By David Kelsey

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Causal claim: states or suggests the presence of causation.
– Examples:
• A causal argument has as its conclusion a causal claim.
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A cause is an event, person, place or thing X without which some other event, person, place or thing Y, X’s effect, would not occur, exist, etc.
– A cause necessitates its effect such that without the cause, the effect would not occur.
– Causes can’t just be correlations though.
• Causal powers

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Post Hoc Fallacy : When one thinks that just because X is followed by Y this must mean that X causes Y.
– Post Hoc is short for Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc which translates:
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The mistake is Thinking Correlation entails causation :
– Accidental correlation : this is a mistake because X could play no role in Y’s coming to be.
• X could merely be accidentally correlated with the occurrence of Y.
• 3 pennies example :
• Other possibilities besides X causing Y or X and Y being accidentally correlated:

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Hypothesis : a supposition offered as a starting point for further investigation.
– When hypothesizing you are conjecturing, I.e. making a guess about some way the world is.
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How do we test a hypothesis?
– Look for counterexamples to it.
• What is a Counterexample?
• A counterexample to: Vitamin C cures colds

• Relevant difference reasoning :
– If some effect, Y, occurs in one situation & Y doesn’t occur in other situations similar
– we can try to find something that is different about this situation, I.e. X.
– We then suspect this difference X is the cause of Y.
– To find X, simply look for the differences between this situation and those situations that are similar but in which Y doesn’t occur.
• Use relevant difference reasoning when:

• Question: how do you know which is the relevant difference?
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Engine overheating :

• Examples of relevant difference reasoning:
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Headaches :
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Post Office :

• When do we use this kind of reasoning?
• Look for a common thread : some event, person, place or thing that is common to all the occurrences of the effect.
• Mosquito example :

• 1.) We can overlook alternative common threads or differences :
– If one difference or thread seems particularly relevant, don’t overlook others as you may miss the real cause in doing so.
– Example:
• 2.) We can focus on irrelevant differences or common threads :
– To know that a difference or thread is relevant you must have some knowledge of the situation, its causes and its effects.

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3.) We can overlook the possibility that causation is the reverse of what has been asserted :
– Climbing a rope:
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4.) We can overlook the possibility that the asserted cause and effect are both the effects of some third underlying cause :
– The leaves turning yellow:
• 5.) We can fail to consider the possibility of coincidence :
– The cancer example:

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1. Appeal to Anecdotal evidence : watch out for a causal claim when the evidence is one or two cases only.
– Smoking doesn’t cause cancer:
• To show smoking doesn’t cause cancer we need to show that even if everyone smoked, the cancer rate would not increase. Can you do this with 1 piece of evidence though?
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2. Circularity
: The cause cannot merely restate the effect for if so we haven’t learned anything new.
– Insomnia example:
• 3. Excessive Vagueness : if a causal claim is too vague we won’t know exactly how it is to be tested.
– Bad Karma example:

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4. Nontestability
: we can’t have a causal claim for which testing is isn’t possible.
– Aids example:
• 5. Unnecessary assumptions : why needn’t make any unnecessary assumptions in asserting a causal claim?
– Déjà vu example:
• 6. Conflict with well-established theory : as a general rule, we don’t really want our causal claims to conflict with our theories.
– We can have theoretical advances, but…
– Height example:

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A causal explanation is an explanation of the cause of something.
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Explanations vs. Arguments : while causal explanations can look superficially like arguments, explanations assert cause and effect while arguments try to prove that something is the case .
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Explaining causes : When we try to justify or defend or excuse something we or someone else did, we sometimes explain its causes.
– Bread example:
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But not every attempt to explain behavior is an attempt to excuse it: One might be simply trying to offer an explanation without any sympathy at all for the actions being explained.
– Nazi Germany example: