Quotes About Causality

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause.

most historical relationships are ironical in character, or, to put it differently, that the course of history has little to do with the intrinsic logic of ideas that served as causal factors in it

But in a cause-and-effect world, if we know the causes we can predict the effects. So "what is chance for the ignorant is not chance for the scientist. Chance is only the measure of our ignorance.

something ELSE set your body in motion, sent an executive summary - almost an afterthought - to the homunculus behind your eyes ...that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as The person, mistakes correlation for causality," ...and thinks He moved the finger

Psychological determinism asserts that every thought and feeling we have and every action we perform is caused by events in the past.

Spinoza is more than happy with this conclusion: he is a thorough-going determinist 'Experience tells us clearly that men believe themselves to be free simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby these actions are determined; further, it is plain that the dictates of the mind are simply another name for the appetites that vary according to the varying state of the body.

Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was. Sometimes I feel ensnared in this, as if no matter what I do, what will come has already been fixed.

Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was.

I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

Modificar el pasado no es modificar un solo hecho; es anular sus consecuencias, que tienden a ser infinitas

Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual.

The central problem of novel-writing is causality.

Y el azar, salvo que no hay azar, salvo que lo que llamamos azar es nuestra ignorancia de la compleja maquinaria de la causalidad, el azar me hizo encontrar tres pequeños volúmenes. Yo he debido traer uno como talismán ahora. Tres pequeños en la librería Mitchel que corresponden a tantos recuerdos míos, y esos tres pequeños volúmenes eran los tres tomos de Infierno, el Purgatorio y el Paraíso, vertidos al inglés [...]

Faptele grave se petrec în afara timpului, fie din pricin? c? trecutul imediat parc? se rupe de viitor, fie din pricin? c? p?rÈ›ile alc?tuitoare nu par s? se înl?nÈ›uiasc? firesc.

Dessa correta aplicação da lei da causalidade segue-se que o menor dos fatos pressupõe o inconcebível universo e, inversamente, que o universo necessita do menor dos fatos.

El Destino (tal es el nombre que aplicamos a la infinita operación incesante de millares de causas entreveradas) no lo resolvió así.

the present engenders the past far more energetically than the other way around.

Everything, all the time, is causing everything else.

Rien ne vient de rien & rien ne se perd dans le rien

In scrutinizing the past, we must be careful not to be overly impressed by external results that readily strike the eye, while ignoring the less visible causes of these results.

Live or dead, no creature might escape the unfolding of its own actions. He

Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote that the worst thing to happen to the novel was the arrival of psychology. You can assume he meant that now we all expect to understand the motivation behind each character's actions, as if that's possible, as if life works that way. I've read so many recent novels, particularly those published in the Anglo world, that are dull and trite because I'm always supposed to infer causality.

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

Philosopher William Lane Craig reminds us that an infinite regress of causes is like trying to jump out of a bottomless pit. How do you start if you never reach the bottom? On the other hand, one might well ask, if every birth is a rebirth, what kamma was paid for in his first birth?