Multiple Causes and the Multiplicity in ‘Cause’

Abstract

Factors are often selected as causes in a state of affairs by reference to some particular interest, or sojne practical possibility of manipulation. I have taken examples mainly from contexts where it might be hoped that the diagnosis of causes would suggest policies for controlling, eradicating, or encouraging them, as the case might be. This attempt to isolate a cause can therefore have its uses, but it can also have its dangers, when a unique cause is looked for in a situation where there are multiple interacting factors, and where concentration on altering one of them without attention to these may not produce the desired result, or may have unintended consequences in its repercussions. (The monetarist diagnosis of the cause of inflation and its cure through control of the money supply may be an instance). Still more can we be suspicious of grand over-all single causes as explaining social phenomena; for instance, Marxist explana ons of social, including cultural, changes as functions of the organi.ation of the means of production, or Montesquieu’s attributing differences in political ‘climate’ to differences in actual geographical climate. (It is pleasing to think that the English are not prone to tyranny beause their climate is so horrible that it makes them politically active. They are too uncomfortable to sit back and relax.)¹