Causality and Necessary Connection

A billiard ball strikes another ball, and the second ball moves away instantly. You see this event and assume the first ball caused the second ball to move. We rely on this pattern every single moment to navigate our physical world. Yet, we must ask if we truly perceive the connection or just the sequence of events. When we observe one event following another, we often mistake this constant conjunction for a logical necessity. We believe that the first event must produce the second event because of some hidden power. However, we never actually witness the secret force that links the two objects together. We only see the movement of the first ball and the subsequent movement of the second ball. Our minds fill in the gap by creating a narrative of cause and effect. This tendency is a mental habit that helps us predict the future based on the past.

The Limits of Empirical Observation

When we examine the nature of reality, we find that our senses only provide data about events occurring in space and time. We observe a fire burning, and we feel the heat that follows the flames. We observe a glass falling, and we see it shatter upon the hard floor. We assume that the fire forces the heat to exist and the floor forces the glass to break. But consider this analogy: if you watch a person flip a light switch, the light turns on every single time. You might claim the switch causes the light to activate. However, you only see the switch move and the light glow. You do not see a physical tether connecting the switch to the light bulb. You simply observe two separate events that happen to occur in a predictable order.

Key term: Causality — the principle that every event has a specific cause which makes the event happen in a predictable way.

We often assume that nature operates by strict rules that govern how objects interact with each other. If we drop a rock, we expect it to fall toward the earth because of gravity. We label this a necessary connection between the rock and the ground. Yet, we cannot prove that the future will mirror the past in every single instance. We assume the laws of nature are constant because they have been reliable for our entire lives. This is an inductive leap rather than a logical certainty. We take our past experiences and project them onto future events. We do not have a direct window into the underlying mechanisms that make these events happen. We are like observers watching a complex play without seeing the stagehands who move the props.

Challenging the Concept of Necessity

When we analyze the Necessary Connection between events, we realize that our belief in causality is a psychological expectation. We expect the sun to rise tomorrow because it has risen every day of our lives. We do not have a logical proof that the sun must rise again tomorrow morning. Our minds are wired to seek patterns and assign meaning to the sequences we observe daily. This mental structure is useful for survival, but it does not reveal the ultimate truth of reality. We might find that our understanding of the universe is built on these unproven assumptions about how objects relate.

We must distinguish between the sequences we see and the hidden laws we imagine. The table above shows how our minds interpret simple physical events by adding a layer of meaning. We see the data, but we interpret the necessity ourselves. This does not mean that cause and effect do not exist in the world. It means that we cannot claim to perceive the necessity of these connections directly. We are limited by our human perspective and the way we process sensory input. We must accept that our knowledge of reality is filtered through these mental habits. If we want to understand the nature of reality, we must look past our assumptions about how the world works.

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Our belief in cause and effect is a mental habit built upon observing patterns rather than witnessing any actual logical necessity between events.

But what happens to our understanding of the universe if these connections are merely habits of the mind?