right, but the potential existence of multiple potential causes (an "or" gate) is what makes this reasoning a fallacy: > "This happened because I did that" see

right, but the potential existence of multiple potential causes (an "or" gate) is what makes this reasoning a fallacy: > "This happened because I did that" seems to imply "Had I not done that, this would not have happened" -- a counterfactual. The point is that constructing the counterfactual requires a more than just knowledge of a single causal link, but a broader set of causal knowledge about many causal links. Language is messy and ambiguous and we do often colloquially use "X caused Y" to imply the truth of the counter factual "If X had not happened Y would not have happened". Interestingly, a different tense such as "X causes Y" generally does not have the same counter factual implication.