Chapter 15

For the last post of this week I am going to discuss about chapter 15 of Epstein. This chapter was a little bit long though amusing.  The chapter is simply about the cause and effect concept but it also describes about other materials that are related to it.  I first thought that this chapter was straightforward since cause and effect was an easy concept.  After reading this chapter, I found that there was more to it. One concept that I found useful is the tracing the cause backward. For instance, the example in this chapter about Spot’s barking caused Dick to wake up could go on forever backward.  Tracing the cause backward is often use as an excuse from my point of view.  Another concept that I found amusing were the criteria for cause and effect.  In Epstein, the fundamentals that is necessary for the criteria for cause and effect states:

• The cause happened (the claim describing it is true).
• The effect happened (the claim describing it is true).
• The cause precedes the effect.
• It is (nearly impossible for the cause to happen (be true) and the effect not to happen (be false), given the normal conditions.
• The cause makes a difference-if the cause had not happened (been true), the effect would not have happened (been true)
• There is no common cause.