What is Cause?

Presupposition: In order to speak about cause we need to ask how we all, humans, first start talking of causes.


On the other hand, one might reason that cause comes prior to causes, and allows us to say, there is one of them, a cause. The brain can recognize causes, it is so made, or come to be through its history.

For instance, someone asks why there are peculiar patterns cast along the forest floor. They are caused, comes the answer, by the shapes of the leaves bunched on the branches which filter the rays cast by the sun. Once such a cause comes to seem a matter of clear understanding, one can go on to say, when there are patterns on the forest floor caused by the sun there is a filter between sun and forest floor, there are such patterns, therefor, the filter exists. Such reasoning, up until the Enlightenment, was held as no different in principle, than the “cause” as something outside reason. Thus the saying that what is not rational is no law of nature. Cause and reason were traditionally the same thing.

This must be understood before one can begin to ask about cause after Hume, Kant and the post-Kantians dispensed with reason, that is, with God, a law above and outside the empirical, and the regime of facts (which require the augmentation of values or opinions about facts) came to replace that of truth. And this means the power of Naturalism, which subsumes the intelligence, animus or soul, or reason in nature as a dependent function.


Then one sees that cause is, in a sense, a human invention (or, discovery), even if it is meant to speak of the world apart from humans. How do we get the notion of a world apart? It is because things are supposed to still be there when we walk away or look away, or sleep, etc… When one challenges the brain, as what controls anything seen, for example that the brain flips the image when we have an upside down presentation of the world, we see the brain as the origin of the manner of presenting the world. But, the brain in this sense can only be the means of correcting a faulty presentation. Faulty can only be measured by the standard of a healthy presentation.

These are initial indications of the difficulties of philosophy proper (rather than analytic or continental philosophy, science or moral theory, or criticism).


Further clarification: to say that “cause” exists without humans, and does not need ineligibility, is likely to make the mistake of thinking of causes.

I agree with Hume,
Cause as part and parcel of “Cause & Effect” is ultimately based on habits, customs and constant conjunction that enable the mind to conceptualize the theories of cause & effect.

Whilst ‘cause’ is a mental thing, it does not mean the concept of cause is frivolous and useless.
The concept of ‘cause’ [as in cause and effect] is critical for survival, i.e. to favor good causes and avoid causes that are potentially evil.

First Cause??
Nah, that is an impossibility to be real.

Cause is ability of mind. It is act of creation.

If the sun casts a patterned shadow on the rocks through a wave is “sun” “ability of the mind”? We say here, the sun is the cause of the flickering light on the beach (not, e.g., a flashlight). Not, the sun is not the cause, but we will pretend light comes from it for our mental model, or some such. When we say cause, we mean something “outside the mind”.

To be more clear I think you need to read my argument in here. The argument is about that there is a mind when there is a change.

It was already a questionable statement that god created the world but even more questionable is the compiled idea that since man is too stupid to realise he isn’t god, god=man created the world.

Cause is a term for something. That the term is a term doesn’t mean the something is a term.

Yes, I agree - Mind is the mover, what propels projects and prototypes designations forward. It was an act of desire, of seeking to transform the current state of things, that gives animation to life.