Cause and Effect Need to be Tied to Each Other

The Efficacy of Causes Creates a Needed and Consequential Connection from Its Effects

Why do cause and effect need to be connected to each other? (Section 2)

All our ideas are derived from impressions.

We must find some impression that creates this need.

To do this, I consider where the need arises.

It is always ascribed to causes and effects.

I look at 2 objects, one is the cause and the other, the effect.

I examine them in all situations and immediately perceive that:

• they are contiguous in time and place, and
• the object that we call ‘cause’ precedes the object we call ’effect’.

I cannot go any further.

It is impossible for me to discover any third relation between these objects.

I enlarge my view to comprehend instances where I find similar objects always existing successively and contiguously.

Thinking about these several instances only repeats the same idea of cause and effect.

Therefore, it can never create a new idea.

But on further inquiry, I find that the repetition is not the same.

Each repetition creates a new impression.

This new impression needs the connection that produced it.

After a frequent repetition, I find that on the appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determined by habit to consider its usual attendant.

The mind considers that attendant in a stronger light because of its relation to the first object. This impression or determination gives me the idea of the needed or consequential connection between cause and effect. These consequences will be initially received easily as deductions from our previous principles.

These deductions create an evidence that might: make us unaware of the importance of the idea of a need or consequence, make us imagine that this need or consequence contains nothing extraordinary, and make us forget this need or consequence. But in fact, this evidence is the base of the most sublime topics in philosophy: the power and efficacy of causes. All the sciences seem so much interested in it.

I hope that my reasoning on the need for cause and effect to connect to each other will: rouse the reader’s attention, and make the reader want: a fuller account of my doctrine, and the arguments on which my doctrine is founded. The efficacy of causes leads to their effects.

This question of efficacy is important and difficult. It has created the most disputes among ancient and modern philosophers. Before they entered these disputes, it would have been better to examine the idea of that efficacy. I find this principally lacking in their reasonings so I will supply it here. The terms of efficacy, agency, power, force, energy, necessity, connection, and productive quality are all nearly synonymous.

It is absurd to use any of them to define the rest. We reject at once all the shallow definitions of power and efficacy. Instead of searching for the idea in these definitions, must look for it in the impressions where it is originally derived from. If it is a compound idea, it must arise from compound impressions. If it is a simple idea, it must arise from simple impressions. The Needed or Consequential Connection Between Cause and Effect Does not Mean that Those Causes Have Innate Power or Innate Ideas The most general and popular explanation of this (Locke, chapter of power) is that we experience several new productions in matter, such as the motions and variations of body.

We conclude that there must be a power capable of producing them. We then arrive at the idea of power and efficacy. This explanation is more popular than philosophical.

This is proven by two very obvious principles. Reason alone can never create any original idea. Reason, as distinguished from experience, can never make us conclude that a cause or productive quality is absolutely needed to every beginning of existence. These two principles have been explained. Since reason can never create the idea of efficacy, that idea must be derived from: experience, and some particular instances of this efficacy. These instances make their way into the mind through impressions of sensation or reflection. Ideas always represent their objects or impressions.

Likewise, objects are needed to give rise to every idea. For us to have any idea of the efficacy of impressions creating ideas or ideas creating impressions, we must produce an experience where: the efficacy is plainly discoverable to the mind, and the operations of the efficacy are obvious. If we cannot, then the idea of such an efficacy is impossible and imaginary. Only the principle of innate ideas can save us from this impossibility. But the principle of innate ideas has: already been refuted, and is now almost universally rejected in the learned world. We must find some natural effect, where the operation and efficacy of a cause can be clearly conceived and comprehended by the mind, without any mistake. Some philosophers have pretended to explain the secret force and energy of causes. (Father Malbranche, Book 6, Part 2, Chapter 3)