"The juice doesn't want to come out!"

This morning, Helena had her sippy-cup full of juice in her hand, but she hadn't opened it completely, so the juice didn't come out.  After trying various positions, she turned to us and complained, "O suco não quer sair!" (The juice doesn't want to come out [of the cup])

We understood perfectly well what Helena Iara meant, though the phrase, on further examination, is a strange one.  The juice doesn't want?  Does juice have free will, that it can decide to leave the cup or not?

Babies aren't the only ones to attribute desire or will to inanimate objects.  I often hear myself say things like "The car doesn't want to start," or "What a stubborn screw!  It just doesn't want to come out."  It's a way of talking about cause an effect... or more exactly, why a cause doesn't lead to the effect I expect.  If I turn the key and the car doesn't start, there must be a foreign will in the way.

Almost fifteen months ago, I was excited when Helena came to realize the connection between turning the knob on the faucet, and water coming into the sink.  Back in the 18th century, David Hume challenged this easy connection between cause and effect, saying that there was nothing "in the world", certainly nothing visible or palpable, that could be called a cause.  "Between the movement of one billiard ball and that of the second, I see no third term," he famously said.  A good bit philosophy for the rest of the century was dedicated to responding to this problem.

One of my favorite answers, and one that Helena's comment about juice seems to endorse, came from the Scot Thomas Reid.  "Cause is our externalization of what we recognize in ourselves to be an active power," he said, in prose less clear than is usual for him.  What he meant (I think) is that we act, and these acts have results.  The connector between my action and its result seems to come from my intention, what I wanted to do.  Imagine, Reid says, an intelligent being without will or desire: he doubts (and I agree) that this being might never develop the idea of cause and effect.  We see causes and effects in the world, because we perceive them in ourselves.


So Helena is right, if in a metaphorical way: the juice doesn't "want" to leave the cup.  In her innocent way, she's captured why we humans connect cause and effect.