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Full Idea
It is much easier to trace effects back to causes with certainty than to predict effects from causes. If I have one contact with someone with a disease and I get it, we suppose I got it from him, but a doctor cannot predict a disease from one contact.
Gist of Idea
With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects
Source
G.E.M. Anscombe (Causality and Determinism [1971], §1)
Book Ref
'Causation', ed/tr. Sosa,E. /Tooley,M. [OUP 1993], p.91
A Reaction
An interesting, and obviously correct, observation. Her point is that we get more certainty of causes from observing a singular effect than we get certainty of effects from regularities or laws.
| 8351 | With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects [Anscombe] |
| 8350 | Since Mill causation has usually been explained by necessary and sufficient conditions [Anscombe] |
| 8353 | Freedom involves acting according to an idea [Anscombe] |
| 8352 | To believe in determinism, one must believe in a system which determines events [Anscombe] |
| 10363 | Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata [Anscombe, by Schaffer,J] |
| 4777 | The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe] |
| 20041 | Intentional actions are those which are explained by giving the reason for so acting [Anscombe] |
| 7439 | The qualities involved in sensations are entirely intentional [Anscombe, by Armstrong] |
| 8065 | 'Ought' and 'right' are survivals from earlier ethics, and should be jettisoned [Anscombe] |
| 8069 | Between Aristotle and us, a Judaeo-Christian legal conception of ethics was developed [Anscombe] |
| 8070 | It would be better to point to failings of character, than to moral wrongness of actions [Anscombe] |