A Passion for Liberty » contra-causality http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com Tibor R. Machan @ Rational Review Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:57:08 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Letter to Free Inquiry http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com/2009/11/letter-to-free-inquiry/ http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com/2009/11/letter-to-free-inquiry/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:46:25 +0000 Tibor R. Machan http://tibormachan.rationalreview.com/2009/11/letter-to-free-inquiry/ Dear Editor:
Mr. Clark claims [in Free Inquiry, Dec. 09/Jan. 10] I believe in what he terms “contra-causal” free will but I do not. I argue, in my book Initiative–Human Agency and Society (Hoover Institution Press, 2000)–that human beings are agents who can think and act on their own initiative. This does not go contrary to causality but is a form of it. When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composes, Mark Twain writes, Paul Cezanne paints and Mr. Clark produces philosophical essays, they all cause things to happen in the world.
True, this means I do defend that people can be first causes in some instances but that is just one type of causation among others. To maintain, as Mr. Clark does implicitly, that only a single kind of causation exists in the world is contrary to what one can confirm in one’s own life, history, and most of one’s experiences with other people. It is to hold, contrary to overwhelming evidence, that the kind of causality we find on a pool table, taking place between billiard balls, is the sole sort in all of reality. This is not a discovery but an artificial imposition or extrapolation, a false metaphysics and certainly not a scientific finding.

Sincerely,

Tibor R. Machan

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