Causation Is Control Over An Entity Relative To A Location

Transfers

To cause something is to control where an entity goes. This metaphor maps the governance frame — an authority determining the spatial position of a thing under its jurisdiction — onto causal reasoning. The cause is an agent who places, moves, or confines an entity to a particular location; the effect is the entity’s arrival at that location. It belongs to the location-case variant of Lakoff’s Event Structure system, where states are locations and changes are movements between locations.

Key structural parallels:

• Cause as placement — “The crisis put the country in a difficult position.” “The ruling placed restrictions on the company.” “Her decision landed him in trouble.” The causal agent places the affected entity at a new location, and the location represents the resulting state. Causing is positioning.
• Control as spatial authority — “She kept him in line.” “The policy held the economy in check.” “They pinned the blame on him.” The causer exercises authority over where the entity is. Control over location is control over state, because the location-state mapping runs underneath.
• Prevention as blocking movement — “The regulation kept prices from rising.” “She held him back from making a mistake.” “They stopped the project from going off track.” Preventing an effect is preventing the entity from reaching a location. The causal agent acts as a barrier or restraint on movement.
• Release as permitting change — “She let him go.” “The court freed the defendant.” “They released the funds.” When the controlling agent stops constraining the entity’s location, the entity moves and the state changes. Permitting causation is releasing spatial control.
• Destination as outcome — “The negotiations brought them to an agreement.” “His recklessness drove the company to bankruptcy.” “The evidence led the jury to a verdict.” The caused state is a place the entity arrives at under the agent’s direction.

Limits

• Causation is not always directional — the metaphor requires a controlling agent who moves an entity to a place. But many causal processes are undirected: erosion, diffusion, entropy. There is no governor placing the river sediment downstream. The metaphor makes agentless causation hard to express without personifying the cause.
• Spatial control implies reversibility — if you can place something at a location, you can presumably move it back. But many causal processes are irreversible: you cannot un-burn a forest or un-say a word. The governance-of-location frame creates a false sense that effects can always be undone by moving the entity back.
• The single-entity focus obscures systemic effects — controlling where one entity goes is a simple dyad (controller-entity). But real causation often involves cascading effects across many entities. Moving one piece changes the whole board, not just the piece’s location.
• Location implies discrete states — if the effect is arriving at a location, then states are places you are either at or not at. This makes gradual transitions awkward. You are not partly in a recession; you are either there or not. The metaphor discretizes what may be continuous.
• Governance implies legitimacy — the source frame carries connotations of rightful authority. When we say someone “put” another person in a bad situation, the governance framing can subtly suggest the causer had the right or power to do so, even when the causation was accidental or illegitimate.

Expressions

• “The recession put millions out of work” — causing unemployment as placing people at a location (out of work)
• “She kept him in line” — preventing deviance as controlling an entity’s spatial position
• “The new law placed the burden on employers” — causing obligation as positioning an entity relative to a bearer
• “His recklessness drove the company to ruin” — causing failure as directing an entity toward a destination
• “They held the situation under control” — preventing change as maintaining an entity’s location
• “The evidence led the jury to a guilty verdict” — causing a conclusion as guiding an entity to a location
• “She landed him in trouble” — causing a bad state as placing someone at an undesirable location
• “The policy kept inflation in check” — preventing rise as confining an entity to a controlled location

Origin Story

This metaphor is documented in the Master Metaphor List (Lakoff, Espenson & Schwartz 1991) as part of the Event Structure metaphor system, location case. Lakoff identified two parallel systems for understanding causation: one based on spatial control (the location case) and one based on possession control (the object case). CAUSATION IS CONTROL OVER AN ENTITY RELATIVE TO A LOCATION is a specific instantiation of the location case that foregrounds the causal agent’s governance over where an affected entity ends up. It depends on the more fundamental mapping STATES ARE LOCATIONS — without that underlying metaphor, the idea that placing something at a location constitutes causing a state change would not cohere.

References

• Lakoff, G., Espenson, J. & Schwartz, A. Master Metaphor List (1991), “Causation Is Control Over An Entity Relative To A Location”
• Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Philosophy in the Flesh (1999) — the Event Structure metaphor system, location case
• Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. Metaphors We Live By (1980) — ontological metaphors