Causation

Importance of causation issue

"Causation is vital for explanation and prediction. Almost anything you are trying to explain is going to be a causal explanation. Also you cannot really predict things without appealing to the causal relation."

Causation and explanation

"David Lewis thought that all explanation is causal explanation, because all explanation gives some information about causal history of an event. If you are thinking why did that happen you look for the cause of whatever that is. If you are wondering about the explanation of B, if you can think that A causes B or all Bs are caused by A, and there was an A some minutes ago then you have got your explanation of B. So explanation appeals to the relation of causation between two events."

Causation and prediction

"If you know that A is cause B and you see the occurrence of an A or you have got reason to believe whatever it is that an A is coming, then you will have reason to predict a B, because knowing that A and B are causally related enables you to predict a B on observation of an A."

David Hume's regularity theory

"Modern discussions of causation begin with David Hume’s views on the question. Hume saw that there is more to our idea of causation than just the idea of one thing following another. Our concept of causation involves the idea of something following something else with a kind of necessity [ni'sesiti] – in some sense, the cause ‘necessitates’[ni'sesiteits] its effects [i'fekts]. But Hume thought that this was an illusion: in reality there is no such necessity. The appearance of necessity is a product of the fact that our minds expect similar causes to have similar effects. This feeling of expectation we ‘prOject’ on to the world, and confuse it with necessitation.

Hume defined causation in terms of tEmporal succession - the cause preceding its effects in time – and constant conjunction – like causes being constantly accompanied by like effects.

Hume gave the following definition of causation: ‘a cause is an object, followed by another, such that all objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second. Or in other words, where the first object had not been, the second never had existed.’"

Hume and contemporary philosophers

"Two aspects of Hume’s theory have retained the interest of contemporary philosophers. The first is the idea that causation does not consist in a necessary connection between cause and effect, and nor can causal relations be known a priori. The second idea is that regularity is involved in causation in some way: to say that A caused B commits us to the claim that things sufficiently like A will cause things sufficiently like B."

Kant on causation

"Kant thought that causation was one of the concepts that we have innately. We are born with the concept of cause."

Philosophical questions on causation

"What is it for something to cause something else? What makes something a cause of another thing?"

SOURCES

Philosophy 1. A Guide through the Subject. Ed. by A.C. Grayling. Oxford University Press. 2012

Talbot, M. The Regularity Theory of Causation. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/regularity-theory-causation