A Brief Introduction to Cause and Effect
A Brief Introduction to Cause and Effect
Deeply embedded in the human psyche is the idea that everything has a cause. One of the main arguments for the existence of god(s) is that the universe must begin with an uncaused cause; everything is caused except the one supreme thing, god(s).
When thinking of a hypothetical cause, the basic principles of cause and effect need to be checked
Multiple Causes
An effect can have more than one cause. The goal of rational thinkers is to find the actual cause or causes of an observed effect, not just the range of possible causes. Your hypothetical cause might be a possible cause, but it might not be the cause.
Adequate Cause
The cause must be able to realistically produce the effect (it is possible for an elephant to sit on someone and kill them, but in Antarctica this is an unrealistic possible cause).
Multiple Adequate Causes
Once you know something or somethings can realistically cause an effect, you need to analyse other possible realistic causes and argue for or against them. Your hypothetical cause might not be the only possible cause.
Conditions Required for Cause
You may have identified a potential cause, but you would need to check that the required conditions for the cause. Opportunity and motivation are important required conditions for human actions, whereas time, temperature etc. are important required conditions for physical processes.
Consistency
You need to establish whether the cause you identified will always produce the same effect or whether it only sometimes produces the effect. If your hypothetical cause only sometimes produces the effect, how can you be sure it produced the effect you have observed?
post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this)
One of the most common mistakes with cause-effect relationships is believing that because something happened before something else, it was the cause of the thing that happened. This is the cause of most superstitions.
A football player puts his right sock on first and scores 3 goals that day. From then on, he always puts his right sock on first, thinking that it is lucky.
There are also more important consequences of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
A child does not do well at school. He grows up and does not have a job. Some would argue that his poor school grades caused his lack of material success in his working life. There is no evidence for this. Just because the school grades came before the unemployment, does not mean the grades are a cause of the effect observed. In this case, the man did not do well at school but was involved in a near-death experience through a car crash when he was 18. The experience motivated him to become a monk and rejected materialism. His grades did not cause the effect observed but a government research team includes the man in statistics on how important school grades are.