Metaphysics (2): Change and Cause

Note: This is the second instalment in my comprehensive summary and an opinion piece of this book.

In the first essay, we have broadly discussed about an object, nature of circularity and whether a whole is greater than an individual part or its sum.

In this essay, we will be dealing with the nature of change and cause and its perspective from a metaphysics angle.

Changes

By change, I mean an object showing a different property than its previous one; whether that property can be recovered or not does not matter.

An irreversible change is something of a child becoming an adult and a reversible one is of lifting a child into the air and bringing them back on the ground.

Before furthering this topic, we will define a term. An event is something where there is at least some change involved which is opposite to a static nature.

For example, “Good Morning” has two events where Good and Morning are its parts.

But it’s important to draw a distinction although vague. Is the individual’s action in WWII and WWII both an event?

An event so big eventually becomes a process and vice versa.

The order however, is also important in a process. The order of an empty fountain pen and refilling it will be different if the events exchanged positions.

According to Aristotle, a change needs a subject. For example, a man with hair changing to a man without is the subject who changes.

Of course, change itself does not have to do with direct destruction or creation itself. A working car vs a car broken down years later itself is a change according to the perspective of its parts.

Aristotle’s view faces challenges when assigned temporal parts of space. What if a tomato can be both green and red at the same time just in different parts of itself?

Aristotle’s viewpoint of considering it wholly as the ‘tomato is red’ is Endurantism.

In contrast the school which believes in the existence of temporal parts such as the tomato being red and green at the same time is called Perdurantism.

When some change occurs to an object, it isn’t contrary properties but simply temporal parts possessing different properties according to the latter school of thought.

While perdurantism seems far more logical and believable than the other one, there are still good reasons why this theory is suspicious as well.

First of all, it seems like a denial of change more than an explanation of it. But the most troublesome aspect is that it promises changless temporals but we know there are no enduring things.

Either way, there are faults in both theories.

Causes

Our responsibility falls over things we have committed. If I throw down the pen, I pick it up and if anyone saw that, it would clearly be my mistake but why so?

What is the connection between my action and the pen falling? Is there a direct connection?

Of course, this might sound stupid but for a better example, what happened in WWI probably has nothing to do with you completing your homework.

Distinguishing between our previous topic, change and cause might help further. Cause is what may bring a change but a cause might also bring no change but without cause, there is certainly no change.

While we may admit there is some causal connection between the nail and your hammer, hume believes such connections are unobservable.

But ultimately this may be disproven or proven since we have past experiences that exactly tell us why there is a connection in the first place.

But again, if smoking does cause cancer but if there is an individual who does not get cancer due to a gene or a specific environment does this mean that the cause is false?

Hume and Aristotle differ here. But of course, it is up to you whether there is a cause and effect or just a series of events with no meaningful connection.