Formal Cause – the defining characteristics of (e.g., shape) the thing. Final Cause – the purpose of the thing. Efficient Cause – the antecedent condition that brought the thing about.

Luck defined. Luck and chance are both things that occur “for something” or with some sort of an end, but that do so coincidentally. Luck occurs specifically among things in accord with decision (or things with thought). (Luck is chance that occurs to people.)

Aristotle briefly considered the possibility that the universe as we know it evolved by chance. He believed there are four essential causes involved in any natural change,(1) and also any number of accidental causes: chance and luck being two of them. This would be considered good luck.

Why can’t they be coincidental? Because things that are coincidental are the result of chance or luck, whereas things that are natural happen always or for the most part, and things that happen always or for the most part cannot be the result of chance or luck.

Aristotle used the four causes to provide different answers to the question, “because of what?” The four answers to this question illuminate different aspects of how a thing comes into being or of how an event takes place.

The four causes are, of course, the material, formal, final, and efficient causes. These causes actually have nothing to do with causality in the modern sense, a notion roughly equivalent to the efficient cause alone. Heidegger claims that the Greek word translated as cause, aition, really means to be indebted.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with concepts like being, substance, cause and identity. Aristotle’s very ancient metaphysics often centered on the four causes of being. They are the material, formal, efficient, and final cause.

Someone or something must have caused the world to exist. The cause is God, the effect is the world. Aquinas stated that this cause (which is outside our world) is the first cause – that is, the one that started everything.

His conception of First Cause was the idea that the Universe must be caused by something that is itself uncaused, which he claimed is that which we call God: The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause.

The argument from miracles is an argument for the existence of God that relies on the belief that events witnessed and described as miracles – i.e. as events not explicable by natural or scientific laws – indicate the intervention of the supernatural.

There are at least three ways the universe can cause itself to exist, by (1) a closed, simultaneous causal loop at the first instant of time, (2) beginning with a continuum of instantaneous states in a first half-open second, with each state being caused by earlier states, and (3) being caused to exist by backward …

Every action has a reaction or consequence “We reap what we sow”. Ralph Waldo Emerson said the Law of Cause and Effect is the “law of laws”. The law of cause and effect states that every cause has an effect and every effect becomes the cause of something else.

Perhaps the principle of causality applies within the universe, but not to the universe. This might allow the universe as a whole to be uncaused. An event doesn’t have a cause if it doesn’t actually happen and there was never anything that stopped it happening. Coincidence!

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.

Cause comes before effect. Except when it doesn’t. Physicists have started to realise that causality might not be as straightforward as we thought. Instead of cause always preceding effect, effects can sometimes precipitate their causes.

In the subatomic realm, where the laws of quantum physics make seemingly impossible feats routine, the one thing that we always considered beyond the pale might just be true. This idea that the future can influence the present, and that the present can influence the past, is known as retrocausality.

For any two correlated events, A and B, their possible relationships include: A causes B (direct causation); A causes B and B causes A (bidirectional or cyclic causation); There is no connection between A and B; the correlation is a coincidence.

Now, the bilking argument holds that backward causation is impossible because we can always intervene after we have observe that the alleged effect occurs and obstruct the alleged cause from occurring.

It’s possible that there is a “mirror universe” where time moves backwards, say scientists. When the Big Bang created our universe, these physicists believe it also created an inverse mirror universe where time moves in the opposite direction. From our perspective, time in the parallel universe moves backward.

Causation, Relation that holds between two temporally simultaneous or successive events when the first event (the cause) brings about the other (the effect). Hume’s definition of causation is an example of a “regularity” analysis.

The problem of mental causation is a conceptual issue in the philosophy of mind. That problem, in short, is how to account for the common-sense idea that intentional thoughts or intentional mental states are causes of intentional actions.

It frequently turns out that difficult-to-resolve disputes inherit their problematic structure from general causal principles. By investigating causation, one can come to recognize where rational progress can be made and where opinions will likely remain at odds.