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Cause and effect

 


File this post under "random quotations".

The subject of this quote is the philosophical inquiry into cause and effect.

I may have cited the book that the italicized bit below appears in, before in this blog, but I doubt I have referenced this particular passage.

The more specific question under discussion is whether "natural selection" is an explanation of evolutionary change: that is, whether it names a cause of which the origin of a new species may be an effect.

Suppose that to be a student in a certain classroom R, students must pass a test indicating that they read at the third-grade level. Some students A and B are admitted on the basis of this test, and others C and D are excluded. The use of this test amounts to a selection process, and the existence of this process explains, in one perfectly good respect, why it is true that "All of the students in room R read at the third-grade level."

Nonetheless ... the existence of this selection process does not explain why this or that individual child ... in the room R reads at the third-grade level.  

James Woodward, Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation (2003) page 235. 

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  1. HenryOctober 9, 2025 at 6:48 AM

    Natural selection does not cause the origin of a new species, because a species has to exist before it is selected. To be selected means only that, because it is fit to survive in its environment, it continues to reproduce. The cause of the origin of a species is a random genetic mutation.

    The classroom R case is analogous. The students already read on a third-grade level, and that enables them to be selected to be in classroom R. The cause of their reading at a third-grade level are factors like their intelligence and their environment--whether their parents read to them when they were younger, for example.

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