Causal adequacy principle

The Cartesian rule that a total efficient cause must possess at least as much metaphysical reality as its effect, formally in the same mode or eminently in a higher one.

Version

v1 · 2026-09-28 · History

Domain-specific #

8369

Domain group

Humanities

Origin domain

Philosophy

Subdomains

Early Modern Philosophy, Metaphysics → Philosophy

Core Idea

Causal adequacy belongs to an early modern metaphysical vocabulary of graded reality. Existing substances and modes have formal reality; ideas have objective reality insofar as they represent objects. An effect cannot derive its degree of reality from a source that lacks it altogether.

Formal containment attributes the relevant perfection to the cause in the same manner; eminent containment places it in a higher causal mode. Descartes uses this constraint when asking what could cause an idea representing infinite perfection. The principle should be reconstructed on those terms rather than assimilated to physical conservation.

How would you explain it like I'm…

You Can't Give What You Lack

You can't give something you don't have at all. The causal adequacy principle says whatever makes something must have at least as much of what it gives — either the very same thing, or something even better. A long-ago thinker used this to ask: where could my idea of something perfectly great have come from?

Enough Realness in the Cause

The causal adequacy principle comes from philosophers a few hundred years ago who thought some things are "more real" than others. It says an effect can't get its amount of reality from a cause that doesn't have that reality at all. A cause can have it in the same way the effect does, or in a higher, better way. Descartes applied this even to ideas: an idea of something perfect must come from a cause that is at least that perfect. It's a rule about levels of reality, not about energy or matter being saved up.

Cause Must Contain Effect's Reality

The causal adequacy principle belongs to early modern metaphysics, which ranked things by degrees of reality. Existing things (substances and their modes) have formal reality — the reality they actually have — while ideas also have objective reality, the reality of what they represent. The principle says an effect cannot get its degree of reality from a cause that lacks it altogether. A cause may contain the effect's perfection formally (in the same way) or eminently (in a higher way). Descartes used it to ask what could possibly cause his idea of an infinitely perfect being. It should be understood on these terms, not confused with physical conservation laws.

 

The causal adequacy principle is a constraint within the early modern metaphysics of graded reality. Existing substances and modes possess formal reality; ideas, beyond their formal reality as mental modes, possess objective reality insofar as they represent objects. The principle holds that an effect cannot derive its degree of reality from a source that altogether lacks it, so the cause must contain what the effect has. That containment may be formal, the perfection existing in the cause in the same manner, or eminent, the perfection existing in the cause in a higher mode. Descartes invokes the principle when asking what could cause his idea representing infinite perfection, since the idea's objective reality demands an adequate cause. Reconstructing it faithfully means keeping it in this vocabulary rather than assimilating it to physical conservation of quantity.

Structural Signature

Sig role-phrases:

• Effect or idea — Supplies the reality whose causal origin requires accounting. It is target. Counterfactual: Merely naming a concept does not settle its objective-reality rank.
• Degree of reality — Orders substances, modes, finite beings, and the represented content of ideas in the theory. It is measure. Counterfactual: The ordering is metaphysical, not physical energy or statistical information.
• Total efficient cause — Provides the complete causal source relevant to the effect. It is source. Counterfactual: A partial occasion does not discharge the adequacy requirement by itself.
• Formal containment — Allows a cause to possess the relevant perfection in the same mode. It is satisfaction. Counterfactual: Formal possession is not literal storage of an effect.
• Eminent containment — Allows a higher cause to produce a lower perfection without instantiating it identically. It is satisfaction. Counterfactual: This clause depends on the hierarchy of reality the theory accepts.
• Explanatory inference — Rules out proposed causes judged to have less reality than the effect. It is constraint. Counterfactual: The principle does not independently identify the one true cause.

What It Is Not

• It is not merely the claim that every event has a cause.
• It is not the principle of sufficient reason.
• It is not conservation of energy or information.
• It does not by itself prove which proposed cause actually exists.
• Closest near-miss. The principle of sufficient reason demands an explanation or reason; causal adequacy instead ranks reality in cause and effect and constrains which causes could produce which effects.

Scope of Application

• History of philosophy. Reconstructs Cartesian and scholastic causal vocabulary.
• Arguments for God. Analyzes the causal premise in Descartes's trademark argument.
• Theory of ideas. Relates represented content to the reality required of its cause.
• Metaphysical explanation. Tests how ontological hierarchies constrain causal accounts.
• Comparative philosophy. Contrasts adequacy with resemblance, sufficiency, conservation, and grounding principles.

Clarity

State the text, translation, kind of reality assigned to cause and effect, whether containment is formal or eminent, and the inference the principle is asked to support. Do not replace metaphysical reality with amount of matter, energy, complexity, or evidence.

Manages Complexity

The abstraction exposes a ranked admissibility test inside a causal argument: characterize the effect, assign its reality, characterize the source, and ask whether the source meets the relevant formal-or-eminent threshold. This makes both the force and contested premises of the argument visible.

Abstract Reasoning

1. Identify the effect, idea, or represented content requiring a cause.
2. Distinguish its formal existence from its objective representational reality.
3. Assign the degree of reality within the historical ontology.
4. Identify the proposed total efficient cause.
5. Test formal or eminent containment of the relevant perfection.
6. Separate exclusion of an inadequate cause from positive proof of one adequate cause.

Knowledge Transfer

The transferable cargo is a ranked causal-admissibility constraint. It transfers only to theories that independently define comparable degrees and modes of possession; it stops at modern engineering or scientific uses of adequacy that lack the Cartesian ontology.

Examples

Canonical

In the Cartesian argument, a finite mind's idea representing infinite perfection is assigned such objective reality that only a cause with adequate formal or eminent reality can explain it.

Mapped back: effect → idea of infinite perfection; measure → objective reality; constraint → adequate cause.

Applied / In Practice

A warm body causes warmth in another under an illustrative scholastic reading because the cause contains the relevant quality formally.

Mapped back: containment → formal; mode → same perfection.

Applied / In Practice

A small spark ignites a large fuel reserve; physical amplification does not refute or instantiate the principle, because Cartesian degrees of reality are not magnitudes of released energy.

Mapped back: physical energy → inapplicable; metaphysical rank → not assessed.

Structural Tensions

T1 — Explanatory Constraint versus Question-Begging Hierarchy. The rule narrows possible causes only if the ordering of reality is independently defensible.

Diagnostic: What warrants the ranking applied to this effect or idea?

T2 — Formal Resemblance versus Eminent Transcendence. The theory permits causation by either shared perfection or a higher nonidentical mode.

Diagnostic: How is eminent possession distinguished from an ad hoc exception?

T3 — Historical Reconstruction versus Modern Reinterpretation. Contemporary causal vocabulary can clarify the argument while easily erasing its scholastic metaphysics.

Diagnostic: Which terms must remain untranslated for fidelity?

Structural–Framed Character

Causal Adequacy Principle is framed: structurally a monotonicity constraint on causation and historically fixed by Cartesian–scholastic grades of reality.

Structural Core vs. Domain Accent

The skeleton is an effect whose rank may not exceed its total cause under allowed modes of containment. Cartesian metaphysics supplies objective and formal reality, substance and mode, efficient causation, perfection, eminence, and the theological argument.

Instantiates / Related Primes

This entry typically is a kind of Principle of sufficient reason.

• Approved root. The frozen DAG retains this historically bounded metaphysical principle without a broader parent.

• Related — principle of sufficient reason, efficient cause, formal reality, objective reality, trademark argument, and causal power. These provide its neighboring rule, ontology, and argumentative use.

Relationships to Other Abstractions

Current abstraction Causal adequacy principle Domain-specific

Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on

• Causal adequacy principle is a kind of, typical Principle of sufficient reason Domain-specific

  Causal adequacy is Descartes' reality-quantified version of demanding a sufficient ground for an effect: the cause must contain enough reality to explain it.

Hierarchy path (1) — routes to 1 parentless root

• Causal adequacy principle → Principle of sufficient reason → Law (Universal Principle) → Invariance

Neighborhood in Abstraction Space

Causal adequacy principle sits in a crowded region of the domain-specific corpus (30^th percentile for distinctiveness): several abstractions share nearly its structure, so a description that fits it tends to fit its neighbors too.

Family — Epistemic Norms & Informal Fallacies (16 abstractions)

Nearest neighbors

• Fallacy of the Single Cause — 0.90
• Hume's Fork — 0.89
• Form of the Good — 0.88
• Explicature — 0.88
• Conatus — 0.88

Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-10-08

Not to Be Confused With

• Principle of Sufficient Reason. Tell: Sufficient reason requires an explanation; causal adequacy compares the metaphysical reality of effect and cause.
• Conservation Law. Tell: A conservation law tracks a physical quantity through dynamics, not ranks of formal and objective reality.
• Causal Sufficiency. Tell: Modern sufficiency concerns whether a factor can produce an outcome or close a model, without Cartesian containment.
• Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit. Tell: Nothing from nothing is a broader maxim; adequacy adds an ordered reality requirement and two modes of containment.

References

• Frozen Wikipedia discovery revision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_adequacy_principle (revision 1222467360).
• Preserved source candidate: https://books.google.com/books?id=iA8ZQX4jyHoC&pg=PA430
• Preserved source candidate: https://books.google.com/books?id=ZEh-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA379
• Preserved source candidate: http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/file/2dbbca5f-bfa1-4001-88e7-d8cbcbe9337e/1/full_text.pdf#page=57
• Preserved source candidate: https://web.archive.org/web/20191221194936/http://www.canberra.edu.au/researchrepository/file/2dbbca5f-bfa1-4001-88e7-d8cbcbe9337e/1/full_text.pdf#page=57
• Preserved source candidate: https://books.google.com/books?id=gBHADwAAQBAJ&pg=PA155
• Preserved source candidate: https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5P2lFaM8GgC&pg=PA28
• Preserved source candidate: https://books.google.com/books?id=gQD2AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA33
• Preserved source candidate: https://books.google.com/books?id=UohoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT138

The frozen Wikipedia revision is discovery provenance. The retained source set was reviewed for identity, formal or operational relation, and scope. The encyclopedia's structural synthesis is bounded to those claims; a thin authority surface is recorded as a nonblocking source-strengthening repair rather than concealed.