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Causality

Causality is an influence by which one event, process, state, or object (a cause) contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an effect) where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. In general, a process has many causes,[1] which are also said to be causal factors for it, and all lie in its past. An effect can in turn be a cause of, or causal factor for, many other effects, which all lie in its future. Some writers have held that causality is metaphysically prior to notions of time and space.[2][3][4]

For the legal sense, see Causation (law). For other uses, see Causality (disambiguation).

Causality is an abstraction that indicates how the world progresses.[5] As such it is a basic concept; it is more apt to be an explanation of other concepts of progression than something to be explained by other more fundamental concepts. The concept is like those of agency and efficacy. For this reason, a leap of intuition may be needed to grasp it.[6][7] Accordingly, causality is implicit in the structure of ordinary language,[8] as well as explicit in the language of scientific causal notation.


In English studies of Aristotelian philosophy, the word "cause" is used as a specialized technical term, the translation of Aristotle's term αἰτία, by which Aristotle meant "explanation" or "answer to a 'why' question". Aristotle categorized the four types of answers as material, formal, efficient, and final "causes". In this case, the "cause" is the explanans for the explanandum, and failure to recognize that different kinds of "cause" are being considered can lead to futile debate. Of Aristotle's four explanatory modes, the one nearest to the concerns of the present article is the "efficient" one.


David Hume, as part of his opposition to rationalism, argued that pure reason alone cannot prove the reality of efficient causality; instead, he appealed to custom and mental habit, observing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience.


The topic of causality remains a staple in contemporary philosophy.

Concept[edit]

Metaphysics[edit]

The nature of cause and effect is a concern of the subject known as metaphysics. Kant thought that time and space were notions prior to human understanding of the progress or evolution of the world, and he also recognized the priority of causality. But he did not have the understanding that came with knowledge of Minkowski geometry and the special theory of relativity, that the notion of causality can be used as a prior foundation from which to construct notions of time and space.[2][3][4]

Fields[edit]

Science[edit]

For the scientific investigation of efficient causality, the cause and effect are each best conceived of as temporally transient processes.


Within the conceptual frame of the scientific method, an investigator sets up several distinct and contrasting temporally transient material processes that have the structure of experiments, and records candidate material responses, normally intending to determine causality in the physical world.[43] For instance, one may want to know whether a high intake of carrots causes humans to develop the bubonic plague. The quantity of carrot intake is a process that is varied from occasion to occasion. The occurrence or non-occurrence of subsequent bubonic plague is recorded. To establish causality, the experiment must fulfill certain criteria, only one example of which is mentioned here. For example, instances of the hypothesized cause must be set up to occur at a time when the hypothesized effect is relatively unlikely in the absence of the hypothesized cause; such unlikelihood is to be established by empirical evidence. A mere observation of a correlation is not nearly adequate to establish causality. In nearly all cases, establishment of causality relies on repetition of experiments and probabilistic reasoning. Hardly ever is causality established more firmly than as more or less probable. It is most convenient for establishment of causality if the contrasting material states of affairs are precisely matched, except for only one variable factor, perhaps measured by a real number.

the material whence a thing has come or that which persists while it changes, as for example, one's mother or the bronze of a statue (see also substance theory).[76]

Material cause

whereby a thing's dynamic form or static shape determines the thing's properties and function, as a human differs from a statue of a human or as a statue differs from a lump of bronze.[77]

Formal cause

which imparts the first relevant movement, as a human lifts a rock or raises a statue. This is the main topic of the present article.

Efficient cause

the criterion of completion, or the end; it may refer to an action or to an inanimate process. Examples: Socrates takes a walk after dinner for the sake of his health; earth falls to the lowest level because that is its nature.

Final cause

Spirtes, Peter, Clark Glymour and Richard Scheines Causation, Prediction, and Search, , ISBN 0-262-19440-6

MIT Press

journal articles, including Judea Pearl's articles between 1984 and 1998 Search Results - Technical Reports Archived 5 July 2022 at the Wayback Machine.

University of California

Miguel Espinoza, Théorie du déterminisme causal, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2006.  2-296-01198-5.

ISBN

at PhilPapers

Causality

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Metaphysics of Science

at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Causal Processes

– A slide show and tutorial lecture by Judea Pearl

The Art and Science of Cause and Effect

– The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Donald Davidson: Causal Explanation of Action

– By Judea Pearl (September 2009)

Causal inference in statistics: An overview

An R implementation of causal calculus

– A tool for discovering causality

TimeSleuth