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Single Idea 13107

[filed under theme 26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 2. Types of cause ]

Full Idea

A cause may be a cause either in its own right or coincidentally. The cause in its own right of a house is house-building ability, but a house may coincidentally be caused by something pale or educated. ..There could be infinite coincidental causes.

Gist of Idea

Causes produce a few things in their own right, and innumerable things coincidentally

Source

Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 196b25)

Book Ref

Aristotle: 'Physics', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1996], p.44

A Reaction

If we seriously want to identify THE cause of an event, this distinction seems useful, even though a cause 'in its own right' is a rather loose locution. It leads on to analyses of necessary and sufficient conditions.

The 21 ideas with the same theme [categories of links between successive events]:

13156 Fancy being unable to distinguish a cause from its necessary background conditions! [Plato]
5219 Types of cause are nature, necessity and chance, and mind and human agency [Aristotle]
11252 The 'form' of a thing explains why the matter constitutes that particular thing [Aristotle, by Politis]
11253 A 'material' cause/explanation is the form of whatever is the source [Aristotle, by Politis]
13107 Causes produce a few things in their own right, and innumerable things coincidentally [Aristotle]
19425 In the schools the Four Causes are just lumped together in a very obscure way [Leibniz]
8367 Causation is defined in terms of a single sequence, and constant conjunction is no part of it [Ducasse]
15823 Some propose a distinct 'agent causation', as well as 'event causation' [Chisholm]
17689 Absences might be effects, but surely not causes? [Armstrong]
8435 Causes are between events ('the explosion') or between facts/states of affairs ('a bomb dropped') [Bennett]
15253 If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden]
15555 Explaining match lighting in general is like explaining one lighting of a match [Lewis]
8388 Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley]
8389 Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley]
11960 Singular causation is prior to general causation; each aspirin produces the aspirin generalization [Molnar]
4071 Causation can be seen in counterfactual terms, or as increased probability, or as energy flow [Crane]
4789 Three divisions of causal theories: generalist/singularist, intrinsic/extrinsic, reductive/non-reductive [Psillos]
17528 The dispositional account explains causation, as stimulation and manifestation of dispositions [Bird]
16722 Scholastic causation is by changes in the primary qualities of hot, cold, wet, dry [Pasnau]
22605 Humeans describe the surface of causation, while powers accounts aim at deeper explanations [Ingthorsson]
22607 Time and space are not causal, but they determine natural phenomena [Ingthorsson]