Full Idea
We are interested in causes and effects primarily for practical purposes, which needs generalizations; so the interest of concrete individual facts of causation is chiefly an indirect one, as raw material for generalizations.
Gist of Idea
We are interested in generalising about causes and effects purely for practical purposes
Source
Curt Ducasse (Nature and Observability of Causal Relations [1926], §6)
Book Reference
'Causation', ed/tr. Sosa,E. /Tooley,M. [OUP 1993], p.135
A Reaction
A nice explanation of why, if causation is fundamentally about single instances, people seem so interested in generalisations and laws. We want to predict, and we want to explain, and we want to intervene.