In your own words, what is causality? What specific criteria have you used to establish causality? Has your understanding about causality evolved over time? Would you give two or three specific examples that APPEAR to have nomothetic causal relationships, but in fact do not have any? Please provide a response that is no less than one and a half pages, double spaced. Thanks!
Background: Causality or causation denotes the relationship between one event (called cause) or events and another event (called effect) which is the consequence of the first.
Child obesity is a major health problem in the U.S. A number of methods have been suggested to combat the problem, such as adding P.E. classes and breast feeding. In this case, adding PE class and breast feeding would be the causal factors, while weight control would be the expected effect.
A second example is that studying hard will lead to better grades. In this case, studying hard would be the cause and better grades would be the effect.
A third example is whether there is a link between vaccine and autism. In a nutshell, it is argued that vaccines have caused autism. Vaccines would be the cause, while autism would be the effect.
A final example is related to the discussion of the five-second rule, in which one movie theater employee has never gotten sick by eating stuff on the floor. In this case, the cause is eating stuff on the floor and the result is getting sick.