Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

You awaken to the sound ofyour alarm clock; you get out of bed to turn it off. Causal relations enter your life at the beginning ofyour day, even before you are fully conscious. The noise of the clock caused you to wake up and get out of bed; turning it off caused the sound to stop. The same sort of thing is repeated innumerable times throughout the day. Under normal conditions – you hope today is normal? – turning the key in the ignition causes your car to start. After you get going, pressure ofyour foot on the brake pedal causes the car to slow down. Causation is involved in virtually everything anyone does, day in and day out, year in and year out.Down the street, a carpenter hits a nail with a hammer, causing it to penetrate some wood. An electrician flips a switch, causing a bunch of lights to go on. At the city morgue, a forensic pathologist tries to figure out what caused a particular person to die. Millions of years ago, the last of the dinosaurs died; scientists have long wondered why. In recent years, they have theorized that the collision of a massive body with our planet caused conditions in which they could not survive. In this case, no humans were involved. Astronomers make extremely precise measurements of the movements of a star; they conclude that its behavior is caused by a planet in orbit around it. Perhaps conditions conducive to the emergence of intelligent ... log in or subscribe to read full text