ABSTRACT
The idea of cause-and-effect plays such a constant role in our everyday lives, it is remarkable that after centuries of thought, we still cannot tell whether it is part of the natural order of the universe, or simply a mental construct we use to make sense of what happens to us. Fascinating though this dilemma is, we will not solve it here. What we will do is start with one, particularly simple notion of causation, and then using characteristics that ought to be true of cause-and-effect, extend our notion of cause over a very wide variety of situations.
