Commentary: how norms make causes.

admits that it cannot be demonstrated or otherwise justified. But, he maintains, such justification is not necessary. “I do not know how WE know that things are as they are because they were as they were. But WE do know it.” The last five authors quoted are at one in asserting an alleged law of causation which turns out to be simply Kant’s mule. None of them has troubled to ask, any more than Kant asked, whether the two propositions of which this hybrid is composed are compatible. No wonder that opinions differ as to “how we know” such a piece of nonsense, or whether “we” know it at all. The last four have agreed in using a locution to which I have ventured to call attention by printing the word WE in capitals. This “indeterminate we” is so common among philosophers that a grammarian might call it rv gla uikorouij ot, and Bacon might have classed it among the idola theatri. The word “we” refers to a group or society of persons among whom the speaker includes himself. It is not used by a man who is thinking clearly unless he is prepared to answer the question “what group is this of which you are speaking, and what are its limits?” Philosophers have got into the habit of using it when in fact they are quoting beliefs of their own sect, but when they imagine themselves to be quoting beliefs common to the entire human race, or at least to all such members of it as have the use of reason. Where such language is found, an alert reader will ask “who are YOU?” It would perhaps have surprised any of the four writers I have quoted, to learn that the answer is “Kantanians.” So recent is the “idea of causation” which modern philosophical dogmatism takes for granted. So necessary is it, before swallowing whole the traditions which this dogmatism would force down our throats, to inquire not only into their logic but also into their history.