Section 2

Probability and the Idea of Cause and Effect

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Knowledge is Based on Four Relations, Reason and Understanding is Based on One Relation: Causation

Those 4 relations of resemblance, contrariety, quality, and quantity are the foundation of science.

The other 3 relations do not depend on the idea.

They may be absent or present even while the idea remains the same.

These 3 relations are:

  1. Identity
  2. The situations in time and place
  3. Causation

All kinds of reasoning consist in a comparison and discovery of those relations, whether constant or inconstant, between objects.

We may make this comparison when:

  • those objects are present to the senses,
  • neither objects are present, or
  • only one object is present.

When both the objects are present to the senses, along with the relation, we call this ‘perception’ rather than reasoning.

  • In this case, the thought does no action.
  • This is a mere passive admission of the impressions through the senses.

Our perceptions from the senses are not reasoning.

  • This is because the mind cannot go beyond what is presented to discover the real existence or the relations of objects.

Identity and time & place are not reasoning unless they affect or are affected by causation.

Only causation produces such a connection that the existence or action of an object was followed or preceded by any other existence or action.

There is nothing in any objects to persuade us that they are always remote or always contiguous.

When we find that 2 objects always go together or look the same, we conclude that there is a cause between them.

But this conclusion is based on our knowing its cause and effect.

Without knowing the cause and effect of an object, we cannot be sure whether the object changed or not even if the change in the object resembles the original object.

We create our judgment on the identity of the object according to our knowledge of these causes and effects.

Of the 3 relations, causation is the only one that:

  • does not depend on the mere ideas,
  • can be traced beyond our senses,
  • informs us of existences and objects that we do not see nor feel.

Cause and Effect

How do we think of cause and effect?

  • The examination of the impression creates a clearness on the idea.
  • The examination of the idea creates a like clearness on all our reasoning.

Cause and effect are 2 objects.

How do they produce the idea of such consequence?

Everything can be a cause or an effect.

  • But no quality exists in all things to make them caues or effects universally.

Cause is Defined by Its Contiguity and Succession to Its Effect, and their Consequential Connection

The idea of causation is therefore derived from some relation among objects.

Objects that are considered as causes or effects are contiguous.

Causes and effects operate and exist in a time or place.

Distant objects may sometimes seem to produce each other.

But in reality, they are commonly linked by a chain of causes, contiguous among themselves and to the distant objects.

  • If we cannot discover this connection, we still presume it to exist.

Therefore, contiguity is essential to causation until we can find a more proper occasion (Part 4, Section 5) to clear up this matter by examining which objects are susceptible of juxtaposition and conjunction.

The second relation essential to causes and effects is cause happening before the effect.

We may establish a temporal relation through inference or reasoning.

Natural and moral philosophy has an established maxim: “an object which exists for any time in its full perfection without producing another, is not its sole cause.”

It is assisted by some other principle which:

  • pushes it from its state of inactivity, and
  • makes it exert that energy which it secretly had.

According to this maxim, if any cause exists at the same time as its effect, then all causes must exist at the same time as all effects.

  • This is beause any one cause which stops its causation for a single moment stops being a cause.

This would lead to:

  • the destruction of that succession of causes which we observe in the world, and
  • the utter annihilation of time.

This is because if one cause happened simultaneously with its effect, and this effect happened simultaneously with its own effect, and so on, then:

  • there would be no such thing as succession, and
  • all objects would exist at the same time.

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