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equations, the Equations of Motion of the system. The claim that
the states don't merely follow one another (as prescribed by the
Equations of Motion), but actually "produce" the states which follow
them, introduces an element which physicists have long rejected as a
metaphysical addition to the content of physics itself.
Even if one is not bothered by this (or thinks that the physicists
have been too influenced by empiricism), a relation of "producing"
which applies only to "states" of closed systems will hardly clarify the
meaning of "causes" as in ')ohn's wild gesture caused the vase to fall
off the mantlepiece." To explain the idea that John's gesture "pro–
duced" the falling of the vase without going back to the Hume-Ayer
account (causality as regularities plus statistical tendencies), some
materialists bring in such recherche objects as possible worlds and a
relation of "nearness" between possible worlds (a genuine causal
regularity is supposed to hold not only in the actual world but in
non-actual worlds "near" to the actual world), while others just take
the idea that some events "explain" other events as primitive.
The fact is that the God's Eye View of the Universe as One
Closed System - the metaphysical picture on which materialism is
based - has no real room for "abilities to produce," a primitive rela–
tion of causation-as-explanation, or nearness-of-possible-worlds.
This currently fashionable metaphysical talk is as incoherent from a
consistent materialist view as it is from an empiricist view. On the
other hand, the world of ordinary life - what Husserl called the "life–
world"
(Lebenswelt)
-
is full of objects which "produce effects" in other
objects, of events which "explain" other events, of people who
"recognize" things (and not only sense-qualia).
When the materialists get in trouble, what they do is forget
their metaphysical picture and simply borrow whatever notions they
need from the
Lebenswelt,
i. e., from spontaneous phenomenology.
(That they then dress up these notions from spontaneous phenome-
nology in a language which comes from medieval philosophy is a
['
curious aberration.) But the whole point of having a metaphysical
picture - a picture of the furniture of the universe - was to analyze
the notions of our spontaneous phenomenology. Just as Ayer ignores
the fact that there is nothing in what he gives us to start with - Hu-
mean sense impressions under the new name "sense-qualia" - to give
us minds (let alone an act of "primary recognition" to put those
minds in direct contact with universals), so the materialists ignore
the fact that there is nothing in what they give us to start with - the
