The Human Question

Newton's third law (that every action has an equal and opposite reaction), seems to me to describe two aspects of the same whole, for the action and reaction occur during at the same time. Our ability to note how two things are contemporaneously interrelated via this third law totally belies Hume's crude conception of antecedent/consequent events as the only knowledge we can have of causality. (On the other hand, a Humean can object that this law is an example of superimposing a mathematical conception of objects [which involves a kind of simultaneity] onto the data of experience.) If they are simultaneous, however, then why do we call one the "action" and the other the "reaction"? Such language misleads us into imagining that one occurs before the other. The answer might be that in our experience, one of the two things exerting equal and opposite forces usually seems to initiate the process: e.g., when I run on a track, I initiate this process, even thoug...

The efficient cause par excellence is a human agent acting deliberately and skillfully (I am speaking epistemically not ontologically: i.e., the prime example by which understand all other cases). "Lower level" causes must be understood by subtracting attirbutes from the human prime analog. For example, "force" involves an analogy with the kinaesthesis involved in intentional acts. Ditto with energy. A little fuzzy here: If our understanding of "lower level" causes were not arrived at in the manner just proposed, then you certainly could not explain human action (trying to move, wishing, perceiving, judging, etc.) by adding together the lower level actions... or at least not without sweeping the problem under the carpet by using homuncular descriptive language. A mechanism does not cognize, desire, try to act.