For example, the sentence John hit the ball. has an actor and an action , which are its subject and its verb. Readers want to understand this sentence, not in isolation, but as a part of a story , say about baseball, where the actor has an intention to perform the action, because of its consequences. An example where we can see the interplay of an underlying acausal model with human causal explanation is a simple ecological system, with one predator species and one prey species, say wolves and rabbits. Most people are happier with such assertions than with differential equations, and even experts often use this kind of causal language informally. So we should not conclude that causal assertions cannot be used at all, but rather we should be aware of their limitations.
Causal assertions are normal and useful for talking about entities that have intentions.
However, they are often misleading in talk about non-intentional entities, and are open to deliberate misuse , e.g., in advertisements for new technical devices. This is in sharp contrast with systems, like the stock market and the global telecommunications system, which do not themselves have goals, and do not intentionally perform actions. This needs a little explanation, because of course we do find objects like TV sets and telephones in the world. To make this discussion more concrete, consider a sentence like The telephone makes communication easier. Also, the sentence makes no sense for communities that do not use telephones, such as tribes deep in the Brazilian jungle.