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Regularity accounts
When we talk about causality, a number of people intuitively associate this with an underlying
mechanics what constitutes the relation between a cause and an effect. For example, when I say
that, after I let loose a ball, gravity caused the ball to drop, this would mean that there is an
underlying mechanic, either contained in nature or contained in the objects itself (i.e. mass), which
causes the ball to fall. However, a number of philosophers have denied that any sort of underlying
mechanism is what makes these causal relations happen. Instead, they insist that what makes a
causality a causality is nothing more than the regularity of a and b. Within this short essay, I'll
discuss the essentials of these so-called regularity accounts of causation via the accounts of Hume,
Mill and Mackie.
coming up causes me to go to work. Clearly, this is due to an underlying mechanism, being that my
working hours start at 8:30 AM. This example is more or less equivalent to Mackie's example of the
factory hooters in Manchester causing the London workers leaving for work3. Mill deals with some
of these problems, but also has a number of his own.
important to note that Mill didn't experience the 'problem of induction' as a problem and therefore
he the above objection regarding the unreasonably high demand isn't relevant for him. For all Mill
is concerned, our experience shows that there are causal relations, even though this seems to be a
circular reasoning; one could say he is biting Hume's bullet.
In F, all (AB¬C or DG¬H or JK¬L) are followed by P, and, in F, all P are preceded by (AB¬C or
DG¬H or JK¬L).
But how do we define A or B? Well, without one of them that particular conjunct will fail (if I lack
a match, there won't be a fire by lightening the gas), but it isn't said that there won't be a fire (one of
the other conjuncts in the disjunct could be fulfilled to cause the fire). He calls this an insufficient
but non-redundant part of an unnecesary but sufficient condition or INUS-condition.
But does this solve the problems as with Mill or Hume? Mackie himself acknowledges that it is
difficult to ensure that this definition only has cases of genuine causality. In other words, this
definition may have enough necessary conditions, but not enough to be sufficient. According to
Mackie, we seem to lack something he calls 'causal priority'. But as a regularity account doesn't
have any arguments to determine 'causal priority', this isn't a solution to this problem.