Card 1.4.2 · Root I — Metaphysics
Causation
What do you actually see when you see one thing cause another?
This question asks what it is for one thing to cause another — what, if anything, connects a cause to its effect beyond the fact that one follows the other.
On this card
Where it sits
Under 1.4 Philosophy of time. Feeds 1.7 Free will, 6.8.1 Scientific explanation, 1.2.1 Origins. Borders 1.9 Laws of nature.
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The rival answers
| Position | Causation is |
|---|---|
| Regularity theory | Nothing but constant conjunction plus succession |
| Counterfactual theory | Had the cause not occurred, the effect would not have |
| Probabilistic theory | Causes raise the probability of their effects |
| Process theory | Transfer of a conserved quantity along a physical process |
| Powers theory | Things have genuine causal powers; necessity is in nature |
| Interventionism | What would change under an idealised intervention |
| Occasionalism | No created thing causes anything; God is the sole agent |
Where do you stand?
What do you actually see when you see one thing cause another?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aristotle | 384–322 BCE | Greek | Four causes: material, formal, efficient, final |
| Nagarjuna | c. 150–250 CE | Indian Buddhist | Dependent origination; critique of self-existent causes |
| Al-Ghazali | 1058–1111 | Islamic | Denied necessary connection; occasionalist conclusion |
| Ibn Rushd | 1126–1198 | Islamic | Defended real causal powers against Al-Ghazali |
| David Hume | 1711–1776 | European modern | Constant conjunction; necessity as a habit of mind |
| Elizabeth Anscombe | 1919–2001 | Analytic | Causation is observable; Hume's argument overreaches |
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Causation:
- Al-Ghazali was right: causal necessity cannot be demonstrated 8 replies
- Anscombe was right: we see causing all the time 6 replies
- Splitting causation from explanation was a modern mistake, not an Aristotelian one 6 replies
- ‘Illa, kāraṇa, gù: what each tradition’s word for ’cause’ lets it ask 6 replies
- The al-Ghazali–Hume parallel is shallower than the textbooks suggest 5 replies
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Connections
→ 1.4, 1.1 · ↔ 1.9, 1.7, 6.8.1, 2.2.1, 1.2.1 · ◇ regularity theory, counterfactual theory, powers theory, occasionalism · ○ Islamic golden age; Early modern; Table 1; false-agreement Box FA-6
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 61.