Caused vs Created

I said, in the last post, "Something is natural if it is caused or created by nature and not caused or created by mankind. Something is artificial if it is caused or created by mankind" I acknowledged that this may have to change and already I am beginning to doubt if this definition will work.

What is the difference between something that is caused and something that is created? Let's take some extreme examples. If lightning strikes your house and causes a fire, we would be fairly comfortable claiming that the lightning "caused" the fire but not very comfortable claiming that the lightning created the fire. On the other hand, if the person who lives in the house make a marble statue to honor the god of lightning in order to protect the house, we would be fairly comfortable in saying that the homeowner created the statue, while uncomfortable saying that the homeowner caused the statue. This is not as obvious as it sounds because if we view this activity in terms of Aristotle's Four Causes, one would have to acknowledge that the homeowner did cause the statue, although we don't look at things that way anymore.

To explore this line of reasoning, let's say that A causes B if B is an outcome, side product, or epi-phenomenon of A.  Alternatively, A creates B if the production of B is an intentional activity of A.This still does not quite work. If the homeowner threw gasoline on the house and then lit it, we would say that the homeowner caused the fire but might be reluctant to say that the homeowner created the fire. On the other hand the homeowner definitely created the statue and it would seem silly to say the homeowner caused the statue. So, in order to create we need not only intentional activity, but we need the thing created to be unique and brought into existence by the creator and not likely to be brought into existence any other way.

This may feel a little tedious, but we cannot make clear value judgements about things unless we clearly know what those things are. In addition we need to know what the consequences of those things are in order to assess their value. That also requires clear definitions. We could go on with the hair splitting of meanings but will drop it for now and come back to it later. Next we will look at some things and attempt to determine, using our current definitions, whether or not they are natural.