argument of causation essay

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How to master the art of writing a successful cause and effect essay that captivates your readers and earns you top grades.

Are you intrigued by the interconnected nature of events and phenomena? Do you aspire to unravel the hidden threads that link causes to effects? Crafting a cause and outcome essay provides an excellent platform to explore and dissect these connections, allowing you to showcase your analytical skills and express your ideas with precision and clarity.

In this comprehensive guide, we will delve deep into the art of writing cause and outcome essays, equipping you with effective strategies, invaluable tips, and real-life examples that will help you master the craft. Whether you are a seasoned writer looking to enhance your skills or a beginner eager to embark on a new writing journey, this guide has got you covered.

Throughout this journey, we will navigate the intricate realm of cause and outcome relationships, examining how actions, events, and circumstances influence one another. We will explore the essential elements of a cause and outcome essay, honing in on the importance of a strong thesis statement, logical organization, and compelling evidence. By the end of this guide, you will possess the necessary tools to produce a captivating cause and outcome essay that engages your readers and leaves a lasting impact.

Tips for Writing a Cause and Effect Essay

When composing a paper that focuses on exploring the connections between actions and their consequences, there are several essential tips that can help you write a compelling cause and effect essay. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your essay is well-structured, clear, and effectively communicates your ideas.

By following these tips, you can enhance your ability to write a compelling cause and effect essay. Remember to analyze the causes and effects carefully, organize your ideas effectively, provide clear explanations, use transitional words, and proofread your essay to ensure a polished final piece of writing.

Understand the Purpose and Structure

One of the most important aspects of writing a cause and effect essay is understanding its purpose and structure. By understanding these key elements, you can effectively communicate the relationship between causes and effects, and present your argument in a clear and organized manner.

In a cause and effect essay, the purpose is to analyze the causes of a specific event or phenomenon and explain the effects that result from those causes. This type of essay is often used to explore the connections between different factors and to demonstrate how one event leads to another.

To structure your cause and effect essay, consider using a chronological or sequential order. Start by introducing the topic and providing some background information on the causes you will discuss. Then, present your thesis statement, which should clearly state your main argument or claim.

In the body paragraphs, discuss each cause or group of causes in a separate paragraph. Provide detailed explanations, examples, and evidence to support your claims. Make sure to use transitional words and phrases to guide the reader through your essay and to show the logical progression of causes and effects.

Finally, in the conclusion, summarize your main points and restate your thesis, reinforcing your overall argument. You can also discuss the broader implications of your analysis and suggest possible solutions or further research.

By understanding the purpose and structure of a cause and effect essay, you can effectively convey your ideas and arguments to your readers. This will help them follow your reasoning and see the connections between causes and effects, leading to a more convincing and impactful essay.

Choose a Topic

When embarking on the journey of writing a cause and effect essay, one of the first steps is to choose an engaging and relevant topic. The topic sets the foundation for the entire essay, determining the direction and scope of the content.

To select an effective topic, it is important to consider your interests, as well as the interests of your intended audience. Think about subjects that captivate you and inspire curiosity. Consider current events, personal experiences, or areas of study that pique your interest. By choosing a topic that you are genuinely passionate about, you will be more motivated to conduct thorough research and present compelling arguments.

Additionally, it is essential to select a topic that is relevant and meaningful. Identify an issue or phenomenon that has a clear cause-and-effect relationship, allowing you to explore the connections and consequences in depth. Look for topics that are timely and impactful, as this will ensure that your essay resonates with readers and addresses significant issues in society.

Moreover, a well-chosen topic should have enough depth and breadth to support a comprehensive analysis. Avoid selecting topics that are too broad or shallow, as this can make it challenging to delve into the causes and effects in a meaningful way. Narrow down your focus to a specific aspect or aspect of a broader topic to ensure that you have enough material to explore and analyze.

In conclusion, choosing a topic for your cause and effect essay is a critical step that will shape the entire writing process. By selecting a topic that aligns with your interests, is relevant and meaningful, and has enough depth and breadth, you will lay the foundation for a compelling and informative essay.

Conduct Thorough Research

Before diving into writing a cause and effect essay, it is essential to conduct a comprehensive research on the topic of your choice. This research phase will provide you with the necessary background information and context to develop a strong and well-supported essay.

During the research process, explore various sources such as books, academic journals, reputable websites, and credible news articles. Utilize synonyms for “research” like “investigate” or “explore” to keep your writing engaging and varied.

Avoid relying solely on a single source or biased information. Instead, strive to gather a variety of perspectives and data points that will enhance the credibility and validity of your essay.

Take notes as you research, highlighting key points, statistics, and quotes that you may want to include in your essay. Organize your findings in a clear and structured manner, making it easier to refer back to them as you begin writing.

Incorporating well-researched evidence and supporting examples into your cause and effect essay will lend credibility to your arguments, making them more persuasive and convincing. By conducting thorough research, you will be able to present a well-rounded and informed analysis of the topic you are writing about.

Create an Outline

One of the crucial steps in writing any type of essay, including cause and effect essays, is creating an outline. An outline helps to organize your thoughts and ideas before you start writing, ensuring that your essay has a clear and logical structure. In this section, we will discuss the importance of creating an outline and provide some tips on how to create an effective outline for your cause and effect essay.

When creating an outline, it is important to start with a clear understanding of the purpose and main points of your essay. Begin by identifying the main cause or event that you will be discussing, as well as its effects or consequences. This will serve as the foundation for your outline, allowing you to structure your essay in a logical and coherent manner.

Once you have identified the main cause and effects, it is time to organize your ideas into a clear and logical order. One effective way to do this is by using a table. Create a table with two columns, one for the cause and one for the effect. Then, list the main causes and effects in each column, using bullet points or short phrases. This will help you see the connections between the different causes and effects, making it easier to write your essay.

In addition to listing the main causes and effects, it is also important to include supporting details and examples in your outline. These can help to strengthen your argument and provide evidence for your claims. Include specific examples, facts, and statistics that support each cause and effect, and organize them under the relevant point in your outline.

Lastly, make sure to review and revise your outline before you start writing your essay. Check for any gaps in your logic or missing information, and make any necessary adjustments. Your outline should serve as a roadmap for your essay, guiding you through the writing process and ensuring that your essay is well-structured and coherent.

In conclusion, creating an outline is an essential step in writing a cause and effect essay. It helps to organize your thoughts and ideas, ensuring that your essay has a clear and logical structure. By identifying the main cause and effects, organizing your ideas into a table, including supporting details and examples, and reviewing your outline, you can create an effective outline that will guide you through the writing process.

Develop the Body Paragraphs

Once you have identified the main causes and effects of the topic you are writing about, it is time to develop your body paragraphs. In these paragraphs, you will present specific evidence and examples to support your claims. The body of your essay should be well-structured and focused, with each paragraph addressing a single cause or effect.

Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence that clearly states the main point you will be discussing. Then, provide detailed explanations and evidence to support your argument. This can include statistics, research findings, expert opinions, or personal anecdotes. Remember to use clear and concise language to convey your ideas effectively.

In order to make your writing more coherent, you can use transition words and phrases to connect your ideas and create a logical flow between paragraphs. Words like “because”, “as a result”, “therefore”, and “consequently” can be used to show cause and effect relationships.

Additionally, it is important to use paragraph unity, which means that each paragraph should focus on a single cause or effect. Avoid including unrelated information or discussing multiple causes/effects in a single paragraph, as this can confuse the reader and weaken your argument.

Furthermore, consider using examples and evidence to enhance the clarity and persuasiveness of your arguments. Concrete examples and real-life scenarios can help illustrate the cause and effect relationship and make your writing more engaging to the reader.

• Use accurate data and precise details to back up your claims
• Include relevant research and studies to support your arguments
• Provide real-life examples and cases that demonstrate the cause and effect relationship

In conclusion, developing the body paragraphs of your cause and effect essay is crucial in presenting a well-structured and persuasive argument. By using topic sentences, clear explanations, transition words, and relevant evidence, you can effectively convey your ideas and convince the reader of the cause and effect relationship you are discussing.

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10.8 Cause and Effect

Learning objectives.

• Determine the purpose and structure of cause and effect in writing.
• Understand how to write a cause-and-effect essay.

The Purpose of Cause and Effect in Writing

It is often considered human nature to ask, “why?” and “how?” We want to know how our child got sick so we can better prevent it from happening in the future, or why our colleague a pay raise because we want one as well. We want to know how much money we will save over the long term if we buy a hybrid car. These examples identify only a few of the relationships we think about in our lives, but each shows the importance of understanding cause and effect.

A cause is something that produces an event or condition; an effect is what results from an event or condition. The purpose of the cause-and-effect essay is to determine how various phenomena relate in terms of origins and results. Sometimes the connection between cause and effect is clear, but often determining the exact relationship between the two is very difficult. For example, the following effects of a cold may be easily identifiable: a sore throat, runny nose, and a cough. But determining the cause of the sickness can be far more difficult. A number of causes are possible, and to complicate matters, these possible causes could have combined to cause the sickness. That is, more than one cause may be responsible for any given effect. Therefore, cause-and-effect discussions are often complicated and frequently lead to debates and arguments.

Use the complex nature of cause and effect to your advantage. Often it is not necessary, or even possible, to find the exact cause of an event or to name the exact effect. So, when formulating a thesis, you can claim one of a number of causes or effects to be the primary, or main, cause or effect. As soon as you claim that one cause or one effect is more crucial than the others, you have developed a thesis.

Consider the causes and effects in the following thesis statements. List a cause and effect for each one on your own sheet of paper.

• The growing childhood obesity epidemic is a result of technology.
• Much of the wildlife is dying because of the oil spill.
• The town continued programs that it could no longer afford, so it went bankrupt.
• More young people became politically active as use of the Internet spread throughout society.
• While many experts believed the rise in violence was due to the poor economy, it was really due to the summer-long heat wave.

Write three cause-and-effect thesis statements of your own for each of the following five broad topics.

• Health and nutrition

The Structure of a Cause-and-Effect Essay

The cause-and-effect essay opens with a general introduction to the topic, which then leads to a thesis that states the main cause, main effect, or various causes and effects of a condition or event.

The cause-and-effect essay can be organized in one of the following two primary ways:

• Start with the cause and then talk about the effects.
• Start with the effect and then talk about the causes.

For example, if your essay were on childhood obesity, you could start by talking about the effect of childhood obesity and then discuss the cause or you could start the same essay by talking about the cause of childhood obesity and then move to the effect.

Regardless of which structure you choose, be sure to explain each element of the essay fully and completely. Explaining complex relationships requires the full use of evidence, such as scientific studies, expert testimony, statistics, and anecdotes.

Because cause-and-effect essays determine how phenomena are linked, they make frequent use of certain words and phrases that denote such linkage. See Table 10.4 “Phrases of Causation” for examples of such terms.

Table 10.4 Phrases of Causation

The conclusion should wrap up the discussion and reinforce the thesis, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of the relationship that was analyzed.

Be careful of resorting to empty speculation. In writing, speculation amounts to unsubstantiated guessing. Writers are particularly prone to such trappings in cause-and-effect arguments due to the complex nature of finding links between phenomena. Be sure to have clear evidence to support the claims that you make.

Look at some of the cause-and-effect relationships from Note 10.83 “Exercise 2” . Outline the links you listed. Outline one using a cause-then-effect structure. Outline the other using the effect-then-cause structure.

Writing a Cause-and-Effect Essay

Choose an event or condition that you think has an interesting cause-and-effect relationship. Introduce your topic in an engaging way. End your introduction with a thesis that states the main cause, the main effect, or both.

Organize your essay by starting with either the cause-then-effect structure or the effect-then-cause structure. Within each section, you should clearly explain and support the causes and effects using a full range of evidence. If you are writing about multiple causes or multiple effects, you may choose to sequence either in terms of order of importance. In other words, order the causes from least to most important (or vice versa), or order the effects from least important to most important (or vice versa).

Use the phrases of causation when trying to forge connections between various events or conditions. This will help organize your ideas and orient the reader. End your essay with a conclusion that summarizes your main points and reinforces your thesis. See Chapter 15 “Readings: Examples of Essays” to read a sample cause-and-effect essay.

Choose one of the ideas you outlined in Note 10.85 “Exercise 3” and write a full cause-and-effect essay. Be sure to include an engaging introduction, a clear thesis, strong evidence and examples, and a thoughtful conclusion.

Key Takeaways

• The purpose of the cause-and-effect essay is to determine how various phenomena are related.
• The thesis states what the writer sees as the main cause, main effect, or various causes and effects of a condition or event.

The cause-and-effect essay can be organized in one of these two primary ways:

• Start with the cause and then talk about the effect.
• Start with the effect and then talk about the cause.
• Strong evidence is particularly important in the cause-and-effect essay due to the complexity of determining connections between phenomena.
• Phrases of causation are helpful in signaling links between various elements in the essay.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

5.8 Causal and Proposal Arguments

Anna Mills and Darya Myers

Causal arguments attempt to make a case that one thing led to another. They answer the question “What caused it?” Causes are often complex and multiple. Before we choose a strategy for a causal argument, it can help to identify our purpose. Why do we need to know the cause? How will it help us?

 Purposes of Causal Arguments

• To get a complete picture of how and why something happened: In this case, we will want to look for multiple causes, each of which may play a different role. Some might be background conditions, others might spark the event, and others may be influences that sped up the event once it got started. In this case, we often speak of near causes that are close in time or space to the event itself, and remote causes, which are further away or further in the past. We can also describe a chain of causes, with one thing leading to the next, which leads to the next. It may even be the case that we have a feedback loop where a first event causes a second event and the second event triggers more of the first, creating an endless circle of causation. For example, as sea ice melts in the arctic, the dark water absorbs more heat, which warms it further, which melts more ice, which makes the water absorb more heat, etc. If the results are bad, this is called a vicious circle.
• To decide who is responsible: Sometimes if an event has multiple causes, we may be most concerned with deciding who bears responsibility and how much. In a car accident, the driver might bear responsibility, and the car manufacturer might bear some as well. We will have to argue that the responsible party caused the event but we will also have to show that there was a moral obligation not to do what the party did. That implies some degree of choice and knowledge of possible consequences. If the driver was following all good driving regulations and triggered an explosion by activating the turn signal, clearly the driver cannot be held responsible.
• To figure out how to make something happen: In this case we need to zero in on a factor or factors that will push the event forward. Such a factor is sometimes called a precipitating cause. The success of this push will depend on circumstances being right for it, so we will likely also need to describe the conditions that have to be in place for the precipitating cause to actually precipitate the event. If there are likely factors that could block the event, we need to show that those can be eliminated. For example, if we propose a particular surgery to fix a heart problem, we will also need to show that the patient can get to a hospital that performs the surgery and get an appointment. We will certainly need to show that the patient is likely to tolerate the surgery.
• To stop something from happening: In this case, we do not need to describe all possible causes. We want to find a factor that is so necessary to the bad result that if we get rid of that factor, the result cannot occur. Then if we eliminate that factor, we can block the bad result. If we cannot find a single such factor, we may at least be able to find one that will make the bad result less likely. For example, to reduce wildfire risk in California, we cannot get rid of all fire whatsoever, but we can repair power lines and aging gas and electric infrastructure to reduce the risk that defects in this system will spark a fire. Or we could try to reduce the damage fires cause by focusing on clearing underbrush.
• To predict what might happen in the future: As Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor put it in A Rhetoric of Argument , “when you argue for a prediction, you try to convince your reader that all the causes needed to bring about an event are in place or will fall into place.” You also may need to show that nothing will intervene to block the event from happening. One common way to support a prediction is by comparing it to a past event that has already played out. For example, we might argue that humans have survived natural disasters in the past, so we will survive the effects of climate change as well. As Fahnestock and Secor point out, however, “the argument is only as good as the analogy, which sometimes must itself be supported.” How comparable are the disasters of the past to the likely effects of climate change? The argument would need to describe both past and possible future events and convince us that they are similar in severity.

Techniques and Cautions for Causal Argument

So how does a writer make a case that one thing causes another? The briefest answer is that the writer needs to convince us that the factor and the event are correlated and also that there is some way in which the factor could plausibly lead to the event. Then the writer will need to convince us that they have done due diligence in considering and eliminating alternate possibilities for the cause and alternate explanations for any correlation between the factor and the event.

Identify Possible Causes

If other writers have already identified possible causes, an argument simply needs to refer back to those and add in any that have been missed. If not, the writer can put themselves in the role of detective and imagine what might have caused the event.

Determine Which Factor Is Most Correlated with the Event

If we think that a factor may commonly cause an event, the first question to ask is whether they go together. If we are looking for a sole cause, we can ask if the factor is always there when the event happens and always absent when the event doesn’t happen. Do the factor and the event follow the same trends? The following methods of arguing for causality were developed by philosopher John Stuart Mill, and are often referred to as “Mill’s methods.”

• If the event is repeated and every time it happens, a common factor is present, that common factor may be the cause.
• If there is a single difference between cases where the event takes place and cases where it doesn’t.
• If an event and a possible cause are repeated over and over and they happen to varying degrees, we can check whether they always increase and decrease together. This is often best done with a graph so we can visually check whether the lines follow the same pattern.
• Finally, ruling out other possible causes can support a case that the one remaining possible cause did in fact operate.

Explain How That Factor Could Have Caused the Event

In order to believe that one thing caused another, we usually need to have some idea of how the first thing could cause the second. If we cannot imagine how one would cause another, why should we find it plausible? If we are talking about human behavior, then we are looking for motivation: love, hate, envy, greed, desire for power, etc. If we are talking about a physical event, then we need to look at physical forces. Scientists have dedicated much research to establishing how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could effectively trap heat and warm the planet.

If there is enough other evidence to show that one thing caused another but the way it happened is still unknown, the argument can note that and perhaps point toward further studies that would establish the mechanism. The writer may want to qualify their argument with “may” or “might” or “seems to indicate,” if they cannot explain how the supposed cause led to the effect.

Eliminate Alternative Explanations

The catchphrase “correlation is not causation” can help us to remember the dangers of the methods above. It’s usually easy to show that two things happen at the same time or in the same pattern, but hard to show that one actually causes another. Correlation can be a good reason to investigate whether something is the cause, and it can provide some evidence of causality, but it is not proof. Sometimes two unrelated things may be correlated, like the number of women in Congress and the price of milk. We can imagine that both might follow an upward trend, one because of the increasing equality of women in society and the other because of inflation. Describing a plausible agency, or way in which one thing led to another, can help show that the correlation is not random. If we find a strong correlation, we can imagine various causal arguments that would explain it and argue that the one we support has the most plausible agency.

Sometimes things vary together because there is a common cause that affects both of them. An argument can explore possible third factors that may have led to both events. For example, students who go to elite colleges tend to make more money than students who go to less elite colleges. Did the elite colleges make the difference? Or are both the college choice and the later earnings due to a third cause, such as family connections? In his book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual , journalist Michael Pollan assesses studies on the effects of supplements like multivitamins and concludes that people who take supplements are also those who have better diet and exercise habits and that the supplements themselves have no effect on health. He advises, “Be the kind of person who takes supplements—then skip the supplements.”

If we have two phenomena that are correlated and happen at the same time, it’s worth considering whether the second phenomenon could actually have caused the first rather than the other way around. For example, if we find that gun violence and violence within video games are both on the rise, we shouldn’t leap to blame video games for the increase in shootings. It may be that people who play video games are being influenced by violence in the games and becoming more likely to go out and shoot people in real life. But could it also be that as gun violence increases in society for other reasons, such violence is a bigger part of people’s consciousness, leading video game makers and gamers to incorporate more violence in their games? It might be that causality operates in both directions, creating a feedback loop as we discussed above.

Proving causality is tricky, and often even rigorous academic studies can do little more than suggest that causality is probable or possible. There are a host of laboratory and statistical methods for testing causality. The gold standard for an experiment to determine a cause is a double-blind, randomized control trial in which there are two groups of people randomly assigned. One group gets the drug being studied and one group gets the placebo, but neither the participants nor the researchers know which is which. This kind of study eliminates the effect of unconscious suggestion, but it is often not possible for ethical and logistical reasons.

The ins and outs of causal arguments are worth studying in a statistics course or a philosophy course, but even without such a course we can do a better job of assessing causes if we develop the habit of looking for alternate explanations.

Reflect on the following to construct a causal argument. What would be the best intervention to introduce in society to reduce the rate of violent crime? Below are some possible causes of violent crime. Choose one and describe how it could lead to violent crime. Then think of a way to intervene in that process to stop it. What method from among those described in this section would you use to convince someone that your intervention would work to lower rates of violent crime? Make up an argument using your chosen method and the kind of evidence, either anecdotal or statistical, you would find convincing.

Possible causes of violent crime:

• Homophobia and transphobia
• Testosterone
• Child abuse
• Violence in the media
• Role models who exhibit toxic masculinity
• Violent video games
• Systemic racism
• Lack of education on expressing emotions
• Unemployment
• Not enough law enforcement
• Economic inequality
• The availability of guns

Proposal Arguments

Proposal arguments attempt to push for action of some kind. They answer the question “What should be done about it?”

In order to build up to a proposal, an argument needs to incorporate elements of definition argument, evaluation argument, and causal argument. First, we will need to define a problem or a situation that calls for action. Then we need to make an evaluation argument to convince readers that the problem is bad enough to be worth addressing. This will create a sense of urgency within the argument and inspire the audience to seek and adopt the proposed action. In most cases, it will need to make causal arguments about the roots of the problem and the good effects of the proposed solution.

Common Elements of Proposal Arguments

Background on the problem, opportunity, or situation

Often just after the introduction, the background section discusses what has brought about the need for the proposal—what problem, what opportunity exists for improving things, what the basic situation is. For example, management of a chain of daycare centers may need to ensure that all employees know CPR because of new state mandates requiring it, or an owner of pine timberland in eastern Oregon may want to make sure the land can produce saleable timber without destroying the environment.

While the named audience of the proposal may know the problem very well, writing the background section is useful in demonstrating our particular view of the problem. If we cannot assume readers know the problem, we will need to spend more time convincing them that the problem or opportunity exists and that it should be addressed. For a larger audience not familiar with the problem, this section can give detailed context.

Description of the Proposed Solution

Here we define the nature of what we are proposing so readers can see what is involved in the proposed action. For example, if we write an essay proposing to donate food scraps from restaurants to pig farms, we will need to define what will be considered food scraps. In another example, if we argue that organic produce is inherently healthier for consumers than non-organic produce, and we propose governmental subsidies to reduce the cost of organic produce, we will need to define “organic” and describe how much the government subsidies will be and which products or consumers will be eligible. These examples illustrate the frequency with which different types of argument overlap within a single work.

If we have not already covered the proposal’s methods in the description, we may want to add this. How will we go about completing the proposed work? For example, in the above example about food scraps, we would want to describe how the leftover food will be stored and delivered to the pig farms. Describing the methods shows the audience we have a sound, thoughtful approach to the project. It serves to demonstrate that we have the knowledge of the field to complete the project.

Feasibility of the Project

A proposal argument needs to convince readers that the project can actually be accomplished. How can enough time, money, and will be found to make it happen? Have similar proposals been carried out successfully in the past? For example, we might observe that according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Rutgers University runs a program that sends a ton of food scraps a day from its dining halls to a local farm. If we describe how other efforts overcame obstacles, we will persuade readers that if they can succeed, this proposal can as well.

Benefits of the Proposal

Most proposals discuss the advantages or benefits that will come from the solution proposed. Describing the benefits helps you win the audience to your side, so readers become more invested in adopting your proposed solution. In the food scraps example, we might emphasize that the Rutgers program, rather than costing more, led to $100,000 a year in savings because the dining halls no longer needed to pay to have the food scraps hauled away. We could calculate the predicted savings for our new proposed program as well.

In order to predict the positive effects of the proposal and show how implementing it will lead to good results, we will want to use causal arguments.

Sample Annotated Proposal Argument

The sample essay “Why We Should Open Our Borders” by student Laurent Wenjun Jiang can serve as an example. Annotations point out how Jiang uses several proposal argument strategies.

• Sample proposal essay “Why We Should Open Our Borders” in PDF with margin notes

Browse news and opinion websites to find a proposal argument that you strongly support. Once you have chosen a proposal, read it closely and look for the elements discussed in this section. Do you find enough discussion of the background, methods, feasibility, and benefits of the proposal? Discuss at least one way in which you think the proposal could be revised to be even more convincing.

Rhetoric Matters: A Guide to Success in the First Year Writing Class Copyright © 2022 by Anna Mills and Darya Myers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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25 Causal Argument

Department of Psychological Sciences Birkbeck, University of London London, England, UK

Institute of Philosophy and Political Science TU Dortmund University Dortmund, Germany

Department of Philosophy & Cognitive Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

• Published: 10 May 2017
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This chapter outlines the range of argument forms involving causation that can be found in everyday discourse. It also surveys empirical work concerned with the generation and evaluation of such arguments. This survey makes clear that there is presently no unified body of research concerned with causal argument. It highlights the benefits of a unified treatment both for those interested in causal cognition and those interested in argumentation, and identifies the key challenges that must be met for a full understanding of causal argumentation.

Although causality is fundamental to human cognition in many different ways, a review of theoretical work in argumentation studies and cognitive science suggests that “causal argument” remains ill understood. This holds for both senses of the term “argument”: argument as a situated process of actors engaged in an actual dispute, on the one hand, and, on the other, the essential component of such a dialectical exchange, namely arguments as individual claims and reasons for those claims. In particular, surprisingly little psychological research has been devoted to how people construct, process, and evaluate causal arguments in this latter sense of “argument,” that is, arguments as abstract inferential objects comprising premises and conclusions.

Nevertheless, there are a number of independent strands of research involving causation and argument. The goal of this chapter is to bring these currently separate bodies of work together in order to provide a coherent basis for future empirical research on causal argument that elucidates the dialectical and inferential role of cause–effect relationships in reasoned discourse. Such a program has immediate implications for what is a central aspect of everyday argumentation, and thus a central aspect of our everyday lives. Consequently, an improved understanding of causal argument should benefit directly a range of areas such as reasoning, argumentation, learning, science comprehension, and communication, to name but a few.

However, insight into causal argument seems beneficial also for those projects within cognitive science aimed at understanding what “cause” actually is, both normatively and in laypeople’s understanding. Causal argument, we will seek to show, thus not only constitutes an important topic for research in its own right, but also can provide new impetus to the many, more familiar, aspects of human behavior and cognition concerned with causality, such as causal learning (see in this volume, Rottman, Chapter 6 ; Le Pelley, Griffiths, & Beesley, Chapter 2 ) or causal inference (see Griffiths, Chapter 7 in this volume).

“Because”: Reasons as Causes Versus Causes as Reasons

The comparative scarcity of research on causal argument relative to work on causal learning or causal inference may surprise, since few topics seem to be more intimately related than argumentation and causation. This is nowhere more apparent, perhaps, than in the term “because” itself. While it marks causal relations in the empirical world (e.g., “Socrates died because the jury had him drink poison”), the same term is used more generally to identify justificatory and explanatory reasons . Imagine, for example, an argument about whether or not Jones killed Smith. Questions about Jones might be answered by stating something like “we know it was Jones, not his wife, who killed Smith, because Miller saw him. …” In this case, the word “because” signifies a relation of evidential support. 1 To the extent that such evidential uses of “because” themselves imply a causal relation, that causal relation pertains to human beliefs and the relationships between them (i.e., knowledge of Miller’s testimony should change our beliefs), as well as between beliefs and world (e.g., Miller’s testimony “I saw Jones kill Smith” is putatively caused by Miller witnessing that Jones killed Smith). In short, causes can provide reasons, and reasons can provide causes.

Both of these aspects are central to an understanding of “causal argument.” The main function of argumentation as we use the term here is to effect changes in beliefs (e.g., Goodwin, 2010; Hahn, 2011 ; Hahn & Oaksford, 2012 ), specifically changes in beliefs that may be considered to be rational (as contrasted with “mere persuasion”). Understanding causal argument therefore involves both asking to what extent causal arguments should change people’s beliefs and how successful they actually are in changing people’s beliefs.

This chapter introduces relevant work on both of these questions. Understanding people’s responses to causal arguments, both from a normative and a descriptive perspective, requires understanding what those arguments typically are. The natural starting point for investigation is thus the typical argument forms that involve aspects of causation found in everyday life, and we describe present findings on this in the next section. The material of that section— “Arguments for Causes and Causes for Arguments” —reflects the reasons/causes duality just described, as people in everyday life both argue about causes and use causes as arguments for particular claims. This initial consideration of types of causal arguments is then followed by examination of what literature there is on how people actually respond to causal arguments. The chapter concludes with a research agenda for future work on causal argumentation.

Arguments for Causes and Causes for Arguments

When asked to provide reasons why something has happened, might happen, or should happen, the term “because” will soon arise. Similarly, we suspect, few disagreements (scholarly ones included) last longer than those about causes. In brief, causality is as ubiquitous in argumentation as it is difficult to understand fully the causal structure of the real world.

It seems reasonable to suppose that the language of causal arguments is intimately related to the cognition of causal relations in the world, and to the way people think about causal structure. As things stand, however, “[t]‌hough basic to human thought, causality is a notion shrouded in mystery, controversy, and caution, because scientists and philosophers have had difficulties defining when one event truly causes another” ( Pearl, 2009 , p. 401). A paradigmatic example of these difficulties is J. L. Mackie’s (1965) conceptual analysis of “cause” as “an insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition (INUS)”—which, at least on initial reading, seems as difficult to understand as the notion it is trying to unpack. 2 Such conceptual difficulties in clarifying the basic concept are likely to be reflected in actual discourse whenever “cause” and related terms such as “effect” are used argumentatively.

In order to examine causal argument, however, one need not start with a clear theoretical notion of “cause.” Instead, studying causal argument may itself be informative of laypeople’s underlying conception of “cause,” and thus provide raw material for both theoretically refined notions of “cause” and for the psychology of causal cognition. Rather than first elucidate the notion of cause in an abstract manner, we thus start from a survey of causal argument types arising in everyday discourse as they have been identified both through corpus analysis and in the argumentation literature. Only with a sense of the range of kinds of causal arguments is it possible to start addressing questions of their cogency and actual persuasiveness, and to examine possible implications of causal argument for an understanding of the notion of “cause” itself.

Causal Argument Patterns from Corpus Analysis

Based on an analysis of corpora of natural language text, Oestermeier and Hesse (2000) provided an extensive typology for causal argument. Their categories rest on “the basic argumentative moves of defending, attacking, and qualifying claims” (p. 68). For each type, this typology

specifies three types of premises involved in causal arguments: Observational (i.e. spatial, temporal, or episodic), explanatory (i.e. intentional or causal), and abstract knowledge (i.e. conceptual knowledge about criteria for causation) […] [along with] the inference patterns which are needed to come up with a causal conclusion, namely, inferences from observations, generalizations, comparisons, mental simulations, and causal explanations. (2000, p. 68)

Figure 25.1 shows Oestermeier and Hesse’s basic typology (stripped of the examples and historical references they provide). This typology features 11 pro types (arguments offered in defense of a causal claim), 10 con types (arguments that attack a causal claim), and 6 qualifying types (which refine a causal claim). For example, “wrong temporal order” is a type of argument advanced against a causal claim. The premises of such an argument consist of episodic knowledge about the observed temporal order of the events A and B . These premises support an inference to the effect that A has not caused B because A happened after B , as in the example, “The server problems have not caused your system crash, the server problems occurred afterward” (for examples of all types listed in Figure 25.1 , see Oestermeier & Hesse, 2000 ).

In the texts analyzed by Oestermeier and Hesse, these types varied considerably in prevalence. The vast majority of instances of causal argument in the corpora analyzed by Oestermeier and Hesse were of the causal mechanism type (78.2%). These are arguments that cite, and so seek to explain through, a causal mechanism. Structurally, these take the form “ A caused C because A led to C via the process/mechanism B ”; for example, “His anger caused the accident. It affected his concentration.”

After causal explanations, the next most numerous type accounts for a mere 3.9% (!) of the total number of causal arguments in their corpus ( Oestermeier & Hesse, 2000 , p. 76). Given the pervasiveness of the causal mechanism type, one might ask whether Oestermeier and Hesse’s typology is fine-grained enough, or whether causal mechanism arguments should be further divided into subtypes. At the same time, however, Oestermeier and Hesse’s notion of causal argument (and hence their typology) is limited to causal claims or conclusions (e.g., “smoking causes cancer”) and the premises (reasons) offered to support those causal claims (e.g., “because smokers have a much higher risk of getting cancer”). However, research within argumentation theory, described next, shows that everyday discourse features not only arguments about causes, and causal explanations, but also arguments from causes.

Scheme-Based Approaches

A long-standing tradition within argumentation theory has sought to devise a typology of causal argument, though based on less systematic descriptive procedures than Oestermeier and Hesse’s (2000) corpus analysis. Argument types, in this tradition, are referred to as schemes . The specific schemes identified by this tradition overlap only partially with those identified by Oestermeier and Hesse, so that a complete typology will need to consider both.

Types of arguments for causal claims (pro, con, qualifier); italicized terms name types of pro-evidence (circumstantial, contrastive, causal explanatory), types of con-evidence ([circumstantial] counter-evidence, alternative explanation, insufficient evidence), and types of qualifiers (causal complexities, causation without responsibility).

In contrast to basic corpus analysis, the so-called scheme-based approach to argumentation not only seeks to describe different types of informal argument schemes, but also pursues normative questions concerning their use. In other words, it seeks to provide guidance on which arguments should convince (on normative foundations for argumentation theory, see Corner & Hahn, 2013 ). Hence, much of the extant work on causal argument in argumentation theory has remained tightly connected to classical fallacies such as post hoc propter hoc (inferring cause from correlation) and slippery slope argument (more on these later). To provide normative guidance, authors typically associate “critical questions” with schemes in order to allow evaluation of the quality of particular instances. This tradition thus feeds directly into the burgeoning, applied literature on critical thinking (e.g., Inch & Warnick, 2009 ; but see also Hamby, 2013 , and Willingham, 2007 , for a critical perspective on this literature).

The central status of causal argument in everyday argument is reflected in the typologies of the scheme-based tradition. For instance, Garssen (2001) views causal arguments as one of three top-level argumentation schemes (“symptomatic argumentation,” “argumentation by analogy,” and “causal argumentation”), and maintains that all other schemes found in everyday informal argument are reducible to these three. 3 However, the scheme-based tradition itself is fairly heterogeneous and has produced a number of competing classification schemes that vary considerably in the number of basic schemes (argument types) assumed, ranging from 3 (as in Garssen, 2001 ) to 60 (in Walton, Reed, and Macagno, 2008 ).

Walton et al.’s (2008) volume is certainly the most comprehensive treatment within the scheme-based approach, and has sought to amalgamate all individual schemes found in the prior literature, yet Oestermeier and Hesse (2000) include schemes not found in that treatment. There are thus continuing theoretical questions about what should constitute a separate argument scheme and how many distinct schemes there are, a question that is unlikely to be independent of the intended use of the typology (see also Hahn & Hornikx, 2015 , for discussion of principled scheme typology).

In the following, we provide a brief overview of the causal schemes identified within the scheme-based literature, following, by and large, Walton et al. (2008) .

First, the seminal work in the scheme-based tradition, Hastings (1962) , distinguishes two basic types of causal argument: argument from cause to effect , and its converse from effect to cause . Hastings sees both as involving further sub-schemes. For the first type, cause to effect, he distinguishes the sub-schemes “prediction on the basis of existing conditions,” referring to an argument whose conclusion states that certain events will occur, and “causal argument based on a hypothetical,” which concerns conclusions that would or will obtain (e.g., “if we were to adopt the proposal, the budget would be overdrawn”). As Hastings notes, the hypothetical sub-scheme appears to be the more common version of the argument, and hypothetical causal arguments are particularly prevalent in policy debates.

For the second basic type of causal argument, effect to cause, a close relation obtains to two sub-schemes that Hastings calls “sign reasoning” (e.g., “there are bear tracks, so there is a bear around”), and “argument from evidence to a hypothesis,” both of which typically involve causes. From this very general perspective, then, most arguments about facts are likely to be causal arguments.

For the argument from cause to effect, Hastings (1963, p. 74) states four critical questions that are assumed to be relevant regardless of the specific sub-type:

Does the cause have a valid causal relation with the effect? That is, is it the true cause?

How probable is the effect on the basis of the correlation?

Is the cause a sufficient cause to produce the effect?

Are any other factors operating to interfere with the production of the cause?

These questions reflect Hastings’ view, formed on the basis of text analysis, that real-world causal arguments are typically complex, involving many causal and correlational sub-components. It is also for this reason, or so Hastings speculates, that causal generalizations invoked in real-world causal arguments are rarely provided with explicit argumentative support. He consequently describes an assertion such as “if the government nationalised industries, poor planning of the operation of those industries will ensue,” for instance, as a claim with “many elements with varying probabilities” (1962, p. 72), rather than a claim about a fully fleshed out causal model. It may be that in many, or even most, real-world contexts, people’s causal models are rather sparse. This aspect seems important to any more detailed normative considerations about causal arguments in everyday life.

We next describe in more detail different types of causal argument schemes both for cause-to-effect and effect-to-cause.

From Cause to Effect

Since Hastings, many authors have included some form of argument from cause to effect within their basic classification of argumentation schemes (e.g., Grennan, 1997 ; Kienpointner, 1992 ; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969 ; Prakken & Renooij, 2001 ; van Eemeren & Kruiger, 1987 ; Walton, 1996 ). What varies across these authors’ work is their characterization of the nature of the scheme and how, if at all, it may be formalized.

Hastings (1962) , Walton (1996) , and Grennan (1997) , for instance, use Toulmin’s (1958) framework to characterize informal argument, which has been popular also in the context of studying the development of argumentation skills ( Kuhn, 1991 ). Toulmin’s framework rests on the insight that classical logic has little to say about everyday informal argument, which must typically deal with uncertainty. As a more appropriate model, Toulmin suggested the inherently dialectical argumentation between two opposing parties in a courtroom. 4 Following from this, Toulmin outlined a general format for representing arguments (Figure 25.2 ). Arguments are broken down into the basic components of “claim” (the conclusion to be established), “data” (the facts appealed to in order to support of the claim), “warrants” (reasons that support the inferential link between data and claim), “backing” (basic assumptions that justify particular warrants), “rebuttals” (exceptions to the claim or the link between warrant and claim) and, finally, “qualifiers” (indications of the degree of regularity with which claim may be stated, such as “certain,” “highly probable,” “rare”).

Figure 25.2 shows an example argument from cause to effect analyzed by Hastings (1962 , p. 67) in this way. This argument, taken from a speech by US president Dwight D. Eisenhower, runs as follows:

Europe cannot attain the towering material stature possible to its people’s skills and spirit so long as it is divided by patchwork territorial fences. They foster localized instead of common interest. They pyramid every cost with middlemen, tariffs, taxes, and overheads. Barred, absolutely, are the efficient division of labor and resources and the easy flow of trade. In the political field, these barriers promote distrust and suspicion. They served vested interests at the expense of peoples and prevent truly concerted action for Europe’s own and obvious good. (quoted in Hastings, 1962 , from Harding, 1952 , p. 532)

This framework provides a potentially useful way of identifying the various components of an overall argument, and has consequently been widely used in psychological research on the development and pedagogy of argument skills (see e.g., van Gelder, Bissett, & Cumming, 2004 ; von Aufschaiter, Erduran, Osborne, & Simon, 2008 ). On its own, however, it does little to provide an evaluative framework for everyday informal argument that might rival classical logic. Arguably, an argument might be better if a warrant is provided, than if it is not (see Kuhn, 1991 , and later in this chaper), but the Toulmin framework itself offers no grounds for a judgment on whether the warrant itself is more or less compelling.

Hastings’s (1962) Toulmin diagram of an argument from cause to effect taken from a speech by Dwight Eisenhower. Full quote appears in text.

It is clearly desirable to have a normative account of argument, that is, an account that tells us how we should argue, and what arguments we, as rational agents, should find compelling and which ones weak. Classical logic sought to provide such a normative standard for “good argument”; Toulmin’s diagnosis of its weakness in the context of everyday argument is right, but his framework does not provide a more suitable replacement. Somehow, an evaluative, normative perspective must be able to engage with the actual content of claim, data, warrant, and backing, not just their structural relationships per se. Indeed, in its structural orientation, Toulmin’s model ultimately shows the same limitations as the framework of classical logic that it seeks to replace.

Subsequent authors have therefore tried to introduce a stronger normative component via critical questions. They have also tried to formalize adequately the type of inference involved in order to bring out more clearly normative aspects of causal argument. Within the scheme-based tradition, the point of departure for such attempts has typically again been a dialectical perspective. Such a perspective tries to bring together the two different senses of “argument” identified at the beginning of this chapter in order to evaluate arguments. It maintains that argument must be understood in the context of wider, dialectical exchange; that is, “argument,” in the narrow sense of an inferential object, can be evaluated properly only by reference to the wider argumentative discourse (“argument” in the wider sense) in which it occurs (e.g., van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004 ).

More specifically, the basic premise underlying much of the more recent work within the scheme-based tradition is that an argument such as that from cause to effect can be treated as containing a defeasible generalization ( Walton, 1996 ; Walton et al., 2008 ), as indicated by the quasi-quantifier “generally” (echoing Hastings’s point that causal generalizations are typically not references to fully fleshed out causal models):

Generally, if A occurs then B will (might) occur. In this case, A occurs (might occur). Therefore, in this case, B will (might) occur.

From a formal perspective, however, this is not to be read as a probabilistic modus ponens (as in, e.g., Edgington, 1995 ; Evans & Over, 2004 ; Oaksford & Chater, 1994 ; a more detailed discussion of probabilistic modus ponens will follow). Instead, authors within the scheme-based tradition take this to be a defeasible argument (in the narrow sense) that is embedded in a (potential) series of dialectical moves (i.e., an argument in the wider sense) where, once a proponent has raised the argument, it is the respondent’s task to reply either by challenging a premise, asking an appropriate critical question, or accepting the argument. Whether or not an argument ultimately “goes through” depends crucially on the allocation of the burden of proof (see, e.g., Walton, 1988 ; but also Hahn & Oaksford, 2007b ). Raising critical questions may shift the burden of proof, so that the defeasible conclusion can no longer be maintained unless further evidence is provided.

While this provides a semi-formal rendition, at best, work in artificial intelligence (AI) over the last decade has sought to embed such an approach within more well-defined systems of non-classical logic (e.g., Gordon, Prakken, & Walton, 2007 ; Prakken & Renooij, 2001 ). Much of this computational work on defeasible reasoning and argumentation has been driven by the belief that a probabilistic approach would be inadequate or impossible. This work has generally ignored probabilistic treatments of conditional inferences such as m odus ponens (e.g., Oaksford & Chater, 1994 ). However, these burden of proof–based approaches have recently been explicitly contrasted with Bayesian, probabilistic approaches to argumentation more generally (e.g., Hahn & Oaksford, 2006 , 2007a ; Hahn, Oaksford, & Harris, 2013 ; Hahn & Hornikx, 2015 ), and we will see positive examples of probabilistic treatments of such generalizations in the following.

Concerning the nature of the generalization from which a defeasible argument about causation is to unfold, Walton et al. (2008) provide several alternative bases for that generalization (where Si is the cause and Sj the effect):

Regularity : Sj regularly follows Si.

Temporal sequence : Si occurs earlier than (or at the same time as) Sj.

Malleability : Si is changeable/could be changed.

Causal status : Si is a necessary or sufficient or INUS condition of Sj. 5

  Pragmatic status : Pragmatic criteria, like voluntariness or abnormality, may single out a cause.

The purpose of these clauses is to serve as operative criteria in reasoned discourse such that

in any given case, the proponent of a causal argument can select one of these clauses as representing the kind of rule [s]‌he has in mind as representing the sort of claim [s]he is making […]. [I]t should be possible to make all or any of these claims, and so the analysis of causal argumentation schemes should permit all three possibilities. ( Walton et al., 2008 , 185)

Notice that clause 4 allows for causal overdetermination, that is, cases where causes are sufficient but non-necessary for their alleged effects, that is, the effects may be brought about by one or more of several sufficient causes. Here, at the very least, it becomes clear that the normative project concerning the evaluation of causal arguments must necessarily engage in the question of what a cause is.

While clauses 1–4 more or less repeat standard criteria from work on causation within the philosophy of science, clause 5 references pragmatic factors to also include the wider context of causal argument. Walton et al. (2008) motivate this by reference to causal argument in law (e.g., Hart & Honore, 1985 ) where particular types of causes are most relevant, most notably voluntary human actions, which are singled out from the overall causal chain of events in order to assign various responsibilities to agents. This echoes Pearl’s (2009 , p. 401) observation that, at least since Aristotelian scholarship, causality has served a dual role: causes are both “the target of credit and blame,” on one hand, and “the carriers of physical flow and control on the other.” Both aspects figure prominently in causal arguments. Indeed, it presently remains unclear whether there is a single, unitary notion of causality that suffices for both aspects, or whether seemingly competing accounts of causation such as counterfactual accounts ( Lewis, 1973 ; see Bennett, 2003 , for a review) and generative accounts ( Dowe, 2000 ; Salmon, 1984 ) are in fact both involved in human causal judgments, albeit to different ends (see also Walsh, Hahn, & DeGregorio, 2009 ; Illari & Russo, 2014 ). Similarly, it is unclear whether domains such as law posses notions of causality that differ from those of the physical or social sciences (see, e.g., Honore, 2010 , for discussion and further literature; see also Lagnado & Gerstenberg, Chapter 29 in this volume). Closer textual analysis of real-world arguments, in law and elsewhere, should be informative here.

Argument from Consequences

Finally, there is a type of argument from cause to effect that seems both practically important and prevalent enough to be discussed separately: namely the so-called argument from consequences. The argument from consequences is a type of what Hastings (1963; see earlier discussion) calls “hypothetical causal argument.” Such an argument seeks to promote or deter from a particular course of action on the basis of that action’s putative consequences. This type of argument forms the basis of much practical reasoning, that is, reasoning about what to do:

Argument from consequences Premise: If A is brought about, good (bad) consequences will plausibly occur. Conclusion: Therefore A should (should not) be brought about.

Within the scheme-based tradition, a number of closely related practical reasoning schemes are distinguished, such as a general scheme for “practical inference” (I have goal X, Y realizes X, I should carry out Y; see Walton et al., 2008 , p. 323; or similarly, the “argument from goal,” Walton et al., 2008 , p. 325; Verheij, 2003 ), and a number of special cases of the argument from consequences feature prominently in the traditional catalogue of fallacies, such as the argumentum ad misericordiam (see, e.g., Hahn & Oaksford, 2006 ), which uses an appeal to pity or sympathy to support a conclusion, or the argumentum ad baculum , an argument from threat (see also Walton, 2000 ), or slippery slope arguments (more on these later). For the argumentation theorist, these different subtypes may each hold interest in their own right (or at least it will be of interest whether or not these subtypes do, in fact, merit conceptual distinction because they actually raise normative and empirical issues of their own; see also Hahn & Hornikx, 2015 ).

Common to consequentialist arguments is that valuations are central to their strength. Consequentialist arguments (see, e.g., Govier, 1982 ) about the desirability of a particular event, policy, or action rest not only on the probability with which a cause (a hypothetical action) will bring about a particular consequence (the action’s effect), but also on the utilities of both the action and the desired/undesired future consequence. The strength of an argument from consequences, therefore, is properly determined by considerations of probability and utility. For example, when the relevant consequence of a given action under debate is (perceived to be) more or less neutral, this gives few grounds to in fact take that action, even if the consequence itself is almost certain to obtain. Likewise, if the consequence of an action is highly undesirable, that is, has a high negative utility, this will give few grounds to not avoid the action, even if the probability that this consequence will obtain is almost zero.

Given that consequentialist arguments are about action, it is unsurprising that they align well with Bayesian decision theory ( Ramsey, 1931 ; Savage, 1954 ), which identifies optimal courses of action through the multiplicative combination of probability and utility. A number of authors have pursued a decision-theoretic approach to consequentialist argument (e.g., Elqayam et al., 2015 ; Evans, Neilens, Handley & Over, 2008 ; Hahn & Oaksford, 2006 , 2007a ), including empirical examination of people’s subjective valuations of argument strength for such arguments. This work will be described in more detail in our survey of experimental work.

From Effect to Cause

What then of arguments from effects to causes? As noted earlier, a number of schemes concerning inference from data to a hypothesis are pertinent here, whether the hypothesis be a causal generalization or an individual event. Most authors in the scheme-based tradition have included some form of “argument from sign” and/or from “evidence to hypothesis” (see Walton et al., 2008 , for further references). At the most general level (where the hypothesis may be of any kind, causal or otherwise) such arguments seem well-captured by Bayesian inference (see also Hahn & Hornikx, 2015 ), though there are also theoretical and empirical questions here about the relation of such inference to abduction and inference to the best explanation (e.g., Lombrozo, 2007 ; Schupbach & Sprenger, 2011 ; van Fraassen, 1989 ; Weisberg, 2009 ; Lombrozo & Vasilyeva, Chapter 22 in this volume). The fact that these inferences concern putative causes, however, puts them in the remit of causal learning (see, e.g., Rottmann, Chapter 6 in this volume). An important project would thus be to square psychological results on causal learning with the types of arguments people entertain when seeking to identify putative causes. Chief among the “specialist” arguments seeking to identify causation is the classic fallacy of “inference from correlation to cause,” which we discuss next.

Correlation and the Bayesian Approach to Argument Strength

Putative fallacies, or “arguments that seem correct but are not” ( Hamblin, 1970 ), or that “seem to be better arguments of their kind than they in fact are” (e.g., Hansen, 2002 ; Walton, 2010 ), pervade everyday informal argument. Catalogs of fallacies (originating with Aristotelian scholarship) have been the focus of long-standing theoretical debate, and a full understanding of the fallacies has remained a central concern to philosophers, communication scholars, logicians, rhetoricians, and cognitive scientists interested in argument.

A staple of the traditional fallacies catalog is the inference from correlation to cause, also known as the post hoc fallacy, as in post hoc, ergo propter hoc (which roughly translates as “after this, hence because of this”), or relatedly, the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (Latin for “with this, therefore because of this”). In more modern terms, this is normally stated as “there is a positive correlation between A and B (premise), so A causes B (conclusion).” As a (fallacious) example, one may consider the (now debunked) claim that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination causes autism—a spurious link that could arise due to the temporal nature of MMR vaccination and the emergence of overt signs of autism.

The relevant argument scheme has been associated with the following critical questions (see Walton et al., 2008 ):

CQ1: Is there really a correlation between A and B? CQ2: Is there any reason to think that the correlation is more than a coincidence? CQ3: Could there be some third factor, C, that is causing both A and B?

These critical questions reflect the general appreciation that, although they are not deductively valid (i.e., their conclusions are not logically entailed by the premises), such arguments nevertheless can be, and often are, reasonable inductive inferences. Such arguments, then, need not be “fallacious” in any stronger sense than lack of logical validity (and logical validity itself is no guarantee that an argument is strong, as the case of circular arguments demonstrates; see, e.g., Hahn, 2011 ). Moreover, this lack of logical validity is a feature that they have in common with the overwhelming majority of everyday arguments, since informal argument typically involves uncertain inference. The argument scheme approach thus highlights a characteristic aspect of most fallacies within the catalog: depending on their specific content, instances of these arguments often seem quite strong in the sense that their premises lend inductive support to their conclusions.

Exceptions and content-specific variation have generally plagued theoretical attempts to provide a comprehensive formal treatment that explains why fallacies make for “bad” arguments of their kind on specific occasions of their use. The logical structure of these arguments cannot be the key, however, because versions of the same form of argument (and hence the same logical structure) differ in relative strength. Variations in strength must be due to content-specific variation, and so require a formal framework such as probability theory (as an intensional formal system; see Pearl, 1988 ), which makes reference to content. From a probabilistic perspective, then, the allegedly fallacious arguments that were historically tabulated as fallacies are typically not fallacious per se. Rather, specific instances are weak due to their specific content, and probabilistic Bayesian formalization brings this to the fore (see, e.g., Hahn & Oaksford, 2006 , 2007a ; Oaksford & Hahn, 2004 ; and, specifically in the context of logical reasoning fallacies, Korb, 2004; Oaksford & Chater, 1994 ).

For the argument from correlation to cause, a probabilistic perspective can go beyond the three simple critical questions offered in the scheme-based tradition. Specifically, a wealth of statistical techniques for inferring causation from essentially correlational data have been developed: learning algorithms for causal Bayesian Belief Networks and structural equation modeling (see, e.g., Pearl, 2000 ) provide salient examples (see also, Rottman, Chapter 6 in this volume). These techniques seek to learn causal models from data and, as part of this, provide evaluation of how good a given causal model is as a description of available data, thus providing measures of how convincing a particular inference from correlation to cause actually is.

An important, practical project for future work would be to try to distill insights from such techniques into “critical questions” that can be readily communicated in everyday settings.

In concluding the overview of types of causal arguments, it is worth drawing attention to several aspects of present typology. First, it is notable how varied and diverse causal argument is, reflecting the central role that considerations of causality take in human thinking. Notable also are the differences between attempts at systematization: the typology drawn from corpus analysis (see section “Casual Argument Patterns from Corpus Analysis” ) is much richer than the scheme-based literature concerning evidence for causes themselves. At the same time, the scheme-based tradition makes clear how much arguing from causes there is, and that causal argument is not only often hypothetical or counter-factual, but also makes reference to the utilities of putative outcomes in the service of deciding on courses of action. This suggests that a predominant focus within the causal cognition literature on causal learning will arguably miss important aspects of causal cognition, and it sits well with recent attempts to move the focus of psychological research on causal cognition beyond some of the dichotomies that have dominated the field in the past (see also Oaksford & Chater, Chapter 19 in this volume, and Lagnado & Gerstenberg, Chapter 29 in this volume).

At the same time, it is clear that much work remains to be done at the theoretical level of typologies. For one, a single, integrated typology of causal argument would seem desirable. It is only when one has a clear overview of a target phenomenon that one can hope to build adequate theories of it. Typologies aim at both completeness and systematization. The former determines the scope of a theory, the latter goes hand in hand with theory development itself, because systematization is about discerning patterns or crucial dimensions of variation across cases. Consequently, the mere fact that there is no comprehensive, systematic typology of causal argument illustrates that causal argument is still poorly understood. Both traditions surveyed here still appear to underappreciate the variety of causal argumentation “out there”: the fact that there is comparatively little overlap between Oestermeier and Hesse’s (2000) analysis and the large, scheme-based compendium of Walton et al. (2008) raises the possibility that there are further types of causal argument that both have missed.

Finally, it is apparent that much of the research on types of causal argument also has explicitly normative concerns. Normative considerations are valuable, not only because they afford standards of comparison for rational, computational analysis of human behavior (see, e.g., Anderson, 1990 ; and in the context of causation specifically, e.g., Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2005 ; Sloman & Lagnado, 2005 ), but also because the quality of people’s everyday thinking and arguing is of immediate practical concern. The emphasis within the scheme-based tradition on “critical questions” and the explicit links to improving critical thinking and argument reflects a worthy goal. At the same time, however, the preceding survey makes clear the diversity of normative approaches that presently obtains, ranging from the informal to formal, and spanning non-classical logics as well as probability theory. A unified perspective would clearly be desirable. Before returning to normative issues in the final section of this chapter, however, we next survey the extent of empirical work on causal argument.

Causal Argument and Cognition

While there is little empirical work under the header of “causal argument” per se, the breadth of causal argument types identified earlier and the importance of causality to our everyday reasoning suggest that there should nevertheless be considerable amounts of relevant psychological research. And, on closer inspection, there is a sizable body of research whose investigative topic is reasoning or argumentation that happens to involve causality. In particular, investigations of causal arguments and people’s ability to deal with them are reported in the literature on the development of argumentation skills, on science arguments, and on consequentialist argument and reasoning. In the following we provide brief examples of each.

Causal Conditionals

Reasoning with conditionals, particularly logical reasoning with conditionals, is a topic of long-standing research within cognitive psychology (see, e.g., Oaksford & Chater, 2010a , for an introduction). Within this body of work one can find a number of studies investigating conditionals (i.e., “if … then statements”) and potential logical inferences from these for specifically causal materials.

Most of this research has centered on four argument forms: modus ponens (MP), modus tollens (MT), affirming the consequent (AC), and denying the antecedent (DA)—exemplified in Table 25.1 . Only two of these—MP and MT—are logically valid, that is, when their premises are true, the truth of their conclusions follows by logical necessity. However, the long-standing finding is that people fail to distinguish appropriately between the different schemes when asked about logical validity (e.g., Marcus & Rips, 1979 ). Moreover, for conditional inference and other forms of logical reasoning such as syllogistic reasoning, there are countless demonstrations that people’s inferences are affected not just by the formal (logical) structure of the inference, which is the only relevant aspect for their validity, but also by specific content (e.g., Evans, Barston, & Pollard, 1983 ; Oaksford, Chater & Larkin, 2000 ).

Much of the empirical and theoretical debate about conditional reasoning has focused on the issue of the appropriate normative standard against which participants’ responses should be evaluated. Classical logic renders natural language “if … then” as the so-called material conditional of propositional logic, and much early research on logical reasoning within psychology adopted this normative perspective (e.g., Wason, 1968 ). Both philosophers (e.g., Edgington, 1995 ) and psychologists (e.g., Evans & Over, 2004 ; Oaksford & Chater, 1994 ), however, have argued that this is an inappropriate formalization of what people mean with natural language “if … then,” both conceptually and empirically. This has given rise to alternative, in particular probabilistic, interpretations of the conditional (in which case, factors such as believability need no longer constitute an inappropriate bias).

One aspect that has figured here is that natural language conditionals often involve causal connections (see also Oaksford & Chater, Chapter 19 in this volume). Cummins et al. (1991) examined specifically how participants’ judgments of the conclusion of a conditional argument differed systematically as a function of the number of alternative causes and disabling conditions that characterized the causal relationship (as benchmarked in a pretest with different participants) and did so in potentially different ways for each the four classic forms: MP, MT, AC, and DA. For example, people were presented with arguments such as

“If my finger is cut, then it bleeds. My finger is cut. Therefore, it bleeds.” or “If I eat candy often, then I have cavities. I eat candy often. Therefore, I have cavities.”

Here (so Cummins et al., 1991 ) it is presumably easier to think of disabling conditions for the second example (cavities) than it is for the first (bleeding finger), and one might expect people’s judgments of conclusion strength to be sensitive to this. In keeping with this, participants’ judgments were found to vary systematically with the number of alternative causes and disabling conditions. Conclusions of arguments based on conditionals with few alternative causes or few disabling conditions, in particular, were more acceptable than conclusions based on those with many. Moreover, Cummins et al. showed that both the number of alternative causes and possible disabling conditions affected the extent to which the conditional (if … then) was interpreted as a bi-conditional (if and only if), or not.

Subsequent work has also attempted to distinguish competing accounts of logical reasoning using specifically causal materials (e.g., Ali, Chater & Oaksford, 2011 ; Quinn & Markovits, 1998 ; Verschueren, Schaeken, & d’Ydewalle, 2005 ; for an overview, see also Oaksford & Chater, 2010b ).

Recent work, particularly the sophisticated analyses provided by Singmann, Klauer, and Over (2014) , finds robust evidence only for an interpretation of the conditional as a conditional probability, but finds no evidence that participants’ judgments of conclusion probability are sensitive to “delta P” ((P(q|p) − P(q|¬p)), a quantity that has figured prominently in accounts of causal learning (see. e.g., Over, Hadjichristidis, Evans, Handley & Sloman, 2007 ; Sloman, 2005 ; see also Over, Chapter 18 in this volume). Whether this result will prove robust in subsequent work remains to be seen, but it highlights the potential for work on causal argument to complement the results from other, more familiar, paradigms for investigating the psychology of human causal learning and causal understanding. Argument evaluation tasks may provide independent evidence in the context of rival accounts of laypeoples’ understanding of causation as found in decades of causal learning studies. 6

Consequentialist Argument

Recent years have also seen increasing empirical interest in another form of conditional, namely consequentialist, arguments. Evans, Neilens, Handley, and Over (2008) investigated a variety of conditionals expressing conditional tips, warnings, threats, and promises. For example, “If you go camping this weekend ( p ) then it will rain ( q ),” is a clear warning not to go camping. From the decision-theoretic perspective mentioned earlier, the higher P(q|p ), and the more negative the utility associated with the consequent, U( q ), that is, rain, the more persuasive should be a conditional warning to the conclusion that action p should not be taken (¬ p ), that is, you should not go camping. Evans et al. found that participants’ judgments of persuasiveness varied in the predicted way as a function of costs and benefits of antecedent ( p ) and conclusion ( q ), as well as the conditional probability ( P(q|p )) linking the two. These effects held for both positive (tips, promises) and negative (warnings, threats) consequentialist arguments.

Corner, Hahn, and Oaksford (2011) provided an empirical examination of a particular type of consequentialist argument: slippery slope arguments such as “if voluntary euthanasia is legalized, then in the future there will be more cases of ‘medical murder.’ ” Slippery slope arguments are a type of warning and are distinct merely in the type of (implied) mechanism that underlies P( q | p ). In particular, for many slippery slope arguments a gradual shift of category boundaries is at play (on other forms of slippery slope arguments, see, e.g., Volokh, 2003 ): The act of categorizing some instance (say, voluntary euthanasia) under a more general predicate (here, legal medical intervention) is assumed to lead inevitably to other items (e.g., involuntary euthanasia or “medical murder”) eventually falling under the same predicate.

Corner et al. (2011) examined not only the effects of utility on the perceived strength of slippery slope arguments, but also examined a specific mechanism underlying the conditional probability P(q|p ). Specifically, they examined the causal mechanism involved in “sorites”-type slippery slope arguments, namely “category boundary reappraisal”: Current theories of conceptual structure typically agree that encountering instances of a category at the category boundary should extend that boundary for subsequent classifications, and there is a wealth of empirical evidence to support this (e.g., Nosofsky, 1986 ). Building on this, Corner et al. (2011) showed how people’s confidence in classifications of various acts as instances of a particular category was directly related to their degree of endorsement for corresponding slippery slope arguments, and that this relationship is moderated by similarity. Slippery slope arguments from one instance to another were viewed as more compelling, the more similar the instances were perceived to be.

The Corner et al. studies demonstrate how the conditional probability P(q|p ) that influences the strength of consequentialist arguments as a type of cause-to-effect argument may be further unpacked. The same is true for a recent study by Maio et al. (2014) that experimentally examined a particular type of hypothetical consequentialist causal argument that appeals to fundamental values. Specifically, Maio et al. investigated “co-value argumentation,” which appeals to furthering one value because doing so will further another. The following quote by George W. Bush provides an example: “I will choose freedom because I think freedom leads to equality” (see Anderson, 1999, as cited in Maio et al., 2014 ).

Numerous examples of this argument type are found, ranging from Plato—“equality leads to friendship”— to Howard Greenspan, who argued that “honesty leads to success in life and business” (examples cited in Maio et al., 2014 ).

“Success,” “freedom,” “equality,” and “honesty” are terms that exemplify what social psychologists consider to be instances of fundamental values that are universally used to guide and evaluate behavior ( Schwartz, 1992 ; Verplanken and Holland, 2002 ). As consequentialist arguments, their strength should depend both on the strength of the causal connection between antecedent and conclusion value, and the antecedent value’s importance.

With respect to causal connections, psychological research on fundamental values has provided evidence that our value systems are structured, that is, they display internal ordering. This ordering is based on the fact that actions taken in pursuit of a particular value will have psychological, practical, and social consequences that may be either compatible or incompatible with the pursuit of another value (for empirical evidence concerning the psychological relevance of this structure, see, e.g., Schwartz, 1992 ; Schwartz & Boehnke, 2004 ; Maio et al., 2009 ).

From this, one can derive predictions about the strength of arguments that combine values. Opposing values are classed as such because the actions taken in their respective pursuit may conflict, that is, pursuing one of two opposing values likely impinges negatively on the pursuit of the other. Conversely, values that fulfill similar motives will be positively correlated in terms of the consequences of actions one might take in their pursuit. Finally, values that are orthogonal will be more or less independent.

These relations—comparative incompatibility, compatibility, and independence—translate directly to systematic differences in causal relatedness and hence conditional probabilities: two opposing values will be negatively correlated, similar values will be positively correlated, and orthogonal values will be independent. Expressed in probabilistic terms, a causal perspective can thus provide clear predictions about the relative convincingness of different consequentialist arguments that combine any given two values. Co-value argumentation involving opposing values should give rise to less convincing arguments than using orthogonal values, and similar values should be even more convincing. In keeping with the causal basis, Maio et al. (2014) found this pattern confirmed both in ratings of argument persuasiveness and in proclaimed intention to vote for a political party on the basis of a manifesto that had manipulated co-value argument. These results not only underscore the importance of causal considerations to people’s evaluation of everyday arguments in the practical domain of values. They also provide an extreme example of the degree of abstraction in causal argument and the sparsity of the underlying causal models that people are willing to engage with in arguments about real-world relationships.

Causal Argument and Causal Thought: Kuhn (1991)

Finally, we discuss what is arguably the central study on causal argument to date, even though it is not explicitly billed as an investigation of causal argument. Kuhn’s (1991) monograph The Skills of Argument is a landmark investigation of people’s ability to engage in real-world argument, across the life span and across different levels of educational background. Kuhn’s fundamental premise is that thinking ability is intrinsically tied to argumentation ability, to the extent that reasoning may just be seen as a kind of “arguing something through with oneself.” Furthermore, Kuhn maintains that thinking (and with it argumentation) abilities are far less well understood than one might expect. This is because of the focus within most of cognitive psychology on lab-based experimentation, frequently involving highly artificial, stylized materials, which leave unanswered questions about how people fare in actual everyday argument. These limitations are compounded by the fact that participants are typically drawn from undergraduate samples. Kuhn’s (1991) study of argument skills sought to redress this balance by getting people from a range of backgrounds (with both college- and non-college-level education) and a range of ages (teenagers, 19–29, 40–49, and 60–69 years of age; for studies of younger children, see Kuhn, Amsel, & O’Loughlin, 1988 ) to engage in argument generation and evaluation for a series of real-world topics that would actually matter to them, but for which they would also have varying levels of expertise. Crucially, from the perspective of the researcher interested in causation and causal arguments, all three topics concerned causes: what causes prisoners to return to crime after they are released; what causes children to fail school; and what causes unemployment.

In a series of structured interviews, Kuhn and colleagues asked participants to provide an initial causal explanation or theory of the phenomenon in question. They then asked participants to provide evidence for those theories, but consider also alternative causes and what kinds of evidence would count for or against them. Responses were coded with a modified version of the Toulmin framework described earlier into “theories,” “supporting evidence,” and “opposing argumentation” (alternative theories, counterarguments, rebuttals).

Kuhn found considerable variation in argument skill across participants. In particular, a sizable number of participants were unable to generate genuine evidence for any of their theories across the three topics (29%) or to generate an alternative theory (8%). Furthermore, where there were failures to generate real evidence, evidence was poorly differentiated from the theory itself.

Where participants supplied causal arguments for their preferred theories, only a minority offered genuine evidence that makes reference to covariation. Other forms of genuine evidence found were evidence from analogy, causal generalizations, and discounting or elimination of alternative causes. At the other extreme (non-evidence), participants seemed willing to treat the effect itself as evidence of the cause, or even to deny the need for evidence altogether.

This serves to underscore earlier points about the sparsity of causal models in (at least some contexts) of real-world argument, and Kuhn’s findings seem reminiscent of Keil’s work on the “illusion of explanatory depth” (see, e.g., Keil, 2003 ). At the same time, it is striking that comparatively few participants showed clear insight into the importance of manipulation in establishing causal relationships in the arguments they supplied.

Limitations were apparent also in participants’ evaluation of evidence given to them. In a second session, the same group of participants was presented with evidence designed intentionally to be largely non-diagnostic. Examples are given in Table 25.2 .

The evidence in Table 25.2 contains descriptions with little information that could be used to infer causal relationships. Though this was recognized by some participants (Question: “What do you think is the cause of Peter’s return to crime?” Response: “there’s nothing in here that suggests a cause”; p. 207), sizable numbers of others did perceive the passages to be evidence for a particular causal mechanism, and possibly even more surprisingly, expressed great certainty concerning their preferred cause.

In all of this, participants showed variations across topics, seemingly as a function of familiarity with the domain, but there was greater consistency in performance than would be expected by chance. In particular, there was consistency also with what Kuhn and colleagues deemed “epistemological perspectives,” that is, more general beliefs participants had about knowledge, and the extent to which different people might reasonably hold different views, without endorsing a relativism so total that all knowledge is seen as “mere opinion.” Finally, for both epistemological perspectives and argument skills, there was statistical evidence of influence only from educational background, not gender or age.

Follow-up research by Sá, Kelley, Ho, and Stanovich (2005) that again examined self-generated causal theories for the crime and education topics, elicited in a similar structured interview, confirmed the sizable variation in participants’ argument skills.

Causal Argument: A Research Agenda

From our survey of extant research it should be clear that causal argument presents a rich field of inquiry, but one that is presently still underdeveloped. In the final sections, we draw together what appear to us to be the main themes and strands for future research.

One strand, on which much else rests, is the issue of typologies of causal argument. The first thing to emerge from the survey of types of causal arguments identified in the literature is the extraordinary richness of causal argument. People argue daily both about causes and from causes, and these arguments concern not just the way things presently are, but also future possibilities and actions. This also gives many causal arguments an intrinsic link with utilities and valuations.

For the argumentation theorist, there is clearly more work to be done here: it is unclear whether even the extensive list drawn up in this chapter exhausts the range of different types of causal argument to be found in everyday and specialist discourse. This question of typology (and its completeness) matters because only with a full sense of the many different ways in which causes figure in argument, and thus in everyday life, can one hope to have a complete picture of the psychology of causal reasoning.

The case for an intimate connection between reasoning and argumentation has been well made ( Kuhn, 1991 ; Mercier & Sperber, 2011 ), and argumentation not only provides a window into reasoning abilities, it may also be a crucial factor in shaping them. In the context of typologies, important theoretical questions remain about what should count as a distinct “type” of argument, both normatively and descriptively, and why (see Hahn & Hornikx, 2015 ).

Much work also remains to be done with respect to the normative question of what makes a given type of causal argument “good” or “strong.” This matters to researchers who are interested in the development and improvement of skills—argumentation theorists, developmental and educational psychologists, or researchers interested in science communication, to name but a few. It matters also to anyone concerned with human rationality, whether from a philosophical or a psychological perspective. Finally, given the benefits of rational analysis and computational level explanation to understanding human behavior (e.g., Anderson, 1990 ), it should matter also to any psychologist simply interested in psychological processes (see also Hahn, 2014 ).

As seen in the section “Arguments for Causes and Causes for Arguments,” there is presently no fully worked out, coherent normative picture on causal argument. The literature is fragmented in terms of both approach and preferred formalism (or even whether formal considerations are necessary at all). The notion of “critical questions” has educational and practical merit, but the present depth of such critical questions falls considerably behind what could be developed on the basis of extant formal frameworks such as causal Bayesian networks (e.g., Pearl, 2000 ).

A comprehensive normative treatment of causal argument seems a genuine cognitive science project that will need contributions from a number of fields, including artificial intelligence and philosophy. It offers also the possibility of a more comprehensive and more effective treatment of causal argument in computational argumentation systems (see, e.g., Rahwan & Simari, 2009 ; Rahwan, Zablith & Reed, 2007 ). At the same time, it must be stressed that there is a considerable amount of work required before anything like a comprehensive normative treatment of causal argument might be achieved. There are aspects, such as causal inference, for which there already exist formal approaches that have a reasonable claim to normative foundations, such as causal Bayesian networks. However, these presently still leave many factors relevant to causal argument largely unaddressed. In particular, only recently have researchers started to concern themselves with normative questions involved in the transition between causal models, as become necessary, for example, on learning new conditionals (Hartmann, submitted).

Only with a clear normative understanding can questions of human competence in causal argument be fully addressed. At present, the evidence on human skill in dealing with causation is rather mixed. While humans may do very well in lab-based contingency learning tasks (but see also Kuhn, 2007 ), and do rather well in causal inference involving explicit verbal descriptions such as those presented in causal conditional reasoning tasks, thinking and arguing about complex real-world materials (even frequently encountered ones for which people possess considerable amounts of relevant knowledge) seem to be another matter, as Kuhn’s (1991) study shows.

Both the sizable individual differences in Kuhn’s (1991) study and her finding that, although there is consistency, the degree of competence expressed seems to vary with familiarity of topic and materials, suggest that skills are more or less readily expressed according to context. So a fuller understanding of causal reasoning should understand also what particular aspects contribute to success or failure.

Kuhn’s (1991) study also highlights a distinction that has been drawn elsewhere in the literature on causal reasoning, namely that between causal structure and causal strength ( Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2005 ). Examination of competence in dealing with causality needs consideration not only of the circumstances under which people draw inferences about causal structure, but also how strong they consider causal relations (and the supporting evidence) to be.

In generating and evaluating causal arguments, there are three distinct ways in which reasoners might go wrong, exemplified in Figure 25.3 . Specifically, causal arguments should be evaluated with respect to how well they align the causal-premises (of the argument) with a causal-model and a subjective degree of support (Figure 25.3 ).

Kuhn’s study suggests that, for some people at least, judgments of causal strength may be considerably exaggerated, in that individual aspects of what are clearly complex multifactorial problems (such as unemployment) are selectively picked out and treated as “the cause.” Even more worrying, however, are the high levels of certainty that many of Kuhn’s participants exhibit, even in the face of largely undiagnostic evidence, suggesting also that failures with respect to “degree of support” may be more prevalent than one would wish.

In all of this, it remains to be fully understood what features people attend to in both establishing and manipulating causal models, what role argument plays in this (given also that much of our knowledge derives from the testimony of others; Coady, 1994 ), and what weight people attach to these. It also seems important to understand how detailed or sparse people’s causal models are in many real-world contexts, and how this interacts with argument evaluation. To achieve this, there is a need for integration of research on causal learning, causal inference, and causal argument.

Schematic representation of the alignment between causal-premises, causal-model, and a subjective degree of support. Perfect alignment of all three elements maps onto a equilateral triangle, as shown here, while imperfections gives rise to angles deviating from 60° angles.

At the same time, as we have stressed throughout this chapter, the study of causal argument offers unique opportunities for insight into causal cognition, and work on causal argument offers methodological approaches that complement lab-based studies in a number of important ways. Examination of real-world argument is possible, not just through structured interviews such as those of Kuhn and colleagues, but also through the direct analysis of corpora of extant speech and text.

Since argumentation is a pervasive linguistic activity and causal reasoning is frequent in arguing, linguistic data for the study of causal reasoning are readily available, for instance in a number of freely accessible linguistic text corpora (for an overview of such corpora, see Xiao, 2008 , or Lee, 2010 ). As Oestermeier and Hesse’s (2000) study illustrates, corpus analysis does not require a prior determination of variables, and is thus well-suited for explorative research into natural language argumentation. In particular, corpora may be assumed to provide a fairly unbiased empirical basis for specific research questions probed because they have been recorded independently of those questions (see Schütze, 2010 , p. 117). Thus, language corpora could be used to study linguistic behavior in more or less natural environments.

Linguistic text corpora also come in many shapes and sizes. Some are restricted to written language (and, as in the case of books and articles, may reflect repeated careful editing), while others contain spoken language. Corpora thus not only make available argumentation in more or less natural environments, but also contain argumentation more or less produced “on the fly.”

Two general strategies for making use of text corpora can be distinguished. Corpus- driven research uses them in explorative fashion under minimal hypotheses as to the linguistic forms that may be relevant to a given research question (also known as “letting the data speak first ”); corpus- based research, in contrast, uses them to verify or falsify specific hypotheses regarding the use of natural language on the basis of extant theories of linguistic forms (see Biber, 2010 ).

While it is fairly straightforward to use corpora to gain access to some data that may well exhibit a larger slice of the real-world use of the language of causality, there are limits to studying causal argumentation in this way. First, an exhaustive list of the linguistic means to express causality is unlikely to be forthcoming, as there are several ways to express a causal connection through coordination with terms not specifically marked for expressing causality (exemplified in this very sentence through the use of “as,” which may be read causally, or not). As Oestermeier and Hesse observe, “In verbal arguments, reasons and conclusions can be easily distinguished if connectives like ‘because,’ ‘therefore,’ ‘so’ or other explicit markers are used” ( Oestermeier & Hesse 2000 , p. 65). However, the sheer number of such markers testifies to an astonishingly wide variety of linguistic forms that can be employed to express some sort of causal connection, and thus figure in causal reasoning. The perhaps most frequent linguistic form is the subordination of clauses by means of (linguistic rather than logical) conjunctions such as “because,” “since,” “as,” and so on (see Altenberg, 1984 ; Diessel & Hetterle, 2011 ). But a variety of causative verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and prepositions can also be used to express causal connections (for an overview, see Khoo, Chan, & Niu, 2002 ).

Moreover, causality can also be encoded in text organization, and so pertains to organizational principles that are reconstructable only at levels of discourse higher than the sentence level ( Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005 ; Altenberg, 1984 ). Not only may causal premises thus be left implicit (see the section “Casual Argument Patterns from Corpus Analysis” ), the relevant causal connection itself need not be evident on the linguistic surface. Accordingly, we lack sufficient criteria to trace all causal phenomena contained in a given corpus through software that queries corpora for linguistic forms or structures. So, one retains an unknown number of false negatives among the results, and conversely, as is the case with “because” itself, some of the linguistic means for indicating causal relationships also have other roles than simple causal connection.

Nevertheless, corpora make for an excellent tool in studying natural language argumentation. Specifically, we think it worthwhile to examine further the communicative circumstances that are typical of different argument schemes. This would provide an entry point for investigation of the extent to which causal arguments in actual discourse meet the norms of the causal argument schemes they might be thought to manifest. It might, arguably, also provide information about the persuasiveness of different types of causal argument. In particular, the frequency of the causal mechanism argument type (see Oestermeier & Hesse, 2000 , and the section “Causal Argument Patterns from Corpus Analysis” in this chapter) may well be indicative of the prevalence of a certain model of causality that laypeople endorse. Corpus data might then, for example, provide an empirical basis for establishing whether the mechanistic argument type is in fact associated with a specific model of causality, and to examine the association of other argument types with specific causal models.

In short, corpus analysis may provide a valuable complement to both the experimental and interview-based methodologies that empirical studies of causal argument have seen.

Conclusions

Causal argument, we hope the reader is now convinced, represents an important topic in its own right: the practical relevance of argumentation to everyday life is enormous, and, theoretically, a good case has been made that argumentation skills are deeply interconnected with reasoning skills (e.g., Hahn & Oaksford, 2007a ; Kuhn, 1991 ; Mercier & Sperber, 2011 ). Given further the breadth of argument involving causation that can be seen in everyday life (as surveyed in the discussion of typologies), causal argument deserves far more consideration than it has, to date, received. Last but not least, a greater understanding of causal argument, both theoretically and empirically, is likely to provide new impetus to the understanding of causal cognition.

This duality—of reasons as causes for belief, and causes as reasons in argumentation—is not limited to English, and can also be discerned in other languages such as German “weil”; Swedish “darför,” French “parce que,” Italian “perque,” Spanish “porque,” Polish “ponieważ,” Russian “potomú čto,” Chinese “yīn,” Japanese “kara,” and so on.

Mackie’s statement reflects a widely shared understanding of causes as partial conditions of their contingent effects, and seeks to convey—in a great hurry—that (i) causes bring their effects about only under suitable background conditions, so that causes alone are not sufficient for their effects; (ii) that an effect cannot occur without its cause, so that causes are nevertheless necessary; (iii) that cause plus background conditions (and perhaps other things) together constitute a condition, C, yielding the effect—thus making C a sufficient condition, since C cannot be a necessary condition, (iv) as contingent effects can be alternatively conditioned.

These three types, and with them the critical questions associated with each, may partially overlap. For instance, as Hitchcock and Wagemans (2011 , p. 193) point out, a fever can be viewed both as an effect and as a symptom of the infection that causes it. Hence, an argument from effect to cause—here, from fever to infection—may instantiate the symptomatic or the causal argumentation scheme, and possibly even both at the same time.

For a critical evaluation of the import of legal concepts into argumentation theory, in particular the central notion of “burden of proof,” see Hahn and Oaksford (2007b) .

Clause 4 gives three different kinds of conditionals, or rules of inference or warrant, each of which is hedged by a ceteris paribus clause. The necessary condition is: if Si would not occur, then Sj would not occur; the sufficient condition states: if Si would occur, then Sj would occur; and the INUS condition reads: if Si would occur within a set of conditions, each of which is necessary for the occurrence of Sj, then Sj would occur (see note 2 on Mackie’s INUS condition).

It should be noted in this context that Sloman and Lagnado (2005) have argued for qualitative differences between conditional and causal reasoning. However, Oaksford and Chater (2010b) argue that the seeming empirical differences observed by Sloman and Lagnado (2005) are due to inadvertent differences in causal strength. The results of Ali et al. (2011) are in keeping with that suggestion.

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Kant and Hume on Causality

Kant famously attempted to “answer” what he took to be Hume’s skeptical view of causality, most explicitly in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783); and, because causality, for Kant, is a central example of a category or pure concept of the understanding, his relationship to Hume on this topic is central to his philosophy as a whole. Moreover, because Hume’s famous discussion of causality and induction is equally central to his philosophy, understanding the relationship between the two philosophers on this issue is crucial for a proper understanding of modern philosophy more generally. Yet ever since Kant offered his response to Hume the topic has been subject to intense controversy. There is no consensus, of course, over whether Kant’s response succeeds, but there is no more consensus about what this response is supposed to be. There has been sharp disagreement concerning Kant’s conception of causality, as well as Hume’s, and, accordingly, there has also been controversy over whether the two conceptions really significantly differ. There has even been disagreement concerning whether Hume’s conception of causality and induction is skeptical at all. We shall not discuss these controversies in detail; rather, we shall concentrate on presenting one particular perspective on this very complicated set of issues. We shall clearly indicate, however, where especially controversial points of interpretation arise and briefly describe some of the main alternatives. (Most of this discussion will be confined to footnotes, where we shall also present further, more specialized details.)

1. Kant’s “Answer to Hume”

2. induction, necessary connection, and laws of nature, 3. kant, hume, and the newtonian science of nature, 4. time determination, the analogies of experience, and the unity of nature, secondary sources, other internet resources, related entries.

In the Preface to the Prolegomena Kant considers the supposed science of metaphysics. He states that “no event has occurred that could have been more decisive for the fate of this science than the attack made upon it by David Hume” and goes on to say that “Hume proceeded primarily from a single but important concept of metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of cause and effect ” (4, 257; 7; see the Bibliography for our method of citation). Over the next few pages Kant defends the importance of Hume’s “attack” on metaphysics against common-sense opponents such as Thomas Reid, James Oswald, James Beattie, and Joseph Priestley (all of whom, according to Kant, missed the point of Hume’s problem), and Kant then famously writes (4, 260; 10):

I freely admit that it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction.

Thus, it was Hume’s “attack” on metaphysics (and, in particular, on the concept of cause and effect) which first provoked Kant himself to undertake a fundamental reconsideration of this (supposed) science.

Later, in §§ 27–30 of the Prolegomena , Kant returns to Hume’s problem and presents his own solution. Kant begins, in § 27, by stating that “here is now the place to remove the Humean doubt from the ground up” (4, 310; 63); and he continues, in § 29, by proposing

to make a trial with Hume’s problematic concept (his crux metaphysicorum ), namely the concept of cause. (4, 312; 65)

Kant concludes, in § 30, by stating that we are now in possession of “a complete solution of the Humean problem” (4, 313; 66)—which, Kant adds,

rescues the a priori origin of the pure concepts of the understanding and the validity of the general laws of nature as laws of the understanding, in such a way that their use is limited only to experience, because their possibility has its ground merely in the relation of the understanding to experience, however, not in such a way that they are derived from experience, but that experience is derived from them, a completely reversed kind of connection which never occurred to Hume. (ibid.)

Thus, Kant’s “complete solution of the Humean problem” directly involves him with his whole revolutionary theory of the constitution of experience by the a priori concepts and principles of the understanding—and with his revolutionary conception of synthetic a priori judgments.

Indeed, when Kant first introduces Hume’s problem in the Preface to the Prolegomena he already indicates that the problem is actually much more general, extending to all of the categories of the understanding (4, 260; 10):

I thus first tried whether Hume’s objection might not be represented generally, and I soon found that the concept of the connection of cause and effect is far from being the only one by which the understanding thinks connections of things a priori; rather, metaphysics consists wholly and completely of them. I sought to secure their number, and since this succeeded as desired, namely, from a single principle, I then proceeded to the deduction of these concepts, on the basis of which I was now assured that they are not derived from experience, as Hume had feared, but have sprung from the pure understanding.

Moreover, Kant soon explains, in § 5, how this more general problem (common to all the categories and principles of the understanding) is to be formulated: “How is cognition from pure reason possible?” (4, 275; 27), or, more specifically, “How are synthetic a priori propositions possible?” (4, 276; 28).

In the Introduction to the second (B) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant follows the Prolegomena in formulating what he here calls “the general problem of pure reason” (B19): “How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?” And, as in the Prolegomena , Kant insists that the possibility of metaphysics as a science entirely depends on this problem (ibid.):

That metaphysics until now has remained in such a wavering state of uncertainty and contradictions is to be ascribed solely to the fact that this problem, and perhaps even the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, was not thought of earlier. Metaphysics stands or falls with the solution of this problem, or on a satisfactory proof that the possibility it requires to be explained does not in fact obtain.

Kant then immediately refers to “David Hume, who, among all philosophers, came closest to this problem”; and he suggests, once again, that Hume failed to perceive the solution because he did not conceive the problem in its

[full] generality, but rather stopped with the synthetic proposition of the connection of the effect with the cause ( principium causalitatis ). (ibid.)

It is only in the second edition of the Critique that Kant gives such a prominent place to Hume and his “objection” to causality, serving to introduce what Kant now calls “the general problem of pure reason”. By contrast, the name of Hume does not appear in either the Introduction or the Transcendental Analytic in the first (A) edition (1781): it appears only in the Transcendental Doctrine of Method at the very end of the book, in a discussion of “skepticism” versus “dogmatism” in metaphysics (where Hume’s skepticism about causation, in particular, is finally explicitly discussed). This is not to say, of course, that implicit references to Hume are not found earlier in the text of the first edition. Thus, for example, in a preliminary section to the Transcendental Deduction Kant illustrates the need for such a deduction with the concept of cause, and in both editions remarks (A91/B124):

Appearances certainly provide cases from which a rule is possible in accordance with which something usually happens, but never that the succession is necessary ; therefore, a dignity pertains to the synthesis of cause and effect that cannot be empirically expressed at all, namely, that the effect does not merely follow upon the cause but is posited through it and follows from it.

But it is only in the second edition that Kant then goes on to mention “David Hume” explicitly, as one who attempted to derive the pure concepts of the understanding from experience (B127):

namely, from a subjective necessity arising from frequent association in experience—i.e., from custom —which is subsequently falsely taken for objective.

This striking difference between the two editions clearly reflects the importance of the intervening appearance of the Prolegomena .

Given the crucial importance of the Prolegomena in this respect, it is natural to return to Kant’s famous remarks in the Preface to that work, where, as we have seen, Kant says that

it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction.

It is natural to wonder, in particular, about the precise years to which Kant is referring and the specific events in his intellectual development he has in mind. Here, however, we now enter controversial terrain, where there are basically two competing alternatives—both of which reflect the circumstance that Kant could read Hume only in German translation.

Kant might be referring, on the one hand, to the late 1750s to mid 1760s. A translation of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (originally published in 1748) appeared in 1755 and was widely read in Germany. Kant had almost certainly read this translation by the mid 1760s, by which time he himself expressed doubts about whether causal connections could be known by reason alone and even suggested that they were knowable only by experience. Or, on the other hand, Kant might be referring to the mid 1770s. After the Inaugural Dissertation appeared in 1770, Kant published nothing more until the first edition of the Critique in 1781. Meanwhile, a German translation of Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (originally published in 1770) appeared in 1772, where, in particular, Beattie quoted extensively from Book 1 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (originally published in 1739). Thus, in the famous “dogmatic slumber” passage, Kant might be referring either to the mid 1760s, when he then had a “remembrance” of reading the translation of Hume’s Enquiry , or to the mid 1770s, when he then had a “remembrance” of reading translations from the Treatise . [ 1 ]

We prefer the first alternative. From this point of view, the decisive event to which Kant is referring is his reading of Hume’s Enquiry (in translation) during the late 1750s to mid 1760s, and this event, we believe, is clearly reflected in two important writings of the mid 1760s: the Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (1763) and Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766).

In the first (1763) essay Kant introduces the distinction between “logical grounds” and “real grounds”, both of which indicate a relationship between a “ground” (cause or reason) and a “consequent” (following from this ground). Kant explains his problem as follows (2, 202; 239):

I understand very well how a consequent may be posited through a ground in accordance with the rule of identity, because it is found to be contained in [the ground] by the analysis of concepts. … [A]nd I can clearly comprehend this connection of the ground with the consequent, because the consequent is actually identical with part of the concept of the ground …. However, how something may flow from another, but not in accordance with the rule of identity, is something that I would very much like to have made clear to me. I call the first kind of ground a logical ground, because its relation to the consequent can be logically comprehended in accordance with the rule of identity, but I call the second kind of ground a real ground, because this relation indeed belongs to my true concepts, but the manner of this [relation] can in no way be estimated. With respect to such a real ground and its relation to the consequent, I pose my question in this simple form: how can I understand the circumstance that, because something is, something else is to be? A logical consequent is only posited because it is identical with the ground.

The fundamental problem with the relationship between a real ground and its consequent, therefore, is that the consequent is not identical with either the ground or a part of this concept—i.e., it is not “contained in [the ground] by the analysis of concepts”.

Thus, using his well-known later terminology (from the Critique and the Prolegomena ), Kant is here saying that, in the case of a real ground, the relationship between the concept of the consequent (e.g., an effect) and the concept of the ground (e.g., a cause) is not one of containment, and the judgment that the former follows from the latter is therefore not analytic . Moreover, although Kant does not explicitly refer to Hume in the essay on Negative Magnitudes , he proceeds to illustrate his problem with an example (among others) of the causal connection in the communication of motion by impact (2, 202; 240):

A body A is in motion, another B is at rest in the straight line [of this motion]. The motion of A is something, that of B is something else, and, nevertheless, the latter is posited through the former.

Hume famously uses this example (among others) in the Enquiry to illustrate his thesis that cause and effect are entirely distinct events, where the idea of the latter is in no way contained in the idea of the former (EHU 4.9; SBN 29):

The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it. Motion in the second billiard-ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the first; nor is there anything in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other.

A few lines later Hume describes this example as follows (EHU 4.10; SBN 29):

When I see, for instance, a billiard-ball moving in a straight line towards another; even suppose motion in the second ball should by accident be suggested to me, as the result of their contact or impulse; may I not conceive, that a hundred different events might as well follow from the cause? … All these suppositions are consistent and conceivable.

In Kant’s second essay from this period, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766), he goes further: he suggests a Humean solution to the problem he had posed, but did not solve, in the essay on Negative Magnitudes . Kant suggests, more specifically, that the relation between a real ground and its consequent can only be given by experience (2, 370; 356):

It is impossible ever to comprehend through reason how something could be a cause or have a force, rather these relations must be taken solely from experience. For the rule of our reason extends only to comparison in accordance with identity and contradiction . But, in so far as something is a cause, then, through something , something else is posited, and there is thus no connection in virtue of agreement to be found—just as no contradiction will ever arise if I wish to view the former not as a cause, because there is no contradiction [in the supposition that] if something is posited, something else is cancelled. Therefore, if they are not derived from experience, the fundamental concepts of things as causes, of forces and activities, are completely arbitrary and can neither be proved nor refuted.

This passage seems clearly to recall the main ideas in section 4, part 1 of Hume’s Enquiry . After distinguishing between “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact”, and asserting that the former “are discoverable by the mere operation of thought” (EHU 4.1; SBN 25), Hume continues (EHU 4.2; SBN 25):

Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction ….

Hume then explains that: “all reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect ” (EHU 4.4; SBN 26) and adds (EHU 4.6; SBN 27):

I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori ; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other.

Finally (EHU 4.10; SBN 29):

And as the first imagination or invention of a particular effect, in all natural operations, is arbitrary, where we consult not experience; so must we also esteem the supposed tye or connexion between the cause and effect, which binds them together, and renders it impossible that any other effect could result from the operation of that cause.

Thus, although Kant does not explicitly mention Hume in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer , the parallels with Hume’s Enquiry are striking indeed. [ 2 ]

Kant does not endorse a Humean solution to the problem of the relation between cause and effect in the critical period (beginning with the first edition of the Critique in 1781): he does not (as he had in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer ) claim that this relation is derived from experience. Instead (as we have seen) Kant takes Hume’s problem of causality to be centrally implicated in the radically new problem of synthetic a priori judgments. Yet the latter problem, in turn, clearly has its origin in Kant’s earlier discussion (in the essay on Negative Magnitudes and Dreams of a Spirit-Seer ) of the apparently mysterious connection between a real ground (or cause) and its consequent (or effect). Just as Kant had earlier emphasized (in these pre-critical works) that the consequent of a real ground is not contained in it, and thus does not result by “the analysis of concepts”, Kant now (in the critical period) maintains that the concept of the effect cannot be contained in the concept of the cause and, accordingly, that a judgment relating the two cannot be analytic. Such a judgment, in Kant’s critical terminology, must now be synthetic—it is a judgment in which “the connection of the predicate with the subject … is thought without identity”, where

a predicate is added to the concept of the subject which is by no means thought in it, and which could not have been extracted from it by any analysis. (A7/B10–11)

The crucial point about a synthetic a priori judgment, however, is that, although it is certainly not (as a priori) derived from experience, it nonetheless extends our knowledge beyond merely analytic judgments.

It therefore becomes clear why, in the Introduction to the second edition of the Critique , Kant says of the crucial problem of synthetic a priori judgments that

this problem, and perhaps even the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, was not thought of earlier,

and then explicitly names “David Hume, who, among all philosophers, came closest to this problem” (B19). It also becomes clear why, in the Preface to the Prolegomena , Kant explains Hume’s problem as follows (4, 257; 7):

Hume proceeded primarily from a single but important concept of metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of cause and effect … , and he challenged reason, which here pretends to have generated this concept in her womb, to give him an account of by what right she thinks that something could be so constituted that, if it is posited, something else must necessarily also be posited thereby; for this is what the concept of cause says. He proved indisputably that it is completely impossible for reason to think such a connection a priori and from concepts [alone] (for this [connection] contains necessity); but it can in no way be comprehended how, because something is, something else must necessarily also be, and how, therefore, the concept of such a connection could be introduced a priori.

Thus here, in the Prolegomena , Kant describes what he calls Hume’s “challenge” to reason concerning “ the connection of cause and effect ” in precisely the same terms that he had himself earlier used, in the 1763 essay on Negative Magnitudes and the 1766 Dreams of a Spirit-Seer , to pose a fundamental problem about the relation of a real ground (as opposed to a logical ground) to its consequent.

What is most important, however, is the official solution to Hume’s problem that Kant presents in § 29 of the Prolegomena . This solution depends on the distinction between “judgments of perception” and “judgments of experience” which Kant has extensively discussed in the preceding sections. In § 18 Kant introduces the distinction as follows (4, 298; 51):

Empirical judgments, in so far as they have objective validity, are judgments of experience ; they, however, in so far as they are only subjectively valid , I call mere judgments of perception . … All of our judgments are at first mere judgments of perception: they are valid merely for us, i.e., for our subject, and only afterwards do we give them a new relation, namely to an object, and we intend that [the judgment] is supposed to be also valid for us at all times and precisely so for everyone else; for, if a judgment agrees with an object, then all judgments about the same object must also agree among one another, and thus the objective validity of the judgment of experience signifies nothing else but its necessary universal validity.

Then, in § 22, Kant emphasizes that the pure concepts of the understanding or categories function precisely to convert mere (subjective) perceptions into objective experience by effecting a “ necessary unification” of them (4, 305; 58):

Therefore, the pure concepts of the understanding are those concepts under which all perceptions must first be subsumed before they can serve as judgments of experience, in which the synthetic unity of perceptions is represented as necessary and universally valid. [ 3 ]

Here is how Kant formulates his solution in § 29 (4, 312; 65):

In order to make a trial with Hume’s problematic concept (his crux metaphysicorum ), namely the concept of cause, first, there is given to me a priori, by means of logic, the form of a conditional judgment in general, namely, to use a given cognition as ground and the other as consequent. It is possible, however, that a rule of relation is found in perception which says that a given appearance is constantly followed by another (but not conversely); and this is a case for me to employ the hypothetical judgment and, e.g., to say: if a body is illuminated sufficiently long by the sun, then it becomes warm. Here, there is certainly no necessity of connection as yet, and thus [not] the concept of cause. However, I continue and say that, if the above proposition, which is merely a subjective connection of perceptions, is to be a judgment of experience, then it must be viewed as necessary and universally valid. But such a proposition would be: the sun is through its light the cause of heat. The above empirical rule is now viewed as a law—and, in fact, not as valid merely of appearances, but [valid] of them on behalf of a possible experience, which requires completely and thus necessarily valid rules.

All the elements from Kant’s earlier discussion of causality in the essays on Negative Magnitudes and Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seem to be present here. Kant begins with the purely logical relation between ground and consequent. Since, in the case of the concept of cause, we are dealing with what Kant had earlier called a real ground, Kant holds that we need a synthetic rather than merely analytic connection between the two. The most obvious thought, which Hume had defended in the Enquiry (and, apparently following Hume, Kant himself had defended in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer ) is that “experience” (in the Humean sense) is the basis for this connection in so far as one perception is found to be “constantly conjoined” with another. Now, however, in the critical period, Kant introduces a revolutionary new concept of “experience” which is explicitly opposed to mere constant conjunctions among perceptions in being “necessary and universally valid”—in particular, “experience is possible only by means of the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions” (B218).

In Kant’s example from § 29 of the Prolegomena , then, we begin from a mere subjective “empirical rule”: that the perception of an illuminated stone is constantly followed by the perception of heat; and we then convert this “empirical rule” into an objective law according to which the very same relationship is now viewed as “necessary and universally valid”. This transformation is effected by the addition of the a priori concept of causality: “the sun is through its light the cause of heat”. It is in precisely this way, more generally, that the categories or pure concepts of the understanding relate to experience:

not in such a way that they are derived from experience, but that experience is derived from them, a completely reversed kind of connection which never occurred to Hume. (§ 30: 4, 313; 66)

We shall devote the rest of this article to clarifying Kant’s solution and its relationship with Hume’s conception of causation. For now, we simply note an important difficulty Kant himself raises in the Prolegomena . Whereas the concept of causality is, for Kant, clearly a priori, he does not think that particular causal laws relating specific causes with specific effects are all synthetic a priori—and, if they are not a priori, how can they be necessary? Indeed, Kant illustrates this difficulty, in a footnote to § 22, with his own example of the sun warming a stone (4, 305; 58):

But how does this proposition, that judgments of experience are supposed to contain necessity in the synthesis of perceptions, agree with my proposition, urged many times above, that experience, as a posteriori cognition, can yield only contingent judgments? If I say that experience teaches me something, I always mean only the perception that lies within in it, e.g., that heat always follows the illumination of the stone by the sun. That this heating results necessarily from the illumination by the sun is in fact contained in the judgment of experience (in virtue of the concept of cause); but I do not learn this from experience, rather, conversely, experience is first generated through this addition of the concept of the understanding (of cause) to the perception.

In other words, experience in the Humean sense teaches me that heat always (i.e., constantly) follows the illumination of the stone by the sun; experience in the Kantian sense then adds that:

the succession is necessary ; … the effect does not merely follow upon the cause but is posited through it and follows from it. (A91/B124)

But what exactly does this mean?

Kant formulates a crucial distinction between “strict” and “comparative” universality in § II of the Introduction to the second edition of the Critique (B3–4):

Experience never gives its judgments true or strict, but merely assumed or comparative universality (through induction), so that, properly speaking, it must be formulated: so far as we have observed until now, no exception has been found to this or that rule. If, therefore, a judgment is thought with strict universality, i.e., so that no exception at all is allowed to be possible, then it is not derived from experience, but is valid absolutely a priori. Empirical universality is thus only an arbitrary augmentation of validity from that which is valid in most cases to that which is valid in all—as, e.g., in the proposition: all bodies are heavy. By contrast, where strict universality essentially belongs to a judgment, this [universality] indicates a special source of cognition for [the judgment], namely a faculty of a priori cognition. Necessity and strict universality are thus secure criteria of an a priori cognition, and also inseparably belong together.

Kant then explicitly links this distinction to Hume’s discussion of causality in the following paragraph (B5):

The very concept of cause so obviously contains the concept of a necessity of the connection with an effect and a strict universality of the rule, that the concept [of cause] would be entirely lost if one pretended to derive it, as Hume did, from a frequent association of that which happens with that which precedes, and [from] a thereby arising custom (thus a merely subjective necessity) of connecting representations. [ 4 ]

Moreover, in the second edition (as we have seen) Kant also goes on to name Hume explicitly, as one who attempted to derive the concept of causality

from a subjective necessity arising from frequent association in experience—i.e., from custom —which is subsequently falsely taken for objective. (B127)

It appears, therefore, that Kant’s discussion, in § 29 of the Prolegomena , of how, by the addition of the concept of cause, we convert a mere subjective “empirical rule” into an objective law (which is “necessary and universally valid”), is not only indebted to Hume for the insight that the connection between cause and effect is synthetic rather than analytic, it is also indebted to Hume’s discussions of the problem of induction (in section 4, part 2 of the Enquiry ) and of the idea of necessary connection (in section 7). Kant agrees with Hume that the idea of necessary connection is in fact an essential ingredient in our idea of the relation between cause and effect; Kant agrees, in addition, that, if all we had to go on were a purely inductive inference from observed constant conjunctions, the inference from comparative to strict universality would not be legitimate, and the presumed necessary connection arising in this way (i.e., from custom) would be merely subjective.

Section 4 of the Enquiry is entitled “Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding”. In part 1 of this section (as we have already seen) Hume maintains that the idea of the effect is never contained in the idea of the cause (in Kant’s terminology, the relation is not analytic), and thus, according to Hume, it is never knowable a priori. We therefore need experience in the Humean sense in order to make any causal claims—that is, the observation of an event of one type A constantly followed by an event of another type B . Otherwise (as we have also seen) any event could follow any other (EHU 4.10; SBN 29):

Note that Hume is here supposing that, in our idea of the relation between cause and effect, the “tye or connexion … which binds them together” is necessary (“it is impossible that any other effect could result”). In the corresponding section of the Treatise , Book 1, part 3, section 2 (“Of probability; and of the idea of cause and effect”), Hume makes this completely explicit (T 1.3.2.11; SBN 77):

Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a compleat idea of causation? By no means. An object may be continuous and prior to another, without being consider’d as its cause. There is a NECESSARY CONNEXION to be taken into consideration; and that relation is of much greater importance, than any of the other two above-mention’d.

In the Enquiry , section 4, part 2, Hume presents his famous skeptical argument concerning causation and induction. Since we need “experience” (i.e., the observation of constant conjunctions) to make any causal claims, Hume now asks (EHU 4.14; SBN 32): “ What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience? ” The conclusion from an experience of constant conjunction is an inference to what has not yet been observed from what has already been observed, and Hume finds an unbridgeable gap between the premise (summarizing what we have observed so far) and the (not yet observed) conclusion of this inference (EHU 4.16; SBN 34):

These two propositions are far from being the same, I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect , and I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects .

Hume concludes that this inference has no foundation in the understanding—that is, no foundation in what he calls “reasoning”. [ 5 ] How does Hume arrive at this position?

All our inductive inferences—our “conclusions from experience”—are founded on the supposition that the course of nature is sufficiently uniform so that the future will be conformable to the past (EHU 4.21; SBN 37–38):

For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past …. If there be any suspicion, that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion.

Therefore, what Hume is now seeking, in turn, is the foundation in our reasoning for the supposition that nature is sufficiently uniform.

Section 4, part 1 of the Enquiry distinguishes (as we have seen) between reasoning concerning relations of ideas and reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence. Demonstrative reasoning (concerning relations of ideas) cannot establish the supposition in question,

since it implies no contradiction, that the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects. (EHU 4.18; SBN 35)

Moreover, reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence cannot establish it either, since such reasoning is always founded on the relation of cause and effect, the very relation we are now attempting to found in reasoning (EHU 4.19; SBN 35–36):

We have said, that all arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and that all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition, that the future will be conformable to the past. To endeavour, therefore, the proof of this last proposition by probable arguments, or arguments regarding existence, must be evidently going in a circle, and taking that for granted, which is the very point in question. [ 6 ]

Although Hume has now shown that there is no foundation for the supposition that nature is sufficiently uniform in reasoning or the understanding, he goes on, in the following section 5 of the Enquiry (“Skeptical Solution of these Doubts”), to insist that we are nonetheless always determined to proceed in accordance with this supposition. There is a natural basis or “principle” for all our arguments from experience, even if there is no ultimate foundation in reasoning (EHU 5.4–5; SBN 42–43):

And though [one] should be convinced, that his understanding has no part in the operation, he would nonetheless continue in the same course of thinking. There is some other principle, which determines him to form such a conclusion. This principle is CUSTOM or HABIT. For wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding; we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom . By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects. [ 7 ]

In section 7 of the Enquiry (“On the Idea of Necessary Connexion”), after rejecting the received views of causal necessity, Hume explains that precisely this custom or habit also produces our idea of necessary connection (EHU 7.28; SBN 75):

It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connexion among events arises from a number of similar instances which occur of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances, surveyed in all possible lights and positions. But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar; except only, that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist. This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression, from which we form the idea of power or necessary connexion.

Thus, the custom or habit to make the inductive inference not only gives rise to a new idea of not yet observed instances resembling the instances we have already observed, it also produces a feeling of determination to make the very inductive inference in question. This feeling of determination, in turn, gives rise to a further new idea, the idea of necessary connexion, which has no resemblance whatsoever with anything we have observed. It is derived from an “impression of reflection” (an internal feeling or sentiment), not from an “impression of sensation” (an observed instance before the mind), and it is in precisely this sense, for Hume, that the idea of necessary connection is merely subjective. Hume emphasizes that this is a “discovery” both “new and extraordinary”, and that it is skeptical in character (EHU 7.28–29; SBN 76):

No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity. And what stronger instance can be produced of the surprising ignorance and weakness of the understanding, than the present? For surely, if there be any relation among objects, which it imports to us to know perfectly, it is that of cause and effect.

Kant agrees with Hume that neither the relation of cause and effect nor the idea of necessary connection is given in our sensory perceptions; both, in an important sense, are contributed by our mind. For Kant, however, the concepts of both causality and necessity arise from precisely the operations of our understanding—and, indeed, they arise entirely a priori as pure concepts or categories of the understanding. It is in precisely this way that Kant thinks that he has an answer to Hume’s skeptical problem of induction: the problem, in Kant’s terms, of grounding the transition from merely “comparative” to “strict universality” (A91–92/B123–124). Thus in § 29 of the Prolegomena , as we have seen, Kant begins from a merely subjective “empirical rule” of constant conjunction or association among our perceptions (of heat following illumination by the sun), which is then transformed into a “necessary and universally valid law” by adding the a priori concept of cause.

At the end of our discussion in section 1 above we saw that there is a serious difficulty in understanding what Kant intends here—a difficulty to which he himself explicitly calls attention. Kant does not think that the particular causal law that “the sun is through its light the cause of heat” is itself a synthetic a priori truth. Indeed, the very same difficulty is present in our discussion at the beginning of this section. For, what Kant is saying in § II of the second edition of the Introduction to the Critique is that necessity and strict universality are “secure criteria of an a priori cognition” (B4; emphasis added). More specifically (B3):

Experience in fact teaches us that something is constituted thus and so, but not that it cannot be otherwise. Hence, if … a proposition is thought together with its necessity , then it is an a priori judgment.

Yet, once again, Kant does not think that particular causal laws relating specific causes to specific effects are all (synthetic) a priori. Accordingly, when Kant provides examples of (synthetic) a priori cognitions in the immediately following paragraph, he cites the synthetic a priori principle of the Second Analogy of Experience (“All alterations take place in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect” [B232]) rather than any particular causal law (B4–5):

Now it is easy to show that there actually are such judgments in human cognition which are necessary and in the strictest sense universal, and therefore purely a priori. If one wants an example from the sciences, then one need only take a look at any of the propositions of mathematics. If one wants such an example from the most common use of the understanding, then the proposition that every alteration must have a cause can serve.

On the basis of this important passage, among others, the majority of twentieth-century English-language commentators have rejected the idea that Kant has a genuine disagreement with Hume over the status of particular causal laws. One must sharply distinguish between the general principle of causality of the Second Analogy—the principle that every event b must have a cause a —and particular causal laws: particular instantiations of the claim that all events of type A must always be followed by events of type B . The former is in fact a synthetic a priori necessary truth holding as a transcendental principle of nature in general, and this principle is explicitly established in the Second Analogy. But the Second Analogy does not establish, on this view, that particular causal laws are themselves necessary. Indeed, as far as particular causal laws are concerned, the Second Analogy is in basic agreement with Hume: they (as synthetic a posteriori ) are established by induction and by induction alone. [ 8 ]

It is indeed crucially important to distinguish between the general principle of causality Kant establishes in the Second Analogy and particular causal laws. It is equally important that particular causal laws, for Kant, are (at least for the most part) synthetic a posteriori rather than synthetic a priori. It does not follow, however, that Kant agrees with Hume about the status of synthetic a posteriori causal laws. On the contrary, Kant (as we have seen) clearly states, in § 29 of the Prolegomena (the very passage where he gives his official “answer to Hume”), that there is a fundamental difference between a mere “empirical rule” (heat always follows illumination by the sun) and a genuine objective law (the sun is through its light the cause of heat) arrived at by adding the a priori concept of cause to the merely inductive rule. Any law thus obtained is “necessary and universally valid”, or, as Kant also puts it, we are now in possession of “completely and thus necessarily valid rules”. In such cases (A91/B124):

The succession is necessary ; … the effect does not merely follow upon the cause but is posited through it and follows from it. The strict universality of the rule is certainly not a property of empirical rules, which, through induction, can acquire nothing but comparative universality: i.e., extensive utility.

Therefore, it is by no means the case that Kant simply agrees with Hume that particular causal laws are grounded solely on induction and, accordingly, that the necessity we attribute to particular causal connections is merely subjective.

Similarly, the text of the Second Analogy is also committed to the necessity and strict universality of particular causal laws. If the general causal principle (that every event b must have a cause a ) is true, then, according to Kant, there must also be particular causal laws (relating preceding events of type A to succeeding events of type B ) which are themselves strictly universal and necessary. [ 9 ] Kant maintains that, when one event follows another in virtue of a causal relation, it must always follow “in accordance with a rule” (A193/B238). Moreover, the “rule” to which Kant is here referring is not the general causal principle, but rather a particular law connecting a given cause to a given effect which is itself strictly universal and necessary (A193/B238–239):

In accordance with such a rule, there must thus lie in that which precedes an event in general the condition for a rule according to which this event follows always and necessarily.

Kant insists on this point throughout the Second Analogy:

that which follows or happens must follow according to a universal rule from that which was contained in the previous state, (A200/B245) in that which precedes the condition is to be met with under which the event always (i.e., necessarily) follows, (A200/B246)

and so on. One cannot escape the burden of explaining the apparently paradoxical necessity and universal validity of particular (synthetic) a posteriori causal laws simply by distinguishing them from the general (synthetic) a priori causal principle.

What is the relationship, then, between the general causal principle of the Second Analogy and the particular causal laws whose existence, according to Kant, is required by the causal principle? What, more generally, is the relationship between the transcendental synthetic a priori principles of the understanding (including all three Analogies of Experience—compare the end of note 3 above—as well as the principles corresponding to the other categories) and the more particular synthetic a posteriori laws of nature involved in specific causal relationships governing empirically characterized events and processes? The relationship cannot be deductive; for, if one could deductively derive the particular causal laws from the transcendental principles of the understanding, then the former would have to be synthetic a priori as well.

Kant himself discusses this relationship extensively, beginning in the first edition version of the Transcendental Deduction (A126–128):

Although we learn many laws through experience, these are still only particular determinations of yet higher laws, among which the highest (under which all others stand) originate a priori in the understanding itself, and are not borrowed from experience, but must rather provide appearances with their law-governedness, and precisely thereby make experience possible … To be sure, empirical laws as such can in no way derive their origin from pure understanding—no more than the immeasurable manifold of appearances can be sufficiently comprehended from the pure form of sensibility. But all empirical laws are only particular determinations of the pure laws of the understanding, under which and in accordance with the norm of which they first become possible, and the appearances take on a lawful form—just as all appearances, notwithstanding the diversity of their empirical form, still must also always be in accordance with the condition of the pure form of sensibility [i.e., space and time].

The “pure laws of the understanding” (here and elsewhere) refers to the pure transcendental principles of the understanding characterizing what Kant calls “experience in general” or “nature in general”.

In the second edition version Kant makes essentially the same point, this time explicitly stating that the relationship in question is not deductive (B165):

The pure faculty of understanding, however, is not sufficient for prescribing to appearances a priori, through mere categories, any laws other than those which are involved in a nature in general , as the law-governedness of all appearances in space and time. Particular laws, because they concern empirically determined appearances, can not be completely derived therefrom, although they one and all stand under them. Experience must be added in order to become acquainted with the [particular laws] as such , but only the former laws provide a priori instruction concerning experience in general, and [concerning] that which can be cognized as an object of experience.

But what exactly does it mean for particular laws of nature to “stand under” the a priori principles of the understanding—that is, to be what Kant calls “particular determinations” of these principles? Once again, it will take more work fully to clarify this relationship, but we can meanwhile observe that it is precisely in virtue of the relationship in question that empirical causal connections—empirical causal laws of nature—count as necessary for Kant.

The necessity in question is characterized in Kant’s official discussion of the category of necessity in the Postulates of Empirical Thought—the three principles corresponding to the categories of possibility, actuality, and necessity (A218–218/B265–266):

• That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience (according to intuition and concepts), is possible .
• That which coheres with the material conditions of experience (with sensation), is actual .
• That whose coherence with the actual is determined in accordance with the general conditions of experience, is (exists as) necessary .

The “formal [or “general”] conditions of experience” include the forms of intuition (space and time), together with all the categories and principles of the understanding. The material conditions of experience include that which is given to us, through sensation, in perception. Kant is thus describing a three-stage procedure, in which we begin with the formal a priori conditions of the possibility of experience in general, perceive various actual events and processes by means of sensation, and then assemble these events and processes together—via necessary connections—by means of the general conditions of the possibility of experience with which we began.

In his detailed discussion of the third Postulate Kant makes it clear that he is referring, more specifically, to causal necessity, and to particular (empirical) causal laws (A226–8/B279–80):

Finally, as far as the third Postulate is concerned, it pertains to material necessity in existence, and not the merely formal and logical necessity in the connection of concepts. … Now there is no existence that could be cognized as necessary under the condition of other given appearances except the existence of effects from given causes in accordance with laws of causality. Thus, it is not the existence of things (substances), but only that of their state, about which we can cognize their necessity—and, indeed, from other states that are given in perception, in accordance with empirical laws of causality.

Note that, in this passage, Kant refers to “laws of causality” (in the plural) in the second quoted sentence, and “empirical laws of causality” (again in the plural) in the last sentence. Hence, he is here referring to particular causal laws (of the form every event of type A must always be followed by an event of type B ) rather than the general principle of the Second Analogy (that every event b must have a cause a ). [ 10 ]

In the Transcendental Deduction (as we have seen) Kant says that

all empirical laws are only particular determinations of the pure laws of the understanding, under which and in accordance with the norm of which they first become possible, and the appearances take on a lawful form. (A127–128)

In the discussion of the third Postulate Kant says that we can cognize an effect as necessary on the basis of an empirical law relating it to its cause—where the effect’s “connection with the actual is determined in accordance with the general conditions of experience” (A218/B266). Kant is suggesting, therefore, that the precise sense in which particular empirical laws themselves become necessary is that they, too, are “determined” in relation to actual perceptions “in accordance with the general conditions of experience” (where the latter, of course, essentially include the “pure laws of the understanding”, i.e., the principles).

Thus, in the example from § 29 of the Prolegomena , Kant begins from a mere “empirical rule” (that heat always follows illumination by the sun) and then proceeds to a “necessary and universally valid” law by adding the a priori concept of cause to this (so far) merely inductive rule. The very same three-stage procedure described by the three Postulates as a whole—in which we begin with the formal a priori conditions of the possibility of experience in general, perceive various actual events and processes by means of sensation, and then assemble these events and processes together (via necessary connections) by means of the a priori conditions of the possibility of experience—also results in “necessary and universally valid” empirical causal laws of nature (the sun is through its light the cause of heat) governing the events and processes in question.

In § 36 of the Prolegomena (after he has presented his official “answer to Hume” in § 29) Kant addresses the question of the relationship between particular empirical laws and the a priori principles of the understanding under the title “How is nature itself possible?” Nature in the material sense is “the totality of all appearances” given in space and time (4, 318; 69). Nature in the formal sense is “the totality of rules under which all appearances must stand if they are to be thought as connected in an experience” (4, 318; 70). In answering the question of how nature in the formal sense is possible Kant proceeds to distinguish between “empirical laws of nature, which always presuppose particular perceptions” and

the pure or universal laws of nature, which, without having a basis in particular perceptions, contain merely the conditions of their necessary unification in an experience. (4, 320; 71)

Yet (as we have seen) the empirical laws owe their status as “necessary and universally valid” to their relationship with the a priori “pure or universal” laws (principles) of the understanding. Moreover, Kant illustrates this situation with an example, which (as explained in the very brief § 37)

is to show, that laws that we discover in objects of sensible intuition, especially if they are cognized as necessary, are already taken by us to be such as the understanding has put there, even though they are otherwise similar in all respects to laws of nature that we attribute to experience. (4, 320; 72)

The example (presented in the immediately following § 38) is a

physical law of mutual attraction, extending over the whole of material nature, whose rule is that it diminishes inversely with the square of the distances from every attracting point. (4, 321; 73)

Thus, Kant illustrates his conception of the relationship between particular empirical laws and the a priori principles of the understanding with the Newtonian law of universal gravitation. [ 11 ]

In § VI of the Introduction to the second edition of the Critique , where Kant discusses the “general problem of pure reason” (“How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?”), Kant explains that

in the solution of [this] problem there is also conceived, at the same time, the possibility of the pure employment of reason in grounding and developing all sciences that contain a theoretical a priori cognition of objects, i.e., the answer to the questions: How is pure mathematics possible? How is pure natural science possible? . (B20)

Kant illustrates his contention that propositions of “pure natural science” actually exist in a footnote (ibid.):

One need only attend to the various propositions that appear at the beginning of proper (empirical) physics, such as those of the permanence of the same quantity of matter, of inertia, of the equality of action and reaction, and so on, in order to be soon convinced that they constitute a pure (or rational) physics, which well deserves, as a science of its own, to be isolated and established in its entire extent, be it narrow or wide.

Kant had just completed the latter task, in fact, in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , which had meanwhile appeared in 1786 (following the publication of the Prolegomena in 1783 and immediately preceding the publication of the second edition of the Critique in 1787). There Kant articulates what he calls “pure natural science” in four chapters corresponding, respectively, to the four headings of the table of categories (quantity, quality, relation, and modality). In the third chapter or Mechanics (corresponding to the three categories of relation: substance, causality, and community) Kant derives three “laws of mechanics” corresponding, respectively, to the three Analogies of Experience: the permanence or conservation of the total quantity of matter, the law of inertia, and the equality of action and reaction—which Kant describes as a law of “the communication of motion” (4, 544; 84). All these laws, Kant makes clear, are synthetic a priori propositions, demonstrated a priori and “drawn from the essence of the thinking faculty itself” (4, 472; 8).

For Kant, therefore, the laws of the Newtonian science of nature are of two essentially different kinds. Kant regards Newton’s three “Axioms or Laws of Motion” presented at the beginning of the Principia as synthetic a priori truths—which Kant himself attempts to demonstrate a priori in the Metaphysical Foundations . [ 12 ] By contrast, Kant does not regard the inverse-square law of universal gravitation, which Newton establishes by a famous “deduction from the phenomena” in Book 3 of the Principia , as a synthetic a priori truth—and, accordingly, Kant does not attempt to demonstrate this law a priori in the Metaphysical Foundations . Nevertheless, Kant regards the synthetic a posteriori law of universal gravitation as “necessary and universally valid” in virtue of the way in which it is “determined” in relation to the “phenomena” by the synthetic a priori laws of pure natural science. And, since the latter, in turn, are “determined” from the a priori principles of the understanding, the a posteriori law of universal gravitation is thereby “determined” in relation to actual perceptions “in accordance with the general conditions of experience”. [ 13 ]

We shall return to Kant’s conception of Newtonian natural science below, but we first want to discuss Hume’s rather different debt to Newton. Hume, like virtually everyone else in the eighteenth century (including Kant), takes Newtonian natural science as his model, and, indeed, he attempts to develop his own “science of human nature” following Newton’s example. Yet Hume learns a very different lesson from Newton than does Kant, based on Newtonian inductivism rather than Newtonian mathematical demonstrations. Contrasting Hume and Kant on this point greatly illuminates their diverging conceptions of causation and necessity.

To begin with, Hume does not consider Newton’s “Axioms or Laws of Motion” as a priori in any sense (in Kant’s terminology, neither analytic nor synthetic a priori). All of these laws, according to Hume, are simply “facts” inductively derived from (constant and regular) experience. Hume considers Newton’s second law of motion (F = ma) in the Enquiry , section 4, part 1 (EHU 4.13; SBN 31):

Thus, it is a law of motion, discovered by experience, that the moment or force of any body in motion is in the compound ratio or proportion of its solid contents and its velocity … . Geometry assists us in the application of this law … ; but still the discovery of the law itself is owing merely to experience, and all the abstract reasonings in the world could never lead us one step towards the knowledge of it.

One of Newton’s main examples of the third law of motion is the communication of motion by impact or impulse. [ 14 ] Hume considers such communication of motion in the same section of the Enquiry (EHU 4.8; SBN 28–29):

We are apt to imagine, that we could discover these effects by the mere operation of our reason, without experience. We fancy, that were we brought, on a sudden, into this world, we would at first have inferred, that one billiard ball would communicate motion to another upon impulse; and that we needed not to have waited for the event, in order to pronounce with certainty concerning it. Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree.

Finally, in a footnote at the end of part 1 of section 7 (the section in the Enquiry devoted to the idea of necessary connection), Hume considers the law of inertia (EHU 7.25n16; SBN 73n1):

I need not examine at length the vis inertiae which is so much talked of in the new philosophy, and which is ascribed to matter. We find by experience, that a body at rest or in motion continues for ever in its present state, till put from it by some new cause; and that a body impelled takes as much motion from the impelling body as it acquires itself. These are facts. When we call this a vis inertiae , we only mark these facts, without pretending to have any idea of the inert power.

(Hume here puts the law of inertia and the communication of motion by impulse together, because both are consequences of a body’s “inherent force [ vis insita ]” or “inert force [ vis inertiae ”] according to Newton’s third definition preceding the Laws of Motion. [ 15 ] ) It is clear, therefore, that Hume views all of Newton’s laws of motion as inductively derived empirical propositions, which (deceptively) appear to be derived from reason simply because the constant and regular experience on which they are in fact based is so pervasive.

We believe that Hume’s discussion of the communication of motion by contact or impulse shows his debt to Newton especially clearly. In section 7, part 1 of the Enquiry Hume is criticizing the inherited ideas of necessary connection. We believe that both here and in section 4, part 1, where he rejects any a priori demonstration of causality, Hume is centrally concerned with the conception of necessary connection articulated by the mechanical natural philosophy. This philosophy had taken the communication of motion by contact or impulse as the paradigm of an a priori rationally intelligible causal connection, to which all other instances of causal connection must be reduced. The reduction would take place by reducing all observable causal relationships to the motions and impacts of the tiny microscopic parts of bodies. [ 16 ]

In the view of contemporary mechanical philosophers, especially Huygens and Leibniz, Newton’s conception of universal gravitation involved an entirely unintelligible action at a distance across empty space. Gravitation could only be acceptable, on their view, if it were explained, in turn, by vortices of intervening invisible matter whose tiny microscopic particles effected the apparent attraction of bodies via impulse. Although both Leibniz and Huygens accepted Newton’s demonstration that the orbits of the satellites of the major astronomical bodies in the solar system obey the inverse-square law (the planets with respect to the sun, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn with respect to their planets, the earth’s moon with respect to the earth), they rejected Newton’s unrestricted generalization of this law to hold between all bodies (and all parts of bodies) whatsoever. For them, the inverse-square law could be accepted in astronomy only by taking the major bodies of the solar system as each being surrounded by vortices limited to the finite surrounding region of their satellites. The validity of the inverse-square law would thus be restricted to precisely such a finite region, so that it could not be extended arbitrarily far: the moons of Jupiter would accelerate towards Jupiter, for example, but neither Saturn nor the sun, for example, would experience such accelerations towards Jupiter. [ 17 ]

In the second (1713) edition of the Principia , in response to these doubts about the law of universal gravitation raised by mechanical philosophers, Newton adds an explicit principle of unrestricted inductive generalization—Rule 3—to a set of “Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy” at the beginning of Book 3. Rule 3 states ( Principia , 795):

Those qualities of bodies that cannot be intended and remitted [i.e. qualities that cannot be increased and diminished] and that belong to all bodies on which experiments can be made should be taken as qualities of all bodies universally. [ 18 ]

Then, in the explanation of this Rule, Newton depicts the hypotheses of the mechanical philosophy as in conflict with the method of inductive generalization that leads to the law of universal gravitation ( Principia , 795–796):

For the qualities of bodies can be known only through experiments; and therefore qualities that square with experiments universally are to be regarded as universal qualities …. Certainly idle fancies ought not to be fabricated recklessly against the evidence of experiments, nor should we depart from the analogy of nature, since nature is always simple and ever consonant with itself.

That the “idle fancies” in question include the hypotheses of the mechanical philosophers (such as the vortex hypothesis) is made perfectly clear and explicit in the passage from the General Scholium (also added to the second edition in 1713) where Newton famously says that he “feigns” no hypotheses ( Principia , 943):

I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for [the] properties of gravity, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this experimental philosophy, propositions are deduced from the phenomena and are made general by induction. The impenetrability, mobility, and impetus of bodies, and the laws of motion and the law of gravitation have been found by this method. [ 19 ]

Thus, Newton also makes it clear that gravity is (at least) as well grounded by induction as the favored properties of bodies singled out by the mechanical philosophers (impenetrability, motion, and impetus), all of which have been derived inductively from phenomena (a point he had earlier developed in the explanation of Rule 3). [ 20 ]

Hume (as we have seen) considers all the laws of motion—including the communication of motion by contact or impulse—as (merely) inductively derived general principles. Accordingly, Hume also unreservedly accepts universal gravitation and takes Newton’s theory to articulate a fundamental law of nature completely on a par with all other inductively established laws (EHU 6.4; SBN 57):

There are some causes, which are entirely uniform and constant in producing a particular effect; and no instance has ever yet been found of any failure or irregularity in their operation. Fire has always burned, and water suffocated every human creature: The production of motion by impulse and gravity is an universal law, which has hitherto admitted of no exception.

For Hume, contrary to the mechanical philosophy, there is no asymmetry between the law of universal gravitation and the laws of impact with respect to their intrinsic intelligibility. [ 21 ]

There is an even more fundamental relationship between Hume’s conception of the inductive method and Newton’s Rule 3. In the explanation of this Rule (as we have seen) Newton takes the supposition that “nature is always simple and ever consonant with itself” to license the inductive generalizations made in accordance with the Rule. Similarly, Hume appeals, in the Enquiry , to the supposition that “the course of nature” does not change (EHU 4.21; SBN 37–38) or, equivalently, that “the future will be conformable to the past” (EHU 4.19; SBN 35–36). In the Treatise Hume formulates this supposition as the

principle, that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same . (T 1.3.6.4; SBN 89)

Hume takes this supposition to license (in his own words, to provide the “foundation” for: compare note 5 above) all inductive inferences from observed constant conjunctions, just as Newton takes the supposition that “nature is always simple and ever consonant with itself” to license the applications of his Rule 3. It appears very likely, therefore, that Hume takes this Newtonian supposition as the model for his own principle of the uniformity of nature. [ 22 ]

Yet Hume raises radical skeptical doubts about this very principle. It has no foundation in reasoning: neither in demonstrative reasoning nor (on pain of circularity) in inductive reasoning itself. Nevertheless, as firmly based in custom or habit, it is a universal principle of the human mind. Moreover, it is also the foundation for the best available science of matters of fact—Newtonian inductive science—and for Hume’s own inductive science (self-consciously following Newton) of human nature. [ 23 ] Thus, when Hume sets his radical skeptical doubts aside, the application of our foremost empirical scientific method (based on uniform constant conjunction) has normative force, and it thereby leads to the articulation of universal, exceptionless laws of nature which, as such, we are compelled to treat as necessary until experience teaches us otherwise (in accordance with Newton’s Rule 4 in Book 3 of the Principia : see note 19 above). [ 24 ] It is because the idea of necessary connection, for Hume, arises from the application of the Newtonian inductive method that our projection of an inner feeling of determination onto nature does not merely reduce to a blind instinctual disposition, but amounts to a normative methodological standard in our best scientific understanding of nature. [ 25 ]

In the famous hypothesis non fingo passage from the General Scholium Newton characterizes his “experimental” method as follows ( Principia , 943): “In this experimental philosophy, propositions are deduced from the phenomena and are made general by induction”. Hume focusses exclusively on the second, inductive, clause, and he thereby shows an especially deep insight into the fundamental difference between Newton’s methodology and the purely demonstrative ideal of scientific knowledge represented by the mechanical philosophy. [ 26 ] For Kant, by contrast, the dispute between Newton and the mechanical philosophers is now effectively over; and Kant concentrates instead on Newtonian mathematical demonstrations and the idea of “deduction from phenomena”. This comes out especially clearly in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , where Kant engages with some of the most important details of Newton’s demonstration of the law of universal gravitation from the initial “phenomena” described at the beginning of Book 3 of the Principia . Kant shows especially deep insight into the way in which this argument is inextricably entangled, in turn, with the Newtonian mathematical conception of (absolute) space, time, and motion; and he thereby takes special pains to frame the explicitly inductive steps in Newton’s argument within the a priori “special metaphysics” of nature expounded in the Metaphysical Foundations . [ 27 ]

The “phenomena” with which Book 3 of the Principia begins record the observed relative motions of the principal satellites in the solar system with respect to their primary bodies (the planets with respect to the sun, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn with respect to their planets, the earth’s moon with respect to the earth). All of these satellites obey Kepler’s laws (at the time often called “rules”) of orbital motion; and, appealing to his first law of motion (the law of inertia), Newton is able to derive purely mathematically that each of the satellites in question experiences an inverse-square acceleration directed towards its respective primary body. Moreover, the so-called “moon test” (developed in Proposition 4 of Book 3) shows that the inverse-square acceleration governing the moon’s orbit is, when the distance in question approaches the surface of the earth, numerically equal to the constant acceleration of terrestrial gravity figuring in Galileo’s law of fall. Newton concludes (by the first and second of his Rules for the Study of Natural Philosophy) that the (centripetal) force holding the moon in its orbit is the same force as terrestrial gravity.

The crucial inductive steps come next. Newton generalizes the result of the moon test to all the other satellites in the solar system: they, too, are held in their orbits by the same force of gravity (Proposition 5). Then (in Proposition 6) Newton concludes that all bodies whatsoever gravitate towards every primary body (including both Saturn and the sun towards Jupiter, for example); moreover, their weights, like those of terrestrial bodies, are proportional to their masses at equal distances from the primary body in question. [ 28 ] Finally (in Proposition 7), Newton applies the third law of motion to this last result to derive the law of universal gravitation itself: not only do all bodies whatsoever experience inverse-square accelerations (proportional to mass) towards every primary body in the solar system, but the primary bodies themselves experience inverse-square accelerations (proportional to mass) towards every other body (Jupiter towards its moons and all other planets, the earth towards its moon and all other planets, and so on). [ 29 ] Indeed, Newton here extends this universal conclusion to the parts of all bodies as well. [ 30 ]

Kant accepts Newton’s law of gravitation in its full universal form—as a

physical law of mutual attraction, extending over the whole of material nature, whose rule is that it diminishes inversely with the square of the distances from every attracting point. ( Prolegomena , § 38: 4, 321; 73)

Moreover, Kant has no qualms at all about action at a distance, and he even attempts to demonstrate a priori (in the Metaphysical Foundations ) that universal gravitation, as a manifestation of what he calls the “original” or “fundamental” force of attraction, must be conceived as an immediate action at a distance through empty space. [ 31 ] Kant also attempts to demonstrate his three “laws of mechanics” corresponding to Newton’s three laws of motion as synthetic a priori truths, especially the crucially important third law (the equality of action and reaction). [ 32 ] Whereas Newton had devoted considerable effort to producing experimental evidence for this law (see note 14 above), Kant here ventures a rare criticism of Newton for not having the courage to prove it a priori. [ 33 ] Indeed, regarding this particular law as a synthetic a priori truth is central to Kant’s reinterpretation of the Newtonian concepts of (absolute) space, time, and motion; for it is in virtue of his understanding of the equality of action and reaction that Kant is now able simply to define the center of gravity of the solar system (in which this principle necessarily holds) as an empirically determinable (provisional) surrogate for Newtonian absolute space. [ 34 ] Moreover, and for closely related reasons, Kant takes the universality of what he calls the “original” or “fundamental” force of attraction—that it proceeds from every part of matter to every other part to infinity—as another synthetic a priori truth demonstrable in “pure natural science”. [ 35 ]

Given this foundation in “pure natural science”, Kant then reconstructs Newton’s “deduction from the phenomena” of the law of universal gravitation as follows. We begin, following Newton, from the observable “phenomena” described by Kepler’s “rules”. These “phenomena”, in Kant’s terminology, are so far mere “appearances [ Erscheinungen ]”, which have not yet attained the status of “experience [ Erfahrung ]”. [ 36 ] Then, again simply following Newton, we can use the law of inertia to derive (purely mathematically) inverse-square accelerations of their satellites directed towards every primary body in the solar system. Once we have done this, however, we can now, from Kant’s point of view, frame all of Newton’s explicitly inductive steps within the a priori “special metaphysics” of nature developed in the Metaphysical Foundations . By demonstrating a priori his three “laws of mechanics” corresponding to the three Analogies of Experience, Kant establishes that Newton’s three “Axioms or Laws of Motion” are synthetic a priori truths (compare notes 12 and 32 above). Further, by identifying the accelerations in question as effects of what Kant calls the fundamental force of attraction, it now follows from Kant’s “special metaphysics” of (material) nature that these accelerations must hold immediately between each part of matter and every other part of matter—and, accordingly, are also directly proportional to the mass. [ 37 ]

In the fourth chapter or Phenomenology of the Metaphysical Foundations Kant connects this reconstruction of Newton’s argument with the modal categories of possibility, actuality, and necessity—the very categories which (as we saw at the end of the second section above) make it possible for initially merely inductive generalizations (à la Hume) to acquire the status of necessary laws. The first stage, where we simply record the “phenomena” described by Kepler’s “rules” (as mere “appearances”: note 36 above), corresponds to the category of possibility. The second stage, where we say that we here have instances of “true” (as opposed to merely “apparent”) rotation by appealing to the law of inertia, corresponds to the category of actuality. [ 38 ] In the third stage, finally, we apply the equality of action and reaction to the true centripetal accelerations correlated with such true rotations ( note 38 above); and all of them, in accordance with Kant’s metaphysical “dynamical theory of matter”, must now be taken as extending universally to infinity from each attracting point (compare notes 35 and 37 above). The result is the law of universal gravitation, now seen as falling under the category of necessity. In this way, Kant’s reconstruction of Newton’s “deduction” of the law of universal gravitation from the initial Keplerian “phenomena” provides a perfect illustration of the three-step procedure, described in the Postulates of Empirical Thought, by which a mere “empirical rule” is transformed into a “necessary and universally valid” objective law. [ 39 ]

We have suggested that Kant’s reconstruction of Newton’s “deduction from the phenomena” of the law of universal gravitation in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science is inextricably entangled with his reinterpretation of the Newtonian concepts of (absolute) space, time, and motion. [ 40 ] Indeed, Kant begins the Metaphysical Foundations by defining matter as “the movable in space”—and by introducing a distinction between absolute and relative space which is clearly derived from Newton’s Scholium on space, time, and motion at the beginning of the Principia (see note 38 above). In Newton’s words ( Principia , 408–409):

Absolute space, of its own nature without reference to anything external, always remains homogeneous and immovable. Relative space is any movable measure or dimension of this absolute space.

In Kant’s words (4, 480; 15):

Matter is the movable in space. That space which is itself movable is called material, or also relative space . That space in which all motion must finally be thought (and which is therefore itself absolutely immovable) is called pure, or also absolute space .

It turns out, however, that Kant’s own view, in apparent contrast with Newton’s, is that “absolute space is in itself nothing and no object at all”, but signifies only an indefinite process of considering ever more extended relative spaces (4, 481–482; 16–17). Moreover, when Kant returns to this issue in the Phenomenology chapter (compare note 36 above), he states that

absolute space is therefore not necessary as the concept of an actual object, but only as an idea, which is to serve as the rule for considering all motion and rest therein merely as relative. (4, 560; 99)

Kant’s procedure for deriving “true motions” from “apparent motions” does not conceive true motions as taking place in a pre-given absolute space, but views them as the product of an indefinitely extended process of empirical determination taking place within experience itself: we begin from our parochial perspective here on the surface of the earth, proceed (in accordance with the argument of Book 3 of Newton’s Principia ) to the center of gravity of the solar system, then proceed to the center of gravity of the Milky Way galaxy, and so on ad infinitum . [ 41 ]

Similarly, it is a central theme of the Analogies of Experience in the first Critique that “absolute time”—“time itself” (B219), “time for itself” (B225), or “time in itself” (B233)—is no actual object of perception. Hence, the three “modes of time” (duration, succession, and simultaneity) must all be determined in and through perceptible features of the appearances. Kant calls this procedure “time determination” (more precisely, “the determination of the existence of appearances in time”), and he sums up his view as follows (A215/B262):

These, then, are the three analogies of experience. They are nothing else but the principles for the determination of the existence of appearances in time with respect to all of its three modes, the relation to time itself as a magnitude (the magnitude of existence, i.e., duration), the relation in time as a series (successively), and finally [the relation] in time as a totality of all existence (simultaneously). This unity of time determination is thoroughly dynamical; that is, time is not viewed as that in which experience immediately determines the place of an existent, which is impossible, because absolute time is no object of perception by means of which appearances could be bound together; rather, the rule of the understanding, by means of which alone the existence of the appearances can acquire synthetic unity with respect to temporal relations, determines for each [appearance] its position in time, and thus [determines this] a priori and valid for each and every time.

For Kant, therefore, the temporal relations of duration, succession, and simultaneity cannot be viewed as pre-existing, as it were, in an absolute time subsisting prior to and independently of the procedures of our pure understanding for determining these relations within the appearances themselves. On the contrary, temporal relations as such are the products of an empirical construction whereby we objectively determine the appearances as objects of a unified experience by means of the a priori principles of the Analogies. Thus, just as Kant does not view the determination of true motions from apparent motions as taking place within an infinite empty absolute space, he also rejects an analogous conception of absolute time and replaces it, too, with a process of empirical determination taking place within experience itself.

Indeed, there is an intimate relationship between these two procedures for empirical determination—of time and of motion, respectively. At the very beginning of his famous Scholium Newton distinguishes between “true” and merely “apparent” time ( Principia , 408):

Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration. Relative, apparent, and common time is any sensible measure (whether accurate or nonuniform) of duration by means of motion: such a measure—for example, an hour, a day, a month, a year—is commonly used instead of true time.

Then, several pages later, Newton illustrates the difference between “absolute” and “relative” time with reference to the celestial motions studied in astronomy ( Principia , 410):

In astronomy, absolute time is distinguished from relative time by the equation of common time. For natural days, which are commonly considered equal for the purpose of measuring time, are actually unequal. Astronomers correct this inequality in order to measure celestial motions on the basis of a truer time. It is possible that there is no uniform motion by which time may have an accurate measure. All motions can be accelerated and retarded, but the flow of absolute time cannot be changed. The duration or perseverance of the existence of things is the same, whether their motions are rapid or slow or null; accordingly, duration is rightly distinguished from its sensible measures and is gathered from them by means of an astronomical equation.

Newton is here referring to the standard astronomical procedure, already well-understood in ancient astronomy, whereby we correct the ordinary measure of time in terms of days, months, and years so as to obtain “sidereal” or mean solar time based on the motions of the sun relative to both the earth and the fixed stars. [ 42 ]

In the Refutation of Idealism added to the second edition of the Critique Kant argues that all empirical determination of time—including determination of the temporal relations among one’s own inner states—ultimately depends on the perception of outer things, and, in particular, on the perception of motion in space (B277–278):

All empirical employment of our cognitive faculties in the determination of time fully agrees with this. It is not only that we can undertake all time determination only by the change of external relations (motion) in relation to the permanent in space (e.g., motion of the sun with respect to objects on the earth), but we also have nothing at all permanent, which could underlie the concept of a substance, as intuition, except merely matter , and even this permanence is not derived from outer experience, but is rather presupposed a priori as necessary condition of all time determination, and thus also [of] the determination of inner sense with respect to our own existence by means of the existence of outer things.

In emphasizing that only matter can instantiate the concept of substance here, Kant is alluding to the way in which the conservation of the total quantity of matter, in the Metaphysical Foundations , realizes the (transcendental) principle of the conservation of substance. [ 43 ] Moreover, Kant’s language at B277–278 (we “ undertake [ vornehmen ]” time determination by observing “motion of the sun with respect to objects on the earth”) thereby suggests a progressive empirical procedure in which we begin with our perspective here on earth, measure the duration of time by the apparent motion of the sun, and then proceed to correct this measure in light of our evolving astronomical knowledge. [ 44 ]

For Kant, once again, this need for correction is not an indication of a pre-existing absolute time subsisting prior to and independently of our empirical procedures for determining temporal magnitudes from observable motions. It rather implies that empirically observable motions must be subject to a priori principles of the understanding (a priori rules of time determination) in order to count as fully objective experience within a unified, temporally determinate objective world. Applying the relevant principles of the understanding—the Analogies of Experience—therefore results in a sequence of successive corrections or refinements of our ordinary temporal experience, as the observable motions are progressively embedded within an increasingly precise and refined conception of temporality itself.

In the Metaphysical Foundations , in particular, Kant articulates a specific realization of the Analogies of Experience in terms of the Newtonian theory of universal gravitation. Kant’s three “laws of mechanics” (a version of the Newtonian laws of motion: compare notes 12 and 32 above) correspond to the three principles of the Analogies; the categories of substance, causality, and community are realized by the system of Newtonian massive bodies interacting with one another in the context of what Newton, in Book III of the Principia , calls the System of the World. The category of substance, that is, is realized by the conservation of the total quantity of matter (mass) in all interactions involving these bodies (compare note 43 above, together with the sentence to which it is appended); the category of causality is realized by the gravitational forces through which these interactions take place (in accordance with the law of inertia); and the category of community is realized by the circumstance that precisely these forces are everywhere mutually equal and opposite. The temporal relation of duration is thereby realized by the progressive empirical procedure by which we successively correct our ordinary measure of time in light of our evolving astronomical knowledge (compare note 44 above, together with the sentence to which it is appended). [ 45 ] The temporal relation of succession is realized by the deterministic evolution of the motions of the bodies (masses) in question described by the law of universal gravitation (according to which every later state of the system is uniquely determined by its earlier states). [ 46 ] The temporal relation of simultaneity, finally, is realized by the circumstance that gravitational forces instantaneously connect each body in the system with all other bodies. [ 47 ] It is in precisely this sense that the procedure of time determination Kant describes in the Analogies is intended to replace the conception of a pre-given absolute time.

We have now arrived at the most fundamental divergence between Kant and Hume concerning causation and induction. For Hume, the order of time is empirically given by the sequence of impressions and ideas (and associations among them) which in fact happen to appear before the mind. As Kant explains in the Second Analogy, however, such a sequence, from his point of view, is

merely something subjective , and determines no object, and can therefore in no way count as cognition of any object at all (not even in the appearance). (A195/B240)

For Kant, it is only the a priori concept of causality (requiring a necessary rule of connection between preceding and succeeding events) which can then transform a merely subjective temporal sequence into an objective one (ibid.):

If we thus experience that something happens, then we always presuppose thereby that something precedes on which it follows in accordance with a rule. For otherwise I would not say of the object that it follows, because the mere sequence in my apprehension, if it is not determined by means of a rule in relation to something preceding, justifies no sequence in the object. Therefore, it is always in reference to a rule, in accordance with which the appearances in their sequence (i.e., as they happen) are determined through the previous state, that I make my subjective synthesis (of apprehension) objective, and, it is solely under this presupposition that even the experience of something happening is possible.

It is for precisely this reason, Kant concludes, that mere induction alone cannot be the ground for objective causal connections—which presuppose both strict universality and necessity, and therefore must be grounded on a priori concepts and principles of the pure understanding (A195–196/B240–241):

It seems, to be sure, that this contradicts all remarks that have always been made concerning the course of the employment of our understanding, according to which we have only been first guided by the perception and comparison of many concurring sequences of events following on certain appearances to discover a rule, in accordance with which certain events always follow on certain appearances, and we have thereby been first prompted to make for ourselves the concept of cause. On such a basis this concept would be merely empirical, and the rule it supplies, that everything that happens has a cause, would be just as contingent as experience itself: its universality and necessity would then be only feigned and would have no true universal validity, because they would not be grounded a priori but only on induction.

For Kant, the concept of cause cannot possibly arise from a mere repetition of resembling constant conjunctions (“concurring sequences of events following on certain appearances”) producing a merely subjective custom. [ 48 ] The procedure by which we apply the concept of cause to experience cannot be merely inductive in the Humean sense; it must rather involve a priori rules of the understanding through which we progressively determine the objective causal relations between appearances—and thereby determine the objective order of succession in time itself. [ 49 ]

Kant thus has a completely different perspective from Hume’s concerning the uniformity of nature. For Hume, the principle of uniformity is a supposition implicit in all of our inductive inferences leading to the formulation of laws of nature. If this principle itself had a foundation in the understanding (in either a priori or a posteriori “reasoning”), then so would our inductive inferences from observed constant conjunctions to so far unobserved events. Yet the supposition in question—“ that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same ” (T 1.3.6.4; SBN 89)—cannot itself be justified by either demonstrative or inductive reasoning. In the former case it would have to be self-contradictory to imagine that the course of nature is not sufficiently uniform; in the latter the attempted justification would be viciously circular. The principle of uniformity, however, is firmly based in custom or habit, as a universal principle of the human mind, and it is also the foundation for the Newtonian inductive method—including Hume’s own inductive science of the human mind. Although the principle thus has normative force in all our reasoning concerning matters of fact in both science and common life, it cannot ultimately legitimate the attribution of objective necessity to our inductively established laws of nature. [ 50 ]

Kant, in our view, is attempting to provide precisely such a grounding of objective necessity by means of the general principle of the Analogies of Experience (B218): “Experience is possible only by means of the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions”. More specifically, the Analogies of Experience provide an a priori conception of the unity and uniformity of experience playing the role, for Kant, of Hume’s principle of the uniformity of nature. According to the Analogies we know a priori that nature in general must consist of interacting substances in space and time governed by universally valid and necessary causal laws determining the temporal relations (of duration, succession, and simultaneity) among all empirical events, and this articulated a priori conception of nature in general amounts to the knowledge that nature is, in fact, sufficiently uniform. [ 51 ]

We can only have objective experience of particular events, for Kant, in so far as we simultaneously construct particular causal relations among them step by step, and this is only possible, in turn, in so far as we presuppose that they are one and all parts of a unified and uniform experience of nature in space and time governed by the Analogies of Experience (together with the other principles of pure understanding). Moreover, since particular causal relations, for Kant, necessarily involve causal laws, all of our inferences from particular perceptions to universal causal laws of nature are grounded in synthetic a priori principles of pure understanding providing a synthetic a priori conception of the unity and uniformity of nature in general. Hume was correct, therefore, that the principle of the uniformity of nature governs all of our inductive causal inferences; and he was also correct that this principle is not and cannot be analytic a priori. What Hume did not see, from Kant’s point of view, is that the merely comparative universality of inductive generalization can indeed be overcome by transforming initially merely subjective “empirical rules” into truly objective and necessary “universal laws” in accordance with synthetic but still a priori principles of the unity of nature in general. [ 52 ]

Primary Sources

Citations from Kant’s works, except for the Critique of Pure Reason , are by volume and page numbers of the Akademie edition of Kant’s gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1902—); the Critique of Pure Reason is cited by the standard A and B pagination of the first (1781) and second (1787) editions respectively. Although all translations from Kant’s writings are our own, we follow the reference to the Akademie edition (except in the case of the Critique of Pure Reason ) with references to the translations in the now standard Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, as follows:

• Critique of Pure Reason , translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics , translated and edited by Gary Hatfield, revised edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , translated and edited by Michael Friedman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770 , translated and edited by David Walford, in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). This volume contains translations of Kant’s pre-critical writings, including Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (1763) and Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766).
• Citations from Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (abbreviated as T) are from the David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), and thus include book, part, section, and paragraph numbers; we also add the corresponding page numbers in the L. A. Selby-Bigge second edition (abbreviated as SBN), with revised text and notes by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
• Citations from Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (abbreviated as EHU) are from the Tom L. Beauchamp edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), and thus include section and paragraph numbers; we also add the corresponding page numbers in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals , edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, third edition (abbreviated as SBN), with revised text and notes by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
• Citations from Hume’s The History of England (abbreviated as HE, and cited by volume and page numbers) are from the reprint of the final edition of 1778, containing the author’s last corrections and improvements (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1983).
• Citations from Locke’s An Essay concerning Human Understanding are from the Peter H. Nidditch edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), and include the Roman numerals of the book and chapter, followed by the Arabic numeral of the section.
• Citations from Newton’s Principia are to The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy , translated and edited by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, assisted by Julia Budenz (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), and are given in the form ( Principia , page numbers).
• Citations from Newton’s Opticks are to Opticks: or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light , based on the fourth edition, London 1730 (New York: Dover, 1979), and are given in the form ( Opticks , page numbers).

The relevant secondary literature is vast. We confine ourselves to English-language literature and, more specifically, to the works cited in the text. These works can be consulted, in turn, for extensive references to other secondary literature.

• Allison, Henry E., 1983, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• –––, 1996, Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant’s Theoretical and Practical Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139172875
• –––, 2004, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense , revised and enlarged edition, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• –––, 2008, Custom and Reason in Hume: A Kantian Reading of the First Book of the Treatise , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199532889.001.0001
• Baier, Annette C., 1991, A Progress of Sentiments , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Barfoot, Michael, 1990, “Hume and the Culture of Science in the Early Eighteenth Century”, in M. A. Stewart (ed.), Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 151–190.
• Beauchamp, Tom L. & Alexander Rosenberg, 1981, Hume and the Problem of Causation , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Beck, Lewis White, 1978, “A Prussian Hume and a Scottish Kant”, in his Essays on Kant on Hume , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 111–129.
• Bird, Graham, 1962, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of One Central Argument in the “Critique of Pure Reason” , New York: Humanities Press.
• Buchdahl, Gerd, 1969, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• –––, 1972 [1974], “The Conception of Lawlikeness in Kant’s Philosophy of Science”, in Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress , Lewis White Beck (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 4: 149–171. Reprinted in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge , Lewis White Beck (ed.), Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974, pp. 128–150. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-3099-1_9 doi:10.1007/978-94-010-2294-1_14
• Cohen, I. Bernard, 1999, “A Guide to Newton’s Principia ”, in I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (trans.), The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 1–370.
• De Pierris, Graciela, 2001, “Hume’s Pyrrhonian Skepticism and the Belief in Causal Laws”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 39(3): 351–383. doi:10.1353/hph.2003.0121
• –––, 2002, “Causation as a Philosophical Relation in Hume”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 64(3): 499–545. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2002.tb00159.x
• –––, 2006, “Hume and Locke on Scientific Methodology: The Newtonian Legacy”, Hume Studies , 32(2): 277–329. [ De Pierris 2006 available online (PDF)]
• –––, 2015, Ideas, Evidence, and Method: Hume’s Skepticism and Naturalism concerning Knowledge and Causation , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716785.001.0001
• Fogelin, Robert J., 1985, Hume’s Skepticism in the Treatise of Human Nature , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Friedman, Michael, 1992a, “Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science”, in Paul Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161–199. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521365872.006
• –––, 1992b, Kant and the Exact Sciences , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2012, “The Prolegomena and Natural Science”, in Holger Lyre and Oliver Schliemann (eds), Kant: Prolegomena. Ein kooperativer Kommentar , Frankfurt: Klostermann, pp. 299–326.
• –––, 2013, Kant’s Construction of Nature: A Reading of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139014083
• –––, 2017, “Kant’s Conception of Causal Necessity and Its Legacy”, in Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach (eds), Kant and the Laws of Nature , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 195–213. doi:10.1017/9781316389645.011
• Garrett, Don, 1997, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Guyer, Paul, 1987, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511624766
• –––, 2005, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273461.001.0001
• –––, 2008, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Kemp Smith, Norman, 1941, The Philosophy of David Hume: A Critical Study of Its Origins and Central Doctrines , London: MacMillan.
• Koyré, Alexandre, 1965, Newtonian Studies , London: Chapman and Hall.
• Kuhn, Thomas S., 1957, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy and the Development of Western Thought , New York: Random House.
• Laywine, Alison, 1993, Kant’s Early Metaphysics and the Origins of the Critical Philosophy , Atascadero, Ca.: Ridgeview.
• Melnick, Arthur, 1973, Kant’s Analogies of Experience , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Owen, David, 1999, Hume’s Reason , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199252602.001.0001
• Paton, H. J., 1936, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience: A Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik Der Reinen Vernunft , 2 vols., London: Allen & Unwin.
• Stein, Howard, 1967, “Newtonian Space-Time”, Texas Quarterly , 10: 174–200.
• Strawson, Galen, 1989, The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199605842.001.0001
• Stroud, Barry, 1977, Hume , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Van Cleve, James, 1973, “Four Recent Interpretations of Kant’s Second Analogy”, Kant-Studien , 64: 69–87.
• Watkins, Eric, 2005, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511614217
• Wolff, Robert Paul, 1960, “Kant’s Debt to Hume via Beattie”, Journal of the History of Ideas , 21(1): 117–123. doi:10.2307/2708003
• –––, 1963, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Wright, John P., 1983, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume , Manchester, Lancashire: Manchester University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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causation: the metaphysics of | Hume, David | Hume, David: Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism | Kant, Immanuel | Kant, Immanuel: critique of metaphysics | laws of nature | Newton, Isaac: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica | Newton, Isaac: views on space, time, and motion

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College Writing: Argument

Causal arguments.

“Why are things like this? What is the effect, or result, of this?” and “What causes this?”–These questions guide authors as they analyze or argue about causal relationships, such as “What is the effect of a college education on income?” View fascinating reports on various cause/effect topics and then explore your own causal relationship. Improve your critical thinking skills.

Unlike explanations of processes, which follow a chronological order of events, cause and effect texts are deeply speculative and tentative, relying on causal reasoning and argument. Your purpose is to answer

• Why are things like this?
• What is the effect, or result, of this?
• What is the cause of this?

Analyzing cause-and-effect relationships requires you to question how different parts and sequences interact with each other over time, which is often more difficult than reporting a chronological order of events, as you do when describing a process.

Why Write About Causes and Effects?

Human beings ask why perhaps more than any other question. When we listen to the nightly news and hear about the atrocities of war, we wonder, “What causes the hatred?” When we read about the violence plaguing our country, we ask, “Why does the United States lead the world in violent crimes?” When we read studies that indicate that 28 percent of women in America have been raped and that the occurrence of date rape is rising on college campuses, we ask, “Why is this happening?” When we read about environmental problems such as the depletion of the ozone layer, we wonder, “Why don’t we do something about it?” Whenever we make decisions in our daily lives, we ask ourselves, “Why should I do this?”

On a daily basis, we seek to understand why events occurred by identifying the factors that led up to them. For example, if you were not doing well in school and on homework assignments, you might ask, “Did my high school class(es) sufficiently prepare me for this class? Am I studying long enough? Am I taking effective lecture notes? Am I paying too much attention to the course texts and too little to the instructor’s lectures? How is my attendance? Is my part-time job interfering too much with my school work? Am I using my time to study effectively? Are some of my friends having a negative influence on my study habits? Am I taking too many courses or putting too much time into another course? What can I do to improve my memory or study skills?” After asking these and other questions, you would eventually be able to identify a variety of causes for your poor performance, and once you recognize the causal relationship, you can set about realistically to improve your grade.

Cause-and-effect assignments are among the most interesting writing projects that you will tackle in school and in professional life. In school, teachers frequently assign process assignments. For example, humanities professors may ask for an analysis of what causes particular music genres or artistic genres to capture the imagination of popular culture; history professors, the impact of cultures on world history; social science professors, the effects of inventions on culture or the effect of gun control laws on violent homicide rates; business professors, the effects of changes in the interest rates on the economy.

Cause-and-effect texts are extremely common in professions–particularly the sciences, where researchers employ the scientific method to seek out cause-and-effect relationships. Writers commonly focus on analyzing causes or effects. A medical writer, for example, might explore the effects of a poor diet or the causes of a disease. A lawyer might argue the effect of an accident on his client. A sports writer might analyze why a team continues its losing or winning streak.

Diverse Rhetorical Situations

The purpose of many cause-and-effect texts is to explain the effects or causes of something. And the tone of these texts tends to be dispassionate and objective. In complex situations, however, the writer’s purpose may shift from explaining to speculating or even arguing about an interpretation. Sometimes writers argue about a particular cause or effect because they want to sell you something or because they want to change your mind on a policy or interpretation.

People write about causes and effects for a variety of communication situations, and they employ a variety of media. The shape and content of cause-and-effect reports tend to be more diverse than the shape and content of texts that explain subjects, concepts, or processes, as suggested in the table below.

Rhetorical Analysis of Cause and Effect Texts

Consider the context, audience, purpose, and media invoked by the following readings. Also examine how ideas are developed in these texts. Are assertions grounded in personal experience, interviews with authorities, questionnaires, Internet and library research, or empirical research?

• GHB on Campus : (http://www.projectghb.org/) A subtext of a larger Web site created to educate readers about the dangers of GHB, this page summarizes the deadly effects of GHB on college campuses and urges readers to forward a listserv message to their friends, which reveals the deadly effects of GHB. Interestingly, a sidebar seeks readers’ input to a survey on GHB usage on college campuses. On the Project GHB home page, the authors explain that Mr. and Mrs. Shortridges began the site following the death of their son to a GHB overdose: This GHB website started out as a quick project with the sole purpose of getting some truth about GHB on the Internet. In doing their original searches for GHB on the Internet, the Shortridges found that most websites advocate its use, etc. Some Internet pages about GHB have seemingly educated reports about GHB. They offer recipes, kits for sale, and tips for “safe” experiences.
• Rewards for Justice Program: Prevention of Terrorism Advertising Campaign : (http://www.state.gov/m/ds/terrorism/c8651.htm) The US Government summarizes the successful effects of its rewards program for preventing terrorism. Its purpose appears to be to defend the program, advertise its effectiveness, and outline future rewards.
• College graduation rate below 50 percent : (http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/21/powell.americas.promise/index.html?iref=allsearch) Written by a reporter for CNN.com, this texts summarizes academic research conducted by the Council for Aid to Education. The research analyzed why 52 percent of students in public colleges and 45 percent of students in private colleges failed to graduate in 2000. The researcher focused on greater access to college as the cause for the high dropout rate, suggesting that students who are being accepted into college are not prepared and that colleges need to do more to help these students succeed. The author’s tone/voice is impersonal and objective. The audience for the original research study was universities, while this report is written for a broader audience–readers of CNN’s online education pages.
• The Impact of Arts Education on Workforce Preparation . (https://www.nga.org/cms/home/nga-center-for-best-practices/center-publications/page-ehsw-publications/col2-content/main-content-list/the-impact-of-arts-education-on.html) Sponsored by the National Governors Association, this report’s primary audience is US governors. The purpose of this summary appears to be to encourage governors to fund arts education. This summary highlights conclusions found in a lengthier review of research: The Impact of Arts Education on Workforce Preparation. (https://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/050102ARTSED.pdf) This brief summary seems to present the other study’s results as fact as opposed to speculation or argument based on empirical research: The arts provide one alternative for states looking to build the workforce of tomorrow — a choice growing in popularity and esteem. The arts can provide effective learning opportunities to the general student population, yielding increased academic performance, reduced absenteeism, and better skill-building. An even more compelling advantage is the striking success of arts-based educational programs among disadvantaged populations, especially at-risk and incarcerated youth.
• Women’s Love/Hate Relationship With the Internet : (http://www2.unb.ca/parl/) This analysis of the effects of gender on Internet usage begins with a strong, personal voice, yet this student writer quickly abandons the personal voice and adopts the more objective, passive, detached voice of the social scientist. Her chief purpose is to analyze barriers women face to using the Internet and outline ways to overcome these barriers. The writer has created a Web site to support her essay, including several bibliographies.
• The State of the World’s Children by UNICEF : (http://www.unicef.org/sowc08/) Mixing evocative pictures with extremely detailed analyses of the effects of poor nutrition on the world’s children, UNICEF offers an informative and persuasive account of how countries and communities can and should help their children. Although this document is available on the Web, it lacks internal navigation links. Readers cannot tell how long the document is, either.
• The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall of American Society by Mike Adams : (https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume5/v5i6/GrandmotherEffect%205-6.pdf) Written for a university audience, Mike Adams pokes fun at social science methods and students’ “grandmother” problems: Overall, a student who is failing a class and has a final coming up is more than 50 times more likely to lose a family member than an A student not facing any exams.

When dealing with causes and effects, it is important to keep to a narrow topic. Time constraints and resources should always be kept in mind when pursuing a topic. Example: To find the reasons for world hunger would take years of research and/or tons of hours, so focus on a specific entity of a broad topic. Perhaps you could identify one country’s efforts over the past few years.

Writers often bring focus to their work by claiming cause-and-effect relationships upfront, in their introductions. These “thesis statements” guide the writer and reader throughout the document. And they also offer clues as to the writer’s voice, tone, and persona. Consider, for example, this tongue-in-cheek analysis of the The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall Of American Society.

The basic problem can be stated very simply: A student’s grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam, than at any other time of year.

While this idea has long been a matter of conjecture or merely a part of the folklore of college teaching, I can now confirm that the phenomenon is real. For over twenty years I have collected data on this supposed relationship, and have not only confirmed what most faculty had suspected, but also found some additional aspects of this process that are of potential importance to the future of the country. The results presented in this report provide a chilling picture and should waken the profession and the general public to a serious health and sociological problem before it is too late.

Development

Critical readers such as your instructors are quick to recognize shallow reasoning. College instructors expect you to cite multiple causes or effects when you are addressing a complex phenomenon. For example, if you were exploring the effects of TV on children, your readers would most likely expect you to do more than attack the violence as being unethical or immoral. Likewise, if you were analyzing the causes of our nation’s high divorce rates, your instructors would expect you to do more than cite troubles with finances as the cause of divorces.

To help you develop a stronger sense of the level of detail your readers need to understand a particular cause-and-effect relationship, consider conducting research. What have others reported about the particular cause-and-effect relationship you are exploring? Read about what others have speculated or reported about your topic.

Below are some additional suggestions for developing your cause-and-effect report.

Check for Post Hoc Fallacies

Critical readers will expect you to develop the reasoning that demonstrates the cause and effect relationship isn’t due to chance. Academic readers are reluctant to assume causality between two actions because they are trained to identify post hoc (“after this”) fallacies. Essentially a post hoc fallacy occurs when an author assumes Event B was caused by Event A simply because it followed Event A; the connection is false because it is equally possible that Event B was caused by some other factor. For example, let us suppose that Bill has been jilted by his girlfriend Laura. Because Laura argued with Bill last Friday night that he never spent any money on her and that she always has to pay for their dates, Bill might assume that she left him because he was cheap. However, this might not be the true reason for Laura’s dumping Bill. In fact, it could be that Laura was tired of Bill’s negative view of life. Perhaps she truly left Bill because she found him to be insensitive, boring, and uncommunicative.

Identify Sufficient and Necessary Causes

In some instances you may be able to explain an effect by identifying sufficient causes and necessary causes.

A sufficient cause is one that can cause the effect to take place. By itself, a sufficient cause can explain a phenomenon or trend. For instance, in order for someone to contract the AIDS virus, any of the following forms of contact is a sufficient cause:

A previously infected patient’s bodily fluids must enter the uninfected person’s body through either an open sore, Sexual conduct, Or a contaminated instrument such as a needle.

Frequently more than one sufficient cause is necessary to explain a phenomenon or trend. Three or four causes, for example, may be necessary to explain an effect. You cannot say, for example, that all one needs is a match to start a fire. You also need oxygen and something to burn. When describing physical phenomena such as how acid rain is produced, you may have little difficulty identifying sufficient causes. Explaining human behavior is rarely so simple, of course.

Identify Remote/Speculative Causes

When we face complicated questions and problems, we often are unable to identify sufficient causes so we must speculate about necessary causes—those causes that can result in the effect. For instance, no single cause precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, yet we could speculate that hunger, poor economic conditions, alienation from communism, and political corruption were all remote causes.

Because academic readers are sensitive to the complexity of most issues, they generally do not expect you to offer sufficient causes for complex problems. Instead, they expect you to speculate about possible causes and effects, while limiting the scope of your claims with qualifiers such as “usually,” “may,” “possible,” “sometimes” or “most.” No simple answer, no sufficient cause, can explain, for example, why some people become violent criminals or serial killers while others devote themselves to feeding the hungry or serving the helpless.

Establish an Appropriate Voice

You can choose from a range of tones, personas and voices. Some writers choose a contentious, argumentative tone. Sometimes writers will soften their tone, perhaps assuming a milder persona than they actually feel, because they fear providing the information in a more straightforward, argumentative way would cause readers to look elsewhere. For example, in Tropical Forests and Climate Change, the Canadian Development Agency offers a terrifying, well-researched analysis of global warming, yet softens its message with this caveat in the introduction:

Climate change predictions are difficult because of the complexity of the atmosphere and the interaction of the many variables involved.

Humanize Abstract Issues

No matter how technical your subject is, you should keep in mind that you are writing to other people. When you sense that the human story is being lost in abstract figures or academic jargon, consider adding an anecdote of how the problem you are discussing affects particular people. For example, Melissa Henderson, a student writer, began her report on the effect of crack on babies with the following portrayal of a newborn, which she composed after reading numerous essays about the effect of crack cocaine on human fetuses:

Lying restlessly under the warm lights like a McDonald’s Big Mac, Baby Doe fights with all of his three pounds of strength to stay alive. Because he was born prematurely, Baby Doe has an array of tubes and wires extending from his frail body which constantly monitor his heartbeat, drain excess fluid from his lungs and alert hospital personnel in the event he stops breathing. As he lies in the aseptic incubator his rigid little arms and legs twitch and jerk as though a steady current of electricity coursed through his veins. Suddenly, without warning or provocation, he begins to cry a mournful, inconsolable wail that continues steadily without an end in sight. As the nurses try to comfort the tiny infant with loving touches and soothing whispers, Baby Doe’s over-wrought nervous system can no longer cope. Suffering from sensory overload, he withdraws into the security offered in a long, deep slumber. Welcome to the world, Baby Doe, your mother is a crack cocaine addict.

As you write drafts of your causal report, consider incorporating an anecdote—that is, a brief story about how people are influenced by your subject. For example, if you are researching the effects of a sluggish economy on our nation’s poor, you might want to flesh out your statistics by depicting the story of how one homeless family lost their jobs, income, medical benefits, house, community, and hope.

Use Visuals

Although visuals are not required–in fact, many cause-and-effect texts do not use visuals–readers appreciate visuals, particularly ones that explain the cause-and-effect relationship being addressed. Consider, for example, this visual from the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Web site on Global Warming:

Readers particularly appreciate tables and graphs. Critical readers will often skim through a document’s tables before reading the text:

Visuals can be used to influence readers at an emotional level. For example, at Project GHB’s Tragedy Page, each picture links to an obituary, which tells the personal story of how these young people overdosed on GHB

Organization

When analyzing causal relationships, you must reveal to readers how different parts and sequences interact with each other over time. Rather than merely reporting the order of events in chronological fashion as we do when describing a process, you need to identify the specific reasons behind the effects or causes. Your organization needs to reflect the logic of your analysis. This is often difficult because a single cause can result in many different effects. Likewise, an effect can have multiple causes.

For example, even a simple effect such as a minor car accident can have multiple causes. Yes, we could say that John D. caused the accident because he was driving while intoxicated. Yet if we knew more about John D.’s state of mind—if we knew, for instance, that he wasn’t watching where he was going because he was thinking about his wife’s threat to leave him—then we could identify additional causes for the accident. It could very well be that he was exhausted after a sleepless night. Or perhaps his personal predicament had nothing to do with the accident: Maybe the loss of his job that morning or his failure to have faulty brakes replaced is a more significant cause for the accident. If we get really carried away with our reasoning, we could say that his former employers were responsible. After all, John D. would not have lost his job if the automobile manufacturer he worked for had not closed three of its American plants and moved manufacturing of some parts to plants in Mexico, Hong Kong, and Japan. In addition, we could also find potential causes for the accident by considering the other driver, Susan K. Maybe she rushed into the busy intersection expecting everyone else to make room for her because she was already late for an in-class exam. Perhaps if Susan K. had not consumed four pots of coffee, she would have been more mellow, more cautious, and less willing to risk her life to get to school on time.

Use Formatting to Highlight Your Organization

You can emphasize the most emphatic elements of your analysis by using headings and subheadings. A quick scan of any of the cause-and-effect readings highlights the popularity of headings. For example, below are the headings used by the Canadian International Development Agency for their essay on Tropical Forests and Climate Change

• Is the world’s climate changing?
• How are we causing climate change?
• Impact of climate change on forests
• Climate change convention and the Kyoto protocol
• Forestry’s role in mitigating climate change
• Carbon trading markets
• Conclusions

You may also want to play with the formatting of your text to highlight the reasoning behind your causal analysis. Consider, for example, the Canadian International Development Agency’s Tropical Forests and Climate Change. These authors used callouts to define climate change terms that readers may not understand and they used call out boxes to emphasize important points in their essay:

The Sustainable Forest Management Project in Cameroon, Trees for Tomorrow in Jamaica, and the Arenal Conservation and Development Project are CIDA-supported projects that work towards enhancing forest management in developing countries.

Expanding the area of forest cover by establishing tree plantations, agroforestry plantings, or analog forests enlarges the capacity of the terrestrial carbon sink. Trees are composed of approximately 50 percent carbon which they extract from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. The rate of carbon sequestration depends on the growth characteristics of the species, the conditions for growth where the tree is planted, and the density of the tree’s wood. It is greatest in the younger stages of tree growth, between 20 to 50 years. Growth rates on commercial plantations in the tropics have been improving steadily as the results of tree improvement research have been applied. The technology to establish fast-growing plantations exists, as does the global expertise for establishing them. Growth rates of more than 30 cubic metres/hectare/year are now commonplace for intensive industrial pulp plantations in the tropics and FAO estimates that there are between 1.5 million and 2.0 million hectares of tree plantations established every year.

You may find it helpful to visually represent the structure of your argument, perhaps even including your organizational map as a visual for readers. For example, consider the following screenshot from the EPA’s site on global warming. From this image, you understand four topics are being addressed and you understand the questions that guide the EPA’s causal analysis:

Introduce the Topic : Typically, texts that explore cause-and-effect relationships summarize the author’s position upfront, in the introduction (see General to the Specific Strategies). For example, back in 1985, Joseph K. Skinner began his influential essay “Big Mac and the Tropical Forests” with this dramatic opening–two sentences that immediately focus your attention on the causal connection he explicates throughout his essay: Hello, fast-food chains. Goodbye, tropical forests. However, you may want to avoid explicit thesis sentences and forecasting statements if your subject is likely to threaten the beliefs of your audience or if it is an inherently emotional subject. You may occasionally find it important to establish a credible persona first by reviewing what your readers are likely to believe about a causal relationship and then by stating your own opinion.

For example, assume you are writing an essay against spanking children. Now if your audience believes that spanking children is the proper way to discipline them, and if you claim in the introduction of the essay that spanking children may result in their becoming criminals, then your readers might assume you are an oddball and dismiss your essay. Yet if you intelligently discuss some of the reasons why parents and psychologists recommend spanking and then introduce extensive research from prominent journals and reports that all violent criminals were spanked as children, your readers might be more willing to listen to your reasoning

Style : When grappling with difficult issues and concepts, your prose can understandably become unclear, dull, or cluttered. Eventually, though, as you continue to revise your drafts and further refine your message, you need to cut away the superfluous words, redundancies, and needless abstractions. You can make your language more interesting and more understandable by eliminating needless jargon; passive voice; lengthy, redundant sentences; or pompous and archaic language.

Provide Descriptive, Sensory Language : You can help your readers imagine your subject better by appealing to their senses. Whenever possible, describe how an object looks, sounds, tastes, feels, or smells. For example, in this excerpt from Carl Sagan’s powerful essay on the effects of a nuclear war, “The Nuclear Winter,” notice how Sagan appeals to our visual sense in his description of the effect of a single nuclear bomb on a city: In a 2 megaton explosion over a fairly large city, buildings would be vaporized, people reduced to atoms and shadows, outlying structures blown down like matchsticks and raging fires ignited. And if the bomb exploded on the ground, an enormous crater, like those that can be seen through a telescope on the surface of the Moon, would be all that remained where midtown once had been.

The lifeblood of effective writing is concrete and sensory language. A word, properly placed, can create a tone that angers or inspires a reader. Knowing the power of language to promote change, effective writers are selective in their use of concrete words—words that represent actual physical things like “chair” and “house”—and sensory words—words that appeal to our five senses. Selecting the right word or group of words is a crucial step in drawing your readers into your work so that they can fully understand your vision and ideas. Note the masterful use of concrete and sensory words in this passage from a Newsweek essay, “Don’t Go in the Water”:

“Black mayonnaise”: The problem for most landlubbers, of course, is that most of the effects of coastal pollution are hard to see. Bays and estuaries that are now in jeopardy—Boston Harbor, for example, or even San Francisco Bay—are still delightful to look at from shore. What is happening underwater is quite another matter, and it is not for the squeamish. Scuba divers talk of swimming through clouds of toilet paper and half-dissolved feces, of bay bottoms covered by a foul and toxic combination of sediment, sewage and petrochemical waste appropriately known as “black mayonnaise.” Fishermen haul in lobsters and crab [sic] covered with mysterious “burn holes” and fish whose fins are rotting off. Offshore, marine biologists track massive tides of algae blooms fed by nitrate and phosphate pollution—colonies of floating microorganisms that, once dead, strangle fish by stripping the water of its life giving oxygen.

In addition to selecting an abundance of distinctive concrete words (such as sediment, sewage, and nitrate) and sensory words (foul, burn holes, feces), the authors have used powerful images and metaphors. Note, for example, the clouds of toilet paper. Even more potent is the image of “black mayonnaise.” Can you imagine biting into a sandwich spread with such poison?

When Speculating, Use Qualifying Language : When addressing complex issues and processes, you adopt an appropriate speculative voice by using words like “may cause” or “could also.”

Useful Qualifying Words and Phrases : may, might, usually typically, perhaps, can, I believe it seems likely. As an example of carefully chosen qualifying words, consider the following passage from the US EPA’s Web site on global warming impacts:

• Rising global temperatures are expected to raise sea level, and change precipitation and other local climate conditions. Changing regional climate could alter forests, crop yields, and water supplies. It could also affect human health, animals, and many types of ecosystems. Deserts may expand into existing rangelands, and features of some of our National Parks may be permanently altered.
• Most of the United States is expected to warm, although sulfates may limit warming in some areas. Scientists currently are unable to determine which parts of the United States will become wetter or drier, but there is likely to be an overall trend toward increased precipitation and evaporation, more intense rainstorms, and drier soils.
• Unfortunately, many of the potentially most important impacts depend upon whether rainfall increases or decreases, which can not be reliably projected for specific areas.
• Causes & Effects. Authored by : Joe Moxley. Provided by : Writing Commons. Located at : https://writingcommons.org/causes-effects . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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67 Causal Essay Topics to Consider

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A causal essay is much like a cause-and-effect essay , but there may be a subtle difference in the minds of some instructors who use the term "causal essay" for complex topics and "cause-and-effect essay" for smaller or more straightforward papers.

However, both terms describe essentially the same type of essay and the goal of each is the same: to come up with a list of events or factors (causes) that bring about a certain outcome (effect). The key question in such an essay is, "How or why did something happen?" It is important to make a clear connection between each cause and the ultimate effect.

Potential Causes

The most common problem students face in writing the causal essay is running out of "causes" to talk about. It is helpful to sketch out an outline before you begin writing the first draft of your outline. Your essay should include a strong introduction , good transition statements , and a well-crafted conclusion.

Topics to Consider

You can use a topic from this list, or use the list as inspiration for your own idea.

• What conditions and events led to the Great Depression ?
• What prompts a change in fashion trends?
• Why do some people fear the dark?
• How did some dinosaurs leave footprints?
• What causes criminal behavior?
• What causes people to rebel against authority?
• What conditions lead to powerful hurricanes?
• What developments led to regional accents in the United States?
• Why do good students become truant?
• What causes war?
• What factors can lead to birth defects?
• How are car insurance rates determined?
• What factors can lead to obesity?
• What can cause evolution to occur?
• Why does unemployment rise?
• Why do some people develop multiple personalities?
• How does the structure of the Earth change over time?
• What factors can cause bulimia nervosa?
• What makes a marriage fail?
• What developments and conditions led to the Declaration of Independence ?
• What led to the decline of the automobile industry?
• What factors led to the decline of the Roman Empire?
• How did the Grand Canyon form?
• Why did enslavement replace indentured servitude in the American colonies ?
• How has popular music been affected by technology?
• How has racial tolerance changed over time?
• What led to the dot-com bubble burst?
• What causes the stock market to fall?
• How does scarring occur?
• How does soap work?
• What causes a surge in nationalism?
• Why do some bridges collapse?
• Why was Abraham Lincoln assassinated ?
• How did we get the various versions of the Bible?
• What factors led to unionization?
• How does a tsunami form?
• What events and factors led to women's suffrage?
• Why did electric cars fail initially?
• How do animals become extinct?
• Why are some tornadoes more destructive than others?
• What factors led to the end of feudalism?
• What led to the " Martian Panic " in the 1930s?
• How did medicine change in the 19th century?
• How does gene therapy work?
• What factors can lead to famine?
• What factors led to the rise of democratic governments in the 18th century?
• How did baseball become a national pastime in the United States?
• What was the impact of Jim Crow laws on Black citizens in the United States?
• What factors led to the growth of imperialism?
• Why did the Salem witch trials take place?
• How did Adolf Hitler come to power?
• What can cause damage to your credit?
• How did the conservationism start?
• How did World War I start?
• How do germs spread and cause illness?
• How do people lose weight?
• How does road salt prevent accidents?
• What makes some tires grip better than others?
• What makes a computer run slowly?
• How does a car work?
• How has the news industry changed over time?
• What created Beatlemania ?
• How did organized crime develop?
• What caused the obesity epidemic?
• How did grammar rules develop in the English language?
• Where do political parties come from?
• How did the Civil Rights movement begin?
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14.2: Organizing the Causal Analysis Essay

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The causal analysis essay can be split into four basic sections: introduction, body, conclusion, and Works Cited page. There are three basic formats for writing a cause/effect:

• Single effect with multiple causes–air pollution is the effect, and students would identify several causes;
• Single cause with multiple effects–bullying is the cause, and students would establish several effects it has on children;
• Causal Chain–This is a more complex format. Causal chains show a series of causes and effects. For example, dust storms between Tucson and Phoenix can be deadly causing a chain reaction of accidents. The dust is the initial catalyst. It causes car A to stop. Car B crashes into Car A. Car C crashes into Car B., etc. Climate change is a good example of a causal chain topic. Population increase is causing an increase in traffic and greenhouse gases. It is also causing an increase in deforestation for housing, roads and farming. Deforestation means less plants to take up the CO2 and release O2 into the environment. Each item causes an effect. That effect causes another effect. All of this contributes to climate change.

Introduction

The introduction introduces the reader to the topic. We’ve all heard that first impressions are important. This is very true in writing as well. The goal is to engage the readers, hook them so they want to read on. One way is to write a narrative. Topics like bullying or divorce hit home. Beginning with a real case study highlights the issue for readers. This becomes an example that you can refer to throughout the paper. The final sentence in the introduction is usually the thesis statement.

Another way to introduce the topic is to ask a question or set of questions then provide background and context for the topic or issue. For example, if you are writing an essay about schizophrenia, opening questions might be “What are the main causes of schizophrenia? Who is susceptible?” The student would then begin a brief discussion defining schizophrenia and explaining its significance. Once again, the final sentence of the introduction would be a thesis statement introducing the main points that will be covered in the paper.

Body Paragraphs

The body of the essay is separated into paragraphs. Each paragraph covers a single cause or effect. For example, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, the two main causes of schizophrenia are genetic and environmental. Thus, if you were writing about the causes of schizophrenia, then you would have a body paragraph on genetic causes of schizophrenia and a body paragraph on the environmental causes. A second example is climate change where separate paragraphs explain each cause/effect relationship: population increases, increases in air pollution due to traffic exhaust and manufacturing, increases in food production and agriculture, deforestation. All are causes for climate change, and all are intricately linked.

A body paragraph should include the following:

• Topic sentence that identifies the topic for the paragraph,
• Several sentences that describes the causal relationship,
• Evidence from outside sources that corroborates your claim that the causal relationship exists,
• MLA formatted in-text citations indicating which source listed on the Works Cited page has provided the evidence,
• Quotation marks placed around any information taken verbatim (word for word) from the source,
• Summary sentence(s) that draws conclusions from the evidence,
• Remember: information from outside sources should be placed in the middle of the paragraph and not at the beginning or the end of the paragraph;
• Be sure and use transitions or bridge sentences between paragraphs.
• Draw final conclusions from the key points and evidence provided in the paper;
• Tie in the introduction. If you began with a story, draw final conclusions from that story;
• If you began with a question(s), refer back to the question(s) and be sure to provide the answer(s).

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Thomas Aquinas, "The Argument from Efficient Cause"

Abstract: Thomas' First Cause Argument for the existence of God is outlined and briefly clarified. Some standard objections to that argument are listed.

• There is an efficient cause for everything; nothing can be the efficient cause of itself.
• It is not possible to regress to infinity in efficient causes.
• To take away the cause is to take away the effect.
• If there be no first cause then there will be no others.
• Therefore, a First Cause exists (and this is God).
• Problem of Accidental Correlation. How can a distinction be maintained between a universal accidental correlation and a necessary connection? Simply because substances or events of the kind B always follow substances or events of the kind A does not imply that A caused B. Cf. , the variety of the informal fallacy of False Cause called post hoc ergo propter hoc . It is conceivable that such a sequence of generally occurring states of affairs is attributable to an improbable accidental or chance series of occurrences or is attributable to factors other than causality.
• If I view as a cause a ball which impresses a hollow as it lies on a stuffed cushion, the cause is simultaneous with the effect. Critique of Pure Reason (A203=B248) … A glass [filled with water] is the cause of the rising of the water above its horizontal surface, although both appearances are simultaneous. Critique of Pure Reason (A204=B249).
• Note that if the coupling of the cars of a train to the locomotive are rigid and the parts of the train are not elastic, as soon as the engine moves, the caboose moves. There would be no gap in time.
• We say the vibration of a string on a musical instrument causes a sound, but the string does not vibrate first followed later by the sound.
• Consider the striking of a match causes the match to light. If we look closely, there are actually an indefinite number of sequences of causes as friction of the striking causes the rapid vibration of red phosphorus atoms which in turn are transferred individually to the sulphur compounds and then individually to the molecules of wood. The sequential agitation of chemicals may be analyzed as moving at the speed of light among an indefinite number of points of ignition—which, from an Einsteinian point of view, can be seen as instantaneous.
• Finally, consider how old the universe would be if causes are simultaneous with their effects. Time would seem to be an illusion.
• Causality can be seen as a web of interrelated events whereby each event is connected to each and every other event directly or remotely. (Any loose end or non-connected event would count as an event not subject to the laws of nature and so would be a miracle .)
• To list all of the conditions for the occurrence of an event would be to include a description of the state of the universe down to the location and momentuum of each and every elementary bit of physical substance.
• There might be different lines of webs of causality leadings to multiple first causes.
• Finally, of course, there is no proof that a First Cause is the same entity as the beings noted in the conclusion of the other Five Ways.
• There seems to be a contradiction in the argument. The first premise states, "There is an efficient cause for everything, nothing can be the efficient cause of itself." Is, then, God something or nothing? If God is something, then we can ask the question of children, "What caused God?" If God is nothing, then God's existence is not proven. If God is claimed to have a privileged status, then the argument becomes viciously circular.
• Thomas oversimplifies the nature of causality in terms of a temporal sequence of causes. Contemporary physics (as the best epistemological result to date) has many different notions of relations of events—including no causality (only correlations between events), simultaneous causation, backward causation, causation at a distance ( cf. , Bell's Theorem or quantum entanglement ), or merely mathematical description.
• Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.
• Rule II. Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes. As to respiration in a man and in a beast; the descent of stones [meteorites) in Europe and in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.
• If the first premise "There is an efficient cause for everything; nothing can be the efficient cause of itself" is true, then the occurrence of miracles is ruled out. A miracle is a violation of a law of nature. Ruling out miracles is not something Thomas would want to do.
• One can envision many possibilities. Even if there were a first cause, it would not necessarily follow that this first cause was God any more than the second cause in the sequence is God. It could be that there are many gods as first causes. It could be that the universe of causes circle back on itself so that there is no first cause, but every effect has a cause.
• Also, it does not follow that the first cause would be the same entity as the conclusion of the other arguments: Unmoved Mover, Necessary Being, Greatest Good, or Great Designer. A separate argument would be necessary to show that all these "gods" are the same God.
• Fallacy of Composition. Simply because causality occurs within the universe, it does not logically follow there must be a grand cause for the exisence of all of the separate causes in the whole universe. Moreover, Thomas' assertion that "To take away the cause is to take away the effect" would not hold for an infinite regress of causes since there is no cause taken away.
• Causation The historical background to the concept and a short list of related terms are summarized in this entry from the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica .
• “Causation in the Seventeenth Century” Willis Doney in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas maintained by the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library discusses contrast of the causal ideas of Hume, Bacon, Hobbes, and Boyle with those of Descartes, Malebranche, and Spinoza. The article concludes with a summary of the notions of force used by Newton and Leibniz.
• Cause. A discussion of causality in Greek, Scholastic, and Modern thought is outlined in the Catholic Encyclopedia . A short summary of Hegel's and Schopenhauer's doctrines together with cause in science, common sense, and the law is also included.
• Cycles. A history of the theory that cosmological and historical events recur on a regular basis is traced by George Boas in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
• The Metaphysics of Causation. Jonathan Schaffer reviews some of the main contemporary arguments over the immanence, individuation, direction, and selection of causation. An extensive bibliography is also included in this article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Spooky Action at a Distance: An Explanation of Bell's Theorem. An explanation of the history and experiments supporting Bell's Theorem. One commonly cited result is how one electon of a pair can instantaneously affect the other electron of the pair million of miles away. This clear account by Gary Felder requires only high-school math.
• Thomas Aquinas, "The Cosmological Argument." Scroll down the page for a short reading selection of Thomas' five arguments for God's existence in the textbook Reading for Philosophical Inquiry on this site.
• What is Occam's Razor? A summary of the variety of ways Occam's Razor and related principles have been interpreted by philosophers and scientists is described by Phil Gibbs and updated by Sugihara Hiroshi.

“If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, ‘How about the tortoise?’ the Indian said, ’Suppose we change the subject.’ Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), 6-7.

Relay corrections, suggestions or questions to larchie at lander.edu Please see the disclaimer concerning this page. This page last updated 01/27/24 © 2005 Licensed under the GFDL

Argumentative Thesis Statement

Ai generator.

In the realm of persuasive writing, the argumentative thesis statement stands as a pivotal element, guiding the entire context of an essay or research paper. It serves as the beacon that directs your work, letting readers know not only what to expect but also the position you’re advocating. This article dives into the depths of argumentative thesis statement examples, unraveling their significance, and offering a step-by-step guide on how to create one effectively.

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What is an Argumentative Thesis Statement?

Before we delve into the intricacies of crafting a compelling argumentative thesis statement, let’s clarify what this vital element entails. An argumentative thesis statement serves as the core assertion of your essay, presenting your stance on a particular theme or topic. It goes beyond a mere description of the subject; it takes a firm position that you will defend with logical reasoning, evidence, and persuasion.

How to Craft an Argumentative Thesis Statement

Creating an argumentative thesis statement requires a methodical approach. By following these steps, you’ll be better equipped to develop a thesis that not only captures the essence of your argument but also engages readers from the outset.

Step 1: Identify Your Topic and Stance

The first step involves identifying the simple subject you’re addressing and your position on it before starting with the introduction . Your stance could be an assertion, a judgment, or an evaluation, shaping the tone and direction of your entire argument.

Step 2: Analyze Your Audience

Understanding your audience is crucial. Consider their perspectives, beliefs, and potential objections. Tailoring your argumentative thesis statement to resonate with your readers enhances the persuasiveness of your message.

Step 3: Develop a Concise Thesis

A strong thesis is concise and focused. It should encapsulate your main argument while giving a glimpse of the supporting points you’ll discuss. Avoid vague language and ensure your thesis statement is clear and direct.

Step 4: Incorporate Cause and Effect

A compelling argumentative thesis statement often involves demonstrating the cause-and-effect relationship between your stance and the topic. Highlight how certain actions, beliefs, or decisions lead to specific outcomes.

Can my argumentative thesis statement evolve as I research and write?

Absolutely. Your thesis can and should evolve based on your research findings and the development of your argument. Flexibility allows you to refine and strengthen your position.

How can I avoid falling into clichés when crafting my thesis statement?

To avoid clichés , strive for originality. Instead of using well-worn phrases, express your position in a unique way that showcases your perspective and analytical depth.

Should I include counterarguments in my thesis statement?

While it’s not necessary to include counterarguments in your thesis statement, acknowledging opposing viewpoints can add credibility to your argument. However, save the detailed counterarguments for the body of your essay.

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

10 Examples of Public speaking

20 Examples of Gas lighting

A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

The Cosmological argument

Cosmological arguments attempt to justify the conclusion that God exists as the required explanation of the existence of the universe.

A posteriori. Cosmological arguments are typically a posteriori arguments, which means they are based on experience. The cosmological argument is based on observation of everything in the universe having a cause, being in motion or being contingent and therefore requiring a creator. These observations form the premises of cosmological arguments. On the basis of those observations, an inference is then made to the nature of the origin of the universe being God.

Cosmological arguments from causation

Aquinas’ first and second ways.

Aquinas’ first two ways are developed from Aristotle’s theory of efficient causation, which is an attempt to explain the change we observe. Aristotle thought that change required a prime mover which sustains the motion and causation we experience.

Efficient causation involves sustaining causes, those which bring about their effect continuously, such that if they ceased to exist then their effect would also cease to exist. E.g., the gravity of the earth causes the moon to be in orbit, which in turn causes the sea tides to rise and fall on earth.

Aquinas’ 1 st way (motion)

P1. We observe that there are things in motion. P2. Motion is the actualization of a thing’s potential to be in motion. P3. A thing can only come to be in motion by being moved. P4. A mover must be something that is actual, i.e., in a state of actuality. P5. A thing cannot move itself. C1. So, all things in motion must have been moved by a mover, which was also moved by another mover. P6. There cannot be an infinite regress of movers, otherwise there would be no first mover and then no motion. C2. Therefore, there must be a first mover which must itself be unmoved (as it is pure actuality). That thing we call God.

Change requires going from potential to actual, which depends on something that is actual, which cannot depend merely on other potential things, so there must be something of pure actuality. A thing that is purely actual with no potential cannot change, it is an unmoved mover or uncaused causer.

Aquinas’ 2 nd way (atemporal causation)

P1. We observe efficient causation. P2. Nothing can cause itself. P3. There is a logical order to sustaining causes: the first cause, then intermediate causes, then an ultimate effect. P4. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A doesn’t exist neither does B. C1. There must be a first sustaining cause, otherwise P1 would be false as there would be no further sustaining causes or effects. C2. As there is a first cause, there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. C3. The first cause must itself be uncaused. That thing we call God.

Aquinas’ first two ways treat the relationship between cause and effect as ontologically real but not temporal, although they are consistent with a temporal understanding of cause and effect. They point to the logical implications of there being sustaining causes. This is why especially Aquinas’ 2 nd way is called a cosmological argument from ‘atemporal causation’.

The first and second way attempt to show God must exist as the first mover or causer. The word ‘first’ in the concept of a first cause or first mover is not meant to indicate it being ‘first’ in time, but ontologically first in the sense that motion and causation are ontologically dependent on it.

The Kalam cosmological argument from temporal causation

The Kalam cosmological argument explicitly involves temporal causation, which is when a cause brings about its effect after it and the continued existence of the effect is independent of the existence of the cause.

The Kalam infers a beginning cause rather than a sustaining cause. The causal sequence being temporal, with God as the beginning cause, is a central feature of the argument.

One advantage of the Kalam argument is that it’s easier to explain how an atemporal God could create the world in one act compared to a sustained act of creation over time.

W. L. Craig brought this argument to prominence in the late 20 th century and named it ‘Kalam’ after the Islamic philosophy which first invented in the 11 th century.

P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. P2. The universe began to exist (an infinite regress is not possible). C1. So, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Further steps are required to show that the cause of the universe is God. Craig firstly argues that scientific explanation applies within the universe and therefore cannot apply to its actual creation. The cause of the universe must therefore have a personal explanation, i.e., intentionally created by an intelligent mind. This being must have the power to create a universe from nothing (ex nihilo). It must be outside time and space since it created time and space. As a timeless, eternal being, God did didn’t begin to exist so it’s then no contradiction in claiming that God doesn’t have a cause. These are qualities that God would have, so the cause of the universe is God.

A strength of the Kalam argument is W. L. Craig’s arguments for the impossibility of an ‘actual infinite’ meaning an infinite in reality. The problem is that sets with infinite members can be equal in size to their subsets. Craig uses the illustration of a library with an infinite number of books, half of which are red. Half of infinity is still infinity, so half of infinity is not actually smaller than infinity. This might make sense theoretically, but Craig claims problems arise when applying it to reality. It would mean the set of red books ‘X’ is apparently smaller than the set of all the books ‘Z’, and yet paradoxically is also equal in size, since both are infinite. Infinities therefore cannot actually exist, since then they could be both smaller than and the same size as other infinities.

Counter: An infinite series is actually possible.

G. Cantor argued that the mathematical properties of infinite sets/things are simply radically different to those that are finite, making Craig’s library or Hilbert’s Hotel not absurd. Craig takes it to be obviously absurd for a subset (red books) to be both smaller than and equal to its set (all the books). However, it’s only absurd for finite sets. For infinite sets it’s not absurd, it’s actually their defining characteristic. When we think of libraries or hotels, we have in mind our ideas about finite sets of things, but Cantor argued such intuitions are not applicable to infinite sets. Infinite sets simply have different mathematical properties, one of which is the possibility of a one-to-one relation between the number of members of infinite sets and those of their subsets.

Hume’s objection to the ‘causal principle’

The strength of cosmological arguments from causation is that they are based on the causal principle, which is that every event has a cause, or that every contingent being has a cause of its existence.

Ex nihilo nihil fit (nothing comes from nothing) goes back to the ancient Greeks like Parmenides who influenced Aristotle and later Aquinas. It’s not possible for an event to happen without a cause, otherwise something could come from nothing, which is absurd.

Arguing for the Kalam cosmological argument, William Lane Craig claims that the causal principle is:

“based on the metaphysical intuition that something cannot come out of nothing.” – W, L. Craig

A causal principle is one of the essential pillars of cosmological arguments, alongside arguments against the possibility of infinite regression and inferences to the divine nature of the ultimate origin of the universe.

Weakness: Hume’s objection to the causal principle.

Hume’s fork tells us that propositions (such as the causal principle) can either be analytic or synthetic.

Hume argues that the causal principle is not true by definition (analytic). There doesn’t appear to be anything incoherent in the idea of an event or thing existing without a cause. It is conceivable and not obviously self-contradictory. We can imagine something popping into existence without a cause. The idea of a four-sided triangle is obviously self-contradictory because the idea of triangle contradicts the idea of four-sides. Yet, the idea of an event doesn’t seem contradicted by the idea of no cause.

So, the causal principle can only be justified on a posteriori grounds, which makes it a synthetic truth. The problem is, claims based on experience cannot be known with certainty to be true in all cases. All we can justifiably claim is that every event we have observed has a cause. It does not follow from this that all events have a cause, since we have not experienced all events.

So, the universe could exist without a cause. The cosmological argument therefore fails because in attempting to argue for God’s existence as the required explanation of the universe, it assumes that the universe has a cause.

Lawrence Krauss & Alan Guth add evidence from modern theoretical physics which resonates with Hume’s point. The universe has zero total energy and therefore required no energy to be created So, it could have come from nothing.

Evaluation defending the cosmological argument:

The cosmological argument could be defended by arguing that the universality of the causal principle is justified through induction. We have experienced many causal interactions, all of which involved the constant conjunction of cause and effect. From this we can infer that all effects have a cause. It is possible that this may be false, that in some cases the causal principle may not hold. However, the evidence so far suggests that it always holds. Therefore, we are empirically justified in accepting the causal principle.

Evaluation criticizing the cosmological argument:

Furthermore, we cannot even be empirically justified in holding the causal principle. All the evidence that we have for the causal principle comes from our observation of change within the universe itself. We are not justified in assuming the relevance of that experience to the conditions under which the universe itself came to exist. Those conditions, whatever they are, could be radically different to anything we now observe within the universe. So, we cannot even justify the causal principle on an empirical basis.

Cosmological arguments from contingency

Aquinas’ 3rd way (contingency).

P1. We observe that there are contingent beings. P2. A series of contingent beings cannot regress infinitely into the past. C1. So, a series of contingent beings must be finite. P3. If this finite series was all that existed, then before it would be nothing. P4. If there was once nothing, there would be nothing now, which is absurd. C1. So, there must be more than this finite series of contingent beings, i.e., a necessary being. P5. There cannot be an infinite regress of necessary beings. C3. There must be a necessary being “having of itself its own necessity … That thing we call God.”

Leibniz’ principle of sufficient reason

Leibniz improves on Aquinas’ 3 rd way by removing unnecessary reasoning about nothing once existing.

Leibniz’ argument is a priori, it doesn’t require inference from experience. The downside of a posteriori arguments is that they are defeasible, meaning in principle future experiences could always prove them false. A priori arguments based on logic are stronger.

Leibniz bases his argument on the principle of sufficient reason, which does both the job of a causal principle and an argument against the infinite regress. It shows that there must be not just any causal explanation, but a causal explanation which provides an ultimately sufficient reason for everything that exists. This strengthens the argument by making it dependent on only one claim.

P1. For every true fact or assertion, there is a “sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise.” P2. There are two types of truth: truths of reasoning and truths of fact. P2a. Truths of reasoning are necessary, so their opposite is impossible. The sufficient reason for truths of reasoning can be discovered a priori. P2b. Truths of fact are contingent, so their opposite is possible. The sufficient reason for truths of fact cannot be discovered through other contingent truths, because they too require a sufficient explanation, and so on. C1. A sufficient reason for contingent facts must be found outside a series of contingent things. C2. The sufficient reason for contingent facts must be a necessary substance. C3. That necessary substance is God. C4. So, God exists.

Leibniz claims that the principle of sufficient reason (P1) can be known as a necessary truth. Even if we can’t know or even find out what the reason is, there must be one. ‘From nothing, nothing comes’ because nothing is not sufficient to create something. Only a necessary being is sufficient to explain the universe because otherwise there would be an infinite chain of contingent beings, but an infinite regress alone can have no sufficient explanation.

If things have always existed going back forever then nothing would have a sufficient reason for its existence. Everything’s reason for existence would consist something for which its reason for existence consists in something else. There would simply be an infinite deferring of the reason for existence and thus there would not actually be a reason for existence. So, a necessary being must have begun the chain of contingent beings and is the sufficient explanation of the universe.

The fallacy of composition

The strength of cosmological arguments from contingency is their seeking an ultimate explanation rather than only a first cause.

They focus more fundamentally on the nature of things. Beings have causal relations, but also an ontological status, i.e., contingency or necessity. Contingent beings & series must have an external explanation since it is their nature to depend on something else for their existence.

Weakness: Hume & Russell on the fallacy of composition.

This criticism explicitly attacks cosmological arguments from contingency, but if successful would also undermine arguments from causation. It is a fallacy to assume that what is true of a thing’s part(s) must also be true of the whole. Bertrand Russell illustrated this by pointing out that just because every human (parts) has a mother, that doesn’t mean the human race (whole) has a mother.

Hume uses the example of a finite set of contingent beings (20 particles). Just because the parts of a set/series of contingent beings have an explanation, that doesn’t mean the whole set/series has an explanation.

Experience shows that parts of the universe are contingent & have a cause/explanation. This doesn’t mean the universe itself as a whole must also be contingent (have a cause/explanation).

The only empirical way to believe a whole series has an explanation is to commit the fallacy of composition by assuming the whole is like the parts. So, a posteriori cosmological arguments commit the fallacy of composition by assuming that the universe has a cause when all we experience is that parts of the universe have a cause. That’s the problem with Aquinas’ 3 rd way.

Evaluation defending the cosmological argument

However, Copleston rightly points out that contingency arguments don’t actually appear to make an inference from parts to whole.

They argue that a series of contingent things must have an external cause. Copleston argues:

P1. A series is either caused or uncaused. P2. If a series is uncaused, the reason for its existence must be internal to it, making it necessary. P3. No amount of contingent things can be necessary, not even an infinite number of them, so a series of contingent things cannot be necessary. C1. So, a series of contingent things must have an external cause like a necessary being.

However, Hume’s empiricism drives his point further. Hume questions how we know a series must have a cause/explanation. In P2, Copleston assumes that an uncaused series must have an internal explanation. Hume doesn’t see how experience can justify thinking a series must have an explanation at all.

However, Leibniz’ a priori argument may avoid this problem as it’s derived from intuitively known a priori necessary truths, not experience. Leibniz is a rationalist and believes the whole has an explanation because of his a priori principle of sufficient reason. Nothing can be true, like a whole series existing, without a sufficient explanation for why it is thus and not otherwise.

Copleston vs Hume & Russell on the universe as a brute fact

Hume and Russell take the fallacy of composition objection further in a way that can respond to Leibniz’ a priori approach.

Hume turns to the example of an infinite series of contingent beings. He argues it is possible and doesn’t need an ultimate sufficient reason. Each being is explained by the being it depends on.

Of course, Leibniz wants to object that this leaves the whole chain itself without explanation, without reason for existence.

Hume, however, denies the validity of claiming that there is ‘whole’ chain. If experience only shows that contingent beings exist, we can question whether there actually is a ‘whole’.

“uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct counties into one kingdom … is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind and has no influence on the nature of things.” – Hume

“I think the word “universe” is a handy word in some connections, but I don’t think it stands for anything that has a meaning … The whole concept of cause is one we derive from our observation of particular things; I see no reason whatsoever to suppose that the total has any cause whatsoever … it doesn’t need to be its own cause, what I’m saying is that the concept of cause is not applicable to the total.” – Russell.

We cannot say the ‘whole universe/series’ is even a valid concept, let alone that it is contingent. So, we can’t conclude there is a need for an explanation like a necessary being. Cosmological arguments from contingency fail. Note that this isn’t quite saying the universe could be necessary. A necessary being contains its own reason for existence, but Hume and Russell are proposing that the universe could simply have no explanation at all.

All we can justifiably say is that the universe/series is “just there, and that’s all” (Russell) . It is a brute fact, one which has no explanation, whether causal or otherwise. Russell points to evidence from Quantum mechanics:

“The physicists assure us that individual quantum transitions in atoms have no cause.” – Russell.

So, arguments from contingency baselessly assume that a series (as a whole) must have an explanation at all.

This argument also counters the arguments from causation. If we have no basis for thinking the universe has an explanation of any kind, that includes causal explanation.

Copleston firstly responds that only some interpretations of quantum mechanics propose uncaused events. Copleston further argues:

“I cannot see how science could be conducted on any other assumption than that of order an intelligibility in nature”  – Copleston.

Copleston’s argument is successful because the ‘brute fact’ argument is self-defeating. Science and philosophy are about finding out why things are the way they are; their causes and explanations. If we say that there is no reason, then we undermine the purpose of science and philosophy itself.

Furthermore, Russell argues that while a scientist may look for causes, they do not assume that there is one to find. Even if quantum transitions are only uncaused on some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the mere idea of it still shows that physicists are able to conceive of events that have no cause. It is therefore at least logically possible for events in nature to have no cause or explanation. So, a contingent series doesn’t need an external cause. The principle of sufficient reason cannot be a necessary truth. The universe could be one of those natural events that has no cause or explanation. Science should accept that possibility, since science should be open to whatever could be true.

Copleston attempts to show that Russell is assuming that there isn’t a cause and Russell attempts to show that Copleston is assuming that there is. Ultimately, defenders of the cosmological argument are the ones making the positive claim about reality, so they have the burden of proof. It looks like for cosmological arguments from contingency, the conclusion that God exists as the explanation/cause of the universe cannot be reached without assuming that the universe has an explanation/cause. In that case, the mere possibility of the universe being a brute fact is enough to undermine the cosmological argument. It’s not irrational to look for a cause, even a cause like a God, but since there might not be a cause it is irrational to think that there must be one.

Issues around the possibility of a ‘necessary being’

A strength of cosmological arguments from contingency is that their conclusions achieve more than arguments from causation. They can establish God’s necessity, meaning inability to cease existing, which is a key element of Christian theology. Aquinas understands necessity to mean the inability to cease existing, which fits with the concept of omnipotence.

Weakness: Hume’s rejection of the possibility of a necessary being.

Hume’s fork:

A priori reasoning can only tell us about the relations between ideas , i.e. analytic knowledge (true by definition). E.g. “a bachelor is an unmarried man”.

A posteriori reasoning can only tell us about matters of fact , i.e. synthetic knowledge (true by the way the world is). E.g. “The sun will rise tomorrow”.

“there is an evident absurdity in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact, or to prove it by any arguments a priori” – Hume.

A being whose existence is logically necessary is an absurdity to Hume. A thing’s existence is a matter of fact. All matters of fact can be conceived false and denied without contradiction. So, anything which could exist could also not exist. The concept of a being which ‘must’ exist, whose existence cannot be denied without contradiction, is therefore absurd and meaningless.

Hume’s justification for the fork is that truths of logic/definition are necessary, because they will be true no matter what happens regarding the factual state of the universe. E.g., 1+1 will always = 2, because there is no possible change to the universe which could make it false.

This shows there is a disconnect between logical (analytic) truths which are necessary (cannot be otherwise) and factual (synthetic) truths which can. The term “necessary existence” violates this disconnect. It is about what factually exists, so must be synthetic. Yet, it somehow also has the “cannot be otherwise” property that only belongs to logical analytic truths. We cannot know that a being’s existence is logically necessary, since a being’s existence cannot be established through logic.

“The words, therefore, necessary existence, have no meaning.” – Hume.

Any argument which attempts to conclude that God exists necessarily therefore fails, including the ontological argument and some cosmological arguments.

The masked man fallacy. Hume’s argument depends on conceivability entailing possibility. It is therefore susceptible to the masked man fallacy, which shows that we can conceive of the impossible. Imagine someone heard of a masked man robbing a bank. They can conceived that it is not their father. Yet, if it was their father, then it is impossible that it is not their father. Yet, that was what they conceived of. So, we can conceive of the impossible. When Hume argues that our ability to conceive of God not existing shows that it is possible for God to not exist and that God therefore cannot be necessary, he assumes that conceivability entails possibility. Conceiving of God’s non-existence could be conceiving of something impossible because God is necessary.

Hume’s argument is successful because it is epistemological, i.e., focused on what we can know. Hume isn’t really saying a necessary being is ‘impossible’, just that it is impossible for us to know that such a being exists. Aquinas, Leibniz and Craig say that it is a being with the property of the impossibility of non-existence, but Hume simply throws up his hands and says he cannot see how anyone can ascribe meaning to that statement. We might technically be able to understand the words, but we cannot conceive or understand how they could map onto reality. If we are to accept the term on that basis, Hume rightly goes on to say that we might as well say that, even though we can’t understand how, reality itself has this mysterious property of the impossibility of non-existence, so positing a God is unnecessary anyway.

Issues around the possibility of an infinite series

A crucial strength of all cosmological arguments are the justifications its proponents provide for the premise that an infinite series is impossible. This is essential, for if there is an infinite regress going back in time forever then all forms of the cosmological argument fail. God could not be concluded to exist as the origin of what exists if there was no origin. These arguments attempt to show that the idea of an infinite regress leads to paradox or absurdity and therefore must be false.

Aquinas argues an infinite regress is impossible. If there was an infinite regress, there would be an infinite amount of time before the present moment. That means to get to the present moment, an infinite amount of time must have passed. However, an infinite amount of time cannot pass. No matter how long you wait, even if you never stop waiting, the amount of time passed can never reach infinity. So, there cannot be an infinite amount of time before the present moment and therefore there cannot be an infinite regress. You cannot traverse an infinite through successive addition.

Weakness: The possibility of an infinite series.

The idea of an infinite regress may be difficult to comprehend, but there is no obvious logical contradiction in the idea. The concept of ‘time’ does not seem contradicted by the predicate of ‘infinitely regressing into the past’.

Critics of the infinite regress attempt to show that while there is no obvious contradiction, nonetheless paradoxes arise from the concept. This aims to show that it is illogical and therefore impossible.

However, Hume thinks we simply lack the evidence on which to properly judge whether it is possible or not. We can strengthen Hume’s point with modern science which is full of examples where physicists speculate about ways an infinite regress could exist without paradox.

Some physicists argue for the block universe, that the passing of time is an illusion. Others suggest the universe eternally cycles between expansion and collapse and that a new timeline begins each cycle. In that case, an infinite amount of time never passes (so Aquinas fails) and in fact a time line containing an actual infinite never existed (so Craig fails). Yet, an infinite series of cycles happened (just not on any particular time-line).

The meta point of these examples is that we know very little about what time and infinity are and how they work, so claims about the impossibility of an infinite series are unjustified. Philosophers who think they can draw conclusions about time through pure logic alone fail because our actual concept of time is so poorly scientifically understood and could bare very little relation to what time actually is. It seems Hume would say we should admit that we are not in a position to conclude either that there is or is not an infinite regress.

There is certainly much we don’t know about time and infinity. However, what we currently understand suggests Aquinas’ reasoning is right. The eternal bang/crunch model may be logically possible, but we have no reason to believe it. The evidence suggests the universe started with a big bang and there is no evidence it will collapse again.  We are justified in believing what we currently have most reason to believe.

Hume’s stance is the right one. We simply lack the required evidence to have a reasonable belief one way or the other regarding whether time regresses infinitely or not. Ultimately it is a matter for scientists and mathematicians and since they are far from decided, we are not justified in claiming an infinite regress is possible or impossible. Cosmological arguments therefore fail as they have the burden of proof. They are making a positive claim about what exists on the assumption of an infinite regress’ impossibility.

Extra credit:

Modern science’s rejection of the cosmological argument.

A reasonably popular view in physics had been the steady state theory, which was that the universe had always existed and that there is a continuous creation of matter which expands. However in the mid 20 th century, the discovery of the microwave background radiation provided very strong evidence against steady state and for the big bang theory. Steady state theory leaves no room for a creator God because it claims the universe was not created but has always existed, whereas the big bang arguably does leave room for God because the big bang could simply be how God created the universe. So, the big bang theory was actually welcomed by many Christians for this reason.

Pope Pius XII declared in 1951 that the big bang theory does not conflict with the Catholic conception of creation.

The question then becomes whether science can explain why the big bang happened without God. One possibility is the oscilating universe theory, that what we call our universe is just one of the cycles of big bangs and big crunches that has been oscilating forever.

However, another theory with more evidence for it is Alan Guth’s inflation theory. Laurence Krauss , a physicist, explains Guth’s theory that the universe came from nothing because it actually is nothing. Gravity has negative energy, the total amount of which in the universe happens to exactly cancel out the positive energy of the matter in the universe, so the total energy of the universe is zero; it is nothing. Krauss claims this answers Leibniz’ question of why there is something rather than nothing. Quantum mechanics has existed eternally and causes quantum fluctuations which can create a zero-energy universe from nothing because such a universe requires zero energy to create.

W. L. Craig’s response to Krauss is that Krauss’ definition of nothing is faulty since it’s actually something. Nothing really means total absence of anything.

Defence of Krauss: Arguably the definition of nothing philosophers have traditionally used is in fact not what nothing actually is though. Science has proven the philosophical conception of nothing to be inaccurate.