Causation without causes I just reread Bachelor's translation of MMK.

It struck me that the argument against causation was that:

A cause has no essence in addition to what it is, else it would not be the final cause. But it must have an essence if it is to be active for more than a moment.

So everything is radically impermanent: and nothing exists long enough to be born and then cease.

And so everything that is born and ceases is empty, it is not a final cause. 

Any conditioned entity is then a mere conventional designation, something which can be identified in a better way (and on forever) and so is always incorrectly identified.



But I was reading about Sautrantika-Yogacara, and the idea that "existents" which aren't unique particulars aren't causally real. This to me seems wrong, I think we can eliminate the unique particulars from a theory and be left with something which is grounded in the particulars' causal properties. This is what some scientific realists do.



My question

Assuming it true that there can be causation without causes, then is there any way to argue that the sentences of science, with their unique particulars eliminated, are not conceptually constructed?

Perhaps because only those particulars are as such, and so empty; and our ideas about the rest of the world can be grounded in them, without that structure being thereby empty.
The Enlightened One taught that there is no cause or "creator" that was eternal or has immortality, such as; a soul or supreme being that was empirically knowable. The Buddha taught that there was causal conditions that are observable in the material world of form and in the conscious dispositionally conditioned state (samskrta). Simply put, the Buddha did not teach eternalism or annihilationism but that everything/everyone is streaming headlong towards becoming.  Perhaps an example might be useful.  A plant seed does not have an inherent cause within it.  It cannot become a tree in and of it's own.  The potentiality might be there but the tree is not evident.  The seed will not germinate without other causal factors; soil, water, temperature, atmosphere, and etc.  It is the causal conditions of these all these things that then cause the seed to germinate.  Once the seed has germinated, we now have the sprout.  Where did the seed go?  And, we no longer conceptualize the seed but the sprout.  Eventually, we may or may not have a tree because there are other factors (causal conditions) that may effect the tree's growth and longevity.
Even emptiness is empty of a state of a substantiality. Dependent arising is not a string of "moments" but a continuous flow of becoming.  If you are looking for a metaphysical cause ( "a final cause" , a "forever" something) that, is simply not evident.  What the Buddha taught was the means to end the general dissatisfaction we have with life and not a metaphysical philosophy. Nibbana is that liberation from dissatisfaction.