Cause and Effect

A pair of categories that reveals the relationship between things that cause and things that are caused. In the interconnection and interaction of things and phenomena, the cause is the phenomenon that causes a phenomenon to occur, and the effect is the phenomenon that is caused by a phenomenon, and the relationship of causality is the universal interconnection that includes the chronological order in which one phenomenon necessarily causes another phenomenon.

The difference between cause and effect is both definite and indefinite. The difference between cause and effect is displayed when we extract a specific object from the universal interconnection and examine it separately. Each concrete set of relation of causality has its own definite content. In a certain relation of causality, the cause is not the effect, and the effect is not the cause; you cannot reverse the cause for the effect, and you cannot reverse the effect for the cause. This is the certainty of the difference between cause and effect. However, from the perspective of universal interconnection of the real world, all phenomena are in an infinite, interconnected chain of causality, and cause and effect often change places, the same phenomenon being an effect in one relation and a cause in another. This is the uncertainty of the difference between cause and effect. Engels said: “Cause and effect are conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will be cause there and then, and vice versa.”

Cause and effect can transform into each other and can cause each other. Cause always produces a certain effect, and effect must be caused by a certain cause. There is no cause without an effect, and no effect without a cause. However, cause and effect cannot be seen non-dialectically as rigidly opposite poles. Engels pointed out that a historical factor, being caused by other causes, is able to “react on its own causes”. In the reaction, the relation of causality undergoes a transformation. Therefore, the relation between cause and effect is complex and diverse. The emergence of a phenomenon often has more than one cause, but many different causes. Furthermore, different causes can be divided into internal and external causes, primary and secondary causes, direct and indirect causes, fundamental and non-fundamental causes, etc. One cause often brings about multiple effects. The relation between cause and effect is the intrinsic basis of the principle of materialist determinism. To acknowledge the objectivity and universality of the relation of causality is to acknowledge the principle of materialist determinism. The principle of dialectical materialism on the dialectical relation between cause and effect provides us with scientific methodological guidance for summarizing the history, grasping the reality and anticipating the future.