It is nothing to do with idealism. It is a view associated with Hume (and Newton).Don Schneider wrote: Me: I have never observed 'causality'.
My OP proof is, as I said, also based upon the implicit assumption therein of the validity of material realism. Your reply seems to point to an acceptance of idealism. If you adhere to material realism, than you have witnessed causality myriad times. If you ever saw (personally or by video) a person being decapitated, then you observed that person’s death and its cause. Your bit about the chicken and the egg being the same thing is classic idealism, so welcome aboard. Since I now lean towards idealism, I no longer hold that my own proof is valid, though I still do if I am wrong and material realism is after all valid.
You write: If you ever saw (personally or by video) a person being decapitated, then you observed that person’s death and its cause. Yes, I would observe the death, but I would not observe a separate thing 'causality'.
Consider your description of the event; where does that causality exist? One could equally say that what caused the death was blade being sharp and hard, or whatever made the victim come to be present in that place, or the geopolitical situation, or the physiology of humans, or that the mothers of the participants happened to meet their fathers, or the laws of physics...A full causal explanation would have to describe the complete history and nature of the universe. A complete description of the cause of anything would be ...everything.
That we wish to point to one particular relationship as 'the cause' is something we do, in order to make a particular point. If you say that the cause of the beheading was 'the victim was a murderer' and I say the cause was 'the force exerted overcame the physical integrity of the neck' there is no way we can look at the event and use science to prove which of us is correct. You are the idealist, in that you are proposing the existence of this metaphysical thing: 'causality'- a thing that resides within the material, but is not itself material.