Question about Sufficient and Necessary Causes vs Cause and Effect

[RSX007]

Hi:

I am having trouble differentiate between a sufficient cause vs necessary cause vs cause-effect (only cause for a particular effect). I ended up making a sentence to demonstrate how each one operates but I am not sure if my understanding is correct:

Sufficient Cause:

"Because I travelled by car, I was able to go to the very far away park."

Is it true that in order for this sentence to demonstrate a sufficient cause, a necessary assumption that needs to be made is that there is no other type of transportation used but travelling by car?

Necessary Cause:

"Travelling by car was needed for me to have gone to the very far away park."

Is it true that in order for this sentence to demonstrate a necessary cause, a sufficient assumption that needs to be made is that travelling by car was not the reason for going to the very far away park in the first place?

Cause and Effect:

"Because and only because I travelled by car, must I have gone to the very far away park."

There are no necessary and sufficient assumptions because the strong language indicates a cause and effect relationship, no questions asked.

Thanks for your help!!

[Robert Carroll]

RSX007,

Sufficient causes and necessary causes are cause and effect relationships. They are types of causal relationships, so there is no difference between them and cause-and-effect. A causal relationship is one where something makes something else happen. A sufficient cause is a cause that will always produce the effect, and, normally, the causal relationships on the LSAT are taken by the authors of the stimuli to be sufficient causes. An exception to that would be where the author uses language that reduces the certainty of the relationship ("probably causes") or indicates that the claimed cause may be only one of several causal factors ("is a factor in causing"). A necessary cause is a cause (and thus produces the effect), but it is the only cause that could have produced that effect, so is also necessary for the effect.

A sufficient cause will be able on its own to produce the effect, so I think that your first example, in order to demonstrate a sufficient cause (if that's what the author is trying to do - it's not clear to me that an author saying such a thing would be trying to do that), would have to assume no other cause was involved.

In your second example, I don't think any assumption about the reason for going to the park has to be made. But it's not clear to me that this is a causal relationship at all, at least as it's expressed. It seems merely to be a conditional relationship.

Your third example does seem to provide an example of a sufficient and necessary cause.

Robert Carroll