Causality From The Perspective Of Analytical Philosophy

Strawson’s criticism of Kant’s causality and his unique causality theory are just between the described metaphysical thought in his early stage and the naturalistic thought in his later stage.Therefore,its causal theory includes the criticism of the causal theory of perception,the metaphysical theory of description and naturalistic thought.Causal change is the change of the objective world.The universal law of causality is not applicable to all possible experiences and can accommodate changes that cannot be explained by causality.In Strawson’s view,the connotation of the concept of objective world is to believe that objects exist continuously and independently.Causality is a change in the objective world.The first part of this paper focuses on the investigation of Kant’s causality theory and the development of causality after the emergence of analytical philosophy.On the one hand,it discusses Kant’s distinction between the concepts of imagination and causality through the "second analogy",as well as the distinction between the understanding of miscellaneous images and the "perception of what happened".The order of perception in the understanding is stipulated,and the understanding is constrained by this order.It makes it inevitable that those perceptions that follow each other.It is concluded that the concept of causality is a pure intellectual concept with comprehensive and unified inevitability,and then it is considered that "all changes occur according to the law of causal connection".On the other hand,the author expounds the discussion of causality by Russell,Shrek,Hong Qian and Carnap after the emergence of analytical philosophy,which will help us better understand the development of causality.The second part of this paper mainly examines Strawson’s view on causality:causal change is only the change of the objective world.In this part,the author first introduces Strawson’s criticism of Kant’s causality: by demonstrating the reversibility of perceptual order,he believes that Kant’s view is a very strange distortion: the perceptual inevitability based on changing facts is equal to the causal inevitability of this change.Secondly,Strawson believes that the demonstration of causality should start from the confirmation of sustainable things to understand objective changes.Finally,the author combs Strawson’s point of view on causality.The understanding of objective changes should not seek sufficient conditions,so as to believe that it has inevitable causality.As an observer,we should allow the objective world to have changes that cannot be understood.The third part of this paper mainly focuses on the interpretation of the characteristics of Strawson’s causality theory.Firstly,Strawson demonstrates his argument on causality through the interpretation of the criticism of pure reason,which shows the strong characteristics of "analytical Kantism";Secondly,through the discussion of his naturalistic belief,he tries to find out the relationship between his mild naturalism and causality theory;Finally,it turns its perspective to its discussion of the concept of "objective world".