When we see a magnet attract iron-filings we see a sequence of events -
the magnet is placed in the vicinity of the filings,
the filings move towards the magnet, sticking to it or clumping round it
- but we do not perceive how the magnet manages to make the filings move towards it.
The magnet’s modus operandi, or way of operation, remains obscure.
So Hume homed in on the interaction of billiard balls because it represented for others a fundamental and transparent case of the operation of causal power. In the light of this context, Hume’s strategy can be expressed as follows. He set out to show that the transparency that mechanists claimed to find in impulse was really a kind of illusion produced by habit or ‘custom’. So much of our experience of causality is of contact-action, Hume argues, that our very familiarity with these cases makes us feel that they have a transparency that they do not really possess. In fact, Adam, on first perceiving the impulse of one billiard-ball on another, would find the resulting motion of the second ball just as surprising and mysterious as, say, the action of the magnet on the iron-filings. It is custom that blinds us to this truth.
Of course, we might be able to set up the appearance of a necessary connection by saying that the magnet must draw the iron-filings because it has the quality, or power, of attraction. But this would be to play a game with words. It would be like the medical student in Molière’s play Le Malade Imaginaire responding to the question ‘how does opium make a person sleep?’ by saying ‘because it has a soporific power (virtus dormitiva)’. This may have satisfied the scholastic examiners in Molière’s satire, but it would not satisfy someone who really wanted to know how opium acts on us. Likewise, saying that a magnet draws iron-filings because it has an attractive power does not make the cause in the least bit transparent.
Hume would have whole-heartedly agreed with the early Wittgenstein, who in his Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus wrote, ‘A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity.’8 But of course if one looks for logical necessity outside logic one should not be surprised when one cannot find it.
back to the magnet - what is a magnet...well, if your naïve enough to
start from an ontology of physical objects, there is a magnet...then...well...
the magnet is placed in the vicinity of the filings,
the filings move towards the magnet, sticking to it or clumping round it
- but we do not perceive how the magnet manages to make the filings move towards it.
The magnet’s modus operandi, or way of operation, remains obscure.
So Hume homed in on the interaction of billiard balls because it represented for others a fundamental and transparent case of the operation of causal power. In the light of this context, Hume’s strategy can be expressed as follows. He set out to show that the transparency that mechanists claimed to find in impulse was really a kind of illusion produced by habit or ‘custom’. So much of our experience of causality is of contact-action, Hume argues, that our very familiarity with these cases makes us feel that they have a transparency that they do not really possess. In fact, Adam, on first perceiving the impulse of one billiard-ball on another, would find the resulting motion of the second ball just as surprising and mysterious as, say, the action of the magnet on the iron-filings. It is custom that blinds us to this truth.
Of course, we might be able to set up the appearance of a necessary connection by saying that the magnet must draw the iron-filings because it has the quality, or power, of attraction. But this would be to play a game with words. It would be like the medical student in Molière’s play Le Malade Imaginaire responding to the question ‘how does opium make a person sleep?’ by saying ‘because it has a soporific power (virtus dormitiva)’. This may have satisfied the scholastic examiners in Molière’s satire, but it would not satisfy someone who really wanted to know how opium acts on us. Likewise, saying that a magnet draws iron-filings because it has an attractive power does not make the cause in the least bit transparent.
Hume would have whole-heartedly agreed with the early Wittgenstein, who in his Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus wrote, ‘A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity.’8 But of course if one looks for logical necessity outside logic one should not be surprised when one cannot find it.
back to the magnet - what is a magnet...well, if your naïve enough to
start from an ontology of physical objects, there is a magnet...then...well...
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