Herbert Spencer's Enduring Lesson on Causation

Few intellectuals/thinkers in the vast history of written thought have been as misunderstood and vilified as Herbert Spencer. Spencer was a polymath whose ideas covered philosophy, biology, sociology, and ethics. Critics who never bothered to read him closely labelled him a "social Darwinist." His extensive Synthetic Philosophy was based on a profound theory of causation that both supported his evolutionary worldview and provided a devastating critique of David Hume's scepticism. As a voracious reader and researcher, I find that Spencer's writing serves as a timeless reminder that disregarding the indisputable laws of cause-and-effect results in detrimental pushback in both personal and policy spheres.

Spencer's observations refute Hume's half-truths and challenge us to face the inflexible structure of reality in a time of feel-good moralising and government interventions that aim to solve problems quickly.

Born in 1820 into a Dissenting family that valued independent thought, Spencer was "possessed by the idea of causation" from an early age. Every event has a "assignable cause," according to the natural laws that govern everything, as his father instilled in him. Spencer believed that causality was the foundation of all knowledge, even more fundamental than evolution, which he considered to be its logical byproduct. Change required enduring causes, universal, unbreakable connections between antecedents and consequents, but evolution suggested change.

The central idea of Spencer's theory was that causation is an a priori truth that has been woven into human cognition through evolutionary adaptation. He made the case that we live in an objective world of forces, with persistent, unbreakable energies that take the form of matter, motion, space, and time, based on his "transfigured realism." His guiding principle was the "persistence of force," which states that force neither disappears nor arises out of nothing. It changes but persists. This was not idle conjecture. Spencer provided a biological and psychological foundation, demonstrating how organisms adjust by bringing their internal states into line with the outside world. These causal necessities are unavoidable truths that we inherit rather than create because the human nervous system etched them into our instincts over many generations. Numerous studies that were horrifyingly validated during World War II by insane German scientists in the most savage experiments are being replicated in China today.

I use the “push” method in my classes, by placing my hand up against a man and push and he inadvertently pushes back once he gets to a place of discomfort. This, a much less aggressive way to prove human nature and causation.The Scottish philosopher David Hume, who lived in the 18th century, raised questions about causality due to his empiricism. Hume famously maintained that we only ever see the constant conjunctions of events rather than direct causation.

He maintained that dropping a ball causes it to fall, but that's habit rather than necessity. He claimed that sequence becomes an illusory cause because experience breeds expectation. According to Hume, causation was a psychological gimmick that originated from tradition rather than logic. This scepticism undermined faith in objective knowledge by fostering idealism and relativism.

This untrue story and ultimately disproved theory gave some of history's more oddball characters enough leeway to defend some of the most ludicrous deviant actions.

With surgical accuracy, Spencer destroyed this, revealing its circularity. He questioned how habit and experience could produce the idea of cause without assuming causation in the explanation. Saying that habit "determines" us to perceive causal links already subverts the idea it is intended to clarify. It's like constructing a house on sand that you say was formed by the house itself. Hume's perspective, according to Spencer, is a "disease of language," a metaphysical trap in which words distort reality. According to Spencer, Hume's mistake resulted from his disregard for evolution. That our understanding of causality is a hard-wired adaptation that has been honed via ancestral survival rather than an arbitrary habit. Humans inherit causal intuition as a "physical axiom," verifiable not by induction but by its necessity in all thought, just as animals naturally associate actions with results, predators' roars with flight. The Push method defends this.

This debunking had significant social ramifications and wasn't just academic nitpicking. I frequently return to this theme when criticising contemporary policies because Spencer expanded the concept of causation to sociology and ethics, developing a "scientific" framework that placed an emphasis on unintended consequences. He maintained that advancement in society results from the "multiplication of effects," in which a single change has a cascading effect on countless others, making simple interventions impossible.

Specialisation is encouraged by population growth, which promotes interdependence and innovation. However, if you interfere with this, for example, by enforcing laws, you break causal chains and encourage inefficiency and moral decline.

This is most evident in Spencer's ethics, which are based on the "conduct/consequence doctrine." Moral behaviour is not a set of rules, rather, it is in accordance with the laws of life, which dictate that every person must naturally benefit from their labours, whether they are good or bad. This "law of equal freedom" maintains causality in human affairs, allowing you to do as you please as long as you do not violate the freedom of others. It is the moral equivalent of survival of the fittest, where the strong survive and the weak adapt or die.

Through coercive laws or welfare programmes, Spencer cautioned that severing actions from consequences stunts evolution and breeds dependency and resentment. Remember, this was 200 years ago and his critique of what would eventually become the pension scam, was spot on!

In contrast to Hume's legacy, a society in which causality is merely habitual encourages policy hubris and moral relativism. Why not engineer society if causes are not required? This has been demonstrated in failed attempts at socialism and contemporary "equity" programmes, where disregarding causal realities, such as the incentives that drive behaviour, consistently leads to poverty and division. Ever the realist, Spencer maintained that ethics must infer from the "laws of life" why particular actions result in happiness or suffering. Pain and pleasure are evolutionary signals that point us in the direction of harmony with an unknowable but enduring reality rather than being whims.

I respect Spencer's unwavering honesty as a security professional, a trainer and investigator.

He didn't back down from politically incorrect facts, such as the biological limitations of reason, the need for progress to be non-interfering, or the idea that self-interest leads to altruism in cooperative societies. Spencer's causation theory seems prophetic to me in the current arguments over regulations that ignore the consequences of their actions or entitlements that separate effort from reward. Spencer's scepticism grounds us in verifiable necessities, whereas Hume's, although clever, leaves us adrift.

Spencer wasn't dogmatic, though. He accepted the "Unknowable." A First Cause beyond human comprehension that tempers intellectual arrogance and is influenced by Hamilton and Mansel. Experts, academics  and elites today claim to be masters of intricate systems, although evidence rebukes, in contrast to this humility. Spencer's advice was to accept causality or face the repercussions.

By enabling the prediction of human behaviour through analysis of underlying causal patterns, such as how environmental pressures and inherited instincts drive actions, Herbert Spencer's theory of causation, which supports unbreakable cause-effect relationships rooted in persistent forces and evolutionary adaptation, offers a potent framework for profiling and the security industry. This, in turn, facilitates proactive threat detection and risk mitigation.

Based on the "conduct/consequence doctrine," which holds that actions naturally produce outcomes that can be stopped ethically, profiling moves the focus from just symptoms to the underlying causes, such as evolutionary adaptations for survival that show up as criminal tendencies. This enables experts and professionals to create behavioural models that predict recidivism or escalation. In cybersecurity, for example, analysts use this theory to profile hackers by tracking the causal chains from social engineering techniques, which are frequently derived from primitive deception strategies, to forecast breach methods. As demonstrated by systems that use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify unusual network behaviours connected to malevolence or human error, these systems stop data theft before it happens.

Personally, I teach security personnel to observe behaviour and patterns and promote conscientious behaviour traits to engage in effective dispute resolution, de-escalation, and threat/advance screening by combining Maslow's Hierachy, Neurolinguistic training, and Hexaco (Behavioural trait profiling) using linguistic axioms.

Few people can compare to Spencer's intelligence or accomplishments if you study human nature, even though he may be forgotten and even avoided by many.

From the author.

The opinions and statements are those of Sam Wilks and do not necessarily represent whom Sam Consults or contracts to. Sam Wilks is a skilled and experienced Security and Risk Consultant with 3 decades of expertise in the fields of Real estate, Security, and the hospitality/gaming industry. Sam has trained over 1,000 entry level security personnel, taught defensive tactics, weapons training and handcuffs to policing personnel and the public. His knowledge and practical experience have made him a valuable asset to many organisations looking to enhance their security measures and provide a safe and secure environment for their clients and staff.