Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Both notions have been criticised as being speculative, but
in neither case this criticism is justified.
Yet, there is also a striking difference between
Anscombe and von Wright concerning the nature of this
more basic dependency concept: for Anscombe the
difference between observing and intervening plays no
role, but for von Wright it is crucial. I believe that when we
turn to Wittgenstein, this difference may be cleared up.
3. Reacting to the cause
In his manuscript, Wittgenstein takes issue with a paper by
Russell (Russell 1936), who argues that before we come
to know a cause by experiencing regularities we must first
know it by intuition. Wittgenstein objects to this idea of
knowledge by intuition. Instead, he points our attention to
the practice of reacting to the cause. In some cases we
react instinctively or non-consciously to some external
stimulus, e.g., blushing or moving nervously when
someone is staring at us. This is a form of reacting to the
cause, although there is no mediating `intuitive
awareness'. In this context, Wittgenstein quotes Goethe,
``im Anfang war die Tat''.
The origin and the primitive form of the language game
is a reaction; only from this can more complicated forms
develop. (Wittgenstein 1976, p. 420)
There are many forms of reacting, not all of which
are immediate. In such cases we speak of `looking for the
cause'. Here, again, there are different types. In one type
of case, we simply trace the cause, e.g., tracing a moving
rope to find the person pulling at it. Upon finding this
person pulling the rope, reacting to the cause (i.e., to him)
is simply a response, e.g., to stop the rope from moving.
This reaction need not be construed as the overcoming of
doubt or the inference ``that this is the cause of the
movement of the rope''. The second type of case is where
we do not simply trace the cause, but perform experiments
to find the cause.
In one case “He is the cause” simply means: he pulled
the string. In the other case it means roughly: those are
the conditions that I would have to change in order to get
rid of this phenomenon. (idem, p. 417)
In R. Rhees' lecture notes (p. 433) we find that
Wittgenstein claims that it is their common function of
predicting what will happen which explains why we use this
one word `cause' in both cases. That is not to say that they
always give us the same results. We may find by
experiment that the cause is something other than the
thing to which we instinctively react. But the practice of
looking for a cause is one root of the ``cause-effect
language-game'' and this explains the use of this word for
both types of behavior.
Wittgenstein's analysis of causation is more diverse
than what is presented by Anscombe and von Wright.
Anscombe focusses on the reaction of looking from one
thing to another thing: when one billiard ball launches
another, our reaction to the cause (the hitting) is that we
look at the effect (the movement of the second ball).
Though her views are not couched in terms of reactions,
they no doubt closely resemble what Wittgenstein writes
about tracing the cause.
Von Wright accepts the traditional view in which
causation is lawlike and nomic, but the reason for this may
simply be that he is concerned with the issue of scientific
methodology. In natural science we try to discover and
Derivativeness, production and reacting to the cause - Rosja Mastop
explain regularities by means of experiment. As
Wittgenstein's analysis shows, there is no conflict between
the existence of this practice and the existence of the
practice of tracing causes (this does not exclude the
possibility of a conflict between the findings of either
practice). Von Wright is only concerned with the latter
practice---he explicitly refers to the concept he is interested
in as `experimentalist causation'---and so for him the
conceptual connection between causation and regularity is
not unreasonable. In this respect, the differences between
Anscombe and von Wright in this respect could almost be
terminological: for which practice do we reserve the term
`cause'?
Von Wright directs our attention to the agency
involved in performing experiments. He argues that this
practice is constitutive of our understanding of causal
connections as being nomic. Although this element in von
Wright's work is commonly interpreted as an influence of
Collingwood, it also clearly follows on Wittgenstein's
analysis. Looking for the cause is of course more than a
mere shift of attention. We aim to impute the witnessed
event to something or someone, or we aim to guard
ourselves against something, or, indeed, we aim to
intervene in the mechanism to change the course of
events. We look for a cause in order to intervene.
Consequently, without the idea of being able to intervene
we cannot make sense of the practice of looking for the
cause.
Von Wright then takes the analysis one step further.
He notes that tracing an event, qua action, to a person is
different from tracing it to, say, a cogwheel or a virus.
Looking for the cause is a process that can, in principle, be
continued indefinitely. But when we impute responsibility to
a person, the tracing comes to an end. This is so, not
because the agent is an `unmoved mover', a view to which
von Wright objects, but because holding a person
responsible is not the same as tracing the behavior to
some cortical activity. The reactions following imputation
are different from the reactions upon finding a cause. In
the latter case we may either restart the activity of tracing
the cause anew, or physically intervene in the mechanism.
In the former case, on the other hand, we can ask for the
person's motives and reason with him. In doing so, we are
not tracing the behavior to some preceding event, but we
consider the person capable of intentional action and we
are generally satisfied when the motivation strikes us as
reasonable or natural. However, giving a motivation
presupposes the capability to do otherwise. We do not
trace the behavior from the person to his motives, but the
motives are attributed to him. In view of this, the attribution
of responsibility can give us the idea of alternative futures
which the notion of tracing a cause in principle does not.
This further step is, I take it, still understandable as
Wittgensteinian. In fact, von Wright quotes Wittgenstein in
a footnote on this point:
An intention is embedded in its situation, in human
customs and institutions. (Wittgenstein 1953, sect. 337)
This is for von Wright the source for his view that
explanation in the social sciences is different from
explanation in the natural sciences, and that the latter
practice depends on the very same customs and
institutions as the former does.
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