Criteria for cause and effect

A part of chapter 15 that I found useful that has not already been discussed is the Criteria for cause and effect. The concept of cause and effect is fairly simple, but we must keep in mind when something falls under the category of cause and effect.

Necessary criteria for cause and effect:

• The cause happened (the claim describing it is true).
• The effect happened (the claim describing it is true).
• The cause precedes, or comes before, the effect
• It is (nearly) impossible for the cause to happen (be true) and the effect not to happen (be false), given the normal conditions.
• 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.

Cause and effect has always been an interesting topic of studying for me. I like it a lot because cause and effect happens everyday. It is fun because once you recognize the effect of something you can usually tell pretty easily what the cause was.