J. L. Mackie's Argument Analysis

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Many people would see how cause and effect are used every day. J. L. Mackie went in-depth saying that causation is a number of causes, where it is necessary to make an effect while the rest makes it sufficient to make the given event happen. This goes into his argument about the causes and conditions and how they are related, and how the causes are insufficient but necessary and conditions are unnecessary but sufficient.

In J. L. Mackie’s first argument, he states that cause and condition is related because he gives a scenario of a house fire which is caused by an electrical short-circuit and explains that the short-circuit is the cause of the fire since there are a set of conditions (positive and negative), such as having the absence
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In this argument, he uses the same house fire example, and questions if the short-circuit is the exact cause of the fire because the short-circuit is neither necessary nor sufficient because he made a thought experiment picturing the short-circuit still occurs and there are no inflammable materials nearby, concluding that it caused the fire, and even if there are efficient automatic sprinklers in the right place, then it would make the short-circuit unnecessary or insufficient. He also concluded that if the short-circuit is the indispensable part of the complex condition, then it makes the cause be insufficient but necessary and the conditions would be unnecessary but sufficient, concluding that it is a complex condition an INUS condition. A simpler way to put it is when a grade 12 high school student is taking a 8 university level courses to get into university but is getting a 70 percent average. Given this example, the cause is the student taking university level courses which are necessary to go to university, but is insufficient to get a 70 percent average, and the conditions are that it is unnecessary to take 8 university level courses to go to university when all you need is at least 6 university or mixed levels to get into university but taking 8 university level courses is enough to go into university. This