Editing Causality (section)

==== Ontology ====
A general metaphysical question about cause and effect is: "what kind of entity can be a cause, and what kind of entity can be an effect?"

One viewpoint on this question is that cause and effect are of one and the same kind of entity, causality being an asymmetric relation between them. That is to say, it would make good sense grammatically to say either "''A'' is the cause and ''B'' the effect" or "''B'' is the cause and ''A'' the effect", though only one of those two can be actually true. In this view, one opinion, proposed as a metaphysical principle in [[process philosophy]], is that every cause and every effect is respectively some process, event, becoming, or happening.<ref name=Whitehead1929/> An example is 'his tripping over the step was the cause, and his breaking his ankle the effect'. Another view is that causes and effects are 'states of affairs', with the exact natures of those entities being more loosely defined than in process philosophy.<ref>[[David Malet Armstrong|Armstrong, D.M.]] (1997). ''A World of States of Affairs'', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, {{ISBN|0-521-58064-1}}, pp.&nbsp;89, 265.</ref>

Another viewpoint on this question is the more classical one, that a cause and its effect can be of different kinds of entity. For example, in Aristotle's efficient causal explanation, an action can be a cause while an [[enduring]] object is its effect. For example, the generative actions of his parents can be regarded as the efficient cause, with Socrates being the effect, Socrates being regarded as an enduring object, in philosophical tradition called a 'substance', as distinct from an action.