"Correlation does not imply causality . . . " -- Common saying
Science is in big trouble. And the scientists know it. In one discipline after another, “settled” theory/conclusions – biological evolution, string-theory, dark-matter, big-bang theory &c – are being vigorously challenged with new evidence. Overall, scientific “self-confidence” is slipping away. This has the structure of what Thomas Kuhn called a “scientific revolution” in 1962. The question of how we painted ourselves into so many “corners” is palpable. Where did we go so wrong . . . ??
Physics Envy and Hard Questions
Physical science. Natural Science. Social Science. Empirical Science. Moral Science. Can they ever be unified? Do they even belong in the same “category”?
Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) – often described as a “logical positivist,” associated with the Vienna Circle – set out to eliminate the influence of metaphysics in science. In parallel, sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) focused on the “disenchantment of the world” in his 1918 Munich lecture, “Science as a Vocation.” Much of the 20th-century was absorbed with a swirling debate on this, ultimately, unresolvable question: Is there anything “beyond” physics or is physics as far as science can go? Indeed, should all science emulate mathematical physics?
In his Logical Foundations of Probability (1950) Carnap attempted to address how inductive inferences (i.e. from experiences, not deduction from premises) can be “reduced” to the “probability there is a logical relation between to types of statements: the hypothesis (conclusion) and the premises (evidence). [Wikipedia] With the publication of his Unity of Science (1934), Carnap &al launched a philosophical/scientific movement to put us on the right path. He failed. Eliminating metaphysics didn’t lead to the ultimate answers – only more “hard questions.”
Social science, in its modern form, was an invention of the 20th-century. It also attempted to eliminate metaphysics – albeit in a different way from Carnap. Often presenting itself as a staunch opponent of Carnap’s “positivism,” it came to accept a “systems” approach – beginning with L. Bertallanfy’s “General Systems” and coming to rest on the notion of “Complex (Adaptive) Systems. A widely cited text, The Collapse Complex Societies (Tainter, 1988), proposes that too much complexity is to blame – while noting that the history of the West in the last 1500+ years does not seem to support his conclusions. Alas, this “anti-reductionist” effort has also failed to meet its objectives – particularly when applied to humans and society.
One unfortunate offspring of Complexity Science is Cognitive Psychology – today the dominant approach in that field. First developed in the 1950s, initially under the name “Mathematical Psychology,” it piggy-backed on the then-widespread interest in Cybernetics (a term introduced via Norbert Wiener’s 1948 “Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine”). Cognitive Psychology takes Wiener’s analogy far too seriously, proposing that humans are themselves “information processors,” much like computers. And from this, we get notions like “Singularity” – described as the point in time when computers are more “intelligent” than humans, leading to massive speculation about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) &c.
This has also failed. The social science literature is filled with examples of experiments that cannot be reproduced, often resting on questionable statistical justifications. Indeed, the inability to do “physics” on human organisms (and their inventions) forced a wholesale retreat from previous causal explorations, replacing them with statistical manipulations. Does smoking “cause” cancer? Statistically, many answer yes. Experimentally, not so much. But for the application of “control” (as Wiener termed it) statistics are good enough – at least for political/regulatory purposes. But is that good enough for real understanding – noting that Wiener refused to direct his own work towards “emotional engineering” . . . ??
Aristotle's Four Causes
“We think we have knowledge of a thing only when we have grasped its causes . . .” – Aristotle (Posterior Analytics)
Aristotle was certainly not the first to think in terms of causes, but many would agree he gave us our foundational “theory of causality.” He was a “causal pluralist”: detailing his famous “Four Causes” and their relationships in both his Physics (II 3) and Metaphysics (V 2). These four are Formal Cause, Final Cause, Material Cause, and Efficient Cause. All at work simultaneously. Often overlapping. With different relations to effects – some of which could be said to “precede” the cause itself.
Throughout the Scribal Paradigm (c. 500BC-1550, in the West), Aristotle was considered the ultimate source on this crucial topic. Sometimes other terms were used, and other causes were defined/inserted – but the theme of multiple causes and their key role in human knowledge was constantly restated/reinforced. In China, the ancient “divination” activity surrounding the Yi Jing (I Ching or Book of Changes) connects human interpretation with “celestial” causation. Indeed, as many have noted, the very structure of the Chinese language’s grammar structurally imbeds causality in its semantics.
David Hume (1711-76) is often credited with ending this millennia-long reliance on Aristotle’s causes in the West. Hume’s view is called “regularity,” and he is credited with noting that “causation is nothing but constant conjunction of certain types of events without any underlying forces responsible for the regularity of conjunction.” [Wikipedia] In philosophical circles, during the Print and Electric Paradigms (i.e. from Hume forward), asking questions about “ultimate” reality shifted away from causes – with more of a public emphasis on effects, particularly technological ones. In the current Oxford Handbook on Political Science, chapter 49 is titled “Causality and Explanation in Political Science” – where a neo-Humean approach is recommended (i.e. no causality at all). In the process, Formal and Final causes were largely dropped, and/or segregated to the non-material side of the rising Mind/Body Dualistic sentiments.
The Modern world has gone even further than that! Karl Pearson (1857-1936), often called the “father of modern statistics,” founded the first university department of statistics (at Univ. College London in 1911). He used statistics to support his advocacy for Eugenics and Social Darwinism (and also Socialism, since these movements were then considered “progressive”). He saw “war against ‘inferior races’ a logical implication of the theory of evolution.” [Wikipedia] Biometry – measuring biological traits – was his specialty. Down this path, Efficient Causality met its final fate. Statistics took over. Leaving only Material Causality to worry about – from Aristotle’s original four.
The rise of attention/funding to Complexity Science and its reliance on “emergence” as the prime explanatory principle can be thought of as a (ersatz) replacement for the causal activity Aristotle’s “Matter.” Again, driven by mathematicians and physicists, initially growing out of weapons design at Los Alamos, the home-base of complexity, the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy since its inception in 1984. It was co-founded by theoretical physicist, Murray Gel-Mann (1929-2019), and his version of the scientific “unity” theme was expressed in his popular The Quark and the Jaguar (1994) – in which subatomic particles are “equated” with living organisms. Now Aristotle has, as they say, truly “left the building” . . . !!
However. Biology isn’t Physics. Humans are not Computers. These mathematical “reductions” (along with many more) can only turn into categorical failures. But many have been fooled by the attention these mistakes have gotten and have spent their careers defending them. Others, still unwilling to question the premises involved, instead prefer to add “epicycles” (i.e. “constraints” &c) to still fit-in, while exploring “exciting” new areas.
For the sake of human knowledge in a Digital Age, we must retrieve Causality. Without it, we have deliberately blinded ourselves. Stick in the eye. Science demands causal retrieval. The difficulties shown by the problems encountered in AI research – increasingly implying that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) *cannot* be achieved, given current assumptions/methods – cluster around the question “What causes us to be humans?” Today’s Complexity and Cognitive Sciences cannot answer that question. Our “consciousness” is not an “emergent property” of matter, and neither is life.
Rather, life is the result of the Formal Causality of the Soul (or Psyche in Greek). This means also retrieving not just Aristotle but the work of his foremost student, St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-74). No, we don’t all need to become “Thomists,” but without knowledge of the (often quite sophisticated) thoughts/arguments offered by these pioneers, we are left up a “digital creek without a medieval paddle.” It’s time to bring back Aristotle’s Forms – since that is what makes us humans.
Technology and Formal Cause
Unlike what Cognitive Psychology tells us, humans do not “detect patterns.” Machines do that. Humans “detect” Forms – as described by Aristotle in his “hylomorphic” Matter/Form ontological framework. Existence comprises an array of objects that are integrated expressions of *both* Forms and Matters. Or, if you will, Potentiality and Actuality. Integrated. Aristotle 101.
Technology alters the Forms of our environment, and, in turn, these Forms change who we actually become. We “conform” to the Forms which shape our souls, which, in turn, are the Forms of every living creature. Forms causing new Forms. Or, as it was once put – describing the work of Marshall McLuhan (1921-80) – “We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us” (by John Culkin, SJ, likely based Winston Churchill’s parallel comment about architecture). Forms (potentials) integrated with Matter (actualities) – giving us the vastly complicated reality in which we live.
But, like the problems encountered today with the dead-ends stemming from the Complexity and Cognitive Sciences &c, this understanding runs afoul of another critical mistake, Constructivism. These fundamental mistakes are all important components of the recent Television-based Electric Paradigm. The typical definition of “Social Constructivism” is “a sociological theory of knowledge according to which human development is socially situated, and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others.” [Wikipedia] This view is widely held in today’s social sciences – with a pronounced “post-modern” sensibility – deployed to leave society “open ended” and often contrasted with anything that is “determined” (particularly “technologically determined”). In this view, McLuhan – who is needed to retrieve Formal Causality – is dismissed as a “technological determinist.” That is also a mistake.
Complexity. Cognitivism. Constructivist. All without Causes. All painting us into the same no-way-out corners. All unable to answer the pressing question, “What does it mean to be human?” All in need of being replaced. All now facing a deep Scientific Revolution – formally caused by the Digital Paradigm.
As many have suggested (typically without any attempt at causality), we are immersed in a “meaning crisis.” However, “meaning” is probably not the right term (i.e. used mostly by those who want you to adopt their “meanings”). Perhaps “understanding” is a better one – as reflected in the title of McLuhan’s 1964 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, where the title of the first chapter is “The Medium is the Message” (and not the same as the 1967 The Medium is the Massage). Under – Standing. Standing “under” – out of sight. Rarely discussed or even acknowledged. Invisible. Foundational. Grounded.
In 1969, Marshall McLuhan wrote a letter to the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, having just read Maritain’s 1968 Peasant of the Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time. In the letter he suggested that “There is deep-seated repugnance in the human breast against understanding the processes in which we are involved. Such understanding implies far too much responsibility for our actions.” Responsibility. That kind of understanding . . . !!
Television, as a medium/environment, enhanced the psychological *faculty* of Imagination. Taken to extremes, this turns into Fantasy. Look around. The typical follow-on to Television, as a business, is Virtual Reality (VR). Sounds like more Fantasy, doesn’t it? Facebook changed its name to “Meta” as it shifted its R&D to lead the race into VR. Billions are being spent. If you’ve ever tried VR, you know it’s still looking for a “killer app.” Apple announced their high-priced “Vision Pro” headset and many rushed out to be the first on their block to try one. Now the used prices on eBay have cut $1000 off the price (in only 3 months) – no doubt heading much lower, with production slashed. Perhaps Fantasy isn’t quite what people are looking for with so much passion anymore?
Television did not enhance understanding. It undermined it. How will Digital technology do on this score? The most important contrasting faculty of the psyche to Imagination is Memory. Indeed, “Imagination” and “Memory” are only two of the “classic” Inner Senses, as understood by Aristotle and for millennia after him. The remaining inner senses have long been known as the “Common Sense” and the “Cogitative Sense” (also know as “Particular Reason” &c). Our “external” perceptions (the usual “five senses”) are collected/collated by the Common Sense and then “stored” in the Imagination (so-called because it is a collection of “images”). But the Forms we require to understand the world are given shape by the Cogitative Sense and “stored” in our Memory. That is where we recognize Forms (subconsciously) – which are then “passed along” to our Intellect, to be “abstracted” (consciously).
We are now living in a Paradigm-shift from Television to Digital. That means we are experiencing a rebalancing of our Inner Senses – shifting us from Imagination to Memory (to use the “classical” terminology). This is a major psychological shift. Our understanding of Forms is being shaped in a radically new way. Much of the turmoil now on the frontpages has been caused by this shift. Our souls are being “reformed” to favor Memory, as a result. We are now bringing back Causes (and a whole lot more). God help us . . . !!