Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Transformal Causality, Temporality, Evolution

Hume posits that a Causal Connection consists in nothing more than a past constant conjunction.  Kant's response, in the Second Analogy, is that Hume ignores the Temporal dimension of the Connection, and, hence, that the conjunction is actually an ordered pair.  In turn, that Temporal ordering opens up, according to the Third Antinomy, a sequence of such ordered pairs, entailing the necessity of at least one term, i. e. an uncaused Cause, occurring outside the Phenomenal chain.  Finally, in the Groundwork, he presents Pure Practical Reason as that Noumenal Cause.  This, via the introduction of Temporality into Hume's concept of Causality, he is able to not only refute the latter's claim that Causality lacks Necessity, but also Hume's other significant anti-Rationalist thesis--that Reason is incapable of Causal efficacy, i. e. that Reason is the "slave of the Passions".  Now, Kant's concept of Temporality is Atomistic, i. e. that even if causally connected, two contents of two successive Phenomenal moments are mutually independent.  He, thus, does not consider that an action modifies some given Phenomenal content, and, so, that the subsequent Phenomenal content is, in some respect, systematically related to it.  So, for example, his concept of Causality cannot explain the process of manufacturing, i. e. via which the content of a finished product is derived from that of raw material in some respect.  Likewise, he is constrained to treat the Human thumb as independent of the ape thumb.  In other words, Kant's concept of Causality is inadequate to an Evolutionary principle, and, indeed, is inadequate to his own development of it from Hume's concept of Causality.  In contrast, as has been previously discussed, the concept of Transformal Causality corrects that deficiency.

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