Aiheuttaman

Aiheuttaman is a term used in philosophy of causality and in speculative fiction to designate a factor within a causal network that has been produced by prior causes and, in turn, produces further effects. It is not the initial trigger in a chain, but a downstream cause that retains causal efficacy and can be responsible for downstream outcomes. The concept helps articulate situations in which responsibility or influence is distributed across multiple steps, complicating judgments about blame, responsibility, and intervention.

The word is constructed from Finnish roots related to "cause" (aihe) and the verb "to cause" (aiheuttaa). The participial form aiheuttama means "caused" or "that which has been caused," and aiheuttaman is used in this article as a nominal term for a causally efficacious, downstream element. The term appears in contemporary philosophical discussions and in speculative fiction as a concise label for this kind of intermediary causal role.

Applications include ethical analysis of responsibility in complex systems, law, and policy, where interventions can affect outcomes by acting on intermediate factors. Critics argue that the term risks reifying a chain of events and obscuring primary causes, while proponents say it clarifies where influence resides in multi-layered processes. In AI research, aiheuttaman is sometimes invoked to discuss how decisions emerge from nested components and how responsibility should be allocated when multiple modules contribute to an outcome.

Related concepts include causal chain, intermediate cause, agent causation, and moral luck. See also general works on causality and philosophy of action.