Causation, forces, and laws of nature: Some implications of Kant's Second Analogy

Bradley L Sickler, Purdue University

Abstract

In the Second Analogy of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues for the causal principle that every event has a cause. This dissertation seeks to make Kant's causal claim clear and investigate its implications regarding laws of nature. Causation is a relation between causes and effects, but there is sustained disagreement about what causes and effects are. Kant classified effects as events, but denied that causes are events. Effects are changes in a substance; namely, the transition from one state to an opposite state. Causes are forces for Kant; thus, the causal principle ought to be understood as the claim that each alteration of a substance is caused by a force. Kant says that effects follow their causes "in conformity with a rule." Most interpreters have understood this as a straightforward commitment to the existence of empirical Laws of nature, taking rules and laws to be equivalent. Kant's discussion of the causal principle in the Second Analogy is limited to single states of single substances; thinking of him as discussing types of states and substances gives the mistaken impression that the causal principle alone is enough to commit Kant to the existence of laws when it is not. If there are types of objects, however, then the causal principle along with the existence of types will certainly entail that there are also natural laws. Kant, unlike Hume, held that laws of nature are universal and necessary, and that there are two varieties of natural laws: those knowable a priori, and those knowable only through empirical means. Yet as he teases out some implications of the causal principle in the Metaphysical Foundations, Kant commits himself to the necessity of some supposedly empirical laws of nature, thereby making his distinction between empirical and a priori laws untenable.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Cover, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Philosophy

COinS