In such a case, one speaks of preemptive, or superseding, cause. We are apt to speak of causes in regard to changes; however, ‘unchanges,’ e.g., this table’s standing here through some period of time, can also have causes: the table continues to stand here because it is supported by a rigid floor. The presence of the floor, therefore, can be called a sustaining cause of the table’s continuing to stand. A cause is usually thought to precede its effect in time; however, some have argued that we must allow for the possibility of a cause that is temporally posterior to its effect – backward causation (sometimes called retrocausation). And there is no universal agreement as to whether a cause can be simultaneous with its effect – concurrent causation. Nor is there a general agreement as to whether cause and effect must, as a matter of conceptual necessity, be ‘contiguous’ in time and space, either directly or through a causal chain of contiguous events – contiguous causation. The attempt to ‘analyze’ causation seems to have reached an impasse; the proposals on hand seem so widely divergent that one wonders whether they are all analyses of one and the same concept. But each of them seems to address some important aspect of the variegated notion that we express by the term ’cause’, and it may be doubted whether there is a unitary concept of causation that can be captured in an enlightening philosophical analysis. On the other hand, the centrality of the concept, both to ordinary practical discourse and to the scientific description of the world, is difficult to deny. This has encouraged some philosophers to view causation as a primitive, one that cannot be further analyzed. There are others who advocate the extreme view (causal nihilism) that causal concepts play no role whatever in the advanced sciences, such as fundamental physical theories of space-time and matter, and that the very notion of cause is an anthropocentric projection deriving from our confused ideas of action and power. See also AGENT CAUSATION, EXPLANATION, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENC. J.K.
