Recently Von Wright has alleged that "p is the cause of q... means that I could bring about q, if I could do (so that) p.,,1 Now this is not a new view, indeed it was not new when Gasking adumbrated it in 1955, ~ and Von Wright acknowledges this as well as his debt to Gasking. "The position most similar to mine which I have found in the literature is the one propounded by Gasking. ''3 In what follows I propose to show that this analysis of cause is hopelessly unilluminating by examining Gasking's argument in favour of it. I consider Gasking's argument both because of its wide circulation, and because it is somewhat more detailed and precise than Von Wright's arguments. Of course, if I am correct about Gasking my conclusions should apply to Von Wright as well.
Gasking's account proceeds as follows: Consider the statement 'heat causes metal to glow'. "We have a general manipulative technique for making anything hot: we put it in a fire .... certain things when manipulated in this way start to glow. And we have no general manipulative technique for making things glow (p. 482);" the only way to make iron glow is to make it hot. "We do not speak of making iron hot by making it glow, for we have no general manipulative technique for making things glow. And we say that the high temperature causes the glowing, not vice-versa." Plainly, the opposite is not logically impossible for we can tell a coherent story in which there are manipulative techniques for making things glow which also makes iron hot, and "in [such a] world we should say that the glowing causes the high temperature... (p. 483)." It is only because we have the manipulative technique for heating which also makes things glow, and not vice-versa, that we say heating causes glowing. But consider: what does 'making' mean here? The obvious answer is 'causing'. But if this is to be Gasking's meaning, then his remarks in no way elucidate the relation of heating and glowing; for he is making the uniUuminating statement that if the manipulative techni-