---
title: "Causality"
chunk: 2/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:43:20.686725+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Geometrical significance ====
Causality has the properties of antecedence and contiguity. These are topological, and are ingredients for space-time geometry. As developed by Alfred Robb, these properties allow the derivation of the notions of time and space. Max Jammer writes "the Einstein postulate ... opens the way to a straightforward construction of the causal topology ... of Minkowski space." Causal efficacy propagates no faster than light.
Thus, the notion of causality is metaphysically prior to the notions of time and space. In practical terms, this is because use of the relation of causality is necessary for the interpretation of empirical experiments. Interpretation of experiments is needed to establish the physical and geometrical notions of time and space.

==== Volition ====
The deterministic world-view holds that the history of the universe can be exhaustively represented as a progression of events following one after the other as cause and effect. Incompatibilism holds that determinism is incompatible with free will, so if determinism is true, "free will" does not exist. Compatibilism, on the other hand, holds that determinism is compatible with, or even necessary for, free will.

=== Necessary and sufficient causes ===

Causes may sometimes be distinguished into two types: necessary and sufficient. A third type of causation, which requires neither necessity nor sufficiency, but which contributes to the effect, is called a "contributory cause".

Necessary causes
If x is a necessary cause of y, then the presence of y necessarily implies the prior occurrence of x. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.
Sufficient causes
If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the subsequent occurrence of y. However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus the presence of y does not imply the prior occurrence of x.
Contributory causes
For some specific effect, in a singular case, a factor that is a contributory cause is one among several co-occurrent causes. It is implicit that all of them are contributory. For the specific effect, in general, there is no implication that a contributory cause is necessary, though it may be so. In general, a factor that is a contributory cause is not sufficient, because it is by definition accompanied by other causes, which would not count as causes if it were sufficient. For the specific effect, a factor that is on some occasions a contributory cause might on some other occasions be sufficient, but on those other occasions it would not be merely contributory.
J. L. Mackie argues that usual talk of "cause" in fact refers to an INUS condition (insufficient but non-redundant parts of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the occurrence of the effect). An example is a short circuit as a cause for a house burning down. Consider the collection of events: the short circuit, the proximity of flammable material, and the absence of firefighters. Together these are unnecessary but sufficient to the house's burning down (since many other collections of events certainly could have led to the house burning down, for example shooting the house with a flamethrower in the presence of oxygen and so forth). Within this collection, the short circuit is an insufficient (since the short circuit by itself would not have caused the fire) but non-redundant (because the fire would not have happened without it, everything else being equal) part of a condition which is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the occurrence of the effect. So, the short circuit is an INUS condition for the occurrence of the house burning down. 
However, Mackie's INUS account succumbs to the problem of joint effects of a common cause: it incorrectly identifies one effect of a common cause as an instantiated INUS condition for another effect of the same common cause, even though the two effects are not causally related. Modern regularity theories aim to overcome this problem using so-called non-redundant regularities.

=== Contrasted with conditionals ===

Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order. Confusion commonly arises since many different statements in English may be presented using "If ..., then ..." form (and, arguably, because this form is far more commonly used to make a statement of causality). The two types of statements are distinct, however.
For example, all of the following statements are true when interpreting "If ..., then ..." as the material conditional:

If Barack Obama is president of the United States in 2011, then Germany is in Europe.
If George Washington is president of the United States in 2011, then ⟨arbitrary statement⟩.
The first is true since both the antecedent and the consequent are true. The second is true in sentential logic and indeterminate in natural language, regardless of the consequent statement that follows, because the antecedent is false.
The ordinary indicative conditional has somewhat more structure than the material conditional. For instance, although the first is the closest, neither of the preceding two statements seems true as an ordinary indicative reading. But the sentence:

If Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon did not write Macbeth, then someone else did.
intuitively seems to be true, even though there is no straightforward causal relation in this hypothetical situation between Shakespeare's not writing Macbeth and someone else's actually writing it.
Another sort of conditional, the counterfactual conditional, has a stronger connection with causality, yet even counterfactual statements are not all examples of causality. Consider the following two statements: