ABSTRACT
Not a few philosophers and scientists in the history of thought have affirmed that singular causation is universal. In this chapter, the author tries to provide two derivations of the universality of causation, or something near enough, that proceed from very weak principles about explanation and/or what can be caused. Purely contingent events only feature contingent substances as constituents. Merely contingent events can have constituents that are necessary substances, and yet be contingent in that they could have failed to occur. A number of recent authors have argued that abstract objects can stand in causal relations. A contrast situation is "the complex of a contrast event and the event in which the absence of the cause consisted." A contrast event is one that is not identical to the effect, or the cause, or the cause's omission although it is compatible with that omission. We can derive the universality of causation with respect to purely platonic events.
