Hi! Returning with a confusion towards this specific definition we concluded on: how does this explain efficient causes? Would the parent not be considered the efficient cause of the child? Or the craftsman an efficient cause of their works? And we know these clearly don’t fall under the stricter consideration of cause and effect, so would we say efficient cause is something different altogether?

The enactivists I am aware of tend to be harsh critics of Kantian representationalism. It gets offered up as a way to avoid Kant's problems, not a way to recreate them. The article you're citing mentions phenomenology as a means of dissolving the very Kantian dualism you are claiming this approach represents. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Phenomenology
Kant is a dualist when he makes a phenomenal-noumenal distinction, between Appearance and the Thing-in-itself.

Kant's approach seems similar to that of Phenomenology, where we have knowledge of Appearance but not of Things-in-themselves.

From SEP - Phenomenology

Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience..................... When Descartes, Hume, and Kant characterized states of perception, thought, and imagination, they were practising phenomenology.

In this sense, Phenomenology is supporting rather than dissolving Kant's "Transcendental Idealism".

Enactivism
Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment (Wikipedia - Enactivism)

The key phrase is "dynamic interaction between".

Enactivism is not the position that cognition arises from direct contact between an organism and its environment.

For Enactivism, there is an indirect contact between an organism and its environment mediated by a dynamic interaction.

For Kant also, cognition is mediated by Appearance, which stands between cognition and Things-in-themselves.

However this isn't the place to address that as we are veering OT for this thread — Pantagruel

The OP asks whether 1 causes 2.

The first thing to work out is where 1 and 2 exist, in the mind or in a world outside the mind.

The answer as to whether 1 causes 2 depends on where 1 and 2 exist.

To be able to answer this question, I am sure that topics such as Phenomenalism and Enactivism, Kant and Collingwood, are relevant.

My belief is that 1 and 2 only exist in the mind.

My belief is that 1 and 2 only exist in the mind — RussellA

Does this itself establish that mental constructs cannot exert causal force? Isn't that the essence of deductive logic, where premises necessitate a conclusion? Isn't this arguably a form of "mental causation" ?

In this sense, Phenomenology is supporting rather than dissolving Kant's "Transcendental Idealism"

It can. It often doesn't. Just for two examples, there is Robert Sokolowski's The Phenomenology of the Human Person and G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Both disagree with Kant's dualism. For Hegel, Kant is a dogmatist, and it is his dogmatic assumptions that leave him with his dualism problem. He just presupposes that perceptions are of objects and goes from there. For Hegel, this is less than fully critical. For the much of the classical tradition, they are going to reject the idea that knowledge of would involve representation/correspondence as opposed to identity. For Sokolowski, indirect realism and representationalism is entirely misguided, a confusion of sorts.

Anyhow, most of the phenomenology I am familiar with attempts to rebut Kant, not support him. It would be a mistake to assume the phenomenology necessarily entails something like how Kant thinks of the difference between phenomena and noumena (even is Husserl himself arguably works himself back in this direction in his later work). Eric Perl, for instance, speaks to the use of phenomenology in the pre-modern tradition (terms like "intentionality" come from Scholasticism), and how the pre-moderns do not accept anything like the British Empiricist/Kantian dualism as a starting supposition (and I agree with Hegel that this is very much something started with). Indeed, both Plotinus and Aquinas consider it and reject it.

I think the word you're looking for is 'pre-requisite', not cause. I can have a 1 and a 1 next to each other and never think of the idea of '2'. The idea of 2 is saying, "I can group 1 and 1 into another type of 1'. 1 does not therefore cause 2 to come into being, its a prerequisite for its being.

Hi! Returning with a confusion towards this specific definition we concluded on: how does this explain efficient causes? Would the parent not be considered the efficient cause of the child? Or the craftsman an efficient cause of their works? And we know these clearly don’t fall under the stricter consideration of cause and effect, so would we say efficient cause is something different altogether? — Pretty

I feel efficient cause is an antiquated ancient concept, which has logical problems. Sure, we can say that parent is a sufficient cause for the child, but I am not sure if there is philosophical or logical point in doing so.

It is like saying, there was a postman when the rain started coming down today, therefore does it mean the rain is the sufficient cause for the postman? Or I was waiting for the bus to go to the town, and a taxi passed me by. Does it mean I was the sufficient cause for the taxi passing me?

It just happened once out of random events, and it was a unique event which has little chance to be repeated (in the case of the parent giving birth to the child X, it will never be repeated. Because no parent can give a birth to the same child twice in their life.)

Therefore, it is like the antiquated concept PSR. It doesn't make logical sense to say the sufficient cause was the relationship between the parent and child.

Hm, I’m not sure. It seems like there really is a clear connection between the actions of the parent and the birth of the child, much more so than the examples you gave. To me it seems there are two ways we can think of it, one more concretely and the other more abstractly. In the former, Edith, a unique person (Parent Y) is the parent of Tim, another unique person (Child X). In the latter, a generic concept of parent regards itself once again as the parent of a child, a generic concept of a child that has once again come from this generic parent.

From here, I see ways that proper causality can be asserted for both. The latter is a little easier to start with — a parent is only understood *as* a parent, when the child is actually in some way existent. Edith, who we are trying to consider as simply a parent, still lived and existed many years without being a parent to Tim. The parent in her though, did not exist until the child was born. In this way, we can say that a parent, qua parent, is universally the cause of the child, qua child, insofar as they cannot exist separate from each other. If our parent, as Edith, took another year to have a child and instead conceived Gregory (Child X1), then it doesn’t change that as simply a parent, the parent did not exist until the child was conceived, and this law held for all parents insofar as parenthood held any share of reality. Furthermore, if we *were* to go back in time and remove the circumstances that brought about the existence of the parenthood in a person, it would also necessarily and without any further steps remove the existence of childhood in the other person, probably by their complete removal of existence altogether. If we were to prevent parenthood in the first parent, and thus fully prevent parenthood as a real thing, then childhood too would be removed to the same degree. But we can see that this abstract level causality is actually eternal in some sense, because although the parent corporeally exists before the child does, as abstract concepts of parent and child they only ever come about at the same exact time, and yet the parent has a clear priority to the child that thus can’t be explained by means of time. Another way to say it is that the definition of parent has causality in its essence — it cannot itself exist without having some degree of the child in existence as well.

In the latter, where Edith gives birth to Tim, which *does* exist over time, we can clear things up if we work from the ground up and observe Tim as an effect. Is it not true that, as a thing existing in the rational universe, Tim’s existence must have come about by result of a determinate cause? And isn’t it true that this cause must exist in some way as well? And if we consider again, Tim not as a generic child, but as Child X, it is clear that the only way his existence could be necessitated is by his conception at the very time and circumstance that he *was* conceived, in which Edith, his father, and the enveloping world are involved. To imagine Tim, not simply as a child named Tim but as *Tim concretely himself*, yet further being able to truly exist without substantial difference by means of any other circumstance, would obviously be absurd. Tim could not exist but by the very specific reality he was conceived in. And so, being necessary parts to the creation of Tim, it should be true that his parents are not simply people *named* Edith and his fathers name, but *actually are Edith as Parent Y, and the father as concretely the same person*. And thus it should be understood that it was *always the case* that if a person identical to Tim should be properly conceived, he could *only be properly conceived as coming about by the circumstances in which Edith is his mother*. And we can’t stop here, because we should also assert, though it may be obvious now, that *Edith as her concrete self could also not exist as we properly understand her, without being precisely the person who caused the creation of Tim*. So if we were to imagine an Edith who waited a year to instead birth Gregory, then although the causality parenthood itself to childhood itself doesn’t change as we previously established, the *concrete Edith as Parent Y should now be understood as Edith Y1, if she instead conceives Gregory and not Tim*. It is a substantially different Edith, if we are properly considering Edith as a concrete individual.

But what if Edith conceives both children? Well, we would need to understand two concretely different Ediths as well. The Edith who birthed Tim is not fully identical to the one who birthed Gregory. She has different cells, a different egg, and for all we know she might even have slightly different genes than she did a year previous. If we really want to conceive of Edith as a concrete individual, as an illuminative instantiation of our investigation, we have to understand her properly as someone *in time*, and thus it is more appropriate to say that while it is Edith as Parent Y who gives birth to Tim as Child X, it is rather a slightly different Edith as Parent Y1 who gives birth to Gregory as child X1. So, just as Tim’s existence necessitated a concretely specific Edith, Gregory’s existence necessitated a concretely specific Edith *who nonetheless should be understood as some way distinct from the other concrete instantiation of Edith*. And so Tim, in every instance that we properly imagine him, comes about only from a very specific circumstance that involves Edith Y, and the same follows for Gregory with Edith Y1. We cannot understand Child X without the existence of Parent Y, but we also can’t imagine Parent Y properly without the existence of Child X. Edith, properly understood as the parent of Tim, could not follow her precise path in life *unless* Tim’s existence had nudged her path in a certain direction, and so would be a concretely different Edith without him. And the same follows for her with Gregory.

So this is how I would establish the universality of efficient causes. I feel like most graspings of it fail to account for time properly — although it is constantly in flux, its instants seem obviously brought about by necessity of the, sometimes immediate, past. What is, is only temporarily. And what will be, will only be potentially. But what has been, will always have been, and *must* have been, for the rest of history. This is the universality hiding right under our noses in the ever-changing current of time.

I feel efficient cause is an antiquated ancient concept, which has logical problems. Sure, we can say that parent is a sufficient cause for the child, but I am not sure if there is philosophical or logical point in doing so.

You seem to be mixing together sufficient and efficient cause here. There is a pretty big difference between the Aristotelian Four Causes and Humean constant conjunction and counterfactual analysis, although the two notions can be used in concert. I am not sure about "antiquated." Both concepts are employed in the sciences all the time, e.g. do-calculus, etc. Any student in the natural or social sciences has to take statistics and they will be taught again and again that "correlation does not equal causation."

It is useful in medicine for example. Pseudoexfoliation glaucoma is the result of a single nucleotide polymorphism common to Nordic peoples. It leads to defective elastin proteins that "clog up the eye." The gene is, in an important sense, the cause of the disorder. For some disorders, a since mutation might be sufficient to ensure that, if a person lives long enough, they will develop the disease (obviously, it isn't sufficient entirely of itself, e.g., one doesn't develop Huntington's if one dies early in life.)

Isn't that the essence of deductive logic, where premises necessitate a conclusion? Isn't this arguably a form of "mental causation" ? — Pantagruel

Depends on what you mean by "cause".

There could be Aristotle's "Material Cause", where a table is made of wood, and the wood is the material cause of the table.

There could be Aristotle's "Efficient Cause", where a sculptor chisels away at stone to make a statue, and the sculptor is the efficient cause of the statue.

Material cause is contemporaneous and efficient cause is sequential in time.

However, today, in general language, using cause as material cause is an archaic use of the word, and what people mean today by cause is efficient cause.

Deductive logic:
P1 - All dogs have ears
P2 - golden retrievers are dogs
C1 - therefore golden retrievers have ears.

The above is an example of cause in the sense of material cause, but not a cause in the sense of efficient cause.

Therefore, in today's' terms, the above example of deductive logic is not an example of causation.

So this is how I would establish the universality of efficient causes. I feel like most graspings of it fail to account for time properly — although it is constantly in flux, its instants seem obviously brought about by necessity of the, sometimes immediate, past. What is, is only temporarily. And what will be, will only be potentially. But what has been, will always have been, and *must* have been, for the rest of history. This is the universality hiding right under our noses in the ever-changing current of time. — Pretty

You seem to be mixing together sufficient and efficient cause here. There is a pretty big difference between the Aristotelian Four Causes and Humean constant conjunction and counterfactual analysis, although the two notions can be used in concert. I am not sure about "antiquated." Both concepts are employed in the sciences all the time, e.g. do-calculus, etc. Any student in the natural or social sciences has to take statistics and they will be taught again and again that "correlation does not equal causation." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ok, great analysis and explanation on Efficient cause. I must admit I learnt something from this thread. I was not familiar with the concept of Efficient cause before. I was only aware of the Humean Causal theory. I will come back for any points in your explanations and counter points, if I find any points to be clarified. Thanks. :up: :pray:

Anyhow, most of the phenomenology I am familiar with attempts to rebut Kant, not support him. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The OP is whether without 1, 2 could not exist. But exist where? In the mind or in a world outside the mind. This leads into the question of phenomenology.

When talking about phenomenology, it depends whether we are referring to the disciplinary field in philosophy or the movement in the history of philosophy (SEP - Phenomenology).

Phenomenology as a study of thought, stretching back several thousand years, may well be at variance with Kant's dualism of phenomena and noumena. However, Phenomenalism as a 20th C movement may well not be.

Phenomenology as a movement got underway in the first half of the 20th C because of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, et al. (SEP - Phenomenology)

Plotinus and Aquinus
Therefore, for Plotinus (204/205 CE to 270CE) and Aquinus (1225 - 1274), phenomenology was still a discipline studying experience and consciousness.

Sokolowski
It is perhaps not a surprise that Monsignor Robert Sokolowski (b. 1934), a Roman catholic Priest, rebuts Kant's dualism, and considers that Indirect Realism and Representationism are misguided (Wikipedia - Robert Sokolowski)

Whilst it is true that Sokolowski wrote Introduction to Phenomenology, explaining the major philosophical doctrines of phenomenology, this does not mean that he is a proponent of Phenomenology as a modern movement. I don't know whether he is or isn't, but would suppose that he isn't, and therefore cannot be held as an example of a Phenomenalist who rebuts Kant's dualism (Wikipedia - Sokolowski)

I would guess that half of those on the Forum today reject Indirect Realism in favour of Direct Realism, thereby rejecting Kant's Representationalism.

Hegel
Hegel was interested in phenomenology as the study of experience and consciousness, but was neither a Husserlian Phenomenologist nor supporter of Kant's dualism between thought and being. For Hegel, in order for a thinking subject to be able to know its object, there must be an identity between thought and being, otherwise the subject would never have access to the object (Wikipedia - Absolute Idealism)

Husserl and Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was the principal founder of the movement of Phenomenology.

Husserl's Ideas, Volume One.(1913) is the true foundation of Phenomenology. In this book Husserl presented phenomenology with a transcendental turn. In part this means that Husserl took on the Kantian idiom of “transcendental idealism”, looking for conditions of the possibility of knowledge, or of consciousness generally, and arguably turning away from any reality beyond phenomena. (SEP - Phenomenology)

For example, when I see a tree, I don't need to concern myself with whether he tree exists or not, my experience is of the tree, not whether such a tree exists. As Husserl writes, we "bracket" the question of the existence of any world around us.

The word "phenomenology" has two uses
I am sure that Phenomenology as a movement founded by Husserl doesn't rebut Kant's dualism of phenomena and noumena, whilst I agree that phenomenology as a general discipline stretching back thousands of years, studying experience and consciousness, is more than likely to both support and oppose Kant's "transcendental idealism".

From here, I see ways that proper causality can be asserted for both. The latter is a little easier to start with — a parent is only understood *as* a parent, when the child is actually in some way existent. Edith, who we are trying to consider as simply a parent, still lived and existed many years without being a parent to Tim. The parent in her though, did not exist until the child was born. In this way, we can say that a parent, qua parent, is universally the cause of the child, qua child, insofar as they cannot exist separate from each other. — Pretty

Does this mean that the parent was caused by the non-parent? Because before the parent became a parent, they were not parent. The parent became parent because of the fact the parent had the child.
It seems a bit unclear here.

The parent had been caused by the not-parent, and the not parent must have been caused by the other parent, and so on. So who is the very first parent? Which comes first then, parent or not parent?

If we were to prevent parenthood in the first parent, and thus fully prevent parenthood as a real thing, then childhood too would be removed to the same degree. But we can see that this abstract level causality is actually eternal in some sense, because although the parent corporeally exists before the child does, as abstract concepts of parent and child they only ever come about at the same exact time, and yet the parent has a clear priority to the child that thus can’t be explained by means of time. Another way to say it is that the definition of parent has causality in its essence — it cannot itself exist without having some degree of the child in existence as well. — Pretty

Having revisited your points, I am still not sure if parent and child  relationship could be classed as cause-effect relationship.  Because cause and effect relationship means that when you observe the cause or the elements which constitutes the cause, you could predict the expected effect in all cases. For example, if I throw a stone to the window, I can predict the window will break. If it rains, the ground will be wet. If I release an apple from the height, it will fall onto the ground ... etc etc.

Hence if you created the conditions for cause, and apply the conditions, then you must get the expected results in the exact same state of results. This is a causal relation.

In a parent child relationship, you don't get anything like that.  To begin with, parents are not conditions themselves.  Parent is a societal name for someone who has a child, be it biologically had, or adopted.  One is called a parent by the society, when one has a child.

Parent doesn't exist as some matter or physical objects or events.  It is a name given by human culture and tradition.  It is like someone is called a teacher, when he / she has some students.  There is no causal relationship in that.  It is a kind of job title, when one has a duty to do something, the society will call you under the name.

Likewise child is a name for a person when he / she is in the early stage of life. The society call a person as child when they are before becoming an adult. Child doesn't exist as some events, state or motions or condition in reality. It is a linguistic name for an young person. Child was not caused by any event, conditions or process. Once the egg is combined with the sperm, the life starts grow biologically by the law of nature. It becomes a person of itself. The mother's body is just a shell for the child to develop until it comes out of the body. It is difficult to see the body of parents as some physical or any type of cause here. If it has to be some causal relationship, then you must also bring the physicians who actually pulled out the child from the mother's body and the midwifes who managed the birth, as part of the cause for the child, which becomes quite blurry in the relationship i.e. who is the real cause for the child?

Likewise Number 1 is not a cause for anything.  It is a descriptive word to describe an object in quantity or start of motion or event or stage of process.   From 1, one can count 1.1, 1.11, 1.111, 1.1111 ... never reaching 2 eternally.  It just depends on how one wants to use the number for his application.

Parent and child relationship is linked by one off event in one's life.  No one can predict, change or adjust it.  How could anyone have predicted Mary had Tim or Jane as her children before their births? And how could have anyone predicted how their faces and personalities would be like before the birth?

One can only talk about its necessity or factuality only after the birth of the child in the relationship.    If something cannot be predicted before its events, then can it be called a necessity or facts? Nope.

When you cannot predict the effect of the cause, it is not a causal relation at all.  That is why efficient cause seems outdated.  Just because A was ahead of B, or A produced B doesn't qualify as a cause and effect relationship between A and B.   In Causal relationship, the details of cause must offer predictions to its effects in exact degree, and the process of cause and effect relationship must be repeatable and predictable in all times in the universe.

So, I am still not convinced on your points that parent child relationship is a causal relationship which is based on necessity. If it is still not making sense, please let me know why it isn't. Thanks.

Nice points! I am going off my own reflections from here on so please take it with a grain of salt

In a parent child relationship, you don't get anything like that.  To begin with, parents are not conditions themselves.  Parent is a societal name for someone who has a child, be it biologically had, or adopted.  One is called a parent by the society, when one has a child.

Parent doesn't exist as some matter or physical objects or events.  It is a name given by human culture and tradition.  It is like someone is called a teacher, when he / she has some students.  There is no causal relationship in that.  It is a kind of job title, when one has a duty to do something, the society will call you under the name. — Corvus

I am not sure how we can claim that relationships based on culture or tradition should be considered as separate from their physical basis. Yes it is true that a parent can be either biological or through adoption, but wouldn’t we mean parent in two different senses? For example, a deadbeat father from birth and a stepfather are both parents, albeit in very different ways. The reason either of them get to have a claim to parenthood in the first place is because they do have a specific relation to a physical being which we call a child. If some small family decided someone was a parent of an imaginary child of theirs, based solely on their tradition with no physical basis to the child’s existence, we would have to either deny the true parenthood of of the person or create a third meaning of the word “parent” — because as we currently understand the word, this parent of no physical basis is definitely not actually a parent at all.

As for the temporality aspect, I did mention it in the last part very briefly but it is a sign that causes exist eternally to some degree, that is, somewhat out of time. When Spinoza declares substance to be the cause of its modes, or Aristotle when he considers the whole to be the cause of its parts, clearly these are also cases where the “cause” in question could not possibly exist in time without the effect in question also taking shape at the same exact point in time. So we can see that, in terms of historical discussion on causes, temporality was never too much of a concern for these thinkers. Indeed, in both senses of the word, the parent doesn’t exist until the child exists, but the person who becomes the parent has an active role in helping the both of them become parent and child together, whereas the child is only passively made so through the parent. Considering this, we can imagine a situation where, in the adoptive sense, the child is the cause of the parent: that is, a child saying something along the lines of “will you be my adoptive parent and take that role within our lives?” In this case, the child can be considered the active reason why the parent is a parent. It’s worth noting that because of this, I was being very strict in my definition of parent before as “the one who gives birth to a child, regardless of their involvement in raising them.” All the same, these parents and children come about at the same exact point in time, because temporal priority isn’t necessary to logical/causal priority. But still, the birth parent must have physically existed before the birthed child right? So how can we say causes are outside of time despite seeming to rely on time for its laws? Well, it seems that logic itself is prior entirely to time, rather than vise versa. When time abides by causality, it is following laws of causality prior to it which can themselves be understood without time in consideration. That is, time relies on logic for its existence but logic does not rely on time. So when it comes to those things affected by time, that is, specifically physically rooted things, there is a temporal requirement for one physical thing to be the cause of another physical thing — such as Edith having to exist before her children. But the concept of the parent itself, as far as we can endow any reality upon it, this quite literally never existed without existing contemporaneously in time with the concept of the child. In simpler terms, if we abstract away the physicality from these concepts, we can see that they actually cannot be grasped in the same way and must be understood as entirely concurrent.

This brings us to your last point though.

It is difficult to see the body of parents as some physical or any type of cause here. If it has to be some causal relationship, then you must also bring the physicians who actually pulled out the child from the mother's body and the midwifes who managed the birth, as part of the cause for the child, which becomes quite blurry in the relationship i.e. who is the real cause for the child? — Corvus

This is a very good point and as a result I will expand my theory pertaining to the parent: first let us acknowledge that this circumstance is specifically considering a concrete instance of a child, not the simple and abstract concept of child, whose cause is solely the parent. What is the cause of the concrete child is quite precisely (or not precisely, depending on how you think of it): the circumstances of the entire universe as a whole. We know that every physical body is affected by every other physical body through gravity, and we also all have an intuitive sense of the butterfly effect. What should be understood as the cause of the child, is like I mentioned with Edith X and Edith X1, the particular circumstances at that very moment in time in which they were birthed. Since we have established that, as a concrete child, the parent must concretely exist first, so must the physician, the hospital, and all of the history of reality that brought everyone to that point. So considering this, it seems to be that in the concrete sense, how reality actually plays out, we have to consider every single existing thing as directly or indirectly contributing to the cause of the child, and thus no matter which concrete object you observe you should only truly be able to consider its efficient cause as the full circumstances of reality leading to its existence. We might even say that efficient cause is the sole force that pushes time itself forward. However, if we were again to consider the child as a simple concept, understood separately from everything else, then all of those concrete qualities of the particular child are gone, and so are all of those extraneous circumstances that brought about the child’s concrete richness in the first place. Considered simply, without any extra qualities, the only thing that could possibly bring about this condition of “childness” is none other than the simple parent, who similarly does not have any extra qualities besides what it has by definition and essence: the one who brings about through biological development the birth of a child. So I guess we can say that, considering all of this, efficient cause is only ever a significant observation in abstraction, and to speak correctly of it towards a concrete individual thing would be nothing other than acknowledging the circumstances of time that led to that things existence.

What remains is whether or not abstractions exist in a significant sense. I couldn’t really gel with your points in the middle of your comment asserting parentness and childness as simply terms of culture and not physical reality. It seems if we take that route we must then go on to throw out all viability of language and further philosophy — as all words are formed out of the culture that observes their respective objects. We have to at least accept that all of these words truly do have an external tether to real things that are distinct from the rest of reality.

Also, I got it cleared up with another commenter here that 1 cannot be the cause of 2, but specifically because a part cannot be confused as a cause :) however we can follow Aristotle and say, since the whole is the cause of the part, that 2 may very well be the cause of 1, and following this, infinity is the fullest cause of all discrete numbers!

When Spinoza declares substance to be the cause of its modes, or Aristotle when he considers the whole to be the cause of its parts, clearly these are also cases where the “cause” in question could not possibly exist in time without the effect in question also taking shape at the same exact point in time. So we can see that, in terms of historical discussion on causes, temporality was never too much of a concern for these thinkers. — Pretty

Ok, there seem to be a lot of interesting points to think about in your post. First of all,

1.  What does it mean when Spinoza says substance is the cause of mode?  Could you explain?  Do you agree with that statement?

2. Again what does it mean when Aristotle says the whole is the cause of the part?  Could you explain the statements perhaps with some examples?  Do you agree with the statement?

 Parent and child relationship itself seems to be saying enough.  It contains all the aspects of biological, societal, physical, psychological and legal relationship details.  But if it is described as a causal relationship, then it seems to reduce the relationship into a physical relation which says very little.    Would you not agree?

Aristotle and say, since the whole is the cause of the part, that 2 may very well be the cause of 1, and following this, infinity is the fullest cause of all discrete numbers! — Pretty

I am not sure if 2 is the cause of 1. It is just an adjective word to say that there are 2 things. We were accustomed to the orders of the words, hence we habitually say 2 after 1, but there is no cause that we can perceive in that relation.

Infinity is just another concept to say, that it has no ending. There is nothing else to it. It is not number since it doesn't say how many things are there to count. It just says, there is no end. It is much like the concept of nothing. It just says there is no things to see or count.

Hence nothing is the same or similar concept as infinity. You cannot add or subtract any other numbers to infinity. You cannot divide any number with infinity. Why? Because infinity is not a number. It is a concept.

Can infinity be a cause for something? Can nothing be cause for something? No. I agree not.

I couldn’t really gel with your points in the middle of your comment asserting parentness and childness as simply terms of culture and not physical reality. It seems if we take that route we must then go on to throw out all viability of language and further philosophy — as all words are formed out of the culture that observes their respective objects. We have to at least accept that all of these words truly do have an external tether to real things that are distinct from the rest of reality. — Pretty

I didn't mean to say that parent child relation is only limited to the societal, cultural and linguistic nature. I was pointing out and explaining on one or two aspects of the relationship, which has little to do with the physical causal relationship.

Of course the relation has multitude of aspects such as physical, biological, psychological and legal aspects. That is why I feel limiting the relation into the causal relation seems to be unnecessary limitation and abstraction.