening, comes to law, so also the system of categories must be unfolded in the order of increasing, enriched, deepened understanding of reality, from quality, quantity to essence, causality and further to law. But this is not the path of the emergence of the concrete, as in Hegel. "...the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete," says Marx, "is only the way by which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it spiritually as concrete" (Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, M., 1933, p. 26). "Cognizing reality, uncovering categories, we proceed from subject to object, and in practice we verify the truth of what is cognized. The finding of C. [Causality] is one of the stages of cognition. To C. we come as a result of the thorough study of reality, of deepening into it." "Real cognition of cause," writes Lenin, "is the deepening of cognition from the externality of phenomena to substance." "The first thing that strikes us when we consider moving matter is the mutual connection of individual movements, individual bodies with each other, their conditioning of each other" (Dialectics of Nature, 4th ed., M.-L., 1930, p. 15). The forms of connection of reality are manifold. One of them is C. [Causality]. "Cause and effect are only moments of the universal interdependence, connection (universal) of the interweaving of events, only links in the chain of the development of matter" (XI Lenin Collection). Therefore causality "one-sidedly, fragmentarily and incompletely" expresses "the all-sidedness and all-embracing character of world connection." But the negation of the absolutization of C. [Causality] does not eliminate its great importance as a form of connection and as a form of cognition. In the process of practical cognition, we always seek what directly causes a given phenomenon. We seek the cause of the phenomenon in order to eliminate the phenomenon itself, or, conversely, in order to cause it. Marx, speaking of the transformation of possibility into reality, considers that cause is what translates a fact, under certain conditions, from possibility into reality. By uncovering the causal relation, we obtain the possibility of affecting, influencing the process and its direction. For example, by finding the cause of a disease, we obtain the possibility of stopping or weakening it. By uncovering the cause of a given crisis, clarifying the connection of the cause with the basis, we come to the conclusion that only the liquidation of the capitalist system and the establishment of socialism will destroy the basis and causes of crises, and thereby the crises themselves. The dialectical-materialist understanding of C. [Causality] was the result of all the preceding development of social practice, philosophy, and science. It overcame the limitations of metaphysics, which for many centuries was the expression of man's relation of cognition to nature. Proceeding from the metaphysical view of nature, the metaphysical understanding of C. [Causality] could not rise to the understanding of C. [Causality] as a process; it metaphysically opposed cause and effect ("Effect is entirely distinct from cause and therefore can never be discovered in it," wrote Hume); it absolutized one of the forms of C. [Causality], applying it to explain phenomena of a qualitatively different sphere. Nevertheless, the metaphysical understanding of C. [Causality] at that time represented a significant step forward in the explanation of nature. It was put forward in opposition to religious, teleological explanation. In modern times, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Spinoza, Newton and others were ardent opponents of religious, scholastic, teleological explanation of reality. For them to know meant "to know by means of causes." They, basing themselves on the most developed science of their epoch - mechanics - put forward as the only scientific the mechanistic understanding of C. [Causality]. This mechanistic understanding of causality they extended also to the organism and society. Their understanding of causality had all the features of metaphysics. The reaction against mechanistic causality was the teaching of Leibniz, Wolff, who proclaimed its limitations and the necessity of subordinating it to teleological explanation. Kant, Hegel considered mechanical C. [Causality] as a moment of purposiveness. Dialectical materialism, critically processing the bourgeois philosophical-scientific heritage preceding it, gave a new, materialistically-dialectical understanding of causality. The latter, in full accordance with the foundations of Marxist philosophy, considers causality as an objective, real connection of things existing in nature and society, inadequately reflected in our cognition, in the form of a logical category. In opposition to the metaphysical understanding of C. [Causality], materialist dialectics in it sees not "immobile opposites." Materialist dialectics considers matter in motion, things in the process of their change and therefore C. [Causality] as a process, as a relation. "A thing becomes a cause only by entering into a connection with another thing." "Only in action is the cause a cause and a real cause." Cause and effect are relative concepts. "To be objective," says Marx, "natural, sensuous is the same as to have outside oneself an object, nature, a feeling or to be oneself an object, nature, a feeling for some third being... A non-objective being is a monstrous being (Unwesen). Take some being which is not an object and has no object. Such a being would be, first, the only being, outside of which no being would exist, it would exist alone, one" (Archive of Marx and Engels, book III, M.-L., 1927, p. 267). In opposition to metaphysics, for Marxism "cause and effect are concepts which have significance only in application to a given individual case... Causes and effects constantly change places: what here and now is a cause, there or then becomes an effect or vice versa" (Anti-Dühring). In other words, the relation of cause and effect passes into interaction. But in this interaction we distinguish what produces, i.e., the cause, from what results from the causal relation, i.e., the effect. Further analysis of the concept of C. [Causality] leads to the understanding of cause as that which precedes the effect. The movement of water follows a stone thrown into the water. "It is difficult," says Lenin, "to imagine how an effect could in time precede the cause... materialism will defend the objective, regular and necessary connection between phenomena, between the preceding cause and the following effect." This moment, characterizing causality, distinguishes the Marxist interpretation from the Machist one.

Dialectical materialism understands causality, further, in accordance with the recognition of various forms of motion of matter. It insists on the necessity of distinguishing the essence of causal relations in various fields of scientific knowledge, it warns against the uncritical transfer of one form of causality into a qualitatively different sphere of phenomena. Correspondingly, it is necessary to distinguish the character of causal relations: in mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, social science. Along with common features (substantiality, causality as a relation, etc.), each form of causality will possess specific features stemming from the essence of the given form of motion. The dialectical understanding of causality, in opposition to the metaphysical, among the multitude of conditions and connections singles out the essential, necessary, and considers the cause as the determining condition. In the metaphysicians we have the viewpoint of multiplicity and equal significance of causes. The latter follows from the impossibility for the metaphysical worldview to correctly resolve the question of the essence and appearance. For the metaphysician, the subject is generated either by an equal number of other subjects or by only one cause, taken outside the concrete connection of the latter with many other conditions. The dialectical materialist, taking into account the significance of the entire mass of conditions, i.e., relations, connections, singles out the essential, necessary, determining in each given case the emergence of the subject, its transition from possibility into reality. Causality represents an essential, necessary connection between cause and effect. Finally, the dialectical-materialist understanding of causality, in opposition to the idealistic, emphasizes the significance of practice in the process of cognition. Reproducing in social-production practice the phenomena, we thereby 'create the concept of causality' and are convinced of its correctness. Hume, having established causality on habit, came to the negation of the universal validity of the law of causality, to the recognition of the doubtfulness of the conclusions obtained as a result of established causal relations. Mill believed that proof of the law of causality is possible only on condition of accounting for all possible cases. But since in his view this is impossible, Mill came to agnosticism. Goethe already said that in order to be convinced that the sky is blue, there is no need to travel around the whole world. Proof of the correctness of the found causal connection is given by practice. To logically prove causality, as Kant wanted, is impossible. 'The activity of man,' writes Engels, 'makes it possible to verify causality. If, taking a burning glass, we concentrate the sun's rays at the focus and thereby cause an effect such as is given by ordinary fire, then we thereby prove that heat emanates from the sun. If we put powder, a cap, and a bullet into a rifle and then fire, expecting an effect known beforehand from experience, then we must be able to trace in all its details the entire process of ignition, combustion, explosion from the sudden transformation into gases, the pressure of the gas on the bullet. And in this case the skeptic has no right to assert that from past experience it does not follow at all that the same thing will be repeated the next time. Indeed, sometimes the same thing does not repeat, the cap or powder refuses to work, the rifle barrel bursts, etc. But precisely this proves causality, and does not refute it, because with each such deviation from the rules one can, by making the corresponding investigation, find the cause of this: chemical decomposition of the cap, dampness, etc., of the powder, damage to the barrel, etc., so that here actually a double verification of causality is carried out' ('Dialectics of Nature'). Let us now consider some forms of causality. Let us begin with the mechanical. The mechanical understanding of causality has its origin from the time when humanity in its cognition and practice formulated the laws of mechanics, created the science of mechanics. Mechanical motion is considered as the displacement of a body under the influence of an external force, as the transfer of the same motion. Mechanics does not study the internal changes of bodies. Hence also the understanding of causality. It is essentially based on the laws of mechanics formulated by Newton. Mechanical causality, first, considers the cause as external in relation to the effect. They stand opposed to each other. The cause is the active force, the effect is the passive result. Further, mechanical causality, proceeding from the mechanical picture of the world, quantitatively equates cause to effect. Qualitative characterization of subjects and processes is absent. 'Reaction,' says Newton, 'is always equal and opposite to action.' Wundt, Planck, Boltzmann, etc., stand on the viewpoint: cause equals effect. Dialectical materialism does not deny mechanical causality, but assigns it a definite place, limiting its application to the field of mechanics. It objects to those who try, proceeding from this form of causality, to explain by it qualitatively different spheres of reality. And precisely this is what the mechanists do. They consider the mechanical form of causality as universal. For them: 'unconditional recognition of mechanical causality is the soul of materialism' (L. I. Axelrod). With the mechanical concept of causality a number of researchers, philosophers try to approach different spheres of reality. Proceeding from the energetic understanding of the world, Ostwald, Bogdanov, Stepanov, etc., develop essentially the mechanical concept of causality in explaining biological and social phenomena. On the mechanical viewpoint of the question of causality stand the Lamarckians and neo-Lamarckians. The mechanical understanding of causality is unable to explain other spheres of reality, because it ignores their qualitative specificity, because it is unable to distinguish necessary connections from accidental, internal from external, essence from appearance, cause from other conditions, it is unable to dialectically resolve the question of causality and purposefulness, etc. As a result, the mechanists are forced to take the viewpoint of the theory of factors, recognition of equal significance for the multitude of conditions. As a result they must and do come to the idealistic-metaphysical understanding of nature and society. Without stopping at other forms of natural causality, let us turn to causality as it is revealed in social life. All attempts of pre-Marxian social science to understand social causality ended in failure due to the inability to reveal the specificity of social life, its distinction from the animal. From the specificity of man as a social animal who makes tools, who consciously pursues ends, follows the specificity of social causality. The latter is the most developed form of dialectical causality. Being a form of the latter, social causality possesses all the above-mentioned its features: it is substantial, expresses a relation, process, etc. In addition to this it is characterized by the fact that the causal process is carried out on the basis of necessity by people and through people, through infinitely interwoven human relationships. As a result social causality is extremely complex, requiring for its disclosure the sharp scalpel of materialist dialectics. Let us clarify the essence of social causality with the example of crises. 'World crises,' according to Marx, 'must be considered as the real connection and violent equalization of all contradictions of the bourgeois economy' ('Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. II, Part 2, Moscow, 1932, p. 186). Marx distinguishes the possibility of a crisis and its reality. Under the conditions of simple commodity economy there lies only the possibility of a crisis, they may not occur. The essential properties of capitalist production transform the abstract possibility of a crisis into a real one, i.e., necessity. Among these properties we see the presence of the basic contradiction of the capitalist system: between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation. This contradiction is the foundation of all crises under capitalism, but not their cause. Crises, due to the movement of this basic contradiction, inevitably arise. But the manifestation of a particular crisis, representing a concrete expression of the foundation, depends also on a mass of conditions. Among these conditions we see the essential, which is the determining condition, necessarily connected both with the foundation and the result. In addition we have a mass of other conditions which, influencing the subject, its emergence, nevertheless are unable to prevent the manifestation of necessity. The determining condition is the cause of the crisis. The causal relation represents the concrete expression of the necessity of the foundation. The cause is that which translates the possibility of a thing into its reality. 'If we ask about its [the crisis'] cause, then we want to know precisely why its abstract form, the form of its possibility, becomes reality from possibility' (Marx, ibid., p. 190). Thus, it is necessary to distinguish cause from foundation and from conditions. The contemporary bourgeois economist Mitchell on the question of the cause of a crisis stands on the vulgar viewpoint of equal significance of causes. 'All conditions necessary for the creation of certain results have equal significance,' he writes. Materialist dialectics resolves the question differently.

By uncovering the numerous connections and interrelationships of things, and by recognizing the necessity of conditions for the emergence of a thing, materialist dialectics seeks out essential connections, seeking out causal connection as necessary. The establishment of causal connection makes it possible to correctly and radically pose the question of eliminating this or that phenomenon. In our example, clarifying the cause as a concrete expression of the basis of crises leads to the conclusion that crises and their causes can be eliminated only with the elimination of the basis as a result of revolution, i.e., capitalism. The cause of crises must be distinguished from what is called the occasion. The event that serves as the occasion is not necessarily connected with the result. When a crisis has matured, the moments that begin it can be the most diverse circumstances. Usually, the occasion for crises are events in the commodity or money market. The collapse of some fictitious enterprise can be the occasion for a crisis, but not the cause. Thus, the cause is that which transforms a thing from its possibility into reality. As a result, a new phenomenon arises, a crisis, which is something other than the cause that produces it. Cause and effect represent another expression of the contradictory nature of the basis. They represent a unity of opposites. They contain within themselves a moment of identity, since both are expressions of the basis of the capitalist system. But at the same time they are different, they represent different qualities. The cause of a crisis is not the same as the crisis itself. There is obviously no place at all here for the mechanistic point of view with its quantitative comparison of cause and effect. The dialectical-materialist understanding of causality overcomes the fatalistic point of view on the social process, which follows from the mechanistic view of nature. This overcoming is conditioned by the understanding of the specificity of the historical process, which is carried out by people and through people. Man himself as a productive force enters as an important condition into social causality. Purposefulness represents a moment of causality, a particular case of the latter. On the basis of understanding objective regularity, there is an impact of man on the social process, and this influence changes depending on the degree of social development. "Together with the soundness of historical action, the volume of the mass whose work it is will also grow". In conditions where the productive forces turn from demons into obedient servants (Engels), in conditions similar to those of the CCdP, the role of man, of classes, becomes extremely significant. The actions of the proletariat, led by the party, under the corresponding circumstances and conditions, are the determining condition that transforms possibility into reality. Brilliant examples of this are Lenin's and Stalin's analysis of the revolutionary situation, and Stalin's analysis of the tasks of economic construction, given in his two historical speeches in 1931.