Cause and effect
idea · 5 works · 6 mentions · 13 anchored passages
al-maʻlūl · al-ʻillah · al-ʻillah al-ūlā · cause · effect · العلة الاولى · al-sabab · al-taʻlīl · al-ʻilliyyah · an impeding accident
spoken of as
1 expressionkāraṇa/kārya“cause and effect”1 mention
Tarkasaṃgraha (Sanskrit)
That cause which, while inhering in the same locus along with the effect or with [its inherent] cause, [produces the effect] is the non-inherent cause (asamavāyi-kāraṇa);
in the texts
Risālat baqāʼ al-nafs baʻda fanāʼ al-jasad
The first, everlasting, agent and governing cause in which all effects terminate, acknowledged by Plato and Aristotle and denied by the party of Greeks who make matter unlimited.
These two men of genius acknowledge the first cause, agent and governing, while denying temporal origination of the original matter;
and effects, for all their difference, terminate on his doctrine in a first everlasting cause.
Archelaus (Arsālāwus) (3) of Athens, whose doctrine is that the principle of the world is that which has no limit, in which condensation and rarefaction occur:
Tarkasaṃgraha
A cause invariably precedes its effect; causes are three-fold—inherent, non-inherent, and instrumental—with the instrumental cause identified as the 'instrument' of valid knowledge.
That cause which, while inhering in the same locus along with the effect or with [its inherent] cause, [produces the effect] is the non-inherent cause (asamavāyi-kāraṇa);
Thus, among these three kinds of cause, that which is the distinctive cause is precisely the instrument (karaṇa).
An effect (kārya) is the counter-correlate of [its own] prior absence.
Kitāb al-Zawrāʼ wa-al-taʻlīqāt ʻalayhi
Causality reconceived: the real cause is the ground of the very self of a thing, the effect is not distinct from the cause essence but a mode, aspect and face of it, and the chain terminates in one real essence.
that is, the passing away of the effect refers in reality to the cause’s parting from its considerations and to its passage through the modes of its essence;
Accordingly the effect is not distinct from the essence of the cause, nor is it for its own sake;
So the passing away of the effect is, in reality, the manifestation of the cause in another mode, and its self-disclosure under a relational aspect.
Risālat al-Wāridāt
The pair ʻillah and maʻlūl: ʻAbduh argues that causation demands a special relation, that a relation needs both terms to exist, and that therefore an effect can never emerge from sheer non-existence; what remains is that the effect is one of the cause's phases (aṭwār) and modes (shuʼūn), with no existence but the cause's.
* The proceeding of the effect (*maʻlūl*) from the cause (*ʻillah*) calls for a special relation between the effect and the cause, so that the effect may soundly proceed from the cause;
And while the effect is not disjoined from the cause, neither is it identical with it;
and in the ordering of effects upon their causes, so that each thing is given its due and set in its proper place:
Kitāb mīzān al-ḥaqq fī al-manṭiq
Causal reasoning: same cause and complete resemblance yield the same result, while divergent results signal an interfering factor, and faulty causal attribution is the chief source of inductive error.
And since this is built upon the resemblance among the instances, so that they may be judged by a general judgement, the matter may be confounded and error may enter in — as that the resemblance be not complete and this not be noticed, because the difference is fine and the cause hidden, or because of a deficiency or an error in the assigning of the cause.