Download A unified account of causal relata

This article was downloaded by: [Macquarie University]
On: 20 October 2011, At: 19:13
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:
1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,
London W1T 3JH, UK
Australasian Journal of
Philosophy
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rajp20
A unified account of causal
relata
Peter Menzies
a
a
Department of Traditional and Modern
Philosophy, University of Sydney
Available online: 02 Jun 2006
To cite this article: Peter Menzies (1989): A unified account of causal relata,
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 67:1, 59-83
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048408912343681
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/
terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study
purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,
reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make
any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or
up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher
shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or
costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Vol. 67, No. 1; March 1989
A UNIFIED ACCOUNT OF CAUSAL RELATA *
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
What kinds of entities do causal sentences relate? This question is readily
answered in the case of general causation, since a distinguishing mark of
a general causal sentence is that its causal relata are properties. The question
is much harder to answer in the case of singular causation, however, because
singular causal sentences seem to disclose a bewildering variety of different
kinds of causal relata, many of which are not well understood. This paper
addresses the issues whether some sense can be made of this bewildering
variety and whether, indeed, some unified account can be given of the
apparently different kinds of causal relata.
In § 1 I catalogue the different kinds of entities which ordinary language
dignifies as causal relata. The catalogue includes physical objects, events,
states of affairs, facts, and event aspects. Then in §2 I critically examine
Donald Davidson's influential thesis that events, conceived of as concrete
particulars, are causation's basic relata. The examination concludes that
Davidson has not made out a distinctive conception of events as concrete
particulars and that he cannot, consistently with his other doctrines, account
for other kinds of causal relata recognised by ordinary language.
In §3 I develop an idea of Jaegwon Kim's that situations, which are the
denotations of a certain class of true statements, are the basic causal relata.
Events and states of affairs, I argue, are subclasses of situations. In the
following section, §4, I explain how causal statements relating facts and
event aspects derive from causal statements relating situations.
Finally in the last section of the paper, §5, I respond to an objection,
pressed strenuously by Davidson, that situations, as the denotations of
statements, cannot serve as causal relata. The objection takes the form of
an argument, stemming from Frege, to the effect that if statements denote
situations, then all true statements denote the same situation. If sound, this
argument would collapse all situations into a single causal relatum.
1. The Variety of Causal Relata
Grammar requires that the places of 3c' and 'y' in the sentential matrix
3c caused y ' should be occupied by noun phrases. Of course, one sort of
noun phrase that can occupy these places is a singular term referring to
a physical object, considered in a wide sense. A sentence such as 'The building
* I thank JohnBaconand LloydReinhardtfor conversationswhichwereveryhelpfulin clarifying
my ideas on this topic. This paper was partly written during my tenure of a National Research
Fellowship.
59
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
60
A Unified Account of Causal Relata
caused the shadow', in which the noun phrases in the cause and effect positions
refer to physical objects, is grammatically well-formed. So, ordinary language
clearly recognises physical objects as causal relata. But this sentence is most
naturally interpreted as elliptical for a more complex sentence such as "The
building's obstructing the light caused the shadow to form', in which the
noun phrases denoting cause and effect are both quasi-sentential in form.
Given that causal sentences relating physical objects are properly seen as
elliptical in this way, I shall not treat physical objects as genuine causal
relata.
Let us turn, then, to consider causal sentences the noun phrases of which
are quasi-sententiat in form. These noun-phrases are formed by the device
of nominalisation, which transforms a sentence into a noun phrase fit for
insertion into another sentence. An essential feature of the resulting nounphrases, called nominals, is that they contain a verb derivative. One common
kind of nominal is formed from the gerund of the verb of the nominalised
sentence, some examples being: 'the children's shrieking loudly', 'the dog's
having mange', 'the postman's arriving late'. Another common kind of
nominal, which is not as universal as the first kind because it depends on
idiosyncracies of English vocabulary, is formed by adding suffixes to the
verbs of the nominalised sentences, as exemplified by 'the dinner guest's
arrival', 'the children's laughter', 'the death of the budgerigar'. Finally, another
kind of nominal commonly found in causal sentences, though only in the
effect position, are infinitival constructions such as those in the sentences
'The dog's limping caused Alice to cry' and 'Opening the oven door caused
the souffl~ to collapse'.
What do the nominals of singular causal sentences refer to? A common
answer is that they refer to events and states of affairs. Postponing a detailed
account of these notions until §3, let us settle now for an informal account
of their common features and differences, starting with their common features.
First, events and states of affairs are occurrent situations, which is to
say that they are happenings or occurrences which are as much real features
of the world as physical objects, though they are categorically different.
Secondly, they are dependent or parasitic on physical objects in that they
would not exist if there were not physical objects: an event occurs because
it occurs to a physical object and a state of affairs obtains because it is
the state of some object. Their dependence on a physical objects supplies
the only sense in which they have spatial location: their spatial location
is that of the physical object on which they depend. Thirdly, events and
states of affairs have a temporal location in their own right: the temporal
location of an event is the time at which it occurs and that of a state of
affairs the time at which it obtains.
The principal difference between events and states of affairs is that events
are changes but states of affairs are not. A strawberry's reddening is an
event, while its being red is a state of affairs; my neighbour's bleaching
her hair blond is an event, while the end result, her hair's being blond,
is a state of affairs. (This difference entails the further difference that an
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
61
event takes time in a way that a state of affairs does not. Since a change
consists in a physical object's acquiring a property which it did not possess
at an earlier time or its losing a property it did possess at an earlier time,
an event happens over a period of time. A state of affairs, on the other
hand, may be instantaneous.) Moreover, events are not only changes, they
are temporally continuous changes: my putting my shoes on in the morning
and my taking them off at night are both events but there is no temporally
discontinuous single event consisting of my putting my shoes on in the morning
and taking them off at night.
Nominals derived from sentences can be classified in terms of whether
they refer to events or states of affairs. This classification is jointly exhaustive
as well as mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, it is worth adverting to a subclassification of states of affairs which will be important for later arguments,
namely the subclassification consisting of what I shall call negative states
of affairs. Nominals in which the verb derivative is negated, for example
'George's not shaving today', 'his not being able to sing Waltzing Matilda',
refer to negative states of affairs, as do nominals derived from negative
verbs like 'fail', 'lack', 'omit'. The situations referred to by the nominals
'George's not shaving today', 'his failure to open the store', and 'his lack
of money' do not involve changes; and consequently, they are most naturally
regarded as states of affairs, rather than events.
A quite distinct kind of nominalisation from the kinds we have considered
consists in converting a sentence into a noun phrase with a 'the fact that'construction. Thus, we obtain such constructions as 'the fact that the dog
limped' or more simply 'that the postman was late', which may then figure
in causal sentences like 'The fact that the dog limped caused his owner
to be concerned' and 'That the postman was late was caused by a delay
at the sorting centre'. Some philosophers (Vendler 1967a; b) have taken
these constructions as providing strong indication that facts are yet one more
kind of causal relatum recognised by ordinary language.
What are facts? Again, I postpone full consideration of this question until
§4 and give only a thumbnail sketch here. It is, indeed, best to characterise
facts by way of contrast with events and states of affairs. Facts do not
seem to be occurrent features of the world like events and states of affairs.
To be sure, facts exist or obtain but they do not exist or obtain at certain
times like events or states of affairs. Again, they do not seem to be dependent
on physical objects like events or states of affairs: if there were no physical
objects, there would still be facts, or at least the fact that there are no
physical objects. Finally, facts do not, in contrast to events or states or affairs,
have a spatial or temporal location: it would be a mistake to ask where
and when to look to find a certain fact. The observation that facts do not
have spatio-temporal location gives rise to the puzzle, to be addressed in
a subsequent section, about exactly how they can serve as causal relata.
We have not yet reached the end of the catalogue of the causal relata
recognised by ordinary language. We have yet to note that the noun phrases
which occupy the cause and effect position of causal sentences may be
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
62
A Unified Account of Causal Relata
nominals derived, not from sentences, but from adjectives and adverbs. As
well as the means for nominalising sentences, English also possesses the
means for making noun phrases out of adjectives and adverbs, as exemplified
by the noun phrases in the causal sentences 'The aridity of the soil caused
the slowness of the plant's growth' and 'The brightness of the light caused
the rapidity of our blinking'. Noting such sentences, some philosophers
(Dretske 1977; Sanford 1985) have proposed as yet a further kind of causal
relatum event aspects. These philosophers believe that nominals which contain
emphasised adjectives or adverbs also refer to event aspects. So, for example,
the sentences 'The arid soil caused the plant to grow slowly' and 'The bright
light caused us to blink rapidly' are supposed to report causal relations between
event aspects. As Dretske (1972) notes, the emphasised elements of these
nominals are often signalled by higher pitch or greater stress; but this is
not necessarily the case, as context may suffice to determine which elements
are emphasised.
It seems, then, that ordinary language dignifies physical objects, events,
states of affairs, facts and event aspects as causal relata. Even if, as I have
suggested, we set aside physical objects, we are still left with quite a variety
of causal relata, which prompts the question: Are there different kinds of
causal relations corresponding to the different kinds of causal relata? From
the point of view of giving a conceptual analysis of the commonsense notion
of causation, it is highly implausible that the answer to this question should
be affirmative. If commonsense supposed there are different causal relations
corresponding to the different kinds of causal relata, the verb 'cause' would
be multiply ambiguous: the verb would mean one thing when it relates events,
another thing when it relates states of affairs, another thing when it relates
facts and yet another thing when it relates event aspects. Moreover, the
ambiguities would multiply when 'cross-over' causal sentences are taken
into account in which the cause and effect are different kinds of entity.
Casual reflection shows, however, that the verb 'cause' is not ambiguous
in four ways, let alone ambiguous in the multiple ways that would be required
to account for 'cross-over' causal sentences.
This conclusion suggests that we should try, at least as a tentative solution,
to find some unified account of the causal relata recognised by ordinary
language. In the next section I shall explore the possibility of providing
a unified account of causal relata in terms of events.
2. Davidsonian Events as Basic Causal Relata
Donald Davidson (1967b) has championed the view that the basic causal
relata are events. As Davidson's view depends for its plausibility on a
particular conception of events, advanced and defended in a series of papers
(1963; 1967a; 1969a), we must first consider this conception of events.
Davidson proposes that events are concrete particulars, similar in this respect
to physical objects. The analogy with physical objects forms the basis of
two points he forcefully makes about events.
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
63
First, just as a definite description standing for a physical object need
not provide a complete description of the object, a definite description standing
for an event need not provide a complete description of the event. According
to Davidson, we can specify the whole cause of some event, even when
we have not wholly specified it (1967b, p. 156): if some person, say Smith,
dies while climbing a rockface, we can specify the whole cause of the death
by means of the singular term 'Smith's fall', even though this definite
description falls far short of providing a complete description of every detail
of the cause.
Secondly, just as there may be several definite descriptions standing for
the same physical object, so there may be several definite descriptions standing
for the same event. To take one of Davidson's early examples (1963, p.
4), my flipping the switch, my turning on the light, my illuminating the
room, and my alerting the burglar do not refer to different events, but rather
to one event which has been described in four different ways.
In Davidson's view, it is events, conceived of as concrete particulars, which
serve as causation's basic relata. Pace Davidson, however, they do not appear
well suited to act in this role. The entities that are causation's basic relata
are more finely individuated than concrete particulars. While Davidson may
suppose that 'my flipping the switch' and 'my alerting the burglar' simply
provide different descriptions of the same event, ordinary causal discourse
does not treat them as describing the same causal relatum. For replacing
one description with the other in a causal sentence may change the truth
value of the sentence. We may say, for example, that flipping the switch
caused electrons to race along the wire to the light bulb, but my alerting
the burglar did not. Conversely, we might say that the burglar's being in
the front room of the house when I entered was a causal condition of my
alerting him, but it was not a causal condition of my flipping the switch.
Davidson may attempt to defend his thesis that events, as concrete
particulars, are causation's basic relata by claiming that these different
descriptions refer, after all, to different events. But such a defence highlights
the need for precise identity conditions for events, as concrete particulars.
To be fair to Davidson, he has tried to provide identity conditions for events
of a kind which will ensure that different descriptions referring to the same
event refer also to the same causal relatum. His identity conditions (1969a,
p. 179) are as follows: events are identical (i) if and (ii) only if their causes
and effects are identical. To be sure, these conditions ensure that no event
can play several causal roles, since they individuate events precisely in terms
of their role in the network of causal relations.
There is, however, some reason to be sceptical about whether these
conditions do their job properly. Davidson's expressed interest in his work
on causation is to develop an account of the logical form of causal sentences,
a concern which is reasonably seen as a preliminary to a full semantic analysis
of causation. But how can Davidson's identity conditions for events fit into
a semantic analysis of causation? The identity conditions, being couched
in terms of causation, would introduce an illicit circularity into the analysis
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
64
A Unified Account of Causal Relata
of causation if events are assumed to be causation's basic relata. Moreover,
as D. H. Mellor points out (1986, §2), these conditions do not even distinguish
events, as concrete particulars, from other rival entities proposed as basic
causal relata. Condition (ii) says no more than the identity of indiscernibles:
entities of any kind which differ in some way are distinct. Furthermore,
condition (i) is as likely to be true of Jaegwon Kim's events, soon to be
discussed, as it is of Davidson's events. The point here is that condition
(i) states something which we would expect to fall out of the true account
of causation's basic relata; but by itself it does not tell us anything about
the character of these entities, whatever they are.
To conclude this part of our discussion, it is far from obvious that Davidson
has made out a distinctive conception of events as concrete particulars which
is compatible with his claim that events are the basic causal relata. But
so that we can move on to some further problems confronting Davidson's
position, let us grant Davidson some conception or other of events as concrete
particulars.
A major problem for Davidson's thesis that events alone are causation's
relata concerns the many sentences which appear to report causal relations
between entities other than events. Among the sentences which do not belong
to the canonical type reporting causation between events, Davidson himself
includes such sentences as (1967b, p. 161): 'The failure of the sprinkling
system caused the fire', 'The slowness with which the controls were applied
caused the rapidity with which inflation developed', 'The collapse was caused,
not by the fact that the bolt gave way, but by the fact that it gave way
so suddenly and unexpectedly'; and 'The fact that the dam did not hold
caused the flood.' The reasons for exclusion from the canonical type of
causal sentence are plain enough: the first sentence involves a negative state
of affairs; the second involves event aspects; and the third and fourth involve
facts. Davidson suggests that these sentences report causal explanations,
which typically relate sentences or propositions, not events. In other words,
he suggests that the verb 'caused' of these sentences does not mean the
same as the 'caused' of the canonical sentences reporting causation between
events, but rather means the same thing as 'causally explains'.
We have already encountered this sort of argumentative move in the last
section, when we considered the suggestion that there are different kinds
of causal relations for different kinds of causal relata. From the perspective
of giving a conceptual analysis of causation, I argued in the last section,
this move is implausible, as it would entail that the verb 'caused' is multiply
ambiguous. Indeed, without any independent argument for an ambiguity
in the verb, Davidson's claim that the non-canonical sentences are causal
explanations seems to be simply an ad hoc manoeuvre. But since Davidson's
views have been extremely influential, it is worth spending some time showing
that they are untenable.
If there were a genuine equivocation in our use of the verb 'caused' in
the two sorts of sentence, it would make illegitimate many of our ordinary
ways of talking and reasoning about causation. For example, if you say
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
PeterMenzies
65
'The shortcircuit caused the fire' and I say 'So too did the failure of the
sprinkler system', my remark would be, strictly speaking, out of place, since
I would be using the word 'caused' in a different way from you. Again,
if you say 'The insect plague caused the poor crop' and I say 'No: it was
the lack of rain that caused the poor crop', we would not be contradicting
each other but merely speaking at cross-purposes. Finally, it would be
mistaken to argue for a canonical causal sentence, as is commonly accepted,
on the basis of non-canonical sentences. For example, it is commonly regarded
as acceptable to argue that George's being distracted caused the accident,
on the grounds that his being distracted caused his failure to brake in time
and his failure to brake in time caused the accident. This seemingly innocent
argument would count as fallacious if Davidson were right, since it would
depend on an equivocation of the word 'caused' in the premisses and
conclusion.
Even apart from these problems, Davidson's claim that the non-canonical
sentences are causal explanations, not reports of causation, raises some
difficult questions about the sort of causal explanation involved. First, as
Mellor (1986, §4) points out, it is usually assumed that causation and causal
explanation are closely related, even if they are not the same thing: in
particular, it is assumed that a cause explains its effect. But this is not possible
on Davidson's view, since causes and effects are events but causal explanantia
and explananda are sentences or propositions. Secondly, a causal explanation
is usually taken to be causal in virtue of some underlying causal relation.
But there cannot be any causal relations underlying Davidson's causal
explanations because they are relegated to secondary status precisely on
the grounds that they do not report genuine causal relations between events.
Thirdly, causal explanations are typically intensional; but the non-canonical
sentences Davidson lists are no more intensional than the canonical sentences.
As a matter of fact, Davidson suggests that the non-canonical sentences
may involve an intensional causal connective (1967b, p. 161). But there
is no good reason for his suggestion: if the sprinkler system is the apparatus
installed by the fire brigade, then the sentence 'The failure of the sprinkler
system caused the fire' is true if and only if the sentence 'The failure of
the apparatus installed by the fire brigade caused the fire' is true. As far
as I am aware, there is no reason for thinking that non-canonical sentences
are intensional which does not apply equally well to canonical sentences.
These arguments cast some doubt on Davidson's claim that the noncanonical sentences report causal explanations rather than causal relations.
Observe, however, that they do not directly undermine his main thesis that
causation's true relata are events rather than other kinds of entities. After
all, the arguments above cast doubt only on the claim that the verb 'caused'
of the non-canonical sentences means something different from the verb
'caused' of the canonical sentences. For all that has been said, it would
be open to Davidson to retain the main thesis and offer an alternative treatment
of the non-canonical sentences. One alternative treatment would be to argue
that the non-canonical sentences semantically reduce to canonical sentences
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
66
A UnifiedAccount of Causal Relata
(perhaps conjoined with other acceptable kinds of sentences). So, instead
of arguing that the non-canonical sentences involve a different sense of
the verb 'caused', one might argue that the non-canonical sentences are
actually translatable into canonical ones (perhaps conjoined with other kinds
of sentences). This course of argument would then allow one to maintain
that causation relates events primarily, but it can relate other kinds of entities
to the extent that the non-canonical sentences reporting the relations between
the other kinds of entities reduce to canonical sentences reporting relations
between events. Let us consider in the remainder of this section how far
this thesis, which admittedly is not Davidson's own, can be upheld.
Is it possible to reduce the non-canonical sentences whose causal relata
are states of affairs, facts, and event aspects to the canonical sentences?
I believe that there are genuine difficulties in trying to reduce any of these
kinds of non-canonical sentences. For the purposes of illustration, however,
let us confine our attention to the reduction of causal sentences involving
states of affairs.
At first sight, it appears that the reduction is simply impossible, in view
of the different natures of events and states of affairs: recall from our earlier
discussion that events are changes but states of affairs are not. But this
characterisation of the difference between events and states of affairs was
mine, not Davidson's. There is nothing in Davidson's own characterisation
of events as concrete particulars, individuated by their position in the causal
network, to rule out taking states of affairs as limiting cases of events that
involve no change. This would certainly sit uneasily with our intuitive
conception of events. But one might try to justify this departure from the
intuitive conception by claiming that the extension of the concept of events
to include states of affairs leads to desirable theoretical economies. However
convincing the argument from theoretical economy might be, this course
of argument will be decisively obstructed by the existence of negative states
of affairs of the kind denoted by negated nominals such as 'Caesar's not
dying' and nominals derived from negative verbs such as 'Brutus' failure
to stab'. Such negative states of affairs are not events, or at least Davidson
cannot say they are, since doing so would prove inconsistent with other
of his doctrines.
To see that this is so, consider the following argument, which is a
modification of Mellor's (1986, §4). Davidson accepts as central to his
treatment of adverbs the thesis, first propounded by F. P. Ramsey (1927),
that a sentence such as 'Caesar died' does not itself refer to an event, Caesar's
death, but rather is an existential proposition asserting the existence of an
event of this kind: on this rendering, the sentence has the same meaning
as 'There is an event which is a death of Caesar'. Davidson (1967a) develops
this insight further in his treatment of adverbs, according to which the sentence
'Caesar dies instantly' has the logical form 'There is an event which is a
death of Caesar and which is instant'. A virtue of this account is that it
provides a simple explanation of the fact that 'Caesar died quickly' entails
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
67
'Caesar died' in terms of the logical properties of the existential quantifier
and conjunction.
Now suppose that there are negative events, and in particular a certain
negative event, Caesar's non-death, which exists just when Caesar does not
die. Ramsey's thesis, extended to negate sentences, would couple the sentence
'Caesar did not die' with the logical form 'There is an event which is a
non-death of Caesar'; and Davidson's treatment of adverbs would couple
the sentence 'Caesar did not die instantly' with the logical form 'There is
an event which is a non-death of Caesar and which is instant'. These logical
forms create an anomaly, however, since they imply that the sentence 'Caesar
did not die instantly' entails 'Caesar did not die', parallel to the way in
which 'Caesar died instantly' entails 'Caesar died'. But, as Mellor points
out, there is an asymmetry in the entailments of affirmative and negative
sentences: the adverbially modified affirmative sentence 'Caesar died
instantly' entails the unmodified affirmative sentence 'Caesar died' but the
situation is reversed with negative sentences with the unmodified negative
sentence 'Caesar did not die' entailing the adverbially modified 'Caesar did
not die instantly'.
In conclusion, Davidson cannot, in view of his adherence to Ramsey's
thesis and his treatment of adverbs, take negative states of affairs to be
among the events over which ordinary sentences quantify.
3. Real Situations as Basic Causal Relata
I believe that a reductionist programme, similar in kind to that sketched
in the last section, is the best way to provide a unified account of the various
kinds of causal relata. But instead of the reductionist thesis that events are
the basic causal relata, I propose the thesis that events and staes of affairs
(including negative states of affairs) are the basic causal relata and that
facts and events aspects are derivative causal relata. Furthermore, I propose
that events and states of affairs are in fact subclasses of a single class of
entities traditionally called situations. (They are sometimes called states of
affairs, but I have already used the term for one of the subclasses.) In this
section I present an account of situations and explain how events and states
of affairs fit into the class of situations. I leave it to §4 to explain how
causal sentences relating facts and event aspects reduce to causal sentences
relating events and states of affairs.
What are situations? There is a venerable roll-call of twentieth century
philosophers--including Wittgenstein in the Tractatus (1961), Russell in 'The
Philosophy of Logical Atomism' (1972), and Austin in 'Truth' (1961)-who have presented accounts, in differing terminologies, of what I am calling
situations. If there is something which is generally agreed by these
philosophers, it is that situations are the worldly correlates of true sentences
or statements: situations are what true sentences or statements describe. Some
philosophers argue that true sentences or statements refer to situations.
However, as there is a perfectly good usage in which the sentence 'Alice
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
68
A UnifiedAccount of Causal Relata
is pulling Jemima's tail' is said to refer to Alice, Jemima, and her tail, to
avoid confusion let us appeal to the technical term 'denotes' and say that
this sentence denotes the situation of Alice pulling Jemima's tail.
When we go beyond the generality that situations are the wordly correlates
of true sentences or statements, we find general controversy over the details
of situations. In presenting an account of situations that may serve as causal
relata, I must needs take sides, without always adducing supporting arguments, over issues which have been the subject of much controversy.
First, I shall assume that only indicative sentences can denote situations.
Questions, imperatives, exclamations, and the like are not in the business
of describing or representing the world; and for this reason do not denote
siutations. More controversially, I agree with Wittgenstein in the Tractatus
(1961, 4.462) that only synthetic indicative sentences denote situations, since
analytic sentences do not have any representative or descriptive function
at all.
Secondly, I shall assume that only true atomic sentences, consisting of
an n-place predicate and n singular terms, and true negated atomic sentences
denote situations. C all these, respectively, the atomic situations and the negative
situations. There has been much controversy over whether there are, in
addition to atomic and negative situations, also situations corresponding to
true logically complex sentences involving disjunction, conjunction, and
quantification. Although the technical resources are available (van Fraassen
1969; Taylor 1985, Ch. 2) to give an affirmative answer to the question,
there is little reason in a discussion of causal relata to go beyond atomic
and negative situations.
Thirdly, I shall assume that it is true statements, rather than sentences,
which denote situations. If we focus attention on eternal sentences which
lack indexicals, demonstratives, and tenses, we may be tempted to think
sentences denote situations. But a consequence of the fact that most sentences
contain indexicals, demonstratives, or tense is that the same sentence can
be used by different people to denote different situations, as when each
of us says something different in uttering 'I am here'; and it is another
consequence that different sentences can be used by different people to
represent the same situation, as when I say 'There is a snake in front of
me' and you say 'There is a snake in front of you'. Consequently, we must
say that it is a sentence as used by a particular person in a particular context,
in other words a statement, which denotes a situation.
The way I have discussed situations so far glosses over a difference between
two rival conceptions of situations. On one conception, the linguistic
conception, situations are quasi-linguistic entities that are posited merely
to provide extralinguistic correlates to true statements. On this conception,
situations are completely parasitic on a language, with the different languages
carving the world up into different totalities of situations. On the other
conception, the metaphysical conception, situations are not quasi-linguistic
entities, but real entities existing in their own right independently of language.
On this conception, there is a fixed totality of situations which exists whether
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
PeterMenzies
69
or not there are any linguistic expressions to denote them. Whatever the
merits of the first conception, which has been invoked especially in semantic
studies (Taylor 1985, p. 29), it is clear that it is the second conception
of situations which is appropriate for our study of causal relata: since it
is safe to assume there are many causal relata which have never been, nor
ever will be, expressed in language, we need a conception of situations as
causal relata which outstrip our linguistic resources.
Under the metaphysical conception, a situation is traditionally represented
as a structured complex: complex because it consists of a number of different
kinds of entity and structured because these entities must be put together
in the right way to constitute a situation. Following Martin (1969), Kim
(1966; 1969; 1973; 1975), Goldman (1970, Ch. 1), Taylor (1985, Ch. 2)
and Barwise and Perry (1983, C h. 3), I identify the constituents of a situation
as a property (or more generally an n-adic relation), a physical object (or
more generally an n-tuple of physical objects), and a period of time (including
both instants and intervals of time). The limitations of time and space force
us in this work to take the identity conditions of physical objects, properties
and relations, and periods of time as given. I note, however, that under
the metaphysical conception of situations which I have embraced, these
constituents need not be correlated with any linguistic expression. More
particularly, the constituent properties and relations of situations are not
linguistic entities like senses or meanings nor, for that matter, abstract objects
like sets or functions from possible worlds to n-tuples of objects. Moreoever,
I point out that while coextensiveness of predicates is a necessary condition
for sameness of property or relation, it is by no means a sufficient condition:
to cite a familiar example, the predicates 'x has a heart' and 'x has a kidney'
are coextensive, they do not pick out the same property. Conversely, while
synonymy is a sufficient condition for sameness of property or relation, it
is not a necessary condition: the predicates 'x is yellow' and 'x is the colour
of sunflowers' pick out the same property but are certainly not synonymous.
The constituents of situations are structured in different ways in atomic
and negative situations. Corresponding to the different structures are different
relationships which hold among the constituents of the two kinds of situation.
Let us follow Jaegwon Kim (1973) and use the symbol [Fn, xn, t] to represent
the atomic situation, whose constituents are the n-adic relation F~, the ntuple xn, and the period of time t. Then this situation consists in a certain
primitive and unanalysable relation holding among these constituents: it
consists, indeed, in the n-tuple x~ exemplifying the relation F~ in the period
of time t. Let us also use the symbol [-(Fn, xn, t)] to represent the negative
situation with the same constituents. This situation consists in a different
primitive and unanalysable relation holding among its constituents, this time
the relation being n-tuple xn not exemplifying the relation F~ in the period
of time t.
We can easily tell when situations, so characterised, are identical. First,
atomic situations are never identical with negative situations; secondly, the
atomic situation [F~, x~, t] is identical with the atomic situation [G~, Y~, t']
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
70
A UnifiedAccount of Causal Relata
if and only if Fn is the same relation as Gn, xn is the same n-tuple of objects
as Yn, and t is the same period of time as t'; and finally the negative situation
[-(S)] is identical with the negative situation [-(/3] if and only if S is the
same atomic situation as T.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, I hasten to point out that the symbol
'[...]', which some of Kim's critics have thought mysterious, is dispensable
in the present account of situations. It serves merely as a convenient formal
means of representing sometimes cumbersome nominals, so [F~, x~, t] is
simply another way of expressing the nominal 'the n-tuple x~'s exemplifying
the relation Fn in the period of time t'. Hence, the expression [Laughs, Alice,
noon] should be no more mysterious than the nominal 'Alice's exemplifying
the property of laughing at noon' or, more briefly, 'Alice's laughing at noon'.
Again, to avoid misunderstanding, I point out that the situation [F~, x~, t]
is not the ordered triple ( F~, x~, D some have identified as a situation (Martin
1969; Taylor 1985, Ch. 2). The latter is a set-theoretic entity which, like
all mathematical objects, is abstract. As Barwise and Perry put it (1983,
pp. 57-60), such set-theoretic entities do not belong to the causal order:
they cannot be perceived and they cannot stand in causal relations. But
the situations which I have identified are real parts of the world; and as
such they stand in causal relations to each other and are the objects of
perception. I believe that it is entirely legitimate to construct, as many have
done, abstract set-theoretic situations from the constituents of real situations.
These abstract situations prove to be of enormous value in semantic studies
of adverbial modification (Taylor 1985), and perceptual and psychological
attitude contexts (Barwise and Perry 1983). But they are quite different
in nature from the real situations which I have identified: the abstract situation
(Fn, xn, D exists just when its constituents exist, but the real situation
[F~, xn, t] exists just when x~ actually exemplifies F~ in the period of time
t.
I propose that events and states of affairs should be identified with these
real situations. What reason is there for these identifications? On the face
of it, nominals seem to play several linguistic roles: they are our standard
means of referring to events and states of affairs; and they are also our
standard means of referring to the situations which are the denotations of
statements. Consequently, any nominal which stands for an event or state
of affairs also stands for a situation which is the denotation of the
corresponding nominalised statement. If events and states of affairs are
situations, that would explain this apparent coincidence. If these identifications
are correct, the event of the Titanic's sinking is identical with the situation
which is the denotation of the statement 'The Titanic sank'; and the state
of affairs of the Titanic's not having enough lifeboats is identical with the
situation which is the denotation of the statement 'The Titanic did not have
enough lifeboats'.
An even more compelling reason for the identifications lies in the striking
parallels between the semantic structure of nominals referring to events and
states of affairs and the identity conditions of situations. Replacing a singular
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
PeterMenzies
71
term in a nominal with another singular term having the same reference
does not change the reference of the nominal itself; but replacing it with
a singular term with a different reference does. For example, Alice's waving
hello to George is the same event as Alice's waving hello to our local
greengrocer, since George is our local greengrocer; but Alice's waving hello
to Fred is a different event, since Fred, our local postman, is distinct from
George. Again, replacing a predicate in a nominal with another denoting
the same property or relation does not change the reference of the nominal
as a whole; but replacing it with a predicate denoting a different property
does. For example, Fred's having a heart is the same state of affairs as
Fred's being cordate, since having a heart is the same property as being
cordate; but Fred's having a kidney is an altogether different state of affairs,
since having a heart is quite a different property from having a kidney.
Finally, replacing a temporal singular term in a nominal with another having
the same reference does not change the reference of the whole nominal;
but replacing it with another temporal singular term with a different reference
does. So, for example, my eating at noon is the same event as my eating
at midday but my eating at midnight is quite a different event. These striking
parallels are explained most naturally by saying that events and states of
affairs are situations.
If events and states of affairs are situations, what distinction can be drawn
between situations to match the intuitive distinction we draw between events
and states of affairs? There is, of course, the obvious division between
situations which involve some kind of change--events--and situations which
involve change--states of affairs. But we might also appeal to linguistic
distinctions, where applicable, to draw the dividing line. For example Anthony
Kenny's draws a distinction (1963, pp. 172-173), modelled on Aristotle's,
between the state-of-affairs-like situations recorded by static verbs and the
event-like situations recorded by performance and activity verbs. (See also
Taylor (1985, p. 58-61).) According to Kenny's distinction, static verbs are
ones which do not possess a continuous tense, whereas performance and
activity verbs do. This linguistic distinction works well up to a point. But,
as Dowty (1979, pp. 173-180) has pointed out, verbs like 'lie', 'stand', 'rest',
and 'perch' which can be used to assign spatial location have a continuous
tense but seem, contrary to the proposed linguistic distinction, to record
states of affairs: for instance, the nominals 'the vase's standing on the mantel
piece' and 'the kite's resting in the tree', and 'the book's lying on the sofa'
all seem to record states of affairs.
If a linguistic classification is to be used to distinguish events from states
of affairs, I favour another classification in terms of the behaviour of verbs.
Before I can recount this classification, I need to distinguish, after Taylor
(1985, pp. 20-21), three different categories of adverb: (i) sentence adverbs,
which are those adverbs M which permit paraphrase of contexts of the form
'x g -ed M -ly' as 'It was M that x g -ed'; (ii) phrase adverbs, which permit
paraphrase of similar contexts as 'It was M on x ' s
part that
x g -ed'; and (iii) adverbs of manner which fit into neither previous category.
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
72
A UnifiedAccount of Causal Relata
My suggestion, then, is that nominals containing verbs or verb phrases
which can be modified by an adverb of manner refer to events, whereas
nominals containing a verb or verb phrase which cannot be so modified
refer to states of affairs. For example, 'Brutus' stabbing Caesar' refers to
an event because the verb 'stab' can be modified by adverbs of manner
such as 'savagely', 'quickly', 'relentlessly'; but 'Brutus' being noble' refers
to a state of affairs because the verb phrase 'be noble' cannot be so modified.
To be sure, nominals recording states of affairs may well be modified by
adverbs; but these adverbs, I claim, invariably turn out to be sentence or
phrase adverbs. We may say, for instance, that Brutus was surprisingly noble,
but this means that it was surprising that Brutus was noble, which makes
it clear that the adverb is a sentence adverb; or we may say that Brutus
was intentionally noble, but this means that it was intentional on Brutus'
part that he was noble, which makes it clear that a phrase adverb is involved.
This way of distinguishing between events and states of affairs confirms
the earlier decision to classify the so-called 'negative states of affairs' as
states of affairs, rather than events. For it turns out that a 'negative state
of affairs' such as there being not enough life boats on the Titanic cannot
be an event because the verb phrase 'being not enough life boats on the
Titanic' cannot be modified by an adverb of manner. True enough, one
might say, 'There were deliberately not enough life boats on the Titanic',
but this surely means that it was deliberate on someone's part that there
were not enough lifeboats, making it clear that the adverb 'deliberately'
is not an adverb of manner but a phrase adverb.
I have concentrated in this section on nominals which reflect in a direct
way the structure of their referent events or states of affairs. But it is no
part of the view I am advancing that events and states of affairs can only
be referred to in this way. There are, in fact, several types of singular term
referring to real situations which are not so directly structure-reflecting. One
type is illustrated by definite descriptions such as 'the event which caused
the greatest consternation in Rome in 44 BC' and 'the state of affairs described
in the history text on p. 23'. The possibility of such definite descriptions
arises from the fact that events and states of affairs may themselves exemplify
properties: thus Brutus' stabbing Caesar may exemplify the property of
occurring in Rome and the property of causing great consternation. (Be
sure to distinguish the property a situation exemplifies from the constitutive
property of the situation, which is exemplified by the constitutive physical
object.) Definite descriptions formed from these properties may pick out
a real situation without revealing its structure.
Another type of singular term which refers to an event or state of affairs
but does not reflect its structure are the so-called disguised nominals which
do not contain any verb-derivative and do not seem to derive from any
sentence. Some example are: 'the 1983 Melbourne bush fires', 'last winter's
blizzard', and 'last night's thunderstorm'. I simply claim in respect of these
two types of non-structure-reflecting singular terms that if they refer to events
or states of affairs, then they can also be characterised in a structure-reflecting
Peter Menzies
73
way: thus, the event which caused the greatest consternation in Rome in
44BC can be characterised as Brutus' stabbing Caesar and the 1983
Melbourne bush fires can be characterised as the burning of bush country
around Melbourne in 1983.
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
4. Facts and Event Aspects as Derivative Causal Relata
The account of causal relata that I am advancing is tailor-made for events
and states of affairs; but it appears not to accommodate the other entities
recognised in ordinary language as causal relata--facts and event aspects.
If this failure is not to be seen as a serious shortcoming of the present
account, either some explanation must be given to the effect that the account
does, after all, accommodate them or some justification must be given for
not including them in the range of the account. In this section I shall argue
that there is good reason for not including facts as genuine causal relata;
and I shall also argue that event aspects are, despite first appearances,
accommodated within the present account.
Let us begin with facts as causal relata. If we can get a good grip on
what they are, we are more likely to understand how, or indeed whether,
they are causal relata. In discussing the question what facts are, let us ignore
facts of the kind corresponding to mathematical and ethical statements and
the like, and concentrate on the kind of facts commonly reported to stand
in causal relations. Such facts, as our discussion in § 1 revealed, are dissimilar
to real situations like events and states of affairs in a number of ways:
they do not seem to be occurrent features of the world, nor do they seem
to be dependent for their existence on physical objects, nor do they seem
to have spatial or temporal location. Notwithstanding these dissimilarities,
there are also a number of striking similarities between facts and real
situations. First, facts are the extralinguistic correlates of statements like
events and states of affairs: a statement corresponds to a fact much in the
same way it corresponds to an event or state of affairs. What is more, facts,
at least of the kind that are thought to stand in causal relations, are logical
complexes like real situations, consisting of physical objects, properties and
relations, and periods of time.
These characteristics of facts suggest that they should be classed, as Taylor
(1985, Ch. 2) and Martin (1967) have proposed, as abstract situations, which
I distinguished in §3 from real situations that include events and states of
affairs. Recall that an abstract situation is an ordered triple (Fn, xn, t~,
where Fn is an n-adic relation, x~ is an n-tuple of physical objects, and
t is a period of time. This identification reflects the idea that facts are logical
complexes with physical objects, properties and relations, and periods of
time as constituents; and also the idea that, as abstract entities, they are
not occurrent features of the world possessing a determinate spatio-temporal
location.
This identification entails that all facts are abstract situations. But it does
not entail that all abstract situations are facts. We must remember that an
abstract situation, construed as an ordered triple, is a set-theoretic entity
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
74
A UnifiedAccount of Causal Relata
which exists whenever the constituent entities of the triple exist. Therefore,
the triple ( Being Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke, 1975 ~ is an
abstract situation, since all the constituents exist. But this abstract situation
is not a fact: Bob Hawke might have been Prime Minister in 1975, but
as a matter of fact, as we say, he was not. We need, then, to distinguish
between those abstract situations which are facts and those which are not.
Let us introduce a predicate of such abstract situations, the predicate 'x
obtains', and say that all and only the abstract situations which obtain are
facts. The most natural way to introduce the predicate is as follows: the
abstract situation ( Fn, xn, t~ obtains if and only if the n-tuple x~ exemplifies
the relation Fn in the period of time t. The condition on the right hand
side, of course, specifies the existence of some event or state of affairs.
This way of characterising facts, therefore, ensures that there is a one-toone correspondence between facts and real situations: for every event or
state of affairs, there is a corresponding fact and vice versa.
Even though facts and real situations are correlated one-to-one, they are
quite different kinds of entity. An event or state of affairs is a real part
of the world, which exists at a certain time and, in a derivative sense, at
a certain place. Real situations belong to the causal order in the sense that
they can be perceived and can stand in causal relations to each other. But
a fact under the proposed identification is an abstract set-theoretic entity,
which does not have determinate spatio-temporal location. As such, facts
cannot be perceived, nor, strictly speaking, can they stand in causal relations.
(Notice that in making facts abstract entities separate from the causal order,
the identification of them with abstract situations merely reflects part of
our commonsense conception of them.)
In view of this, we must conclude that ordinary language reports of causal
relations involving facts are a fa¢on de parler, such reports cannot be
understood as describing genuine causal relations. But this is not to say
that these reports are uninformative: for, as we have seen, there corresponds
to every fact of the kind reported as standing in a causal relation some
event or state of affairs. Therefore, we can read off from any causal statement
about facts a genuine causal statement about events or states of affairs.
That a causal statement about facts can be informative because it mirrors
a genuine causal statement is confirmed by the observation that a causal
sentence like 'The fact that the dog had mange caused it to be the case
that she itched constantly' is almost synonymous with the sentence 'The
dog's having mange caused her constant itching'.
Let us turn now to event aspects as causal relata. In ordinary discourse
it is common to couch causal statements in terms of nominals which appear
to refer to event aspects: we say such things as 'The quickness of the climber's
fall caused his death' or even 'The climber's falling quickly caused his death'.
At first sight, it seems that the philosophers (Dretske 1977; Sanford 1985)
are right who have argued that we must count event aspects as causal relata
in addition to events and states of affairs. I believe, however, that once
we understand the linguistic function of nominals such as 'the quickness
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
75
of the climber's fall' and 'the climber's falling quickly', which appear to
refer to event aspects, we will be able to see that the present account does
not need any extension or revision to accommodate event aspects.
What precisely is the linguistic function of such nominals? Davidson's
treatment of adverbial modification, now familiar from our discussions in
earlier sections, gives us one answer to this question, at least in the case
of the nominal 'the climber's falling quickly'. To take one of Davidson's
own examples, the adverbially modified nominal 'Flora's drying herself with
a coarse towel' is simply a longer description of the same event described
by the nominal 'Flora's drying herself. According to Davidson, the adverbial
phrase 'with a coarse towel' merely provides supplementary information
which helps identify the particular drying of Flora's in question: it was the
drying that she performed with a coarse towel. Adverbial phrases are, strictly
speaking, dispensable parts of nominals, even when they appear in causal
attributions. He writes: 'If it was a drying she gave herself with a coarse
towel on the beach at noon that caused those awful splotches to appear
on Flora's skin, then it was drying she gave herself that did it.' (1967, p.
156) In Davidson's view, then, the event which caused the splotches to appear
can be specified just as well by 'Flora's drying herself as by 'Flora's drying
herself with a coarse towel on the beach at noon'. It is a confusion, he
insists, to think that every deletion from the description of an event represents
something deleted from the event described.
But this is certainly not the entire story. Adverbial phrases in nominals
do more than simply provide supplementary information for identificatory
purposes: when they appear in causal attributions, they can convey causally
significant information. On one very natural interpretation of the sentence
'Flora's drying herself with a coarse towel caused the splotches to appear',
causal efficacy is ascribed, not simply to the event of Flora's drying herself,
but to the drying being one performed with a coarse towel. Davidson might
suggest, that this confuses causation with explanation: 'Flora's drying herself
did cause the splotches', he might argue, 'but this way of referring to the
cause does not reveal why her drying had this result; it does not explain,
in the way the expression 'Flora's drying with a coarse towel' explains, why
the splotches appeared'. We have seen reason in our earlier discussion to
suspect this unjustified appeal to the distinction between causation and
explanation. But over and above those reasons, we must view this argument
as idle, since there is a perfectly good sense in which we can say that what
caused Flora's splotches was not her drying herself, but her drying herself
with a coarse towel.
An analogy might help to clarify my point here. Definite descriptions
with adjectival modifiers sometimes display an ambiguity in causal
attributions. For example, if I say 'The man with a big nose caused a riot',
I may be using the adjectival phrase 'with a big nose' in either of two ways:
on the one hand, I may be using the phrase 'with a big nose' simply to
help identify the man I have in mind; on the other hand, I may be using
the adjectival phrase in a more essential way to suggest that the bigness
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
76
A UnifiedAccount of Causal Relata
of his nose was in fact partly responsible for the riot. (I explain in the next
section two readings of the definite description 'the man with the big nose'
which would explain the ambiguity of this causal attribution.)
I am suggesting, then, that an adverbial phrase like 'with a coarse towel'
can play two roles in a nominal like 'Flora's drying herself with a coarse
towel'. It can play an identifying role in which it serves merely to identify
the referent situation. If a phrase plays this role, it is, strictly speaking,
redundant and does not play any role in determining the constitutive property
of the corresponding situation. Used in this capacity, an adverbial phrase
is more or less equivalent to a restrictive clause. If the adverbial phrase
'with a coarse towel' is used in its identifying role, the sentence 'Flora's
drying herself with a towel caused the splotches' might be rendered as 'Flora's
drying herself, which she happened to perform with a towel, caused the
splotches'.
An adverbial phrase can, however, have a modifying role in which it modifies
the verb of the nominal in an essential way. Used in this role, an adverbial
phrase is not redundant and indeed plays a crucial part in determining the
constitutive property of the situation referred to by the nominal. Consequently,
if the adverbial phrase 'with a coarse towel' is used in its modifying role,
the nominal 'Flora's drying herself with a coarse towel' refers to a different
situation from the nominal 'Flora's drying herself. There can be no question
that the modifying use is a distinct use from the identifying use of an adverbial
phrase: there is all the different in the world between saying that Flora's
drying herself, which she happened to perform with a coarse towel, caused
her splotches and saying that her drying herself with a coarse towel caused
the splotches. (Dretske draws a similar distinction to one I have drawn between
identifying and modifying uses of adverbial phrases in his 1977.)
It follows from this that nominals such as 'The climber's quick fall' and
'the climber's falling quickly' are ambiguous between a reading in which
the adverbial or adjectival phrase is used in an identifying role and a reading
in which it is used in a modifying role. In the light of this ambiguity, it
is apparent what the linguistic function is of nominals such as 'the quickness
of the climber's fall' and 'the climber's failing quickly', which some have
thought refer to event aspects: the function of these nominals is to make
it clear that the adverb or adjective plays a modifying rather than an identifying
role in the nominal. These constructions signal that the adverb or adjective
plays an essential, indispensable role in determining the constitutive property
of the situation denoted by the nominal. If this explanation is correct, there
is no need to see nominals like 'the quickness of the climber's fall' and
'the climber's falling quickly' as referring to event aspects. Such nominals
refer to events and states of affairs in much the way as ordinary nominals
with modifying adjectival or adverbial phrases; the emphasis and the
nominalised adjective or adverb have a pragmatic function which does not
affect the referential structure of the nominals.
Ontologically, matters are quite simple. If the adjective or adverb of the
nominals 'the climber's quick fall' and 'the climber's falling quickly' are
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
77
used in their identifying role, then these nominals refer to the situation [Falls,
the climber, t]. But if the adjective or the adverb of the nominals is used
in its modifying role, which might be signalled by constructions such as
'the quickness of the climber's fall' and 'the climber's falling quickly', then
these nominals refer to the situation [Falls quickly, the climber, t]. We can
treat our other example in the same way: 'Flora's drying herself with a
coarse towel' with an identifying adverbial phrase refers to the situation
[Dries herself, Flora, t]; the same nominal with a modifying adverbial phrase
refers to the situation [Dries herself with a coarse towel, Flora, t]. We may
conclude with some satisfaction, therefore, that the account of causal relata
does not need to be extended or revised to accommodate event aspects:
there is no need for such entities, at least as causal relata, so long as we
distinguish between the identifying and modifying uses of adjectival and
adverbial phrases and the different roles they play in determining the referents
of their nominals.
With this framework in place, we can lay to rest an argument that Achinstein
(1975 and 1983, Ch. 6) has given to the effect that causal statements are
not extensional. I shall adapt Achinstein's argument to Davidson's example
about Flora. The first step in the argument is the assumption that nominals
differing only in which of their elements is emphasised refer to the same
situation, so that the nominal 'Flora's drying herself with a coarse towel
on the beach' refers to the same situation as 'Flora's drying herself with
a coarse on the beach'. The second step of the argument is the claim that
these nominals, though coreferential, cannot be substituted salva veritate in
the same causal statements. For example, while it may be true that
Flora's drying herself with a coarse towel on the beach caused the splotches,
it is not true that
Flora's drying herself with a coarse towel on the beach caused the splotches.
Achinstein concludes that causal statements, in failing of extensionality, do
not report genuine relations.
There can be little guessing what I regard as the weakness of this argument.
It is, of course, the assumption that nominals which differ only in emphasis
refer to the same event or state of affairs. The proposed explanation of
the linguistic role of nominals with emphasised adverbial phrases suggests
a contrary conclusion. The nominal 'Flora's drying herself with a coarse
towel on the beach' signals that the adverbial phrase 'with a coarse towel',
but not the phrase 'on the beach', plays a role in determining the constitutive
property of its referent situation. In this case, this nominal is most naturally
seen as referring to the situation [Dries herself with a coarse towel, Flora,
t]. Conversely, in the nominal 'Flora's drying herself with a coarse towel
on the beach', the phrase 'with a coarse towel' is referentially idle but 'on
the beach' is not, so that this nominal is best seen as referring to the situation
[Dries herself on the beach, Flora, t]. Given these identifications of the
referents of the nominals, it is no surprise that a causal statement may change
78
A Unified Account of Causal Relata
in truth value when one nominal is substituted for the other. The extensionality
of causal statements is not impugned by Achinstein's argument.
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
5. The Frege-Quine-Davidson Argument
There is a powerful objection to the thesis I am advancing that the basic
causal relata are real situations. Davidson (1967a; b) has pressed this objection
with great persistence. The objection takes the form of an argument, originally
due to Frege but first rigorously formulated by Quine (1966), to the effect
that statements with the same truth value must denote the same thing (the
True or the False in Frege's terminology), if what they denote is determined
by what their parts stand for. This result directly contradicts the present
account of situations, according to which statements with the same truth
value may denote different situations.
I present below a version of the argument, similar to one given by Barwise
and Perry (1983, pp. 24-25), that uses definite descriptions. Adapting Barwise
and Perry's version of the argument, let us introduce, for any statement
Q, the singular t e r m 'tQ' which is the definite description 'the person who
is Ronald Reagan if Q is true and is Margaret Thatcher if Q is false'. This
definite description is such that Q is logically equivalent to the statement
that tQ is Ronald Reagan. For if Q is true, tQ refers to Ronald Reagan and
so the statement that tQ is Ronald Reagan is true, while if Q is false, tQ
refers to Margaret Thatcher and so the statement that tQ is Ronald Reagan
is false.
The argument relies on two assumptions: first, logically equivalent statements
denote the same thing; and second, the denotation o f a statement does not
change if a component singular term is replaced by a coreferential singular
term.
Now let R and S be any two statements which are true. If the two
assumptions above are correct, these statements must denote the same thing
if indeed they denote anything. For, on these assumptions, each of the
statements in the following list has the same denotation as the one before
it, for the reason displayed:
(1) R
(2) tR is Ronald Reagan (by logical equivalence)
(3) Ronald Reagan is Ronald Reagan (by substitution of coreferential
singular terms)
(4) ts is Ronald Reagan (by substitution of coreferential singular terms)
(5) S (by logical equivalence)
This argument is easily adapted to the case in which both R and S are
false: the argument remains the same, except that the line 'Ronald Reagan
is Ronald Reagan' is replaced by 'Margaret Thatcher is Ronald Reagan',
since tR and ts both refer to Margaret Thatcher if R and S are false.
If sound, this argument would be devastating against the account of
situations developed herein. In my view, however, anyone who holds that
statements denote situations should question both of the assumptions on
Peter Menzies
79
which the argument depends. Let us start with the second assumption, whose
falsity is something of an embarrassment, as the account of situations, as
developed up till now, incorporates the assumption. That the assumption
is false is evident from a number of counterexamples cited in the literature
(Kim 1969; Meltor 1985). The counterexamples all involve contingent identity
claims which appear to change their denotation when a definite description
is replaced by a coreferential singular term. For example, the contingent
identity
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
(6) The Vice-President in October 1963 was Lyndon Johnson
denotes a certain situation; but replacing the definite description 'The VicePresident in October 1963' with the coreferential definite description 'The
President in December 196Y, we obtain
(7) The President in December 1963 was Lyndon Johnson,
which seems to denote a different situation; and what is more, replacing
the same definite description with the coreferential proper name 'Lyndon
Johnson', we obtain
(8) Lyndon Johnson was Lyndon Johnson,
which does not seem to denote any situation at all. (Here I assume the
thesis mentioned in §3 that analytic statements do not denote situations
because they do not have a descriptive function.)
I think that Keith Donnellan's(1966) distinction between the referential
and attributive uses of definite descriptions is of considerable relevance in
explaining these examples. Donnellan argues that a definite description, say
'the F , can be used in the statement that the F is a G in two ways: it
can be used attributively so that the statement means that whatever it is
that fits the description 'the F is a G; or it can be used referentially so
that the statement means that the particular individual which happens to
fit the description 'the F is a G. In the first use the definite description
occurs essentially, for the person who makes the statement wishes to state
something about whatever fits the description; but in the referential use the
definite description is merely one tool for doing a certain job--calling
attention to an individual--and in general any other tool for doing the same
job, another description or a name, would do as well. Donnellan illustrates
the distinction with the example sentence 'Smith's murderer is insane'. Suppose
first that you discover Smith's mutilated corpse. Appalled at the brutal murder
of lovable Smith, you say 'Smith's murderer is insane'. This is the attributive
use of the definite description, since you are saying that whoever fits the
description 'Smith's murderer' is insane. Now suppose that Jones has been
charged with Smith's murder and we are discussing his odd behaviour at
the trial. You might say, expressing your view of his strange behaviour,
'Smith's murderer is insane'. This is the referential use of the definite
description, since you might have easily expressed your view by saying 'Jones
is insane'.
With this distinction in hand, we can ask which way the definite descriptions
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
80
A Unified Account of Causal Relata
of (6) and (7) would be used in a normal context. On reflection, it is clear
that they would be used attributively rather than referentially. If they were
used referentially, it would be possible to replace the definite descriptions
with the name 'Lyndon Johnson' without changing the meaning of the
statements. But obviously (6) and (7), asserted in a normal context, mean
something different from (8): at the very least, (8) states a necessary, analytic
truth, whereas (6) and (7) normally state contingent synthetic truths. Hence,
we must conclude that these definite descriptions are normally used
attributively and occur essentially in (6) and (7).
What bearing does Donnellan's distinction have on the question whether
the denotation of a statement remains unchanged when a component singular
term, especially a definite description, is replaced by a coreferential singular
term? It has considerable bearing because we have assumed up till now
that the contribution that a definite description makes to the denotation
of a statement is simply its referent. But this simple assumption holds true
only for referential uses of definite descriptions. Attributive uses of definite
descriptions complicate the picture immensely. It seems that attributively
used definite descriptions contribute to the denotation of statements not only
their referents, but also the properties or relations mentioned in the
descriptions.
But how are we to represent the situation denoted by a statement with
an attributely used definite description? The situation which is denoted by
the sentence 'Smith's murderer is insane', when the description is used
referentially, is [Is insane, Jones, t]. But what situation is denoted by the
same sentence when the description is used attributively? This is not an
easy question to answer, since any way of representing the fact that an
attributively used definite description contributes both its referent and the
property or relation mentioned in the description raises issues which take
us well beyond the simplicities of our present account of situations. Perhaps
the situation may be represented as [Is a murderer and insane, Jones, t];
but the constituent property of this situation is complex and so takes us
beyond the simple atomic situations to which we have restricted our attention.
Perhaps, the statement with attributely used description denotes two situations,
[Is a murderer, Jones, t] and [Is insane, Jones, t]; but again this takes us
beyond the simple view we have embraced that a statement denotes just
one situation.
In view of these complexities, I shall leave unsettled the question of what
sort of situation is denoted by a statement with an attributively used definite
description. All the same, we have everything we strictly require to state
precisely the principle governing the sorts of substitutions which are situationpreserving. Let us call proper names and referentially used definite descriptions simple singular terms and attributively used definite descriptions complex
singular terms. Then the following principle governing the replacement of
singular terms is true: the denotation of a statement remains unchanged if
a component simple singular term is replaced by a coreferential simple singular
term. This principle does not allow, and indeed we have seen some reason
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
81
to believe it false, that replacing a complex singular term by a coreferential
simple singular term, and vice versa, is situation-preserving. For example,
replacing the complex singular term 'The President in December 1963' with
the coreferential simple singular term 'Lyndon Johnson' takes us from a
statement (7) which denotes a certain situation to a statement (8) which
denotes no situation at all. The reverse replacement illustrates the reverse
problem.
These points bear directly on the Frege-Quine-Davidson argument. On
reflection we can see that the definite descriptions tn and ts are used
attributively in statements (2) and (4). For, if these definite descriptions
were used referentially, we could replace them with the coreferential proper
name 'Ronald Reagan' without changing the meaning of these statements:
but since these statements are contingent synthetic truths, in contrast to
the necessary analytic truth (3), these definite descriptions must be used
attributively. In this case, the transformation of (2) into (3) obtained by
replacing the attributively used description tR with the proper name 'Ronald
Reagan' is not situation-preserving; nor, for that matter, is the reverse
transformation of (3) into (4).
This is not the only flaw which a situation theorist will discern in the
Frege-Quine-Davidson argument. It is flawed also is assuming that logically
equivalent statements denote the same situation. It is not difficult to see
why this assumption is likely to be rejected by someone who believes that
statements denote situations which are built up out of the entities that parts
of the sentence denote. To take an example of Kim's (1969, p. 209), the
statements made by uttering the sentences 'Xantippe's husband died' and
'Xantippe was widowed' are logically equivalent but they denote different
situations: the first situation consists of a physical object, Socrates,
exemplifying the property of dying whereas the second situation consists
of a different physical object, Xantippe, exemplifying a different physical
property, being widowed.
Another kind of counterexample to this assumption is given by pairs of
sentences like 'George shaves' and 'George shaves and Fred runs or Fred
does not run'. Statements made by uttering these sentences are logically
equivalent but intuitively denote different situations: the first statement
denotes the situation of George's shaving and the second statement denotes,
at least on one interpretation of the denotation of disjunctive statements,
the situation of George's shaving and Fred's running plus the situation of
George's shaving and Fred's not running. While Fred is a constituent of
the latter situations, he is not a constituent of the former situation; and
so, the these sentences, though logically equivalent, denote different situations.
(See Barwise and Perry 1981; 1983, Ch. 1.)
The Frege-Quine-Davidson argument makes two fallacious applications
of the assumption that logically equivalent statements denote the same
situation. The first application takes us from the statement R to the logically
equivalent statement that tR is Ronald Reagan. But clearly these statements
may denote different situations: the first statement, let us suppose, denotes
A Unified Account o f Causal Relata
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
82
the situation of Chainsaw's chasing Jemima, [Chases, ( Chainsaw, Jemima),
t], while the second sentence denotes the quite different situation of Ronald
Reagan being identical with Ronald Reagan, [=, (Ronald Reagan, Ronald
Reagan), t]. The second application of the assumption, taking us from the
statement that ts is Ronald Reagan to the statement that S, is fallacious
for the same reason.
In conclusion, the Frege-Quine-Davidson argument is completely without
force against the view that the denotation of a statement is a situation.
Since this view rejects both assumptions on which the argument relies, it
can deny the conclusion of the argument that any two statements with the
same truth value denote the same thing. Thus we despatch the objection
which many have seen as the most formidable obstacle to the view that
causation's basic relata are situations, conceived of as the denotations of
statements.
Department of Traditional and
Modem Philosophy, University of Sydney
Received March 1987
WORKS CITED
Achinstein, Peter 1975: 'Causation, Transparency, and Emphasis', Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 5, pp. 1-23.
Achinstein, Peter 1983: The Nature of Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Austin, J. L. 1961: 'Truth' in J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock (eds.) Philosophical Papers
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 117-133.
Barwise, Jon and Perry, John 1981: 'Semantic Innocence and Uncompromising Situations',
in Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6, pp. 668-69 I.
Barwise, Jon and Perry, John 1983: Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Davidson, Donald 1963: 'Actions, Reasons, and Causes', in Davidson 1980, pp. 3-20.
Davidson, Donald, 1967a: 'The Logical Form of Action Sentences', in Davidson 1980, pp.
105-121.
Davidson, Donald 1967b: 'Causal Relations', in Davidson 1980, pp. 149-162.
Davidson, Donald 1969a: 'The Individuation of Events', in Davidson 1980, pp. 163-180.
Davidson, Donald 1969b: 'Reply to Martin', in Davidson 1980, pp. 129-137.
Davidson, Donald 1980: Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Donnellan, Keith 1966: 'Reference and Definite Descriptions', Philosophical Review 75, pp.
281-304.
Dowty, David 1979: Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Boston: Reidel Publishing
Company.
Dretske, Fred 1972: 'Contrastive Statements', Philosophical Review 81, pp. 411-437.
Dretske, Fred 1977: 'Referring to Events', Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2, pp. 90-99.
Goldman, Alvin 1970: A Theory of Human Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kenny, Anthony 1963: Action, Emotion and Will. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Kim, Jaegwon 1966: 'On the Psycho-Physical Identity Theory', American Philosophical Quarterly
3, pp. 227-235.
Kim Jaegwon 1969: 'Events and Their Descriptions: Some Considerations', in N. Rescher et.
al. (eds.) Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company),
pp. 198-215.
Kim, Jaegwon 1973: 'Causation, Nomic Subsumption, and the Concept of Event', Journal of
Philosophy 70, pp. 217-236.
Downloaded by [Macquarie University] at 19:13 20 October 2011
Peter Menzies
83
Kim, Jaegwon 1975: 'Events as Property Exemplifications', in Myles Brand and Douglas Walton
(eds.) Action Theory (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company), pp. 159-177.
Levin, Michael 1976: 'Extensionalityof Causation and Causal-Explanatory Contexts', Philosophy
of Science 43, pp. 266-277.
Martin, R. M. 1967: 'Facts: What They Are and What They Are Not', American Philosophical
Quarterly 4, pp. 269-280.
Martin, R. M. 1969: 'On Events and Event-Descriptions', in Joseph Margolis (ed.) Fact and
Existence (Oxford: Basil Blackwells, 1969), pp. 63-73.
MeUor, D. H. 1986: 'The Singularly Affecting Facts of Causation' in P. Pettit, R. Sylvan, and
J. Norman (eds.) Mind, Morality & Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1987).
Quine, W. V. 1966: 'Three Grades of Modal Involvement', in his The Ways of Paradox (New
York: Random House), pp. 156-174.
Ramsey, F. P. 1927: 'Facts and Propositions', in D. H. Mellor (ed.) Foundations (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 40-57.
Russell, Bertrand 1972: 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism', in David Pears (ed.) Russell's
Logical Atomism (London: Fontana), pp. 31-142.
Taylor, Barry 1985: Modes of Occurrence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Sanford, David 1985: 'Causal Relata', in Ernest le Pore and Brian McLaughlin (eds.), Actions
and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell),
pp. 282-294.
van Fraassen, Bas 1969: 'Facts and Tautological Entailments', Journal of Philosophy 66, pp.
477-487.
Vendler, Zeno 1967a: 'Effects, Results, and Consequences' in his Linguisticsin Philosophy (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press), pp. 147-171.
Vendler, Zeno, 1967b: 'Causal Relations', Journal of Philosophy 64, pp. 704-713.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1961: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears & B. F.
McGuiness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.