Necessary and Sufficient Causes - Essay Example

The paper "Necessary and Sufficient Causes" is an excellent example of an essay on social science. A necessary cause is a situation, which must exist for a consequence to follow. To convict a person, charges of criminal offense exists where the person pleads guilty or found guilty of the offense. Sufficient cause is a state that assures the result in question. When a person pleads guilty, that is a sufficient cause to convict the person (Maxfield and Babbie, 86).

Reasons why both necessary and sufficient causes are difficult to identify in social sciences
The validity of casual implication clarifies whether it is correct to conclude that a cause, which produced an effect for validity is an estimated truth to a conclusion. When something is valid, reliable evidence supports whether the inference is correct to a degree (Maxfield and Babbie, 87). A researcher is never certain of a cause thus making approximate, an important word in conclusion of a cause.
Since it is difficult to establish the rationality of causal inference, there cannot be an absolute judgment on whether statements about the causes are correct. The social scientists address the various validity threats to determine whether the conviction of a person base on sufficient or necessary cause (Maxfield and Babbie, 88). In statistical conclusion validity, there is a determination on whether the suspected cause statistically associates with the change in suspected result.
Validity threats refer to potential false deduction about a cause. If research shows that the use of illegal drugs leads to people committing crimes, the researchers’ interest is to know how the crime committed relates to the use of drugs. If drug users commit equal crimes with nonusers and there are equal proportions of criminals and non-criminals who use drugs, it will be difficult to measure the relationship between the criminal offense and drug use (Maxfield and Babbie, 88).  Read More