Cause is a special power, force, or energy.

In virtue of that power, force, or energy, an event

brings about another event called cause brings out another event called effect. There is some
kind of connection between cause and effect. Now the question is what does one mean by
saying cause is a power or force? One of the ways to understand the idea cause as a power is
to relate it with the notion of necessity. It is to say that the connection between cause and
effect is a necessary connection. A cause necessitates its effect. Cause makes the effect to
happen. Given the occurrence of the cause, the event that is its effect must occur; it cannot
fail to occur. There is a necessary connection between cause and effect.

But in order for this explanation to be plausible one must assume that there is a necessary
connection between the events in the world. So the question is how to understand and
characterize further the idea of necessary connection between the events. How to understand
two events are connected or related necessarily. We would find any problem in accepting the
necessary relation between sentences or propositions. Consider an argument. Valid argument
is the one which can never contain true premises and false conclusion. In some sense, the
premises of the argument necessitate the conclusion of the argument. The problem is would
we say what we said about the argument which basically contain sentences and which are
part of the language that the premises necessitate the conclusion. Would we say the same
thing about the events that one event necessitate the other event which is the part of the world
and not of the language. Unless and until one who supports the view that the cause is a power
addresses this issue will always have a problem.

Exactly this is what David Hume is going to attack. But before turning to Hume’s response
we need to understand Hume’s certain claims about IDEAS.

Consider that we feel pain. Now this is an impression of sensation. Now mind takes copy of
this feeling which is an idea of pain. When we think of this idea of pain later it can cause us
to feel aversion. These are impressions of reflection. Impressions of reflection are derived
from impression of sensation.

• There is no idea at all corresponding to the use of the phrase ‘necessary connection.’

• It would be an idea for which there is some corresponding impression of sensation or

reflection.

• Examine the individual cases of causation we meet in sensation and introspection

 • What he argues is that our examination of those cases reveals no power and no
necessary connection.

He begins with the case of sensation, where we are confronted with bodies interacting with
each other. The sort of case he has in mind is the familiar one where we have a first billiard
ball striking a second and causing it to move. He claims that if we examine just a single case
of this sort of interaction, we find that we have two events exhibiting a temporal relation. The
event we call the cause – the first ball’s striking the second – precedes the event we call the
effect – the second ball’s moving. We observe, then, a temporal succession in the events.
Furthermore, we observe that the two balls are in contact at the moment the first strikes the
second. So we have what Hume calls impressions of temporal succession and spatial
contiguity (sequential occurrence of events causing association of those events in the mind);
but Hume insists that these are the only relations we experience when we examine the
interaction. In particular, we do not observe anything corresponding to the traditional
metaphysician’s talk of power, energy, or necessitation.

In particular, we do not observe anything corresponding to the traditional metaphysician’s

talk of power, energy, or necessitation. We see one event succeeding another in a narrowly
circumscribed region of space; and that is all we see. Were we to have a sensory impression
of some special causal power on the part of the first event, then on our very first acquaintance
with an instance of this sort of sequence, our experience of the first event in the sequence
would enable us to infer just which event would follow. And, of course, our observation of
any such novel sequence tells us no such thing; nor, Hume tells us, is this an accident.

But if sensation provides us with no impression of any causal power or force necessitating an
event, perhaps the introspective case does.

I am sitting in my chair. I have been dozing, but I remember that I need to wash the dishes.
Accordingly, I decide to get up and go to the kitchen. I am, however, sleepy; and it is difficult
to rouse myself, so I focus on the intended action. I exert my will, and my body responds.

Is this not a case where I have direct and immediate access to the causal power or efficacy
that results in the necessitation of an event?
He tells us that what we have in the interaction just described is an experience of a mental
event followed by a physical event and nothing more. I could not have first-hand knowledge
of a connection between the two events without understanding how the mental and the
physical interact.

Hume, however, reminds us that the relation between mind and body is utterly mysterious.

Furthermore, he tells us, if I did directly apprehend the necessitating connection tying my act
of the will with my body’s rising from the chair, I would have first-hand knowledge of every
intermediate item in the chain of events taking us from the volition to the movement of the
body; but, of course, not even the most sophisticated physiologist knows what all those items
are.

More to the point, none of us apprehends any of the events as working as the intermediate
event between an act of the will and the body’s responding.

What we observe is simply a succession of events. since every idea derives from an
impression of experience, we seem driven to the conclusion that we have no clear and
coherent idea of a necessitating connection between a cause and its effect; and that suggests
that the traditional metaphysician’s talk of causal force, causal power, and the like is deeply
confused if not completely meaningless.

Saying that causation is nothing but spatial contiguity and temporal succession seems to be
insufficient. Certainly, events can be related to each other without being related as cause and
effect.

Hume thinks that there is something more to causation; and he thinks that to discover the
missing ingredient, we need to enlarge our field of observation.

Hume thinks that there is something more to causation. There is some missing ingredient in
explaining causation. In order to find out the missing ingredient, we need to enlarge our field
of observation.

We need to look beyond our sample causal sequence to cases where we have events
resembling the cause in our sample.
We need to look beyond a particular sample causal sequence or particular single cause-effect
case to general events resembling or having similarity with the cause in our sample or the
event that is considered to occur first.

We need to move away from that particular cases to other cases that are similar to this
particular case and especially we need to look for the similarity of the first event or the cause
itself.

We look beyond the case of the two billiard balls to other cases where a moving object strikes
an object of roughly the same size and mass.

We need to look beyond the particular case of first ball striking the second one to other cases
where a moving object striking an object of roughly the same size and mass.

What we find, in each case is that the second object moves. We don’t find a case where a
moving object striking an object of roughly the same size and mass and the second one
doesn’t move.

So we find that events resembling our original cause are associated with events resembling
our original effect.

So we can see that the events that resemble the original cause associated with the events that
resemble our original effect.

You consider any event that resembles the original or the sample cause; such an event will be
associated with the event that resembles the original or the sample cause.

The event that are similar to original or sample cause will be associated with the event that
are similar to original or sample effect.

Furthermore, we observe that, in each case, the two events are related in precisely the way
our original cause and effect were.

We have the relevant temporal succession and the relevant spatial contiguity; and we find
ourselves labelling the temporally prior event cause and the event succeeding it effect.

But in none of these cases do we find anything that was missing in our original case. What,
then, is it that makes all of these sequences causal?
Hume’s answer is that while taken individually none of the sequences exhibits any feature
that might justify calling them causal, the sequences all conform to a general pattern.

If we take the case individually, we can see that none of the sequence exhibits any feature
that might justify calling them causal. What we can see is there is a general pattern and all
sequences confirm to this general pattern.

We have two sets of resembling events; and in each sequence, an event from the one set bears
the relevant temporal and spatial relations to an event from the other set.

There are two kinds of events, K1 and K2; and in each sequence an event belonging to K1 is
succeeded by a spatially contiguous event belonging to K2, so that we can say that whenever
an event from K1 occurs, a spatially proximate event from K2 will follow.

And according to Hume, this is all that there is to causation. Causation is nothing more than
the sort of constant conjunction at work in the pattern. Accordingly, when we say that one
event causes another, we are not pointing to any feature of the events that, taken in isolation,
they can be observed to exhibit. We are saying, instead, that our events instantiate a general
pattern of the sort just identified.

Causation is simply constant conjunction or regularity of succession.

The idea of causation enables us to infer an effect from a cause or vice-versa. That is, if
we know how an event (one ball striking another) operates as a cause, we can infer its
effects. You say ‘I know what happens next’. You can’t make this prediction on the
basis
of one experience. Instead, you need repeated experiences of the same event following
the first. The basis for our idea of causation and our causal inferences, claims Hume, is
constant conjunction. When I repeatedly observe one object following another, I begin
to infer, from perceiving just the first object, that the second object will come about.
Once I’ve seen enough times one billiard ball strike another, and the second move, when
I see a billiard ball moving towards another, I immediately believe that the second one
will move when it is struck.
So the idea of causation is derived from our experience of constant conjunction. This
experience is, of course, past experience. Hume argues that our use of past experience to
make inferences about the future – e.g. what will happen next when one ball strikes
another – is not based on reasoning. Instead, it is based on custom, that principle of the
mind that associates cause and effect, so that whenever we experience an event which
has had particular effects in the past, we immediately think of the effect now. What sets
up this ‘customary’ movement of the mind is our experience of constant conjunction.
The response to Hume

So Hume thinks that where we have a causal sequence, we have an instance of a pattern of
constant conjunction between events of two kinds, a pattern that determines the mind to move
from an experience or idea of an event of the one kind to the idea of an event of the other
kind. Causation is, then, a thoroughly non-modal relation.

One kind of objection is that the account is too broad.

Thus, critics point to non-causal patterns in which events of one kind are regularly followed
by events of another kind.

Thomas Reid gives the day-night sequence as just such a pattern. The arrival of night
invariably follows the termination of day, and yet we refuse to say that day causes night.

One reason is that we could just as well say that night causes day.

That claim, however, would deliver the consequence that one and the same event is related to
another event as both cause and effect, and we believe that cause and effect are
asymmetrically related; we believe, that is, if an event, c, is the cause of an event, e, then e is
not a cause of c.

A horn goes off at a certain factory in London at 8:00 a.m. each day; immediately after, the
workers at another factory in Manchester enter their factory and begin work. The horn, of
course, is meant to signal the start of work at the London factory and not the Manchester
factory; but Ewing argues that if the regularity account were true, we would be forced to say
that the sounding of the horn in London is no less the cause of the workers entering the
Manchester factory than it is the cause of the corresponding event at the London factory.

Singular causal judgments

Suppose I present you with a weird looking contraption of a sort you have never seen before,
and suppose that upon my striking it, bells, whistles, and lights from within the contraption
all go off. You will certainly be justified in asserting that my striking the contraption caused
the reaction.
J L Mackie

Regularity theorists invoke the notions of necessary condition and sufficient condition.

Mackie is concerned with the causal claims we actually make, whether in specialized
contexts like the sciences and medicine or in the nonspecialized context of everyday life.

He thinks that such claims always presuppose a background setting – what Mackie calls a
causal field.

The causal field represents the context in which we take our cause to operate; it is the region
within which the cause makes a difference.

According to Mackie, causal claims are responses to causal questions, and those questions are
typically incomplete and indeterminate.

Giving those questions a complete and determinate content is a matter of identifying a causal
field.

When we ask, for example, why this or that individual contracted cancer, we may be asking
why the individual contracted the disease now rather than at some earlier time; in that case,
the causal field is the lifetime of the individual.

We may, however, be asking why this individual contracted cancer when other individuals
who were also exposed to the asbestos in the factory did not; in that case, our causal field is
those human beings who were exposed to the asbestos in a particular factory.

So a causal claim is always issued relative to a particular causal field.

What are we saying when we issue a claim circumscribed in this way?

Mackie presents us with the example of a house fire.

The experts examine the house after the fire has been extinguished, and they tell us that the
cause of the fire was an electrical short-circuit. According to Mackie, they are not telling us
that the short-circuit was a necessary condition of the house fire; they know that any of a
large number of other factors could have resulted in the house catching fire at the time it did.
One cannot say that if there is fire then there is short-circuit. One can think of a situation even
if there is fire, there is no short-circuit. That is why short-circuit is not a necessary condition.

They are also not saying that the short-circuit was a sufficient condition for the fire. They
know that the short-circuit by itself was not sufficient to set the house afire. A lot of other
factors had to be in place: the dry rags had to be there next to the electrical outlet; the water
sprinklers had to be defective; and so on.

So what the experts pick out as the cause of the fire is neither a necessary nor a sufficient
condition for the fire.

It is rather an indispensable component in a larger bundle of factors, all of which were

present and which, taken together, were sufficient for the fire.

There are, of course, other such bundles of factors sufficient for producing the same result;
but none of them was present before the fire.

What the experts are calling the cause, then, is an insufficient, but necessary component in a
bundle of factors that was unnecessary, but sufficient for the occurrence of the fire.

Mackie calls such a factor an INUS condition. Mackie wants to claim that what we typically
call a cause is just the sort of thing the experts are calling the cause of the fire – an INUS
condition.

Thus, to identify the cause of an event relative to a given causal field is to specify some factor
that is an insufficient, but necessary component in one of the bundles that, within that field,
are not necessary, but are sufficient for the occurrence of the event, to say that all the other
factors in that same bundle were present, and to deny that any of the other bundles sufficient
for the event were present.

Version of the regularity approach to causation

His talk of necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of certain conditional statements.

He proposes that we understand the claim (1) in terms of the counterfactual conditional (2).

(1) Event x was a necessary condition for event y

(2) If x had not occurred, y would not have occurred

He recommends that we understand the claim (3) in terms of what he (following Nelson
Goodman) calls the factual conditional (4).

(3) Event x was a sufficient condition for event y

(4) Since x occurred, y occurred.

(2) is to be understood as:

(5) Suppose x did not occur; then y did not occur.

(4) is to be understood as:

(6) x occurred; therefore y occurred.

Mackie stressed that effects have, typically, a "plurality of causes". That is, a certain
effect can be brought about by a number of distinct clusters of factors. Each cluster is
sufficient to bring about the effect, but none of them is necessary. So, he takes the
regularities in nature to have a complex form (A&B&C or D&E&F or G&H&I) ↔ E,
which should be read as: all (A&B&C or D&E&F or G&H&I) are followed by E, and
all E are preceded by (A&B&C or D&E&F or G&H&I). How do we pick out the cause
of an event in this setting? Each single factor of A&B&C (e.g., A) is related to the effect
E in an important way. It is an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary
but sufficient condition for E. Using the first letters of the italicized words, Mackie has
called such a factor an INUS condition. Causes, then, are INUS conditions. So to say
that short circuits cause house fires is to say that the short circuit is an INUS condition
for house fires. It is an insufficient part because it cannot cause the fire on its own
(other conditions such as oxygen, inflammable material, etc. should be present). It is,
nonetheless, a non-redundant part because, without it, the rest of the conditions are not
sufficient for the fire. It is just a part, and not the whole, of a sufficient condition (which
includes oxygen, the presence of inflammable material, etc.), but this whole sufficient
condition is not necessary, since some other cluster of conditions, for example, an
arsonist with gasoline, can produce the fire.
Kant’s response to Hume

Kant holds that a presupposition of our having the sort of unified or coherent experience we
do in fact have is that distinct events are related in some rule-governed way that makes it
possible for us to infer the occurrence of one event from that of another.

Accordingly, no event can be an object of experience for us unless it stands in a strongly

modal causal relation to other events.

Accepting Hume’s argument that no such modal notion can have an empirical origin, Kant
concludes that the concept of causation is innate.

It is one of twelve apriori concepts or categories that understanding imposes on the raw data
of inner and other senses (sensation and introspection) to yield what we call an object of
experience.

They tell us that it is a relation which is somehow analogous to the logical relation of
entailment.

Just as the premises of a valid argument necessitate their conclusion, so a cause necessitates
its effect.

That the causal relation is analogous to the logical relation, we are told, is shown, first, by the
fact that we can infer effects from their causes and, second, by the fact that causes provide us
with reasons or explanations for their effects. Both facts are intelligible only on the
assumption that causation is something like entailment. So one response to Hume is to insist
on a modal characterization of causation and to construe the relation as an apriori or innate
concept.

In Kant’s model of the mind the causal relation is one of twelve ‘categories’ – concepts that
are fundamental to all knowledge. They are mental functions which ‘make sense' out of our
disparate perceptions by organising them into the form in which we experience the world.
The categories in unison form ‘the understanding' – the faculty for making empirical
judgements. Finally, the categories are ‘pure’ concepts, in the sense that they are not as Hume
had claimed, derived from experience, but have their origin in the very constitution of the
mind itself.
The judgement that A is not merely joined to B (by always preceding it) but actually causes B
is grounded in an a priori source of knowledge – ie in the faculty of the understanding with its
a priori conditions of objective knowledge. It is because the judgement is so grounded a
priori, that we are entitled to assert the principle of causality: that all events of type A are
universally and necessarily followed by events of type B.

This principle is ‘transcendental’ in this strictly technical sense: it is known to be true not
from experience, but because it is a condition that must be fulfilled for empirical knowledge
to be possible. Kant's next step is to distinguish particular empirical causal laws – those
which scientists discover – from the causal principle. The very discovery of particular laws,
he argues, takes place “in virtue of the original laws through which experience first become
possible” – ie the categories of the understanding. Therefore even particular laws are not
derived solely empirically. They are subsumed under the a priori concept of causality in such
a way that they thereby become necessary and acquire more than inductive status. Particular
laws are, in other words, grounded in the universal causal principle. The principle makes
experience possible by injecting both necessity and strict universality into the particular
causal laws of science.

We are now ready to identify the crucial difference between Hume and Kant on causal
necessity: Hume works from world to mind, Kant from mind to world.