Q&A: Causality
Causality
Question
Hello,
In one of your articles you wrote that there are three components in causality: temporal, logical, and physical. Accordingly, is it correct to say that the flow of electricity to a computer is the cause of the image that appears on the computer?
On the one hand, this seems to satisfy all three components, because the electricity comes before the image, there cannot be an image without electricity, and the electricity causes the image to appear. On the other hand, it seems to me incorrect to say that the electricity is the cause of the image, because it is the computer’s processor that directs the electricity so that an image is created, and electricity by itself would do nothing.
Answer
The electricity together with the software and the hardware are the cause.
Discussion on Answer
What’s hard to understand? For x to happen, several things have to occur together. Very simple, and there is no problem with that. For a fight to break out, Reuven has to provoke, Shimon has to not be a restrained person, and both of them also have to have hands in order to start throwing punches.
I don’t understand the answer. How can you say that three events are the cause of one event?
If none of them by itself, without the others, is the cause of the thing, then none of them is the cause.
If only together they are the cause, then you can’t say they are three different things; they have to be one and the same.
It seems to me that there is another component in causality that people haven’t quite put their finger on.
P.S. I understand how one event can be the cause of a second event, and the second event in turn will be the cause of the third event. But I don’t understand how several events can simultaneously be the cause of another event.