THE CAUSALITY AND DETERMINISM IN DESCARTES' PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to discuss some important moments in the evolution of the early modern debate on causality, and, more specifically, to discuss the theoretical and scientific context of this problem as inherent to particular answers given by the great philosopher of this era – Descartes. In addition, we would like to show that the development of the early modern debate on causality reveals that particular answers and their logical inconsistency and conceptual troubles within this debate were determined by its immediate context. The modern limiting of philosophy to the study of nature determined the character of all the important philosophical and scientific questions. This was the case with the problem of causality as well. According to Descartes, there was only one cause: the efficient cause. He endorsed two very different concepts of efficient causality. There are particular causes and there is one general cause. Descartes attributed to God the status of a general cause that insures the constancy of quantity of motion in the universe. God created in the beginning, matter and motion, and he conserves exactly the same quantity of motion for all time. Thus only God is the efficient cause of any change of motion. He does so according to the laws of nature, which become secondary causes. The only “active initiator of change” that remained was the cause of all the causes – God. The causal concept got new meaning in the physical world. Thus we come to the conclusion that the determinism was the most important outcome of Descartes' theory of causation.