On Mary Shepherd’s Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect

Abstract

Abstract Mary Shepherd (1777–1847) was a fierce and brilliant critic of Berkeley and Hume, who moreover offered strikingly original positive views about the nature of reality and one’s access to it, which deserve much more attention (and credit, since she anticipates many prominent views) than they have received thus far. By way of illustration, this chapter focuses on Shepherd’s 1824 Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, Controverting the Doctrine of Mr. Hume, Concerning the Nature of that Relation (ERCE). After a brief setup, the author canvasses certain of Shepherd’s trenchant objections to Hume’s argumentation; and then presents the positive core of Shepherd’s response to Hume, which consists in providing novel accounts of how reason alone or reason coupled with experience can justify, first, that every effect must have a cause, and second, that it is necessary that like causes produce like effects. Among other contributions here, Shepherd provides a distinctively metaphysical argument for the claim that nothing can begin to exist “of itself” (going beyond an appeal to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, in particular), and leverages difference-making considerations to make the case that a single “experimentum crucis” can justify causal belief (anticipating Mill’s “method of difference”). The chapter closes by highlighting salient features of Shepherd’s metaphysics of causation, whereby causation is singularist and local (anticipating Ducasse and Anscombe) and involves synchronic interactions (anticipating Mill’s and certain contemporary accounts), and according to which objects are essentially characterized by their causes and effects (anticipating contemporary causal or dispositional essentialist positions).

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