ABSTRACT
Manktelow (2012, p. 89) discusses an intriguing poster he once saw on a local bus that made a causal claim. It read, ‘FACT: Cigarettes and alcohol are the biggest cause of death by fire in the home.’ He rightly remarks that it is not easy to pin down this claim. Causal reasoning is indispensable to living beings: we would soon die without it. But we will argue that, to be clear about causation, we must make a distinction between two types of causal induction. We can try to identify quickly and efficiently the causal, or at least relevant, factors for preventing death in our homes. Looking at some data, local health officials might swiftly detect that cigarette smoking and alcohol are such factors for death in the home and produce a poster with that information on it. But other, more scientific researchers might want deeper knowledge about how to predict and control a type of event, like death in the home, and would aim to distinguish between correlation and causation. With deeper research, they might, for example, be able to set limits to alcohol consumption, above which the danger greatly increases that it will cause people to make serious mistakes or misjudgements.
