Grice's later thoughts on 'cause' ("Actions and Events", 1986, p. 32)

-- by J. L. Speranza
---- for the Grice Club.

While we consider the synthetic a priori and some of its alleged representatives ("Every event has a cause") consider Grice's points again using the Kiparskys's terminology ('factive'):

"Hume-type causation is FACTIVE, having [a] cause to is non-factive, and being the cause of one's own actin is factive, but factive in a very special way which is divorced from full predictability. We mght then say that the uses of 'cause' which are MOST GERMANE to action are either non-factive ('cause to') or only in a special non-predictive way factive (like 'x was the cause of x's A-ing'). We MIGHT also say that, in our preferred mode of conception, actions (like giving [Smith] a job) are non-factive, in that the performance of ths action does not guarantee that [Smith] actually gets a job. We might also say that, when a particular sequence of movements issues from, or flows from (in a typically unreflective way), an action which an agent has performed, and so realizes the action, the agent has caused-1, or is the cause-1 of, the movements in question."

----

Grice uses subscripts here: cause-1 and cause-2. What is cause-2?

His example:

"A gymnastic instructor is drilling a squad, and gives the order,

'Raise your right arm'"

-- "All the right arms are dutifully elevated. He then says,

'How many of you actually RAISED your right arm, and
for how many of you was it simply the case that your arm went up?'

Grice comments:

"The oddity of this question indicates that

raising the right arm involves NO DISTINGUISHING

observable or introspectible element: all the

squad-members were (to so speak) in the same boat,

and they ALL, in fact, RAISED their arms."

-----

"What, then, is special about raising one's arm or about

MAKING any bodily movement? The answer is, I think, that

the movement is CAUSED by the agent in the sense

that its occurrence is monitored by him".

Cfr. Bayne on Anscombe.

---

Grice goes on:

"He is aware of what takes place and should something go wrong

or should some difficulty arise, he is ready to intervene

to correct the situation. He sees to it that the

appropriate movement is forthocming. We have then a

FURTHER interpretation of 'cause' ('cause-2'), namely

that of being MONITORED by us, in which we are

the cause-2 of the movements which we make."



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To summarise:

Grice goes oN:

"We can distinguish" four stages:

"FIRST"

---- "External, or 'transeunt', causation in INANIMATE objects, when an object is affected by processes in other objects."

--

SECOND:

"Internal, or 'inmanent', causation in inanimate objects,

where a process in an object is the outcome of previous

stages in that process, as in a 'freely moving' body."



---

THIRD:

"Internal causation in LIVING things, in which changes

are generated in a creature by internal features which

are NOT earlier stages of the same change, but independent

items like beliefs, DESIRES, and emotions, the function

(or finality) of which is, in general, to provide for the

GOOD of the creature in question."


---

Last but not least:

Four:

"A culminating stage at which the CONCEPTION

in a certain mode by a HUMAN creature of something

as being for the crature's good is SUFFICIENT

to initiate in the creature the doing of that thing."

He adds:

"At this stage, it is (or at least appears to be)

the case that the crature is LIBERATED not merely

from EXTERNAL CAUSES, but from all FACTIVE

causes, being governed instead by reasons, or

non-factive causes. It is at this stage that

rational activity and itnentions appear on the scene."

----


So, Grice has magically brought himself to build that needed bridge between the 'theoretical' Kant of the pure reason critique, and the 'practical' Kant of the realm of ends!

---- In THAT way, 'every event has a cause' ceases to look the analytic it did. Or not!