Metaphysics

The Nature of Causation

What makes one event a cause of another?

Positions

  1. Causal Powers

    Causation is the exercise of real powers that things have in virtue of their natures, so the connection holds in the world rather than in our expectations.

  2. Counterfactual Analysis

    One event causes another when, had the first not occurred, the second would not have occurred either.

  3. Humean Regularity

    Causation consists in temporal priority, contiguity, and regular succession, without a further necessary connection or causal power in objects.

    Held by British Empiricism

Methods used to investigate this question

  • Prasaṅga

    Prasaṅga examines a thesis by drawing out consequences of its own assumptions, often without replacing it with an independent metaphysical counter-thesis.

    Open in Methods

Discussion

Accounts of causation ask what distinguishes a cause from something that merely happens earlier. Regularity theories answer in terms of temporal order, contiguity, and recurring patterns, without adding a causal power or necessary connection in the world. Other theories appeal to counterfactual dependence, processes, powers, or production.

This question concerns the relation between a cause and its effect. It does not treat Dependent Origination's account of suffering and its cessation as a rival theory of that same relation; that account is linked as a separate question.

References