Causal and modal competence? WTF?
Through the activity of analysis, we try to grasp the environment conceptually, with ourselves in it, as a collection of objects, conceptually differentiated entities generically called ‘things’, which, together with the properties these things are observed to have, allow us to form conceptually articulated representations of their interacting relations.1
In doing so, we look around us and differentiate ‘things’ from the chaotic manifold that presents itself to us and see how they work together in terms of inferential relationships.
‘Things’ are conceptually distinguished pieces, entities, swaths cut out from the fabric of the universe that we are able to differentiate on the basis of the behaviour we perceive them to have.
For example, a red rose growing against a stone wall behaves redly and rose-like against the background of the stone wall that behaves like a stone wall. The behaviour of red roses and stone walls have become familiar to us through comparable experiences.
We assign things a boundary on the basis of that act of differentiation so that we can point them out and point to what they are not; we attach a name to these things, and assign that name a set of described properties that the thing the name refers to appears to have.
This then allows us to make sense of its workings and behaviour so that we can explore the thing and its relations within a space of implications.2
The recipe for making ‘things’ (conceptualised objects that manifest themselves in space-time and can be pointed out) as described in the previous paragraph, hints at the difficult relationship between our conceptual construction of reality and reality itself, or, put in simpler terms: the world of thought and the world we think about. (see also the section on things)
Reality presents itself to us exclusively through the generative mediation of our perceptual and cognitive apparatus.
Perhaps the relationship between reality and our representation of it is so difficult to fathom because our conceptual ability is part and parcel of the reality it is trying to conceive.
We look at the world we think about from within, so to say, and do so by encoding that reality with values originating in us, which we then ascribe to the things perceived, ignoring a great deal that our body itself is responsible for. Perhaps it is for this reason that the intimate relations between reality and our conception of it are so hard to untangle.
It is on the basis of the properties we assign to an entity or thing that we become inferentially empowered. From that moment of assignation, we can begin to make sense of the implications of those properties in causal and modal terms. To illustrate this, if I know that a stone has certain properties but not others, I shall use it to throw at targets or to build walls with, but I will not use it to make tea with, nor will I have it for breakfast.
The more we know of the properties of a thing in interaction with other things, the better we can assess the implications of a situation or event in which that thing plays a role and so explore and assess the qualities for use that our knowledge of its properties gives us.
As such, everything we come to understand, we come to understand in terms of concepts of ‘things’ and their ‘relations’, each of which can be given names and described conceptually.
The behaviour of the world which we can imagine as a single continuous manifold, is thus differentiated, and divided only by us into conceptual entities called things that can be pointed out, and which have properties that are themselves also things.
And things can be best imagined as conceptualised objects with conceptualized relations called properties.
Analysis provides us with causal and modal competence with regard to the behaviour of things in relation to each other.
With those two competences, causal and modal, we become knowing.
That means we have succeeded in transforming information into knowledge.
Information is all around us; knowledge is purely subjective, it is what we each of us individually make of that information in making it ready for use toward some purpose.
Knowledge is information changed into something we understand causally and modally in its working, and can therefore use.
Through analysis and critique, we become users, clever users and might hope to become good at using, or even wise users.
Causal Competence
With our causal competence we make the assumption that one thing or situation, which we might understand as a momentary configuration of things conceptualised into a situational thing, is the cause of another. If such a causal relationship as we conceive it, is empirically confirmed, we know what to do in a given situation whatever the ‘real’ causes of that relationship might be.
Causality is one of the knottiest problems in philosophy.
It appears that the only sensible thing one can really say about causality is that everything at all scales active within the universe causes everything. And as that is quite a useless description, we perhaps ought to avoid talk of real cause, and talk more modestly of causal competence.
Causal competence is to read the signs of one’s environment and know what sign belongs to what event or situation and what implications might follow on from that. IN this way you do not pretend to know what causes what, or run the risk of becoming reductive in your modelling of cause and effect, but more modestly you say: “well, causality is difficult, but I know that if I do A then effect B follows.”
In terms of causal competence, it is useful to revisit Aristotle’s four causes or ‘why’ questions: the material, formal, efficient and final causes of things.3 (see also the section on Style) The material cause is simply the material something is made of which can be described in terms of its behaviour. The formal cause is the organisation of that material into a matter-form compound, which again can be described in terms of its behaviour as it interacts with its environment. The efficient cause is the question of historical and technological question: how did the material/form compound come to be the way it is.
The final cause needs, for my purposes at least, to be further refined. Use-driven, habit-forming agents like human beings may assign purposes to things but paying homage to the notion of evolution by selection, we can say that without that habit-forming ability of sapient creatures endowed with memory and cognition, final causes are generally not purpose-driven but use-driven.
Purpose assumes an a priori function, (for example: ‘the eye was designed by God, to see’) that we conceive of somehow as inherent to the thing. Use on the other hand merely assumes the a posteriori function of a thing, that, if selected for whatever reason becomes part of the co-creation of things in interaction (in this way we speak of an eye having evolved from a piece of skin sensitive to light, through a series of small beneficial and therefore selective steps, to acquire the ability to see, an advantage that again became selective). (see the section on selection and evolution)
If the posited causal relationship is not empirically confirmed, any relevant theory we might have in which that relationship plays a role, falls, and we carry on searching for a new causal theory that will hold and be useful to us. That is what I mean by causal competence.
Modal Competence
Modal competence, on the other hand, is the ability to see that some things come about necessarily whilst others come about contingently, or accidentally due to a set of (often contiguous) conditions or circumstances at work in a situation.
For example: the universe is, by definition, everything there is but this everything there is has an obligation to itself; a Spinozist will demand of that universe that everything in it must, in principle, be able to affect or be affected by everything else in that universe in some way.
If something cannot, in principle, be affected by something else, it must belong to some other universe that can have nothing to do with ours in any way whatsoever.
That is a necessary Spinozist precondition for belonging to the universe and one that I find convincing.
However, things act upon each other locally, through what we call contiguity. So, it is the contingency of two things being in the same locality and banging into each other in some way that makes the one affect the other and vice versa.
It is this that allows logical space to form, the space in which everything that is either necessary or possible can be talked about and speculated upon conceptually and inferentially. (see the section on space)
Modal competence allows me to say things like: ‘Pigs fly? Impossible!’ and for you to then see that as a challenge to prove me wrong. The earthbound nature of pigs is not an a priori necessity, it is contingent upon them not being in an aeroplane and not having evolved to boast wings.
Modal competence then, is a creative, explorative ability with which we explore possibilities based upon our causal competence, our intuitions, pure chance, serendipity, divine inspiration (if that’s your thing) or indeed causal conjecture.
We then critically consider whether discovered possibilities might also work well with reference to a particular goal we might have. Could it be somehow useful to me, or to someone willing to pay me, to have pigs fly? This has to be analytically assessed with reference to the question as to whether it will work and critically assessed with reference to the question as to whether it would be a good thing taking the relevant factors and stakeholders into account.
I would like to propose that this is how design and indeed all intentional action (which is what design is) works.4 As I said earlier—and enjoy repeating—with analysis we become knowing creatures, in possession of truths and accuracies, with critique we hope to become clever, successful but preferably good and wise creatures, that is we hope to be able to apply good means to good ends whose value we believe we know well. Surely that is, or ought to be, the goal of every designer.
- This essay was first published in Jacob Voorthuis, Theoria, use, intention & design, a philosophical reckoning; Analysis & Critique: Gardening in the metaphysics of the beautiful, the true, and the good, AHT, Tu/e (2024) ↩︎
- I lean heavily on the work of Robert Brandom in much of my thinking, especially the book Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, 2nd ed. (Harvard University Press 1998) and his magisterial A Spirit of Trust, A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology (Harvard 2019). For a more accessible introduction to his work see Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons, An Introduction to Inferentialism (Harvard 2001). I adopt the notion ‘space of implications’ from Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1, no. 19 (1956): 253–329. (republished in 1997 with an Introduction by Robert Brandom). ↩︎
- Aristotle, Posterior Analytics. I 2, and II 11; Physics II 3 and Metaphysics V 2 ↩︎
- G.E.M Anscombe, Intention, (Harvard University Press, 2000, originally published in 1957) where she argues that intention is to do something with reason. Since the publication much has been said about the subject, but the thesis holds and, within the pragmaticist tradition it has been worked on by Wilfred Sellars and Robert Brandom, whose thinking pervades this essay. ↩︎
© jacob voorthuis, 2025. Please cite Jacob Voorthuis as the author, The Theoria Project as the title and the page address as the location. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially under the following terms: No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.