Analytic Philosophy as Phenomenology

Phenomenology lies in a long tradition stemming from Descartes and including Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mill, Brentano, and Wundt. It has a number of distinguishing features, as developed by Husserl: it is based on “intuitions”; it is concerned with phenomena not hidden realities (e.g., Kantian noumena); it aims to discover essences; it combines elements of empiricism with elements of rationalism; it aspires to be a science; it makes heavy use of the notion of intentionality; it is introspective; it employs something called the “phenomenological reduction”, which seeks to suspend the “natural standpoint”, in a mental act called the “epoche”. The first and last items in this list require special mention. In phenomenology, the concept of intuition is used in a broad and specialized sense: it is taken to include the full range of basic acts of consciousness, from perception to imagination to abstract thought, so that a physicist is said to use intuitions when making perceptual observations. What is necessary is that an intuition involves confrontation with the object of interest not merely indication in absentia; this can be perceptual or imaginative. It is to be contrasted with inference or argument or abstract speculation. It is a source of data. The idea of the phenomenological reduction is that we are to step out of the usual attitude of science and common sense, which involves commitment to external reality, and contemplate only the contents of consciousness as such; we are to be concerned with essence not existence. It is a matter of indifference whether the objects of consciousness exist (it is not denied that they do). In practice this means that we are concerned with the mind as opposed to objective reality. Thus, we elicit essences by suspending the natural standpoint and employing intuition as our source of evidence. We attend to what is given from the first-person perspective in order accurately to describe the phenomena. We don’t rely on theology or traditional authorities or science or mysticism or a priori deductions. We use an empirical method in order to arrive at necessary truths (this is called “eidetic abstraction” by Husserl). We are operating at the same level as Descartes in his search for clear and distinct ideas, and also with the British empiricists in their preoccupation with ideas, images, perceptions, impressions, sense data, and the like. Our gaze is directed inward, but we take in more things than they recognized (numbers, for example). Now my question is this: Isn’t this very similar to what the analytic philosophers recommended? That is, didn’t they take a similar stance towards the investigation of concepts? They proposed to examine concepts by detaching them from the world and intuiting them (in the wide sense) so as to reveal necessary truths. They wanted to analyze these concepts just as Husserl proposed to analyze his “noema”. They were not concerned to discover empirical and contingent truths about the extensions of these concepts but to articulate the essence of the concept (as it might be, the concept of knowledge). In some cases, this could be accomplished by simply looking at the concept (e.g., reporting that the concept of red is a color concept), while in other cases a more complicated procedure would need to be adopted—the imaginative construction of thought experiments and provision of necessary and sufficient conditions (compare Husserl’s method of eidetic variation). We thus gain insight into the “logical structure” of the concept in question. We don’t need to look outside of the mind in order to do this (or if we do, it is only to look at language); we don’t mimic the natural sciences by investigating the extra-mental natural world. We have “bracketed” that mode of enquiry so as to concentrate on essence. Since concepts are “immanent” in the mind, we are not then subject to skeptical doubts, so that we have a firm foundation for our enquiries. We are, in effect, conducting a phenomenology of concepts, in Husserl’s sense. Analytic philosophy is therefore a species of phenomenology, and the better off for it. Concepts are phenomena that can be studied by means of intuition, supplemented by acts of imagination, and yielding knowledge of necessary truths. Analytic philosophy is not opposed to phenomenology but a type of phenomenology: first-person, introspective, intuitive, non-scientific, apodictic, and essence-seeking. The differences start to seem merely terminological and stylistic. This impression is confirmed by asking a further question: What kind of meta-philosophy stands in contrast to that of analytic philosophy and phenomenology? Here we cannot do better than to tabulate Sartre’s deviations from Husserlian orthodoxy. These concern his conception of consciousness itself: he regards consciousness (the for-itself) as a nothingness whose only qualities are conferred by extraneous being (the in-itself). From this it follows that there can be no detachment from existence, no suspension of the natural standpoint, no epoche: the for-itself is constituted by the in-itself. There is no transcendental ego in consciousness and no “stuff” of consciousness (Husserl’s “hyle”): consciousness is pure intentionality and hence dependent on the world of actual existence. It is, for Sartre, absolute freedom, devoid of essence, a kind of psychic vacuum. Thus, Sartre describes consciousness as embedded in the existing world—in the world of physical objects, the human body, time, and other consciousnesses.[1] The division between them is artificial; it is the consciousness-world nexus that is ontologically basic in the description of human reality—what we might call “situated consciousness”. What does this remind you of? Externalism, anti-individualism, the extended mind, wide content, Twin Earth, direct reference, singular propositions, meaning outside the head, belief de re, non-supervenience of mind on brain—all that jazz. This is all very Sartre-esque and not at all Husserlian: if you suspend the world, you do away with the mind. Jean-Paul would have loved the Twin Earth story! Not for him the neo-Fregean insistence on internal modes of presentation, definite descriptions in the language of thought, narrow content, supervenient qualia—all that internalist claptrap! Husserl is to Frege what Sartre is to Mill. The analytic externalists are “existentialists” in that they build objective existence into the mind; they reject Husserl’s attempt to insulate the mind from the outside world. The mind is embedded and extended, not isolated and detached. And there is a further point of analogy: Quine’s view of the mind as indeterminate is strikingly similar to Sartre’s vacuum picture of the mind. For both men, the mind is essentially an empty vessel, consisting of nothing but interactions with the external world. It brings nothing to the table; it merely reflects what is already there. Sartre would have been tickled by Quine’s rabbit ruminations: for there is nothing in the mind to provide any content beyond what can be gleaned from stimulus meaning. The in-itself might well not provide the distinctions necessary to justify our customary discriminations, in which case consciousness cannot furnish such discriminations. This kind of picture of the relationship between mind and world upends centuries of thought about what constitutes the mind—in particular, the views of Husserl’s forerunners (Descartes, Locke, et al). So, the departure represented by Sartre and the psychological externalists is really a major divide in the historical tradition—more significant than the one gestured at by the usual hackneyed “analytic versus Continental” dichotomy. In fact, the former division cuts across the latter division. All can still count as phenomenologists, but they differ dramatically in how they conceive their object of study (the mind, experience, consciousness). There are existential phenomenologists (Sartre) and non-existential phenomenologists (Husserl). And the same distinction applies to conceptual analysts, according to whether they regard concepts as existence-involving (Putnam) or not existence-involving (Frege).[2] It turns out, then, that analytic philosophy and phenomenology are not really opposed, despite some superficial stylistic differences. Both derive from the same historical sources (Descartes, Hume, et al), so this is not surprising. It is the focus on the knowing subject that leads to both.[3]

[1] Sartre disavowed the label “existentialist” (it was Gabriel Marcel that coined it)—as did Camus. What would be a better label? We might try “existence-ist”, or “libertarian negationist”, or simply “externalist”: but these are not too catchy or descriptive. Still, we do well to remember that “existentialist” does not do justice to the guiding principle of Sartre’s philosophy, namely the essential nothingness of consciousness—he is a “nothing-ist” more than an “existential-ist”. I rather like “phenomenological negativist” (contrast “logical positivist”), but it’s a mouthful. (Apparently, Husserl used to like to say “We are the real positivists!”, and with some justification—they were a pretty negative lot.)

[2] Where would Wittgenstein fall? He can be aptly characterized as a phenomenologist of sorts (“Look and see!”), but what about along the internalist-externalist axis? Well, he isn’t a referential externalist (nothing twin-earthy about PI), but he does invoke “forms of life” and the community, so he is not an it’s-all-in-the-head type of philosopher. He also shares with Sartre an attachment to the idea of life as decision (see section 186).

[3] A view which really does stand opposed to both phenomenology and analytic philosophy is that philosophy is not different from regular science, since both claim that philosophy needs a special method. What should we call such a view? To call it “naturalistic philosophy” presupposes that the other two approaches are not “naturalistic”, but their proponents would be within their rights to claim that they are perfectly naturalistic (they aren’t “super-naturalistic”). Nor would it be apt to call the view “scientific philosophy”, since the opposition would protest that they too deserve that honorific adjective. How about “scientistic philosophy”? But that connotes the fault of excessive belief in scientific methods: true, no doubt, but not diplomatic. I think “scientistical” would do, or “scientifical”. Thus, scientifical philosophy would differ from phenomenological philosophy (which includes analytic philosophy)—which in turn differs from religious or mystical philosophy, or psychedelic or alcoholic or schizophrenic…

Intentionality and the Ego

In The Transcendence of the Ego (1936) Sartre criticizes Husserl’s conception of consciousness. I intend to add to this critique. Husserl supposes that in addition to the usual objects of consciousness there exists a further object christened the “transcendental ego”: it is the reference of “I”, the source of the unity of consciousness, and a constituting agent with respect to the intentional objects of consciousness (e.g., the objects of perception). This implies that consciousness inherently possesses a dyadic structure, a bipolarity, a subject-object axis: I am aware of this. It has a kind of double reference—to the ego and to the objects the ego contemplates. Sartre contends that this is false: there is no ego embedded in consciousness per se, only the objects that consciousness apprehends outside itself. The ego enters, according to Sartre, only when consciousness acts reflectively, taking itself as object; it doesn’t enter at the basic level of intentional directedness—as when you see or think about things in general. Consciousness necessarily posits (Sartre’s term) the objects of its essential intentionality, but it only sporadically posits an ego, as when it turns back on itself. The ego is not part of the constitutive structure of consciousness. It might well be true that there has to be an ego (self, subject) in order for consciousness to do what it does, but this is not part of its essence quaphenomenological reality. There no doubt has to be a body and brain in order that consciousness should achieve its essential intentional directedness, but this is not part of its phenomenology. Consciousness is not as of an ego that transcends it (i.e., non-reflective consciousness). Now, I think Sartre is quite right in this contention, and that his case can be strengthened. Consider this analogy: if I say “New York is noisy” I refer to New York and its acoustic properties, but I don’t refer to myself. I am there in the background, a necessary condition of this particular act of speech, but there is no “I” in my sentence. I can go on to say “I just said that New York is noisy”, thus engaging in a self-reflective act, but I don’t typically do that. It is the same with consciousness: I can think about the world without thinking about myself in having that very thought. Speech is not invariably self-positing, and neither is thought (or perception, emotion, etc.). Moreover, if (first-level) consciousness did posit an ego alongside its other posits, it would be possible for it to exist without those other posits; but that is clearly impossible, because it would be empty of what gives it reality (by the principle of intentionality). It would be the mere apprehension of the solitary ego devoid of reference to anything outside of consciousness. But consciousness is necessarily about something distinct from itself, of something separate and alien. The idea of a consciousness containing only reference to the pure ego is not intelligible (Husserl would agree, given his allegiance to Brentano). The transcendent ego is not enough transcendence (“going beyond”) to sustain an act of consciousness. Secondly, if the ego were contained in consciousness as an intentional object (and how else is it to be contained?), there would have to be another ego to be the subject of that apprehension, unless we thought that it could be aware of itself. But intentionality is inherently irreflexiveby definition: this would be an inhabitant of consciousness being directed at itself, like a perception being a perception of itself. Not surprisingly, Husserl didn’t postulate that his transcendent ego occurred in consciousness by way of the intentional relation, but rather in some other way—as a “constituent”. But this violates the whole doctrine of intentionality, and is anyway obscure. The fact is that the way consciousness gives access to the ego is (or would be) quite different from the way it gives access to other objects, but this difference is never explained. Thirdly, if the ego has a nature, this nature would have to constitute part of the nature of consciousness itself; but consciousness has no nature apart from what its objects confer (the doctrine of intentionality again). If the ego is identical to the psychological subject (the “empirical ego”), then consciousness will be invaded by desires, personality traits, and so forth; but nothing like that is found within the precincts of consciousness as such (it is an “emptiness”, as Sartre says). The same goes for the ego considered as a body, a brain, an extensionless point, or an immaterial soul: none of this shows up in consciousness (unless it is explicitly about such things). But the ego can’t have no nature—it can’t be a nothing. The usual objects of consciousness do color the conscious act, constituting it as the act that it is, and that fits with the deliverances of phenomenology; but nothing analogous happens with the alleged transcendental ego—it makes no phenomenological difference. Fourthly, what are we to say of animal consciousness—does it too harbor a transcendental ego? That seems far too intellectualist: isn’t the animal simply aware of objects outside its consciousness, not of any supposed ego lurking within it? Why would its consciousness be directed at something on the inside as well as the outside? What would be the biological point of that? It seems superfluous, a kind of pointless luxury. Fifthly, what guarantees that the putative reference to an ego actually picks out anything real? Suppose we agree that such a directedness occurs: it doesn’t follow that it points to anything that really exists. So why should we believe in such a thing? It might an illusion; and wouldn’t an illusion do just as well as the real thing, phenomenologically speaking? As Sartre argues, we do better to regard consciousness in its basic form as unipolar—pointed solely at its objects, not as containing in addition some kind of reference to a self. Visual perception, say, represents objects in the environment without any accompaniment by a representation of some kind of ego (whose nature remains obscure). There is no positing of a self, analogous to the positing of physical objects in the environment. No doubt there has to be some kind of entity underlying the acts of consciousness—a person, an organism, a brain—but this entity doesn’t show up in the phenomenology of the act. Why should it? The being of consciousness qua consciousness is intentionality not constitution by a supposed inner ego. That idea is really the abandonment of the original insight (derived from Brentano) of the phenomenological movement. The phenomenological field should be kept ego-free.[1]

[1] Of course, thoughts about the self, one’s own or other people’s, contain reference to such things; but this is not a feature of all thoughts. Most of consciousness is quite innocent of self-directedness. Thus, there is no ego-as- subject in consciousness but only ego-as-object (in the special case of reflexive consciousness). There is no mention of the self in a typical conscious act; there is no “I think” accompanying every exercise of consciousness (pace Kant). Consciousnesses thus don’t differ with respect to the individual possessing them; they are “impersonal”, as Sartre puts it.

The Symbolic Gene

Everyone has heard of the genetic code. Here is a typical statement from Wikipedia: “The genetic code is the set of rules used by living cells to translate information encoded within genetic material (DNA or RNA sequences of nucleotide triplets, or codons) into proteins…The codons specify which amino acid will be added next during protein biosynthesis”. Notice the heavy use of semantic notions in this formulation: code, rules, translate, information, encoded, specify. Other formulations use the concept of language explicitly and speak of “instructions” that “tell a cell how to make a specific protein”. What are we to make of these formulations? Are we to suppose that DNA contains symbols with meaning and reference? Evidently, we are to suppose this; there is no hint of metaphor in these words—no suggestion that it is merely as if genes have semantic properties. Still, someone might protest that metaphor must be what is meant, because it would be anthropocentric to project our mastery of language onto mere molecules. DNA doesn’t utter words, communicate, or perform speech acts! That’s a specifically human ability. There is much that is wrong with this protest, which I won’t go into (what about whales and dolphins?), but I do want to make a more general point about the attribution of such concepts to non-human subjects. Consider the concept of the selfish gene: this is often regarded as a mere metaphor and must be meant as such, useful or not. But that is surely wrong: genes really do operate in ways that closely mirror ordinary human selfishness, thus deserving the appellation “selfish”. To be selfish is to favor one’s own interests over the interests of others, not taking those interests into consideration. A dog or cat will eat all the food put in front of it without regard for what another cat or dog might desire or need. It does not consider the interests of others. It is not always selfish, though, because it considers the interests of its offspring (its genetic relatives). Sometimes it exhibits selfish behavior and sometimes not. And the same is true of animal species in general, going right down the phylogenetic scale. Of course, there are differences between the different species (animals are not blameworthy for their self-centered behavior whereas humans are), but the common pattern justifies applying the concept in this extended way. This isn’t mere metaphor; it is rooted in the behavior and dispositions of the animal in question. Animals are literally selfish (sometimes), self-centered, self-interested, self-promoting—despite their differences from humans. In the same way genes are selfish, literally, non-metaphorically: they act in ways that favor their own survival at the expense of others. They don’t do so intentionally, consciously, with malice aforethought; but they still do it. They thus resemble consciously selfish agents in significant respects, and that is what grounds the ascription to them of the word “selfish”. Is it a metaphor that computers compute? It used to be that only humans were called “computers”, which seems quaint now, but when machine computers were invented their similarity to human computers warranted the extension of the term to them. This doesn’t require us to suppose that computers are conscious, only that their behavior resemble that of human computers. The same applies to the current use of “smart”—smart phones, smart TVS, smart cars. When someone writes a book called The Intelligent Eye,[1] we don’t immediately impute metaphor but recognize that eyes act with many of the attributes characteristic of human intelligence (The Intelligent Eyelash would not invite the same semantic tolerance). There isn’t some kind of fallacy involved in using words like this; it is entirely reasonable in the light of the facts. So, the title The Selfish Gene wasn’t simply a category mistake or fanciful trope; it was the literal truth given the facts expounded in the book. And everyone can see this (aside from captious critics). Similarly for the phrase “the symbolic gene”: the biological facts justify this coinage—as with whale and dolphin language. Compare “the language of thought”: you may or may not agree that such a thing exists, but it is not a category mistake to talk that way—it all depends on whether thought is sufficiently similar to speech. These are all natural biological kinds and have their extension fixed by the facts not by supposed paradigms. If that is so, we have an interesting question about symbolic genes: do they thereby have a mind? Isn’t a symbolizing entity necessarily a mental entity? It is supposed by some that we have a second mind located in our bowels,[2] given the neural activity at that locale; do we have a third mind located in our genes? The idea should not be dismissed out of hand; again, we must beware of linguistic parochialism. We don’t need to assume that genes are conscious in order to believe they are endowed with mind, so long as they have intentionality (just like the unconscious); and the usual way of talking encourages this supposition. The symbols in the genetic code stand for different amino acids, so there is intentionality built into the system—reference, representation. The genes instruct genetic mechanisms to assemble amino acids in certain places in a certain order, so they must contain the semantic machinery required for such instruction. Indeed, they must have a semantics: an assignment of entities from a domain and rules for determining conditions of satisfaction. The entities are amino acids and the rules fix conditions under which the instructions have been correctly carried out: “Put such and such an amino acid in such and such a place” is satisfied if and only if that acid is put in that place”, or some such thing. That is, the genetic code and its instructions have a semantic interpretation in the classical sense—if (but only if) it is right to attribute a language to the genes. But then, we have enough to warrant an ascription of mentality. Clearly this mind (like the gut mind) is very different from our head-centered mind, but it would be narrow-minded (!) to exclude such minds from the general category of mindedness. We have finally got used to ascribing minds to our fellow animals, despite their differences from our minds; it shouldn’t be too great a stretch to grant this license to sub-personal systems. And aren’t genes fully deserving of such largesse given their extraordinary generative powers? They can make whole complex organisms, which no brain-centered intelligence can do: they are clever, resourceful, sophisticated (what other words can we use?) Embryogenesis is a remarkable engineering feat of nature, requiring complex ingenious machinery; it seems petty and self-aggrandizing to deny them the honorific label “mind” (or “intelligent”, “clever”, “inventive”). True, they mimic the impressively intelligent Mr. Spock in their lack of affect, but no one has ever denied that he has a mind, in some ways superior to the affect-laden human mind. Minds come in many forms and we shouldn’t take ours to be the measure of all of them. The octopus, as we now know, has a mind suited to its anatomy and needs, and the same might be true of the molecule made of DNA. Also, can we really exclude the possibility of consciousness here? Our knowledge is limited, panpsychism might have some truth to it, and conscious minds can be very alien—so it is possible that genes have some sort of consciousness. But even if they don’t, that doesn’t preclude them having an unconscious mind. So, maybe mind appeared on earth a good deal earlier than it is commonly supposed, with the advent of DNA (itself a remarkable evolutionary product). We might think of it as the brain behind evolution by natural selection, its sine qua non. The selfish gene, the symbolic gene, the intelligent gene, the cerebral gene: DNA is more than just a chemical double helix.[3]

[1] R.L. Gregory (1970). The book deals with the perception of ambiguous figures and other sorts of visual interpretation. Nowadays it would not be out of place to speak of the “genius eye” given what we know of the eye’s feats of reconstruction from the retinal image.

[2] See Michael Gershon, The Second Brain (1998).

[3] The same is true of the brain: if you look at it from outside, or under a microscope, it looks like a mere collection of spindly cells, but it has many characteristics not so revealed—including selfishness, symbolism, intelligence, and consciousness. Why should the same not be true of the genes? They may have emergent properties not revealed by simple inspection. It all depends on what theory demands and reason recommends.

A Causal World

There are two ways to think about causation: either it is something that exists in addition to an antecedent reality of objects and properties or it is constitutive of reality. According to the first way, if you removed causation from the world, you would be left with constant conjunction, a real world of recognizable things; according to the second way, you would be left with nothing, since causation is what reality fundamentally is. The first way is dominant in our intellectual tradition, which is why some people contemplate doing without causation in our conception of the world. Causation is mere icing on the cake (a dubious icing according to some). Reality is not fundamentally and inherently causal reality. After all, we don’t see causation, or if we do it is not ubiquitous, not omnipresent. Empiricism militates against causal foundationalism. Yet there have been voices that champion causation-based metaphysics: Schopenhauer and Shoemaker, in particular (with their similar-sounding names). True, Schopenhauer preferred to speak of Will, but his general conception is causal in thrust; Shoemaker just comes right out with it—properties are causal powers.[1] I will explore this idea further. The metaphor I like compares causation to fungi: fungi are everywhere, they are basic to life, but underappreciated because of their general invisibility. They largely live underground, only peeping above ground for purposes of reproduction. They were there before plants and animals and allowed these parvenu life-forms to come into existence (on land anyway). They are root causes, so to speak. The general idea of causal metaphysics is that everything in the physical and psychological world is a cause—an active, generative producer—and that is all that reality is. There is nothing more to things than causes. Reality reduces to causation (“causal reductionism”). That was Shoemaker’s radical message: he was a functionalist about properties in general—properties are defined by their causal roles. A property like shape is a causal power. It isn’t something separate and distinct (he is an identity theorist about properties). An object, then, is a bundle of powers—a congeries of causes. Causation is not a part of (concrete) reality; it is the whole of it. Reality is composed of causes. It isn’t that causation coexists with non-causal inactive components of reality; it constitutes all of reality. Shapes are causes, and so are colors (possibly mental causes, if you are a subjectivist about color). Forces are obviously causes, but so are the things that forces act on—planets, for example. Causes cause other causes. It’s causation all the way down—pan-causalism, nothing but causes. This view is apt to seem hyperbolic, if not patently false: for that is not how we see the world, how it seems to us. It might be noumenally constituted by causes, but it isn’t phenomenally purely causal. The world seems innocent of causation for long stretches and short ones: inactive, unchanging, inert, stable. How then can it be constituted by causal interactions? Sometimes nothing moves, nothing happens—isn’t that because there is nothing causal going on? We are not observing any effects, so causation is taking a break from its usual exertions. However, this view is deeply mistaken, as science has shown: we are subject to illusions of inactivity. We are simply not witnessing the ever-present fact of causal activity. Take the motion of the earth: it seems to us that the earth is not moving and not under the influence of a force, but it is—we just don’t experience it. The earth is caused to move by the sun’s gravitational force—at every second and for all of its existence. Likewise, when objects on the earth’s surface are stationary (relative to the earth) they are held there by earth’s gravitational field; they are caused to stay still by a force we don’t see. Most strikingly, the coherence of physical objects is not the result of zero causal activity but of counterbalancing forces at the atomic level—the positive and negative charges of protons and electrons, respectively. Objects are caused not to fly apart; they don’t remain stable spontaneously. We are thus victims of a widespread illusion, making us think that nothing causal is going on, when in fact the world is pulsing with non-stop causation. It’s as if we could only see beehives from a distance and formed the idea that nothing is going on inside them, whereas in fact they are centers of buzzing activity. True, we don’t perceive the ceaseless causality of the world, but it is there nonetheless, under the surface. In fact, it is doubtful that we ever really see causality (as Hume pointed out), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the foundation of everything we do see (along with its characteristic type of necessity). We thus don’t appreciate the omnipresence of causality and miss its foundational status. But actually, as Shoemaker realized, it is impossible to sever the connection between properties and powers, no matter what the appearances may be. Causation is the fungus of the universe; its hidden driving force. Or better: all is fungus, when you get right down to it.[2] A.J. Ayer used to like to say that causation is just one damn thing after another; the truth is that things are just causation manifesting itself. The world is Will, Force, Activity, Necessary Connection, Influence, Push and Pull. Causation is in every nook and cranny.[3]

[1] See his Identity, Cause and Mind (1984).

[2] Of course, it is not true that all is fungus in botany, poetically apt as that might sound; but in metaphysics all might be causation (causal fungus). This is perfectly compatible with the Humean thesis that we don’t really know what causation ultimately consists in; in particular, we don’t know what causal necessity is (objectively, intrinsically).

[3] A few decades ago, it became fashionable to propose causal theories of many things: perception, knowledge, reference, action, memory. But no one ever proposed a causal theory of everything—the whole world. If causation is a notion in good order, however, it becomes attractive to consider the possibility that all properties, objects, and facts are causal in nature. Thus, causal metaphysics: causation is ontologically basic. (I’m not supposing ethical and mathematical facts are causal, if such there be; I’m discussing only concrete facts that enter into causal relations.) Hume described causation as the “cement of the universe”; according to causal metaphysics, it is the universe.