ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Thirty-Two: The Principle of Causation The Importance of the Principle of Causation As was explained earlier,1 the discovery of causal relations among phenomena forms the axis of all scientific efforts, and the principle of causality, as a universal and general principle, is a pillar of all sciences which deal with the laws of real objects.

On the other hand, every scientific law owes its universality and definiteness to the rational and philosophical laws of causation, and without them no universal and definite law of any science could be established. This is one of the most important ways in which science is in need of philosophy.

Some of those who deny rationalism and rational principles independent of experience, or who basically do not believe that philosophical and metaphysical problems have any scientific or definitive value, try to prove the validity of the principle of causality by way of experience. However, as has been repeatedly indicated, these sorts of efforts are useless and sterile.

In order to establish the real existence of a entified thing outside the self one must rely upon the principle of causation, and without it there is no way to establish entified realities, and there will always exist room for doubt as to whether there exist realities beyond perceptions and mental images which are subjected to experience.

Furthermore, the establishment of a correspondence between perceptions and external things (after accepting them), requires subsidiary laws of causation, and as long as these laws have not been established, there will be room for doubt as to whether our mental phenomena and perceptions correspond to things in the external world, so that we may come to know of external realities by means of these laws.

Finally, if there is doubt about the laws of causation, then one cannot establish the universality and definiteness of the results of experience, and the attempt to establish the laws of causation by means of experience involves circular reasoning, that is, the universality of the results of experience is based on the laws of causation, and this presupposes that we wish to establish these laws by means of generalization upon the results of experience and their universality.

In other words, the use of experience is possible only in case the existence of things as subjects of experience is established and the results of experience are also definitely known.