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M εtascience | No.2 | online M arch 8, 2021

Causation according to M ario Bunge

and Graham Harman

M artín Orensanz1

RÉSUM É — Imaginez une table de billard, sur laquelle se trouvent plusieurs boules
de billard rouges. Supposons que l’une d’entre elles en percute une autre. On pour-
rait prétendre que la première boule de billard, la cause, est en contact direct avec
la seconde, l’effet. Si nous devions généraliser cela pour toutes choses, pas seule-
ment pour les boules de billard, nous dirions que « la chose A cause la chose B ».
Comme nous le verrons, Bunge et Harman rejettent tous deux la conception pré-
cédente de la causalité. Ils s’entendent pour dire que l’affirmation « la chose A
cause la chose B » est fausse, parce que les choses n’entrent pas en contact causal
direct ; il doit y avoir un troisième élément qui les relie. Dans le cas de Bunge, deux
choses sont liées par des événements. Dans le cas d’Harman, deux objets réels sont
liés par un objet sensuel.

ABSTRACT — Imagine a billiard table, wit h several red billiard balls. Suppose that
one of them impacts another. It could be claimed that the first billiard ball, the
cause, makes direct contact with the second one, the effect. If we had to generalize
this for all things, not just billiard balls, we would say that "thing A causes thing B".
As we shall see, both Bunge and Harman reject the preceding view of causation.
They would agree that the statement "thing A causes thing B" is false. This is be-
cause t hings do not make direct causal contact wit h each other, there has t o be a
t hird element t hat links t hem. In Bunge's case, t wo things are linked by event s. In
Harman's case, two real objects are linked by a sensual object.

1 Martìn Orensanz is a Doct or en Filosofía fr om Ar gentina. His wor k focuses on thr ee main topics: Ar gen-

tine philosophy, contempor ar y philosophy and philosophy of science. He has published a book, as well as
sever al ar t icles in inter national jour nals. He won tw o scholar ships (doct or al and post-doctor al) fr om the
National Scientific and Technical Resear ch Council of Ar gentina (CONICET). Together with Guiller mo
Denegri, he is wor ki ng on the philosophical, histor ical and t heor etical aspects of par asitology and hel-
minthology.

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 M art ín Orensanz | Causation according to M ario Bunge and Graham Harman 2

Keyw ords — Causation; Causalit y; Causal Relation; Ontology; M etaphysics.

Contents

1 Causation According to Bunge

2 Causation According to Harman
3 Concluding Remarks

1 CAUSATION ACCORDING TO BUNGE

Bunge wr ote on causation thr oughout his career . The fir st systematic treatment
of this issue can be found in his book Causalit y: The Place of t he Causal Pr inciple
in Moder n Science. He r etur ned to this topic in subsequent wor ks. His general
idea is that causation is a relation between events, not things. Thus, in Chasing
Realit y, he says:

We start by making the usual if somet imes t acit assumpt ion that t he causal
relat ion obt ains bet ween event s (changes of stat e in the course of t ime),
not between things or their propert ies. A simple classical example is
Hooke’s law: The strain or deformat ion of an elast ic body is proportional to
t he applied tension or load. Because only event s can cause, we must disal-
low such expressions as “ Gene G causes trait T ” and “ Brain causes mind.”
We should say, instead, that t he expression or act ivat ion of gene G causes
it to int ervene in t he biochemical react ions result ing eventually in t he emer-
gence of phenotypic t rait T. (Bunge, 2006: 90)

In other wor ds, things-in-themselves do not causally r elate to each other di-
r ectly, they do so indir ectly, by way of events. I believe that this point should be
emphasized, because it has often been over looked by Bunge's r eader s, including
myself. In another article published in this volume, I ar gued that accor ding to
Bunge, inor ganic objects inter act with each other as things-in-themselves. I re-
alize now that my claim about Bunge was wr ong, since he claims that causation
is not a relation between things, but between their events. It was only thr ough
my reading of Graham Har man's wor ks that I gained a better under standing of
Mar io Bunge's concept of causation. Given Har man's idea that causation is not a
dir ect r elation between two r eal objects, since it requir es a sensual object that
functions as a link, I had set out to compare that idea to Bunge's concept of cau-
sation. My question at that point was a simple one: would Bunge agree with

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 M art ín Orensanz | Causation according to M ario Bunge and Graham Harman 3

Har man on this issue, or would he disagr ee? I had supposed that the latter was
the case, but I was sur pr ised to find out that it was the for mer .
But what was mor e sur pr ising was the fact that I had over looked Bunge's en-
tir e point about causation: that it is not a relation between things-in-themselves,
but between their events. Even though Bunge's point may sound tr ivial, since it
appear s to be a simple technicality, that is not the case. What is at stake her e is
no small matter , since his concept of causation pr ovides the answer to the fol-
lowing cr ucial ontological question: in the absence of humans and other animals
endowed with ner vous systems, do inor ganic objects interact with each other as
things-in-themselves? The answer is no, they do not. They can only relate to each
other indirectly, through some kind of link, which, in turn, is not a thing-in-itself.
A change, according to Bunge, can be either an event or a pr ocess. He defines
an event as an instantaneous change of state, while a pr ocesses is a ser ies of
events. For this reason, sometimes he speaks of causation as a r elation between
events, as in the preceding quote, and at other times he is mor e precise, defining
causation as a relation between changes, which can be events or pr ocesses. The
following is an example of this:

To hold that “ brain processes cause consciousness,” as Searle […] does, is

like maintaining t hat bodies cause mot ions, or t hat t he gut causes digest ion.
Things do not cause processes: they undergo processes; and t hese in t urn
cause changes (event s or processes) in other t hings. Short er: t he causal re-
lat ion holds only among changes (event s and processes). (Bunge, 2006: 90-
91)

Bunge's cr itique of Sear le and of other philosopher s of mind consists in showing

that they do not have an adequate ontology. Causation, accor ding to Bunge, is an
ontological concept, and it is difficult to develop an adequate account of it with-
out a general ontological fr amework. Thus, in Mat t er and Mind , he says:

Ot her philosophers of mind are not so much narrow-minded as confused

for lack of a broad and clear ont ology. Thus John Searle (2007, 40 ff.), who
has published extensively on this subject, tells us that he opposes both ma-
terialism and psychoneural dualism. Yet he also claims that mental states
are caused by brain processes at t he neuron level. St at es of one kind caused
by processes of another? This talk of upward causation sounds dualist ic to
me. M oreover, it is reminiscent of the ninet eent h-cent ury vulgar mat erial-
ist Karl Vogt, who famously claimed that “ the brain secretes thought just as
the liver secretes bile.” There is an elementary ontological confusion here:

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 M art ín Orensanz | Causation according to M ario Bunge and Graham Harman 4

By definit ion, processes are sequences of states, and only events are sup-
posed t o cause event s (more in Chapt er 14). For instance, not LSD by it self,
but t aking LSD, causes hallucinat ions. (Bunge, 2010: 144-145)

The example of LSD mentioned at the end of the pr eceding quote is noteworthy.
Clear ly, the dr ug by itself, laying idly on a table, does not cause hallucinations. It
has to be taken by someone for that to occur . Likew ise, it may be said that a glass
of water by itself does not quench thir st, dr inking the water does that. A red bil-
liar d ball laying idly on a billiar d table does not cause another one to move, it
must under go a change in or der to do that. This being so, we can see why the
statement “thing A causes thing B” is false, since causation is not a direct relation
between things. Compar e that statement to the definition of causation that
Bunge offer s in Chasing Realit y:

Definit ion 4.1 Event C in t hing A causes event E in t hing B if and only if t he
occurrence of C generat es an energy transfer from A to B result ing in t he
occurrence of E. (Bunge, 2006: 90-91)

One could for mulate a possible objection here: if ther e is an ener gy transfer fr om
A to B, as the pr eceding definition states, then ther e is a contr adiction, because
that energy transfer is occur r ing between things (A and B), not between events
(C and E). My r eply to that possible objection is that the ener gy tr ansfer fr om A
to B can only occur by means of Cand E, so there is no contr adiction. Bunge offer s
some additional clar ification on this point:

The concept of energy may be used t o define t hat of causat ion, and t o dis-
t inguish t he latt er from correlat ion. Indeed, causat ion may be defined as
energy transfer, as in t he cases of the light beam t hat burns a dry leaf or
act ivates a phot ocell. (In bot h cases t he cause is light absorpt ion, not light ;
likewise, the effects are processes: combust ion in the first case, and elec-
tron emission in the second. To generalize, the relata of causal relations are
event s or processes.) (Bunge, 2010: 66)

If in doubt, consider the following example. Imagine that a thing “A” does not
under go any changes, all of its ener gy remains within it. And imagine that a thing
“B” does not undergo any changes either , it does not r eceive any ener gy. How is
ener gy suppose to flow fr om thing “A” to thing “B” if they do not undergo any
changes at all? It can only be transfer r ed fr om one thing to the other if these
things undergo changes. Thus, when thing “A” transfers ener gy and thing “B” ab-
sor bs it, both things have undergone changes, and it would be impossible for the

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 M art ín Orensanz | Causation according to M ario Bunge and Graham Harman 5

ener gy transfer to occur dir ectly, that is, fr om “A” to “B” without the changes “C”
and “E”.

2 CAUSATION ACCORDING TO H ARM AN

We will now consider Har man’s view of causation. He addr essed this pr oblem at
length in Guer r illa Met aphysics, and he continued to r efine this notion thr ough-
out his subsequent wor ks. Har man does not deny that r eal objects interact with
each other . What he denies is that they do so dir ectly, since ther e has to be some-
thing that links them. Bunge would agree, since he says that causation is not a
r elation between things, but between their events. Thus, in Object Or ient ed On-
t ology: A New Theor y of Ever yt hing , Har man says:

Since real object s exceed t he grasp not only of all human t heory, percept ion
and pract ical act ion, but of every sort of direct relat ion, t hen I wonder how
it is possible for one ent ity to influence another in any way. Obviously, I do
not quest ion t he exist ence of such influence, but only wonder about the
mechanism behind it . (Harman, 2018a: 150)

The mechanism in question, accor ding to Harman, is that a sensual object func-
tions like a vicar or an inter mediar y for the causal r elation involving two real
objects. Let us r emember that, in Harman’s terms, real objects exist in them-
selves, not only independently of humans, but also independently of each other
as well. By contr ast, sensual objects can only exist in r elation to a real object.
Consider the example he offer s of a red billiar d ball that impacts a blue one:

We now have the basic OOO model of t he cosmos: it is packed full of ob-
ject s t hat wit hdraw from each other, incapable of direct cont act . Here we
encounter anot her aspect of t his philosophy t hat many crit ics find hard to
swallow. For is it not obviously the case that object s influence each ot her
all the time? Does science not calculate these interact ions with extraordi-
nary precision, using the results to make badly needed medical devices and
launch probes deep int o t he solar syst em? OOO is aware of this, of course.
It s point is not that object s do not make cont act , but t hat they cannot do
so directly. In an obvious-looking case such as two billiard balls colliding on
a table, the collision obviously occurs; we do not dispute this point. But as
seen from the OOO reading of Heidegger’s tool-analysis, the collision of
t hese balls is really a quest ion of bot h balls int eract ing only wit h t he most
superficial feat ures of each ot her. When t he red ball strikes t he blue ball, it
is not st riking t he blue ball it self, but only a t ranslated blue ball accessible

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 M art ín Orensanz | Causation according to M ario Bunge and Graham Harman 6

t o t he red ball’s fairly impoverished world. By way of t hese impoverished

blue-ball-features, t he red ball makes indirect cont act wit h t he blue ball it -
self, which also makes cont act with its own blue-ball-feat ures, though in a
different way. It is a quest ion of indirect causation or, as OOO calls it , vicar-
ious causat ion. (Harman, 2018b: 127)

Thus, according to Har man, a real object can indeed interact with another r eal
object, but not dir ectly, only by means of a sensual object. Causation, according
to him, is not only vicar ious, but also buffer ed and asymmetr ical. I cannot discuss
the details of these character istics her e because it would involve a more thor-
ough discussion of Har man’s philosophy in general, and it would be necessar y
to examine other key concepts of his philosophy that I have not mentioned yet,
but that per tain to his view of causation, such as allure and black noise, among
other s. I plan to addr ess this issue in more detail in a futur e publication. For now,
it should be noted that one of the fundamental featur es of vicar ious causation is
that it always creates a new object. Consider the example of two airplanes that
crash into each other:

When t wo fight er planes collide at an air show, we t hink that t heir impact
caused damage so severe as t o lead t o t he crash and explosion of bot h. But
according t o t he model just sketched, t his is merely a ‘retroact ive effect on
its parts’ of a larger collision-ent ity, to which we never pay attent ion be-
cause it last s so briefly and t akes on litt le or no physical form. (Harman,
2010: 13-14)

If we analyze this example by distinguishing a ser ies of phases, we may say the
following. Initially, both planes, “A” and “B”, exist separ ately fr om each other .
Then the cr ash occur s, what happens here is that plane “A”, as a real object, en-
counter s a limited or sensual ver sion of plane “B”, and in addition to this, the
encounter generates a new r eal object, “C”, which contains the real plane “A” and
the sensual plane “B”. This new object “C” is the collision itself, the “situation”, if
you will. It lasts for a br ief moment, but it is still r eal. In the final stage, the colli-
sion as a new object interacts with the two r eal planes, but not directly, it does
so by way of a sensual ver sion of plane “A” and a sensual ver sion of plane “B”,
and thr ough these inter mediar ies, it affects the real plane “A” and in the r eal
plane “B”.

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3 CONCLUDING REM ARKS

Despite the fact that Bunge and Har man disagr ee on some specific issues r egar d-
ing causation, they agr ee on a more general and fundamental point: that it is not
a dir ect relation between things-in-themselves, since it r equir es the existence of
a link between those things, and that link is not a thing-in-itself.
What Bunge calls an “event” meets the cr iter ia for being classified as a sen-
sual object, because he thinks that there are no events in-themselves. What he
means by this is not that events do not exist independently of human beings,
since he says that they do. Rather , he uses the term “in-itself” as a synonym of
“by-itself”. There ar e no events in-themselves because they cannot exist by
themselves, independently of things. Ever y event is a change of state of a thing.
In other wor ds, there are no thingless events.
I encour age other reader s of Bunge to take notice of the pr ofound ontological
consequences that his concept of causation has. In gener al, when thinking about
the concept of the thing-in-itself, we tend to differ entiate this notion fr om the
concept of phenomenon, sur ely due to the influence of Kant. This being so, we
take it for gr anted that befor e the emergence of the first animals endowed with
ner vous systems, “there was no appear ance, there was only reality”, as Bunge
(983: 150-151) says. But this does not automatically mean that, befor e the emer-
gence of those animals, things-in-themselves were causally r elating to each
other directly, since they wer e doing so indir ectly, by way of events.

References

Bunge, Mar io. (1977). Tr eat ise on Basic Philosophy Volume 3. Ont ology I: The Fur nit ur e of t he
Wor ld. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Bunge, Mar io. (1983). Tr eat ise on Basic Philosophy Volume 5. Epist emology and Methodology I:
Explor ing t he Wor ld . Dor dr echt, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Bunge, Mar io. (2006). Chasing Reality: Str ife over Realism . Tor onto: Univer sity of Tor onto
Press.
Bunge, Mar io. (2010). Mat t er and Mind: A Philosophical Inquir y. New Yor k: Springer .
Har man, Graham. (2005). Guer r illa Met aphysics: Phenomenology and the Car pentr y of Things.
Chicago: Open Court.
Har man, Graham. (2010). “Time, space, essence, and eidos: A new theor y of causation”. In Cos-
mos and Hist or y: The Jour nal of Nat ur al and Social Philosophy, 6(1), 1-17.
Har man, Gr aham. (2018a). Object -Or iented Ont ology: A New Theor y of Ever yt hing. London: Pe-
lican.

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Har man, Gr aham (2018b). Speculative Realism: An Intr oduct ion. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

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