This also covers modern ideas of mental causation involving such psychological causes as volition, need, motivation, or motives, rational, irrational, ethical, all that gives purpose to behavior.Īdditionally, things can be causes of one another, causing each other reciprocally, as hard work causes fitness and vice versa, although not in the same way or function, the one is as the beginning of change, the other as the goal. The final cause or telos is the purpose or end that something is supposed to serve, or it is that from which and that to which the change is. The Final Cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this covers the modern definitions of "cause" as either the agent or agency or particular events or states of affairs. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. The Efficient Cause is that from which the change or the ending of the change first starts.
It embraces the account of causes in terms of fundamental principles or general laws, as the whole (macrostructure) is the cause of its parts (the whole-part causation). The Formal Cause tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis, or archetype. This reduces the explanation of causes to the parts (factors, elements, constituents, ingredients) forming the whole (system, structure, compound, complex, composite, or combination) (the part-whole causation). The Material Cause is that from which a thing comes into existence as from its parts, constituents, substratum or materials. Consequently, the major kinds of causes come under the following divisions: According to Aristotle's theory, all the causes fall into several senses, the total number of which amounts to the ways the question 'why' may be answered namely, by reference to the matter or the substratum the essence, the pattern, the form, or the structure to the primary moving change or the agent and its action and to the goal, the plan the end, or the good. Setting the guidelines for all the subsequent causal theories, by specifying its number, nature, principles, elements, varieties, order, and modes of causation, Aristotle's account of the causes of things is the most comprehensive theory up to now. 12.1 Counterfactual accounts of causationĬausation in the history of Western philosophy AristotleĪristole, a great mind and ontologist, is the first who saw that All causes of things are beginnings that we have scientific knowledge when we know the cause that to know a thing's existence is to know the reason why it is.11.1 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:.3 Causality contrasted with conditionals.1.4 Causality, determinism, and existentialism.1 Causation in the history of Western philosophy.Ĭausality is the centerpiece of the universe and so the main subject of ontology for comprehending the nature, meaning, kinds, varieties, and ordering of cause and effect amounts to knowing the beginnings and endings of things, to uncovering the implicit mechanisms of world dynamics, or to having the fundamental scientific knowledge. In natural languages, causal relationships can be expressed by the following causative expressions: i) a set of causative verbs Finally, the existence of a causal relationship generally suggests that - all other things being equal - if the cause occurs the effect will as well (or at least the probability of the effect occurring will increase). It is usually presumed that the cause chronologically precedes the effect. Most generally, causation is a relationship that holds between events, objects, variables, or states of affairs. A neutral definition is notoriously hard to provide, since every aspect of causation has received substantial debate. The philosophical concept of causality, the principles of causes, or causation, the working of causes, refers to the set of all particular "causal" or "cause-and-effect" relations. Please help to improve this page yourself if you can. This article needs rewriting to enhance its relevance to psychologists.
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