Shepherd vol 2 ebook: Chapter 8: Non Causa Pro Causa

Chapter 8: Non Causa Pro Causa 

In this chapter, I shall continue with Shepherd's refutation of Lawrence's propositions about gold and nerves in her treatise: An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824)¹. I shall then continue my discussion of Lawrence and Shepherd’s argument against engrafting errors from other philosophers by examining her mirror example. In my previous chapter, I discussed the first refutation, the linguistic one, in which she emphasises the difference between nouns and qualified nouns in relation to causation. In this chapter, I shall examine her second refutation against Lawrence which is rooted in pure logic. In particular, the Fallacy known as Non Causa Pro Causa, which simply means you have misidentified the cause for something in such a way that you have incorrectly concluded, without evidence, that A caused B. 

I shall now analyse the passage in which Shepherd uses this logic phrase 'non causa pro causa'². Shepherd argues:

“Of all philosophical errors, the substitution of false, partial, or insufficient causes for the production of an end or object, is the most dangerous, because so liable to escape detection ; and the idleness of the mind which prosecutes with reluctance difficult researches into remote proofs ; its impatience which eagerly grasps at the readist solution of a doubt; and its pride, so prone to triumph indiscreetly at the glimpse of a discovery supposed to be complete; for ever occasion it to be guilty of that mode of sophistry scholastically termed non causa pro causa.”³

On the following page, Shepherd applies this fallacy to Lawrence: 

“And this is truly the amount of Mr. Lawrence's error for with all his denial that there are such things as cause and necessary connexion, he virtually assigns a "false cause' for sensation, because he asserts that all is found that is necessary in order to it*.”⁴

Putting these two sections together, we see that Shepherd thinks that Lawrence expounds false causes as he hastily declares a solution without first logically working through possible causes until he reaches the truth of the matter. This is partly because he is not a philosopher, so fails to appreciate the importance of thinking carefully about causation. Even today, scientists employ philosophers to analyse their methodology and reasoning. Shepherd, therefore, maintains that committing Non Causa Pro Causa is a dangerous yet easily overlooked error.⁵

I certainly agree with Shepherd here, especially since Lawrence was a doctor and a top surgeon, whose patients even included the Queen. It is indeed a worry that even such an expert in medicine struggles to logically think through what causes what. How does he diagnose what caused an illness or ailment if he does not think in terms of what the relevant cause was that produced the symptoms? How does he know what precisely he should operate on to alleviate symptoms or improve a patient's health, in order that it ceases to cause discomfort or cause the condition in question? 

As Shepherd points out⁶, Lawrence is in danger of attributing a false cause to even something as basic as sensation. So I can imagine that this lack of rigour in causal thinking means it is harder to conceptualise phenomena such as potential causes of nerve problems, such as severe numbness, tingling and loss of feeling in a limb. Nevertheless, as Shepherd highlights, Lawrence is claiming that he is providing an “explanation of the properties of life”⁷. Lawrence is also arguing as a materialist, so one would hope that he could accurately identify the precise material cause that produced an effect! 

However, Shepherd shows us that she has detailed knowledge of how the Non Causa Pro Causa functions and the variety of paths that lead us to point to the wrong cause in our explanation.⁸

She lists:

1) a false cause; 

2) a partial cause; and

3) insufficient causes

as unacceptable causes to cite in place of the true cause that actually produced an end or object or whatever we are examining⁹. This description matches well with standard definitions in Philosophy and Logic of the fallacy of Non Causa Pro Causa as occurring when one allows oneself to be misled by an apparent casual relation that in reality is merely an accidental correlation. As I have mentioned in this volume, it is still vital to research methods in the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology, for one to be acutely aware of what is an accidental correlation and what is a causal relation. 

Another way for Shepherd to demonstrate the problem of engrafting errors from other philosophers is through her analysis of how Lawrence engrafted errors from Hume in his Mirror example. Shepherd also provides her own counterexample while she constructs her refutation. 

In her 1824 treatise ‘An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect’, Shepherd likens Lawrence's methodology and thinking as being akin to mistakenly believing that a mirror is no more than polished glass for the simple reason that they both consistently share the features of being polished, reflective and made of glass.

In Shepherd's mirror example¹¹, she takes apart what she considers to be Mr Lawrence's error about causation, which she thinks stems from Hume's inadequate definition of causation. So her contra to Lawrence's methodology doubles up as a contra to Hume's definition of causation, by showing the illogicalities it leads to in scientific reasoning. By going along with Hume's notion of causation amounting to a constant conjunction between two things, it means that there is a cause and effect relationship between the two things, which, to her mind, is a notion that falls into error. Hence, she refutes such "illogical definitions"¹² of causation, and a couple of pages later, she wonders why they have been "so long admired, adopted and unanswered"¹³, despite malfunctioning. So she answers the issue herself and provides us with an alternative. 

Shepherd's mirror counterexample is very intricate: She maintains that Lawrence is mistaken in assuming that: If variables appear together consistently, then this is a sign that there is a cause and effect relationship between them. Shepherd argues to the contrary. Just because variables consistently appear alongside each other, it does not logically follow that this must be due to causation. 'Polish', 'glass' and 'reflection' always go together when looking at a mirror and a mirror ceases to function as a mirror when it becomes too scratched. But these variables are not what causes the mirror. What causes a mirror to come into existence is a process which involves various tools to make it. 

What can we learn from Shepherd's references to Lawrence? I argue that it shows:

1 There are examples of thoroughgoing materialists in her era, we cannot assume that everyone before the 20th century was pious and that atheism is some newfangled notion that shows how people have recently lost their way.

2 We cannot assume that Shepherd is a pious Christian simply because she lived in that pre-20th century era and because she argued against the likes of Lawrence and Hume, who were seen as Materialists or Atheists. 

Shepherd is not the only one to be critical for non-religious reasons either. For instance, Thomas Brown, a philosopher Shepherd mentions in her writings, is interpreted as criticising Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, for epistemological reasons, not religious ones or because he rejected materialism. 

Furthermore, Shepherd is not looking to refute all materialist arguments. She is engaging with various thinkers, religious or not, materialist or not, and using their arguments as a springboard for putting forward her own philosophy and body of work.

3 Shepherd is not putting forward a religious objection to Lawrence's materialism, despite the fact that he was hysterically accused of Atheism and blasphemy by Conservatives and religious Ministers to the detriment of one of his books. Her main concern is academic rigour, and putting forward her own theory of causation and solid methodology. So it is a purely technical, academic observation. Elsewhere in her treatise¹⁴, she agrees with Lawrence and his biological "notion of life" as an "inward motion of the 'organs' ", so it's not his scientific materialism that is the root cause of her scholarly objections to his methodology. She writes:

"My notion of life therefore agrees in this respect with that of Mr. Lawrence, viz. "That it is a peculiar inward motion of the "organs." "¹⁵

I interpret this as supporting my claim that Shepherd has her own brand of Soft Materialism in which she takes the middle ground between Hard Materialism (which claims everything is matter) and religious people's anti-materialist arguments which are motivated by persuading people that there is an immaterial soul that achieves immortality. She argues for this by writing that while the Materialists are mistaken in arguing all is body, at the other end of the spectrum, religious people are also mistaken, and unnecessarily fear, that any argument which involves the body for thought might imply the mind is not immaterial, which would undermine the notion of an immaterial soul, immortality, and so on. In addition, Shepherd believes that religious people are also in error when they claim that questions about materialism are of fundamental relevance and importance to religion. So we learn that Shepherd obviously did not see such questions in philosophy and metaphysics as being domains religion should be interfering with and, furthermore, materialistic claims do not automatically clash with theism. 

Indeed, Shepherd shows us the fundamental importance of philosophy when she argues that Lawrence holds back the strength of his scientific claims by not knowing his philosophy and which philosophers argued what. She writes that Lawrence is: 

"guilty of a very great oversight in supposing philosophers speak of an immaterial being as wanted for thought, and not for sensation,"....¹⁶

…."this mistake shows the little attention he has paid to these authors"¹⁷…..

such as Locke, Bishop Butler, David Hartley, and Bishop Berkeley. Hence, Shepherd demonstrates to her readers, through several examples, the huge problem of accidentally engrafting errors from other philosophers and the philosophical, methodological problems this causes and how this misses the point, obscures philosophical understanding and hinders attainment of truth. 

References: 

¹Shepherd, Mary. An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect : Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, Concerning the Nature of That Relation, with Observations upon the Opinions of Dr. Brown and Mr. Lawrence Connected with the Same Subject 

(London, United Kingdom: Printed for T. Hookham, 1824),

 http://archive.org/details/essayuponrelatio00shepiala 

²Ibid p167

³Ibid

⁴Ibid p168

⁵Shepherd, An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect 

⁶Ibid

⁷Ibid p152

⁸Shepherd, An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect 

⁹Ibid

¹⁰Ibid

¹¹Ibid p190

¹² Ibid p190

¹³ Ibid p192

¹⁴ Ibid

¹⁵ Ibid p183

¹⁶ Ibid p173

¹⁷ Ibid p174

See also the transcript version of my arguments here in the appendix section of this book.