One concept that I found useful in chapter 15 was section 8 which is titled "criteria for cause and effect." There are necessary conditions for there to be cause and effect. In the book Epstein list six different criteria for cause and effect.
The six necessary criteria for cause and effect are;
- The cause happened (claim describing it is true).
- The effect happened (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 condition.
- 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
The reason why I found this section to be really useful was because even though the section was short, it had a lot of useful information. I think the most important criteria would be the first two because it defines any cause and effect problem.
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