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Reverse causation or reverse causality or wrong direction is an informal fallacy of questionable cause where cause and effect are reversed. The cause is said to be the effect and vice versa. Example 1 The faster that windmills are observed to rotate, the more wind is observed. Therefore, wind is caused by the rotation of windmills.
Causality is an influence by which one event, process, state, or object (a cause) contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an effect) where the cause is at least partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is at least partly dependent on the cause. [1]
Retrocausality, or backwards causation, is a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one. [1] [2] In quantum physics, the distinction between cause and effect is not made at the most fundamental level and so time-symmetric systems can be viewed as causal or retrocausal.
To establish cause and effect (i.e., causality) is notoriously difficult, as is expressed by the commonly heard statement that "correlation does not imply causation." In statistics, it is generally accepted that observational studies can give hints but can never establish cause and effect. But, considering the probability paradox (see Koestler ...
A bootstrap paradox, also known as an information loop, an information paradox, [6] an ontological paradox, [7] or a "predestination paradox" is a paradox of time travel that occurs when any event, such as an action, information, an object, or a person, ultimately causes itself, as a consequence of either retrocausality or time travel.
Causal reasoning is the process of identifying causality: the relationship between a cause and its effect.The study of causality extends from ancient philosophy to contemporary neuropsychology; assumptions about the nature of causality may be shown to be functions of a previous event preceding a later one.
John Stuart Mill describes the Law of Universal Causation in following way: . Every phenomenon has a cause, which it invariably follows; and from this are derived other invariable sequences among the successive stages of the same effect, as well as between the effects resulting from causes which invariably succeed one another.
In legal matters, "but-for", "sine qua non", causa sine qua non, [9] or "cause-in-fact" causation, or condicio sine qua non, is a circumstance in which a certain act is a material cause of a certain injury or wrongdoing, without which the injury would not have occurred.