Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

54 Theism and Explanation
argues that the temporal priority condition could, conceivably, apply to
God, on the assumption that both God’s willing the explanandum and the
explanandum itself exist in time. (Where the big bang is the explanandum,
the temporal priority condition would entail that the big bang was not,
as commonly believed, 87 the beginning of time. As Smith writes, this is
at least a “logical possibility.” 88 ) But the other two conditions—those of
spatial contiguity and law-like conjunction—do not apply to God. 89 What
about “singularist” defi nitions of causality, which reject the nomological
requirement? Well, at least the best known of such defi nitions, that of C.
J. Ducasse, 90 still requires spatial contiguity. 91 Another option consists of
“transference” defi nitions of a cause, which claim that what is essential to
causation is a transfer of some mark or property from cause to effect. This,
too, Smith argues, fails in application to God. For what could it be that is
transferred between a non-physical cause and a physical effect?
There remains the counterfactual analysis of causation to which I
referred a moment ago. If the theist could answer the various objections
that have been offered to the counterfactual analysis, could the theist not
think of divine action as “causal” in this sense? No, Smith argues, he cannot.
When applied to God, a counterfactual analysis of causation runs into
a new problem. The problem was already identifi ed in the work of David
Lewis. Lewis points out an objection to his own counterfactual analysis of
causation, namely that it leads to what he calls a “spurious causal dependence”
of the cause on its effect. To see what he means, let’s designate the
cause as c and the effect as e. And let’s imagine a situation in which—given
the particular laws and circumstances involved—“c could not have failed
to cause e.” 92 Then, as Lewis writes, “it seems to follow that if the effect
e had not occurred, then its cause c would not have occurred.” 93 But on a
counterfactual analysis, this would make e the cause of c, which is an unacceptable
conclusion. Something like Mackie’s added condition of causal
priority seems to be needed (3.4.3).
Lewis’s way out of this objection is to deny the counterfactual in question,
to deny that if e had not occurred then c would not have occurred
either. Rather, he insists,
c would have occurred just as it did but would have failed to cause e.
It is less of a departure from actuality to get rid of e by holding c fi xed
and giving up some or other of the laws and circumstances in virtue of
which c could not have failed to produce e, rather than to hold those
laws and circumstances fi xed and get rid of e by going back and abolishing
its cause c. 94
What Lewis seems to be doing here is retracting his original stipulation,
namely that here is a situation in which “c could not have failed to cause
e.” And one can read this as a denial that there could ever be an unfailingly
effi cacious cause. But of course to deny that there could be an unfailingly