5 Necessary and Sufficient Causes Model

The 5 Necessary and Sufficient Causes Model

This model helps us to switch our thinking from the mere correlation of statistics to the causality of reality, experiential reality. This allows us to accurately predict results with real world individual phenomena.

Briefly, there are only 2 simple ideas necessary to understand this model: Necessary & Sufficient.
Necessary are those causes that are absolutely necessary for something to come into existence or continue to exist.
Sufficient, simply saves us a lot of work. Once we've figured out what's sufficient we can stop worring about all the extras we may have added on, they're not needed!

Aristotle's 4	Necessary & Sufficient Causes
Name	House Example	Type
Material	Lumber	Parts
Operational	Carpenters	Skills
Formal	Blueprint	Organization
Final	Desire	Intent
My 5th	Necessary & Sufficient Cause
Experiential	Zoning Rules	Contexts

I'll start with Aristotle's model from 2,000 years ago. He only had 4 causes and I'll show why a fifth was 'Necessary' for our real, experiential world.
For Aristotle, the abstract idea was the prime objective, and individual realities were but poor copies of his ideal ideas. For me the exact opposite is true. I care about individuals. My relatives and friends are more important to me than his ideal ideas. Indeed I see ideas as simply tools to make individual lives better. In response, I created the 5th Necessary and Sufficient Cause - Context!

Since this distinction between 'Ideal' and 'Real' worlds is fundamental to almost all of my ideas, here's some extra pointers to it's explanation:
Personal and Experiential Worlds
and
World Views blog entry

Let's start with Aristotle's 4 Causes and use the example of a house, since most of us live in some type of house. In order for a house to come to exist, there are at least 4 necessary 'Causes'.

The first Necessary Cause is the Materials or Parts. These are the pieces of lumber, and pipes for plumbing, some roof shingles, and nowadays electrical wires that go into making a house. You could get all of these and lay them out on the lawn, and while they might look nice, they are definitely Necessary. In other words, No lumber, No house!, But they certainly don't make a house, they are not Sufficient.

The second Necessary Cause is Skills, some skilled workers. Unless you hire some carpenters, plumbers, roofers and electricians you still don't have a house that you can move into. Again, Necessary. In other words, No skilled workers, No house!, but still not Sufficient.

The Third Necessary Cause is a Plan or blueprint. A diagram of which parts go where. Is there an entrance way, 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, etc.? So now you have a blueprint on the lawn. Again, Necessary. In other words, No blueprint, No house!, but still not Sufficient.

Aristotle calls his 4th Cause the 'Final' cause, I tend to call it the Primary Cause, and that is Motive, or Passion, or Intention or Drive, or Desire, or Force; somebody has to want, really want, that house to exist to buy the land, decide on a blueprint, buy the materials, and hire the workers to finally build the house. I'll have many examples later about how crucial and primary this is for personal, social, political, or business change; An Individual, usually a very strong individual, is needed to bring about significant change. Yet ironically, we tend to forget this while analyzing changes.
We see it in every detective novel - Without Motive, there is no crime!

Now if you're building that house in your mind, which is where Aristotle mostly lived, that's all you need! But I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. There you needed a building permit! Also a plumbing permit, and electrical permit, water & sewer permissions, etc., etc., etc. When I built my first house in Downingtown, Pennsylvania I only needed a building permit and an electrical permit. In addition, I had to keep the water pump at least 100 feet from the sewerage system, which was also common sense. In the early settlement days the restrictions were more materials, you had to cut down trees, and protect against strong winds, Indians and local rodents.
All these special individual restrictions I call 'Contexts'. They limit, sometimes severely, what we can create at any one point in time. To create anything in our real, shared, experiential world we have to live within these many specific Contexts!

I first created this model while at St. John's University, around 1961. Over the last 40+ years, I've used it in many different applications and so I now have more examples. Also, when applying it in different areas, we tend to use different words. Remember it's the meanings, not the words that count, but a good choice of words makes it easier to apply the basic idea. Specific words allow us to 'think' within a certain context.

My Jargon Matrix:

Domain	Parts	Skills	Organization	Intentions	Contexts
Houses	Lumber	Carpenters	Blueprint	Desire	Permits
Language	Words	Selecting	Syntax	Creating meaning	Many contexts
Knowledge	Distinctions	Learning	Connections	Meaning	Many...
Persons	Body	Emotions	Mind	Spirit	Relationships
Politics	Actions	Convincing	Promoting	Special Interests	World events
Economics	Transactions	Leveraging	Structures	Gain	Exchange

A Note about my colors.
In a sense they are truly arbitrary, nothing profound. But I chose them mainly to make them easy to remember.

Blue - is rather passive, which parts are, they just lie there.
Green - Skills are more active, they add value.
Yellow - Organizing is more intellectual, so I picked Yellow.
Red - Passion, hot blooded, strong Intent.
Cyan, light blue - This is the Sky! The context we all live under.

Second example:
Let's take a simple fire in a campfire or a fireplace as an additional example.
Details to follow...

The flip side, an extra benefit.
Because ALL 5 causes are necessary for something to come into existence, they are also necessary for that something to continue to exist. This is not as easy to see but can be very useful. Back to the house example, if the lumber rots away or is eaten by termites, the house might fall. Likewise for skillful maintenance and repairs, and conforming to changing zoning laws.
BUT
There are many thing we want to get rid of, such as diseases, crime, poverty, unnecessary violence, ignorance, flood damage, fire etc. Using this model opens up a whole new approach to these problems. Consider fire. It need a supply of oxygen and material to burn. By cutting a wide trench around a fire, we deprive it of burnable materials. Or, by smothering it with foam we cut off the needed oxygen and the fire goes out!

Behavioral example:
At the end of a talk I gave on thinking skills, specifically "Try to create the unwanted behavior", a woman said she had a 16 year old boy with several disturbing behaviors. She felt as parents they had done all they could to help. I gave her this challenge: Go home and with your husband, imagine the following fantasy. You actually want him to mis-behave the way he does. Also you have complete control of him - for 15 years, his food, exercise, friends, hobbies etc. How would you do it? The following week, she reported that with her husband they discovered many ways that they unwitting assisted his mis-behaviors. A year later she reported major positive changes in their entire family.

Potassium example:
Coming soon.

Caution:
In our real, shared, experiential worlds there is a significant issue with this 5 Necessary and Sufficient Causes Model. In the abstract conceptual world things are quite black & white, they either exist or they don't; they fit into a category or they don't. But in our real, shared, experiential worlds there are always degrees of presence. Try to buy some 'pure' copper, or gold, or lead, or even water or oxygen, it's almost impossible. All things in our experiential world are 'impure'; a given sample has more or less of the substance we want. So a critical issue with these 5 Necessary & Sufficient Causes is - How much of each is 'necessary & sufficient' to say - Yes it's present! Or if we are trying to eliminate something, - Yes, it's absent! When looking at these sometimes small differences, the relevant question is:

When does the difference make a difference?

To address this real, experiential world issue, I created yet another Model.
See the exciting details at:
The Dynamic Thresholds or Relative Absolutes Model

Related pages:
Personal and Experiential Worlds
World Views blog entry
About the Founder
Bob's Blog

Feedback:

Certified RFR - Rat Free Research:
All my studies have been conducted with humans, by humans, and for humans.
No rats have ever been harmed or even inconvenienced.

Last Updated: Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007 7:29 PM

KnCell Technologies

Solving Humanity's problems, One Individual at a time.

The 5 Necessary and Sufficient Causes Model