Logical Distinctness. An interpretaion of Templing

Robert Templing gave a great talk on causation last night best summed up in his own words: “What the heck is logical distinctness anyway?”. Rob was looking into what seems to be a fairly standard assumption in the philosophy of causation which is that the cause must be logically distinct from the effect. Two questions are: 1. Does the cause have to be logically distinct from the effect? What motivates this rule? 2. What is it for two facts, events, objects (whatever causes and effects are) to be logically distinct?
I will give my answer to the first question without further ado. Cause is a linguistic concept and language is governed at least partially by pragmatics. If one can deduce B from A anyway, one doesn’t need the concept of cause to explain the fact that B followed A. Where there is the relation of logical entailment between 2 events a causal explanation of the relation is redundant. So intuitively speaking “Frodo puts on the ring” is not the cause of “Frodo puts on the ring” because the counterfactual dependence is already explained logically. This explains the intuition as far as I am concerned. By way of argument, all I offer is that often people do make these kinds of causal claims, and their uselessness is the best argument against them. For example: “Eating something poisonous causes one to be poisoned.” The intuition I have is not “False!” but “Well duh! No shit Sherlock.”
The second question is the more interesting and wide ranging., especially now when the new logical inquisitors are asserting as fact that “necessary” means “logically necessary” and “possible” means “logically possible” and “identity” means “logical identity”. Logic is to do with true and false, and true and false only attach to representations, maybe even only linguistic representations. The universe as a whole is not true. It is not a conjunction of true propositions. The universe just is. The flash point in Rob’s talk as far as I was concerned was a challenge to logical distinctness from Davidson. Davidson views cause to be a relation between events. Logical distinctness seems to be a relation between descriptions. So the logical distinctness condition is false since you can always describe a cause and an effect in such a way that the cause and the effect are not logically distinct. Moreover, it doesn’t really mean anything to say that two events are logically distinct. Davidson’s argument is that
Suppose A causes B. This means the description “the cause of B” truly describes A. So we have this true causal statement “The cause of B causes B.” This is a tautology. Therefore under at least one description every cause is not logically distinct from its effect.
But this is rubbish. If “the cause of B” rigidly designates A, then, given that some causal relations are logically contingent, it is true that it is logically possible that the cause of B does not cause B. If on the other hand “the cause of B” only refers to whatever is in fact the cause of B, then “the cause of B” no longer refers to A necessarily, but merely contingently. Either way the cause of B and B are logically distinct.

To try and make this a little less abstract. Chapman by the action of shooting murdered John Lennon. Therefore Chapman’s action was the cause of John Lennon’s death. Now we have a description of an action “the cause of John Lennon’s death”. This refers to Chapman’s action. But suppose Chapman’s action was not the cause of John Lennon’s death. Now we have: “Suppose the cause of John Lennon’s death was not the cause of John Lennon’s death.” Are our high Priests of Modal logic going to deny us this hypothesis on the grounds that it is impossible? Of course they aren’t, they are reasonable people. So it is Davidson who has made the mistake. The cause of B is logically distinct from B, even so described.
Take a non causal example. Jack is married to his wife. Is this a logical tautology? Not really. It makes perfect sense to me that Jack actually never got married to his wife. I mean in this world, indicative possibility, epistemic possibility. They might never have had a ceremony.

Another example of this pervasive error is the fact that everything I know is true. Williamson and others take the appearance of tautology in this statement to ridiculous extremes. The fact that I know that p does not entail that p in any interesting way. I now hereby claim to know that Robert Templing gave a talk last night. These two events are distinct. Robert could have given his talk without me knowing about it. I could have claimed to know it without him having given it. It is true in a sense that if he hadn’t given his talk, my knowledge wouldn’t be knowledge. It is also true that if I hadn’t known about it his talk may have been a slightly different event. But this is not a logical relation. In my private world I refer to this representation of Roberts talk as “knowledge”. This act of describing does not warrant the inference that it is logically impossible that Robert failed to give a talk. It just entitles me to assume with certainty that he gave a talk. It is logically possible that I am a brain in a vat. Or that the world consists of two identical iron balls. The only logically impossibility is that logicians have got it wrong. This puts logicians up with Freud and the Pope.