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### The Major Kinds of Causes - **Material Cause:** - The raw materials or parts that make up a thing. - Limits the explanation of cause to the parts that form the whole and their relationship. - These parts make up the system, structure, compound, complex, or combination. - **Formal Ca...

### The Major Kinds of Causes - **Material Cause:** - The raw materials or parts that make up a thing. - Limits the explanation of cause to the parts that form the whole and their relationship. - These parts make up the system, structure, compound, complex, or combination. - **Formal Cause:** - The intended and planned end of a thing, its purpose. - Determined by its definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis, or archetype. - Accounts for causes in fundamental principles or general laws. - **Efficient Cause:** - The external entity that starts the change or ending of the change. - Includes all agents, living or non-living, which act as the source of change or movement. - Represent the modern understanding of cause and effect. - **Final Cause:** - The purpose or end of a thing. - This is the telos, the goal which a thing is intended to serve. - Includes meaningful actions and mental causation, including psychological causes: volition, need, motivation, or motives; rational, irrational, and ethical - all of which provide purpose to behavior. Additionally, things can cause one another, reciprocally like hard work causes fitness.