The late Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, A.E. Taylor--in spite of his fairly strong general leanings towards traditional views of Occidental idealism--makes a strikingly monistic statement in a chapter on the mind-body problem in his remarkably original work Elements of Metaphysics. After having expressed his personal preference for the alternative of interaction as the most reasonable answer to the psychophysical question in metaphysics, he says:
We have explicitly defended Interaction as being no statement of actual experienced fact, but a working hypothesis for the convenient correlation of two scientific constructions, neither of which directly corresponds to the actualities of experience. This means, of course, that Interaction cannot possibly be the final truth for Metaphysics. It cannot ultimately be the "fact" that "mind" and "body" are things which react upon each other, because, as we have seen, neither "mind" nor "body" is an actual datum of experience; for direct experience and its social relations, the duality subsequently created by the construction of a physical order, simply has no existence. (p. 331)
The author admits that his duality is even superfluous as an assumption for the purpose of making experience consistent with itself. It is the preconception of the physical as a rigidly mechanical system which has now caused the artificial necessity, for speculative minds, to devise the concept of a "body" and a "soul" separated from each other, and interacting on each other. Having first constructed the notion of a "body" by itself, man in this modern Western World of super-mechanization in all fields finds it inevitable to follow up, as it were, by constructing an additional notion, that of a "mind". In other words, it is, in this case, precisely the materialistic scientist who feels a certain obligation of adding this abstracted "soul" concept, simply for the purpose of recognizing, in some way--at least symbolically--the possible existence of a certain "non-mechanical" character, which "might"--after all--be that of actual human life.
Personally we must admit that we have accepted, and will go on to accept, the viewpoint of interaction as one we can never do away with, or feel the slightest need to do away with. We realize, in fact, that this particular way of expressing the mystery of psycho-physical relations in human life is a way naturally adapted, from time immemorial, to the highest levels of spirituality. Elevated religions, as monistic and close to life as Judaism and Christianity, have, unhesitatingly, availed themselves of a language of interaction here.
In fact, we realize that, in the history of ideas, very opposite "languages"--for instance a language of "parallelism"--have frequently been used to express views of the hardest and coldest materialism. This even applies to fairly recent representatives of scientific and speculative thought. So expressions of radical monism in this respect do not necessarily indicate an alternative of greater human totality, if we go on to demand an element of spirituality as essential to that totality.
Perhaps a reasonably comprehensive list of the most important alternatives of psycho-physical interpretation is the following: 1) pre-established harmony, 2) occasionalism, 3) epiphenomenalism, 4) psycho-physical parallelism, and 5) interaction.
To the alternative of interaction we may here first oppose the two which seem to have had the greatest appeal to men during this last century of singularly intensified scientific research.
a) Epiphenomenalism
No interpretation has appealed more tremendously to modern minds deeply absorbed in the problems of our physical sciences, both physicists and physiologists. According to epiphenomenalism, all mental states are but "epiphenomena", i.e. a sort of mere accessories. They do arise in the human mind concomitantly with the series of bodily phenomena, it is true. But presumably they exert no "determining influence" on that series. If we are to believe the epiphenomenalist, it is the physical changes taking place in a human body which deserve capital attention. And he feels confident that these may be studied without "danger" of any serious interference on the part of mental factors, and, accordingly, without any serious disturbance as regards the working out of those specific physical laws governing the physical or physiological processes. This of course ensures a wonderful uniformity, each single bodily alteration being solely determined by other bodily facts as antecedents. It is admitted that bodily conditions may be "attended by" certain "corresponding" states of consciousness, but such, "mental phenomena" do not impose themselves as efficient causes, producing any real changes in subsequent bodily conditions. Nor are they supposed to have any mutual causal connection among themselves. In other words, one state in the mental series does not even influence a subsequent state in the same series.
Expressed in terms so obviously suggestive of materialistic bias, the epiphenomenalist theory is bound to obscure any spiritual perspective of true human totality, as we have conceived it. For how could we imagine such spirituality at all unless we take, as our point of departure, certain fundamental realities which the highest religions have always invested with axiomatic dignity; and the same seems to apply to the recognized peaks of human philosophy: rational knowledge, as well as religious faith, exerts the most profound and decisive influence on man's external behaviour.
Of course the adherent of the epiphenomenal hypothesis may attenuate the rigid character of his standpoint by inferring that it is to be considered mainly as a mere methodological approach. For the sake of certain aims of physiological science it has proved useful to simply look away from the reality of mental conditions as determining factors for the whole process of bodily changes. In other words, the postulate of epiphenomenalism may be envisaged as practical device simplifying the task of the scientist, levelling his path towards approximate knowledge of the rigid laws governing nature. That would mean a quite conscious abstraction, treating the physical or physiological processes as if psychical concomitants did not exist at all. It would be unreasonable to deny that such abstraction might serve the causes of natural science in a given instance and within this or that limited field of research (although even this calls for the utmost caution).
But as soon as the same abstraction is assumed as an adequate means of grasping the very essence of vital facts constituting the totality of a human being, it must necessarily be a sad case of oversimplification leading to serious error. One thing is to assume that certain physiological events may be foreseen, and even scientifically determined, according to certain laws of causality. It would be quite another thing to contend that they have an existence as realities entirely detached from their mental correlates.
The metaphysician who considers teleology as an integrated part of metaphysics--and there is no reason why a psychologist should not, also, be entitled to state his dependence upon similar fundamental metaphysical concepts--will invariably tend to regard ethical appreciation as an indispensable presupposition for any psycho-physiology which is to be truly meaningful, even as a science. Does epiphenomenalism now make allowance for any such place ascribed to ethical realism? An unqualified acceptance of the epiphenomenal hypothesis would rather oblige research in this field to commit itself to the great ineluctabile fatum. But to any researcher who regards elements of religion as an integrating part of the human reality, this would be impossible. For such fatalism is not only Mohammedan and essentially pagan, it is positively anti-religious as we in this thesis understand religion.
b) Parallelism
The psycho-physical theory of parallelism may, in certain radical and dogmatic forms, manifest a very similar spirit of adamant hardness and icy coldness, which are the inescapable characteristics of automatism wherever it asserts itself. But let us rather first consider the general principles of parallelism as a modern interpretation of the body-mind reality. The parallelist theory distinguishes itself from the epiphenomenalist theory inasmuch as it gives a fairly equal treatment to the physical and the mental. A relation of causality is here accredited not only to the different terms of the physical series, but also to those of the physical series. So one state of mind stands in direct causal relation to another state of mind. True, some professed adherents of parallelism, like Munsterberg, claim that causal connection must be limited to universals, and every mental state, being a unique phenomenon, must be causally independent of any other mental state (Grundzuge der Psychologie, p. 402). In practice this reservation makes Munsterberg's parallelism come pretty close to the epiphenomenalism of other theorists. However, what has given parallelism its very name, is certainly the dogmatic insistence on the following viewpoint: If one compares a physical series and a psychical series, the two entities are entirely distinct. They remain without any causal relation to each other. This is not only valid for one series as a whole compared to another series as a whole, but also applies to every single element of one series compared to the corresponding element of the other series. There is no causal interrelation from one side to the other; there is just parallelism.
In its rigid form, that mutual independence of the physical and the mental is an idea at total war with the stress we place upon teleology and alterocentricity--briefly on human meaningfulness. As compared to this, Spinoza's doctrine of identity expresses its theory of parallelism in terms which are bound to appear frigidly inhuman. It implies, after all, an inexorable separateness which is not very suggestive of any true monism.
Perhaps we ought to add an important remark here, lest our own "monism" be misunderstood. Repeatedly we have formulated such statements as this one: "Soul and body constitute two sides of one and the same reality."
Or: "Faith and works denote one single entity, only considered from different points of view."[1] Such formulations, however, should not be taken to imply that the terms are simply interchangeable, or synonymous in the usual sense of synonymity. No, if they are said to constitute two "sides", this does not mean one single "side". It is possible and even necessary sometimes--to distinguish between the two. What is not possible--and sometimes rather a serious act of violence--is to separate them. One should respect the fundamental fact that the two "sides", or "series", constituting such a structured reality, are one unbreakable whole. One cannot be present if the other one is absent. They are concomitant. Therefore the name of one can be used to designate the whole they form together. Such abstractions are mere "façons de parler". They do not correspond to any actual separability. Any such idea, taken seriously, would lead to the saddest break with reality.
Ebbinghaus has a significant expression. He calls that reality which is expressed with equal adequacy by one series or by the other: a tertium quid.
In a cultural environment in which abstractions have managed to be invested with the dignity of posing as actual realities "all by themselves", we do admit that such a designation for the full reality (the structured whole) may have its merits, its legitimate place.
In the further development of our philosophical anthropology we have pointed out the curious fact that even Descartes, the man who was to secure a place of honour and prestige for dualism still extant in this age of modern scientific investigation, seems to have had a similar lucky realization of the distance between abstractions and reality. He actually feels in duty bound to admit that the human soul and the human body, when "united", suddenly manifest the "capricious behaviour", we might say, of "changing" into something "very different" from those old abstractions kept alive from age to age in the respective terms used to name each single one of them. Of course he could not fail to see that their "mysterious union" placed him face to face with nothing less than a real man! True, Descartes did not happen to give that name of a "tertium quid" to this "new thing" his sound human senses were bound to perceive right in front of him in spite of his radical theoretical dualism. But he could have done so. At least the realistic intuition that dawns upon his mind for a moment is clearly a very similar case (see pp 309-311).
But for some reasons we feel that the strange mixtum compositum (or rather absolutely "non-mixtum/ non-compositum") which rigid parallelism conjures up, as its own peculiar type of reality, must be relegated to the realms of some "quartum quid";--or we do not really know how to express the infinite distance we feel between this ism and any imaginable form plain reality might ever adopt!
In one sense, it is true, parallelism might be assumed to favour a trend toward some kind of "monistic anthropology". But we are afraid that this would turn out to be a monism of death, not a monism of life, of living oneness. Of course, on first views, the alternative of inter-action, which we are to examine in a moment, might give the immediate impression of promising far less than parallelism does in terms of totality. But no rash conclusions should be drawn from external appearances. Decisive to our eventual choice will be the following; we can see no possibilities for a philosophy of totality in which no safe place is procured for meaning and worthiness in human life. But this is tantamount to postulating freedom as a conditio sine qua non. So nothing could be more dubious than an alternative interpretation of man's mind-body reality involving automatism as a built-in feature, the very opposite of freedom, as a prerequisite for meaning.
There is something fundamentally negative about the theory of parallelism which, from the outset as it were, could hardly be likely to inspire us with confidence. Notice this: the best argument one seems able to offer in favour of it is an essentially negative one. And what is it that one denies here? One denies that there can ever exist any significant relations between states of the mind and states of the body in a human life. Why can there not exist any such relations whatsoever? Because there is no "scientific basis", allegedly, for thinking that any equation can reasonably be established between dimensions so "qualitatively different"! In other words, the two aspects of the human reality, a person's mind and the same person's body, represent dimensions so despairingly incommensurable that their "being together" simply remains "devoid of sense to the scientist"! What creates the problem is not quantity; it is quality. This is once more the tragedy of quality in a modern world. Quality had to be ostracized because it could find no legitimate place as a meaningful reality in a universe erected by the scientific mind. What a disaster!
For instance, it is a well-known historical fact that modern mathematical physics, from its very origins, has proved incapable of constructing a system which could include qualitative change as an objectively verifiable reality. And even up to the present day mathematical physicists seem to think that their success in building up a world of reality is entirely dependent upon their willingness to sacrifice quality. Or how, otherwise, could one interpret this willful resolution to close one's eyes to qualitative change under the pretext that it is "purely subjective" (translate: "devoid of scientific sense")?
Now an ironic epilogue could be attached to this sad story, for even as early as the beginning of this century the philosopher A. E. Taylor was able to show, thanks to an irrefutable metaphysical argument, that mathematical physics actually destroys the whole concept of cause, if it persists in reducing all change to quantitative transformation. For the very problem of the origin of what is qualitatively new, happens to be an essential part of the idea of causality (op. cit. pp. 1 and 323).
Of course, there is no lack of evidential cases where science is simply forced to include the fullness of human life in order to mean anything whatsoever. This is what happens, for instance, to psychophysiology. In such cases any would-be-scientific one-sidedness is certainly bound to become disastrous. That should be one good reason why we are well advised to consider with serious hesitation the current type of "parallelism" as an alternative theory to account for human body-mind reality. In the form philosophy and science have constantly tended to give this parallelist interpretation of man, it comes so alarmingly close to a virtual denial of all living integration that meaningfulness simply ceases to exist, not only on a spiritual level, but even on a purely temporal level.
Scientists with rather materialistic leanings have also referred to the principle of conservation of energy as an argument against all causal connections between so heterogeneous entities as body and mind. If any "purely mental" state were assumed as exerting an actual influence upon the course of a "purely physiological" change, then one would also have to assume that actual work had thereby been performed, and notice: work performed in a physical organism "without the obligatory expenditure of physical energy"! Vice versa, there is similar fear that, if there should happen to be a morsel of "nonphysical" elements in the process of nervous change, then there might be "loss of energy without due work being done exactly corresponding to that energy".
Ward, in his work Naturalism and Agnosticism, already met this apprehension by showing that the principle of conservation of energy is nothing more than a law of exchanges. True, the quantity of the energy in a conservative system remains constant under all transformations happening to that system, but it affords no means of deciding what transformation is to occur in the system, or when this shall take place. Suppose that just mental conditions can determine that moment when energy in the organism is to be transformed, say, from a kinetic to a potential state, then there would be no breach with the principle of conservation (p. 324).
Within the precincts of parallelism the views may be considerably modified. Stout, a professed parallelist himself, gives evidence of such modification in his Manual of Psychology. Here he suggests that the mental series present a "more adequate revelation" of man's psycho-physical reality than do the physical series.
Dogmatic parallelism, as well as any other rigid theory of an automatic psycho-physical correlation, is bound to run a serious risk of one-sidedness and estrangement from life if it bluntly refuses to recognize any duality whatsoever or any causal connectedness whatsoever in the human body-mind relations. However correct it may be to say that body and mind, the outward and the inward, constitute two sides of the same reality, plain teleological metaphysics seems to imply that this is not the whole truth. There is an inherent necessity of assuming that the human connection between any elements of that structure is a living one. And here there must even be room for considering them from the viewpoint of "different levels". Accordingly it must be permissible to consider one term, the soul, as revealing the human reality more fully and more adequately than does another term, the body. A man is not a wall. His "sides" are not like those of a dead piece of wood. The relations between inward and outward in that living totality, man, are bound to be far more captivating.
c) Interaction
Anyway, the perspective of interaction may certainly present an interpretation of man's psychophysical enigma just as reasonable as any other hypothesis suggested. Does this necessarily mean that for instance a certain Inward state of mind, called for brevity's sake "I", is kept at abeyance somewhere as a "cause", and "then", after due contemplation of its obligation and dignity as a "cause", eventually rises up to produce its respective "effect", for instance in the form of some bodily condition? Does it mean that the mind-body, or body-mind, interaction constitutes a definite two-term process, in which one term precedes and the second follows?
We have seen in the case of biblical theology that a similar anteriority-posteriority viewpoint is not inevitable. The creative command from the lips of the Omnipotent One (some would say the "cause") on the one hand, and the produced creation (some would say the "effect") on the other, perfectly coincide with each other. It is only an abstracting afterthought, an artificial theoretical reconstruction, that distinguishes the two as separate events, one "following after" the other. The fact is: "There be light"--And there was light (Genesis 1:3), a process of "causal succession" and still perfect unity, absolute oneness in time.
How far can the Inward and the Outward in human psycho-physics be imagined as simultaneous? How far can--or must--psycho-physical interaction be imagined as a process of totality? First the theoretical possibility. To come to the aid of our imagination, let us return to our previous schema of the bicycle. Or better still: we simply take two wheels firmly and indissolubly connected together by a power transmission chain.
Wheel I Wheel O Wheel I-O
According to the common formulations of the alternative of interaction, it may here be said that "I" influences "O" and "O" influences "I". But in what way? Is it in such a way that one may say: "The cause precedes its effect"? Of course it is the current impression that an "initial motive Impulse" operative in "I" will "subsequently" cause "O" to rotate (or vice versa). But in practical reality that "effect" is instantaneous. And that whole transmission of power "from one wheel to the other" proves to be so evenly distributed along any imaginable "point" of the "machine", as a whole, that you could hardly with any empirical evidence or logical reason maintain: "In this particular sector of this particular wheel the cause is concentrated, for just here my hand grasped that wheel and pressed it forward." Or: "In that other sector--or that other wheel--the effect--and nothing but the effect--must be concentrated. For I, at least, never touched the machine at those other points!"
Such categorical distinctions are meaningless to practical reality in this case, just as they would be meaningless in the following and somewhat simplified case: Imagine one single wheel--or, if you prefer, one larger wheel "placed outside" a smaller "interior" one. In fact, the "exterior" wheel is constructed in one piece with the "interior". In other words, they are inseparably connected with each other. Or better: they are one single wheel. (See Wheel I-O.)
Now your great "causa efficiens", that initial pressure from your finger, may of course concentrate on any single "point" of this larger unity, the wheel. And you may say, "may cause" is limited to this particular spot (e.g., some definite part of the "exterior" wheel). Nevertheless, without any lapse of time whatsoever--according to all practical evidence--any movement in that "limited part" is extended to a movement comprising the entire mass of "both" wheels. You might of course, theoretically, "explain" this immediate and all-comprehensive transmission of power by saying to yourself, "The molecules upon which my finger first exerted its pressure obviously influenced the molecules closest to them; these, in their turn, influenced the ones closest to them, and so on, and so forth." But all this is just superimposed theory and, in one sense, rather vain imagination. For the factual datum is and remains this one: The whole wheel was here exposed to pressure. And nothing less than the whole wheel started moving immediately. So if you still prefer to say that wheel "I", for instance, communicates its motive power to wheel "O" you might just as well proceed to say: wheel "O" reacts back on wheel "I", etc., etc.
In fact, it is logically contradictory to imagine any kind of causation as discontinuous. And in our present case we undoubtedly have to do with a continuous system. In various respects any wheel may obviously be regarded as a series presenting the distinctive features of continuity. For, according to definition, "a series is continuous when any term divides the whole series unambiguously into two mutually exclusive parts which between them comprise all the terms of the series, and when every term which so divides the series is itself a term of the series" (Change and Causality, p. 171).
These conditions always apply to the time series. Accordingly the time series is of necessity a continuous series. And this is of the greatest interest to us when we consider causal relations, particularly the notion that a cause is "bound to" precede its effect. Since the days of Hume, logicians were for a long time under the impression that the causal processes are discontinuous. Experience was assumed to come to man, not as an unbroken stream of consciousness, but as isolated "atoms". These separate morsels were then, allegedly, linked together by man himself in an artificial way, which was the human notion of causality. In other words: there is no necessary concatenation. May we sum up Hume's question in this way: How has man hit upon the fixed idea of connecting together events in the law-directed unity of a continuous series? Our question ought to be: How has Hume--and his followers--hit upon the idea of disconnecting them? We shall soon return to both the historical circumstances and the logical facts here implied. But let us first try to clarify some points as regards the idea of a causal connection between mind and body.
F.H. Bradley, in his work Appearance and Reality begins by stating the reasons why he has felt obliged to reject the idea of simple identity (p. 323, ed. 1906). Then he turns to the belief "which occurs to the unbiassed observer". That is the belief that soul acts upon body and body upon soul. If, "without any theories you look at the facts", you immediately find that "changes in one series ... are often concerned in bringing on changes in the other". It is "obvious that alterations in the soul come from movements in the organism. And it is no less obvious that the latter may be consequent on the former. We may be sure that no one, except to save a theory, would deny that in volition mind influences matter. And with pain and pleasure such a denial would be even less natural. To hold that now in the individual pleasure and pain do not move, but are mere idle accompaniments, to maintain that never in past development have they ever made a difference to anything--surely this strikes the common observer as a willful paradox" (p. 324). Bradley seriously doubts that most of those who have accepted the doctrine in general, have fully realized its meaning. His own conclusion is that the natural view-that of a body and a soul having influence on each other--is a view he has found to be proof against attacks.
This eminent metaphysician, however, modifies his statement of the mind-body interaction in a way which we believe to be worth noticing:
Let me say at once that, by a causal connection of mind with matter, I do not mean that one influences the other when bare [the latter emphasis is ours]. I do not mean that soul by itself ever acts upon body, or that mere bodily states have an action on bare soul ... I understand that, normally, we have an event with two sides, and that these two sides, taken together, are the inseparable cause of the event which succeeds. What is the effect? It is a state of soul going along with a state of body ... And what are we to say is the cause? It is a double event of the same kind, and the two sides of it, both in union, produce the effect. The alteration of mind which results, is not the effect of mind or body, acting singly or alone, but of both working at once.
This complicating affirmation of the facts is undoubtedly very much to the point and absolutely necessary. The causal connection in either direction being this double one, our convenient simplification may lead to false conclusions, however correct our general postulate of mind-body interaction may be. How could we avoid falsifying our issues if we fail to distinguish between total causes and part causes, between total effects and part effects. So if the interaction statement is to have any validity at all, we might say that it has to be formulated approximately thus: there is mutual influence between one body-mind condition and another body-mind condition. But what is a body-mind condition in any case? In the world of empirical reality it is an entity so mysteriously blended that an abstraction of distinct elements in it leaves no meaning whatsoever. In fact, even this body-mind condition as a whole may, in the last analysis, be an abstraction leaving no meaning. From what should this have been meaninglessly abstracted? Well, why not from the totality of the universe? And we are not speaking about a universe without a God above it (and constantly interfering with it). For that too would be an unwarranted, full-truth disturbing abstraction.
It will be remembered that one important reason why we could not accept the psycho-physical alternative of absolute identity, was the radical issue of automatism to which it seemed to lead us. It would clash with our views of meaningfulness if we were to establish relations of such automatism either between mind and body or between the body-mind totality and the greater totality of the universe. The schema of the two wheels--or of the two opposite pages of one and the same sheet of paper--is useful enough as such. One should only be careful not to imagine that the schema contains the whole truth. It is a fateful error to put a sign of equation between the inward and the outward. A soul can never be identical with a body. Faith is not the same as works. How hopelessly heterodox would it not be to state, in religion, that "faith is works"? What would happen to texts in the New Testament if one simply substituted one term for the other? For instance: "The just shall live by works". Luther would have every reason to condemn us as stiff-necked heretics, if ever we violated the text of Romans 7: by treating faith and works as completely interchangeable terms in that light-minded way.
Now you may reasonably ask, "If, in one instance, one adopts, for the psycho-physical reality of man, a viewpoint of perfect wholeness, in the sense that the two terms of this reality should be envisaged as aspects of equal dignity, and, in the other instance, one suggests that one of the terms--the soul, or the faith--must definitely be regarded as presenting a "higher level", or a "fuller degree of reality", do we not then render ourselves guilty of some obvious contradiction?
Or, first this objection: if, on one hand, we defend viewpoints of unqualified monism and mere "concomitance" as the proper expression for a relation between the "inward" and the "outward", and then, in the next moment, viewpoints of indubitable interaction, i.e. a mutual influence in terms of cause and effect, do we not then render ourselves guilty of an equally gross contradiction? Do we not commonly demand of a cause that it precede its effect? And is not this concept of the preceding versus the subsequent something very different from concomitance?
We may meet this charge of a contradictory attitude by first referring to our own recent schematic illustration. Did the "two wheels" show mutual relations of a continuous or a discontinuous character? This is an important first question. For it casts some significant light upon the question as to whether or not cause and effect must be considered in terms of priority and posteriority respectively.
As a brief and mainly historical intercalation, we may refer to our discussion in Book III[2] of the respective thought patterns of two different cultures. The spirit of the ancient Hebrews differs widely from that of our Western culture precisely in this: with the former there was a viewpoint of "togetherness" and totality even when their minds were invited to assess the proper relations of events we modern Occidentals would characterize as definitely separate events. As a plausible explanation it has been suggested by several prominent students of Hebraic versus Greek or Western thinking, that we heirs of a Hellenist culture have been engrossed in our viewpoints of prevailingly causal relations. Our "logical concept" of a cause that "precedes" and an effect which is bound to "follow" exerts a formidable sway over our minds.
Now it must also be admitted that this present age has been an age of an intensely realistic inquiry into the crude facts of human life. Such inquiry could not fail to reveal to many of our leading scientists and thinkers a flagrant discrepancy between simple empirical reality and the "logical derivations" from the traditional principles of causal thinking. The result is that some modern minds have actually been forced back into thought patterns of a well nigh Hebraic totality. After a radical application of the causal principle they had to face the frustrating predicament that this principle, consistently applied, did not yield a logically satisfactory explanation of one single event. Taylor describes the dilemma of an infinite regress to which the causal postulate inevitably leads in these words:
The same reasons which lead us to demand a cause A for any event B, and to find that cause in an assemblage of antecedent events, require that A should be similarly determined by another assemblage of antecedent events, and that this cause of A should itself have its own antecedent cause, and so on indefinitely. (Op. cit., p. 177)
The time series, as we have already pointed out, is, per definitionem, a continuous, infinite one. Just as any point on a line is without any conceivable next term, because this line is a continuous series, so any moment you may like to choose along the "line" of time is without any next term. If it had such a next term, time would not be continuous.
But time is continuous, according to the definition of continuity. And causation taking place in time must be equally continuous. What would it mean, however, to contend that a cause "precedes" its effect? It would be tantamount to saying that the time series is one, after all, in which a given term does have a next term. If Hume were right in his postulate that causation is discontinuous, this would mean that a gap of "empty time", as Taylor puts it (p. 173), actually separates a "first" event--the cause--from the "following" event--the effect.
This conception of the causal process as a discontinuous series and its corollary, the idea of a priority-posteriority relation of cause and effect, bequeathed to modern logic by Hume, is a curious thing. It presupposes that the cause has first had some kind of separate and complete existence. Only after it has reached this stage of completeness, is it eventually followed by its effect. But what does such separateness and completeness of the "preceding" cause imply? It implies, once more, an actual "gap" of intermediate time separating it, unquestionably, from its "successor" on the scene. The fact of the case is, however, that the cause has no sooner reached its stage of completeness than the effect is also there. And "no sooner--than" means no gap whatsoever. It means simultaneously. And if simultaneity and precedence are qualities used to describe the same process, then words have ceased to have any true meaning. "Togetherness" can never become synonymous for "separateness".
Here we must also keep in mind Bradley's timely admonition. We may sum it up as follows: The cause itself--if we accept this term--is a weird mixtum compositum (an intimate "togetherness") of bodily and mental states. And so is the effect. In other words, to speak of, for instance, a "physical condition" as the cause A leading up to for instance a "physical condition", the effect B, is at best a daring oversimplification. We might suggest another schema which would seem considerably closer to the truth: a mind-body condition in which the mental element appears to be preponderant, and therefore called Mb, presents itself as a cause of--or at least a human fragment having some definite connection with--a body-mind condition in which the bodily element appears to be predominant, and is therefore called Bm.
This increased complication of the matter makes it still more improbable that it makes any sense in practical reality to speak about a cause-effect separateness--either in time (corresponding to the old theoretical schema of "before-after"), or in quality (corresponding to the equally theoretical schema "body-mind" or "mind-body").
Conclusion: psycho-physical inter-action, if it means anything at all, must mean togetherness--at least this more than anything else.
We may here seem to have been constantly conniving for a general impeachment against causal reasoning as an adequate means of reaching tenable conclusions about the human reality. Does any school of thought, through its particular awareness of the demands of totality, or for other reasons, envisage any special system of logic adapting itself more readily to viewpoint of connectedness than does the traditional schema of causal sequence? At least there is "another system". And, as far as I can see, it is one leading astonishingly close to what we have described as a definitely non-Western and a non-modern mode of thinking. With us that means, in more affirmative terms, a Judeo-Christian way of thought.
The "cause-versus-effect" concept is occasionally, even right in the age of modern philosophy, replaced by a "ground-and-consequence" concept. As we have substituted here the connective "and" for the "versus" (which latter interpolation is also a device of emphasis we have taken the liberty to use), we might perhaps just as well have replaced the word "consequence" at the same time. For its etymology implies, after all, something "following upon" something else, as the simplex "sequence" amply testifies.
But what is, then, in the technical language of logic, meant by ground and consequence? Ground is defined as the underlying principle of a logical system. The consequence is the "detail in which that principle finds its systematic expression". Important here is the following: ground and consequence constitute one single systematic whole. This whole, considered from the point of view of a common all-pervading nature, is the "ground". Considered from the point of view of every detail, the same system is envisaged as the "consequence". The latter constitutes a plurality of differences, but each one of those differences is pervaded and determined by one common principle, which is the former.
Where change is taking place, one event may seem to succeed the other in an "arbitrary" way. But this succession of a plurality of allegedly "separate" states (the consequence) is an appearance which may not occur at all to the person who has once succeeded in grasping a vision of the underlying principle of a common structure (the ground).
Is there any difference then between the "ground-consequence" concept and the "cause-effect" concept? Yes, there is a remarkable difference of perspective. In the former case the two terms constitute one single systematic entity, a well-balanced whole. The principle of ground-and-consequence is certainly no narrow one. It goes to the length of saying that the whole of existence is one complete system in which each single part has the most intimate coherence with that whole and is entirely determined by that coherence.
How does this difference affect the question of a "separateness" in time for the two terms? That goes without saying. If ground-and-consequence form a coherent whole, and this whole completely determines the details of which the system is composed, then it would be an unwarranted license to detach one particular component saying that this one, all by itself, could suffice to determine another constituent of "lesser ascendency" (or of no ascendency at all, as this is traditionally assumed for the "effect", exerting no influence whatsoever on its respective cause, according to the well-known one-sided system of causal dependence).
Admittedly, to logicians of the conventional type it would appear downright nonsensical to contend that an effect, to any degree, determines its cause. But as soon as one has accepted the full implications of the principle of ground-and-consequence, one has admitted a perfect reversibility of the determining influence. An effect determines its cause just as much as a cause determines its effect (167-8).
The absolute reciprocity of two terms here seems to bring us right back to some prevailing viewpoints we have observed as essential to Hebraic thought forms and revealed in significant phases of Hebrew grammar: past, present, and future form an undifferentiated whole. Once the observer has grasped the inherent principle of this continuous flow of events, their co-existence and interdependence, then he has no difficulty in realizing their parity of standing, and the arbitrariness of selecting one of them as unique in its autocratic relation to the others. Taylor takes the example that, in reality, eclipses can be equally well calculated for the future and for the past. In fact, if the future is determined by the past, it is equally true that the past is determined by the future. It makes no essential difference at which point you start or in what direction you conduct your reasoning. You must only know the general principle of the whole process. You must know the common ground, according to which the particular terms, the different details, belong together, we might say, in order to keep the stress where it is actually due. Here it is not a bit more logical to make an inference from such a detail even of an earlier date to one of a later date than vice versa. For both are stages of the very same process. Choosing one or the other as your point of departure, is simply a matter of your preferring positive or negative values for your time-variable.
No wonder that physicists as thoroughly experienced and as philosophically open-minded as Mach and Oswald finished by placing their hopes in a so-called descriptive approach of scientific explanation. The ideal here suggested is that of merely "describing" the progressive course of events. This is done by means of just general formulae--formulae as plainly conceived as possible, and as few in number as possible. In accordance with this descriptive method in science, the proper question asked by the investigator is not: "in consequence of what antecedents do things in nature at a given moment behave in such or such a way?" No, the question is in all its modesty--and its greater realism--simply: "In what way do they happen?" full stop! Do scientists of that kind manifest any great confidence in the supreme virtues of the theories of causation classically conceived? Ernst Mach is known to have gone even to the extreme of asserting that the word "cause" ought to have been expelled from the nomenclature of modern science (Science of Mechanics, p. 483).
The viewpoint of a truly continuous process is bound to be something radically different from the viewpoint of successive events in the sense of a certain separateness. For if you keep the idea of a continuous process unmolested, you cannot without utter arbitrariness undertake to draw your mental line of demarcation between an "earlier event" and a "later event". Of course you serve a useful theoretical purpose every time you put your pencil down on the paper making dots denoting the series of single details (or "separate events") along that continuous line of the real process. Each one of those dots represents values simply helping you to visualize the process as a whole. But the sad misconception arises at the moment when that descriptive formula which has helped you to draw a line from one value of your time-variable to the other, thus showing the course of the whole process, is suddenly conceived as the cause of that process, whereas, in reality it is simply the principle by which it is what it is. The brave step our descriptive science has actually taken is just to leave the category of cause out of the picture completely. Instead of this it concentrates its attention on the ground of the whole process. And where is that ground to be found? Not in a system of "separate" and "anterior" events, but simply in the inherent and all-pervading principle which that ground itself represents. A system which to the student of living reality must have seemed disruptive and tyrannical in its one-sidedness, has been superseded by a system of harmonious rest.
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