Causal Precedence Is Temporal Precedence

Transfers

The cause comes first. The effect comes after. We understand causal priority through temporal sequence — what happens earlier is what makes the later thing happen. This metaphor maps the directly perceivable temporal ordering of events onto the abstract logical relation of causation.

Key structural parallels:

• Sequence as explanation — “What led to the crash?” To explain is to narrate in temporal order. The metaphor makes causal reasoning feel like chronological storytelling: lay out what happened first, second, third, and the causal structure will reveal itself.
• Priority as power — the cause precedes the effect just as a predecessor precedes a successor. The first event has a kind of temporal authority over the second. “The initial conditions determined the outcome” treats temporal priority as causal dominance.
• Irreversibility — time flows in one direction; so does causation. The metaphor imports temporal asymmetry into causal reasoning. Effects cannot precede their causes, just as later cannot come before earlier. This feels self-evident, but it is a structural inference from the metaphor, not a logical necessity in all causal frameworks.
• Chains — “a chain of events” uses temporal sequence to structure causal chains. A causes B causes C because A happens before B happens before C. The transitivity of temporal ordering maps onto the transitivity of causal chains.
• Proximity — “The immediate cause” is the temporally closest antecedent. The metaphor makes causal relevance a function of temporal proximity: the closer in time, the more likely to be the cause.

Limits

• Post hoc ergo propter hoc — the most famous failure of this metaphor. If causal priority just is temporal priority, then anything that happens before an event is a candidate cause. The rooster crows before sunrise; therefore the rooster causes sunrise. The metaphor provides the cognitive substrate for this fallacy by making sequence feel like sufficient evidence for causation.
• Simultaneous causation is invisible — gravitational attraction between two bodies is simultaneous. Market prices and demand exist in simultaneous equilibrium. Feedback loops in ecosystems operate in continuous mutual causation. The temporal-precedence frame cannot represent any of these because it requires a before and an after.
• Distal causes are demoted — because the metaphor privileges temporal proximity, distant causes look less causal. “What caused the financial crisis?” elicits proximate triggers (the housing bubble burst) rather than distal structural causes (decades of deregulation) because the distant events are temporally far from the effect.
• Reverse causation in perception — in quantum mechanics and some interpretations of statistical mechanics, later states constrain earlier ones (retrocausation). The metaphor makes these frameworks feel paradoxical or absurd because they violate the temporal ordering that the metaphor treats as definitional.
• Confounding looks like causation — two events that co-occur in time due to a common cause will appear causally related under this metaphor. The metaphor has no built-in vocabulary for confounders.

Expressions

• “What led to this outcome?” — temporal precedence as causal chain
• “The events leading up to the war” — causation narrated as chronology
• “One thing led to another” — temporal sequence as causal mechanism
• “It all started when…” — origin as temporal beginning
• “The root cause” — the earliest identifiable antecedent
• “In the wake of the disaster” — effects following causes like a ship’s wake follows the ship
• “The aftermath” — effects as what comes after
• “Prior conditions” — causes identified by their temporal priority
• “First came X, then Y followed” — narration as causal explanation
• “The chain of events” — causation as temporal sequence

Origin Story

Listed in the Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson & Schwartz, 1991). The metaphor reflects one of the deepest connections in human cognition: the link between temporal sequence and causal inference. Developmental psychologists (Piaget, Michotte) have shown that infants infer causation from temporal contiguity and sequence as early as six months. Hume’s famous analysis of causation (1739) identifies “priority in time” as one of the three components of the causal relation (along with contiguity and constant conjunction). The conceptual metaphor theorists’ contribution is to show that this is not just a philosophical analysis but a cognitive mapping: we understand the abstract relation of causal priority by projecting the structure of experienced temporal sequence onto it.

References

• Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991)
• Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), Chapter 11
• Hume, D. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Book I, Part III
• Michotte, A. The Perception of Causality (1963)
• Lagnado, D.A. & Sloman, S.A. “The Advantage of Timely Intervention” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (2004)