Short Notes on Qualitative and Quantitative Marks of Causation

Mill takes cause as the sum total of conditions, positive and negative taken together. Bain falls in line with Mill when he defines cause as the entire aggregate of conditions or circumstances requisite to the effect.

Carveth Read attempts to give a scientific account of causation by bringing out its qualitative and quantitative aspects. According to him qualitatively cause is “the immediate, unconditional, invariable antecedent of the effect” and quantitatively cause is “equal to the effect”.

Let us first discuss the qualitative marks of cause as pointed out above.

i) Cause and effect are relative terms. No one should be under the impression that cause and effect are two distinct water-tight compartments.

That is to say it is a mistake to believe that there is a group of phenomena which are causes and another group which are effects.

On the other hand cause and effect are relative terms in as much as one and the same event may be a cause in relation to its effect and also be an effect in relation to its cause. Thus for example while rain is the cause of wet-ground, it is also the effect of monsoon cloud.

ii) The given phenomenon is an event in time. It is a matter of common experience that things change constantly. Changes in nature occur ceaselessly. Without such changes the problem of causation will not arise.

It is inherent in man to ask for the cause of such changes. Man seeks to know the cause behind the various phenomena that take place nature. When some phenomena occur, the existing order of things changes. Man intellectual need is to ask for the cause of such changes.

iii) The cause is an antecedent of the effect. Causal relation is a temporal relation. That means causation involves succession in time.

Cause always precedes the effect and the effect always follows the cause. Cause is, therefore, the antecedent of the effect. Mosquito bite precedes malarial fever. So malarial fever is the effect and mosquito bite is the cause which precedes the former.

But this view that cause is the antecedent of effect is objected by some logician for they hold that cause and effect are relative ideas. An event cannot be called a cause by itself unless it is associated with another event called the effect.

That means if cause is an antecedent and effect is a consequent how can causation be applied to them as o is existing and the other is non-existing at a particular time. So they treat cause an effect as simultaneous events. But again if two events take place simultaneously it is arbitrary to choose one of them as cause and the other as effect.

It is to be remembered that although cause and effect are quite distinct in nature their distinctness is marked by a line similar to mathematical lines which just exist in our mind but not in reality.

That is to say nature is one continuous process, so no sharp line of demarcation is there between cause and effect according to Mellone. According to him nature is a continuous process and what we call cause or effect is nothing but different factors. So it is not that easy to mark off one from the other.

iv) The cause is an invariable antecedent. Cause no doubt is an antecedent but each and every antecedent is not to be taken as cause. Cause is an invariable antecedent. Antecedent can be variable or invariable.

Variable antecedents cannot be treated to be cause because they sometimes precede the effect and sometimes do not. Hooting of an owl might be there prior to the death of a great man. But it is not to be considered as the cause. For there are several instances of death without prior hooting of the owl.

Likewise appearance of a comet in the sky is sometimes blindly believed to be the cause of death of some great men. But this too is not the cause of death of a great man. For many other great men have died in the past even though no comet was seen in the sky.

In other words hooting of the owl and appearance of comet are variable antecedents and they have no characteristic relation with the death of a man.

A variable antecedent is not the cause of an event. Invariable antecedents are those that invariably precede their respective effects. So invariable antecedents are alone fit enough to be called causes. For instance heart failure is the invariable antecedent of the consequent, death, because it always precedes death.

Thus only invariable antecedent of a phenomenon can be entitled to be the cause. But to take any antecedent to be the cause will lead to the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

This fallacy literally means after this, therefore because of this. Before the death of a great leader, there may be many antecedent phenomena like hooting of an owl, appearance of a comet, cyclone in some part etc., but they are not the causes.

If any and every anteced­ent of a phenomenon is taken as the cause there arises the fallacy of post hoc ergo popter hoc. Because they are not invariable antecedents. On the other hand the cause is an invari­able antecedent, because without such an antecedent the effect does not occur.

v) The cause is the unconditional antecedent. All causes are invariable antecedents but not vice versa. Cause is not only the invariable but also the unconditional antecedent. For if cause were only invariable antecedent that would land us in the embarrassing position of saying day is the cause of night or for that matter night is the cause of day.

For day invariably precedes night and night too invariably precedes day. But none of them can be called the cause of the other. The reason is that day cannot independently cause night nor can night independently cause day. For each of them to produce the other depends on a number of conditions like rotation of the earth round the sun, light of the sun, position of the earth etc.

So here the invariable relation of day and night is conditional or dependent on a number of extraneous conditions as mentioned above. So none of them can be the cause of the other, on the other hand both are coeffects. But the cause without depending on any other extraneous condition must be able to produce the effect single-handedly.

In short it must be the sole sufficient agent to produce the effect. In other words the cause must not only be invariable but also the unconditional antecedent. Bain therefore very appropriately suggests that cause is the “sole sufficing circumstance whose presence makes the effect and whose obsence arrests it”.

To Mill an unconditional antecedent is that group of conditions which without any further condition helps the event in question to occur.

vi) The cause is the immediate antecedent. The immediacy of the cause follows from its unconditionality. Failing to produce the effect single handedly if the cause depends on some other factor for the occurrence of the effect; it will be dependent on that factor and hence cannot be unconditional.

So the cause has to be the immediate antecedent and there must not be any intervening factor behind it and its effect. Thus for example when a bullet is fired, the wall collapsed and the man standing behind it is killed.

Here firing of the bullet is the remote cause but collapse of the wall is the proximate cause of the death of the man. For had the wall not collapsed he would not have died despite the firing of the bullet.

In a situation if A causes B, B causes C and C causes D, then C is the immediate cause or the proximate cause of D whereas A or B is the remote cause of D. Thus the cause is the immediate antecedent but not the remote antecedent. The immediate antecedent is the proximate cause that immediately gives rise to the effect. But a remote cause gives rise to the effect in a remote way.

Quantitative mark of causation:

According to Carveth Read so far as matter and energy are concerned there is a quantitative equality or agreement between the cause and the affect. In other words quantitatively matter and energy in the cause are equal to it in the effect.

This is obvious for the reason that the effect is not altogether a new product. Instead it is only transformation of the cause. This quantitative equivalence of the cause and effect is based on the laws of conservation of matter and conservation of energy.

The law of conservation of matter states that the total quantity of matter in the world neither increases nor decreases, it remains constant or unchanged.

The form of matter only changes but not its quantity. For example the weight of water produced is exactly equal with the weight of oxygen and hydrogen used for the purpose.

Likewise the weight of the iron used is found to be exactly identical with the weight of the utensil which is manufactured out of it. So in both the cases there is quantitative equality of matter between the cause and the effect it has produced.

It is to be borne in mind that in the process of transformation of the cause into the effect no quantity is lost. It remains un­changed, the form ofcourse changes. Oxygen and hydrogen are gaseous in nature but the effect they produce, i.e. water, is liquid.

The law of conservation of energy likewise states that the total quantity of energy in the world remains the same always. It neither increases nor decreases. What changes is the form of the energy only but not its quantity.

One form of energy may change into another form without affecting its original quantity. In other words there is quantitative equality in regard to energy between cause and effect. Thus, for example, when a moving vehicle stops, we say that the motion in it is lost. But actually it is never so. No energy is actually lost.

Here motion is not lost. On the other hand the form of motion is converted to heat without affecting the original quantity. Likewise we all are in possession of potential energy. But when we start doing our work the potential energy is converted into kinetic- energy.

It is also a fact that the kinetic energy thus spent is exactly equal in amount to the original potential energy we had, before we started the work. So the form of energy only changes from potential to kinetic but in the process of transformation of cause to effect the quantitative equivalence of the energy remains unchanged or unaffected.

Read has defined cause as quantitatively equaled to the effect. The effect, actually speaking, is nothing but the cause transformed.

The matter or the energy which disappears as cause reappears as effect and in the process of appearance and disappearance the quantitative equivalence of both matter and energy and for that matter cause and effect remains the same.

It neither increases nor decreases. That is why cause is said to be quantitatively equal to the effect.

Thus, the cause of an event is qualitatively the invariable, unconditional and immediate antecedent and quantitatively equal to the effect.