An actual cause has a genuine explanatory relation to the event—for instance, a physical account of rainfall. A rhetorically asserted cause is imagined to create a delicate relationship, such as clouds weeping over a separation.
The purpose is not to deceive the audience about physical causation; it is to recast the event imaginatively. Success depends on fittingness, subtlety, and context. An arbitrary invented cause does not automatically become elegant attribution.
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The Dialectical Method and Elegant Causal Attribution: Proof and Four Modes of Ḥusn al-Taʿlīl
An actual cause has a genuine explanatory relation to the event—for instance, a physical account of rainfall. A rhetorically asserted cause is imagined to create a delicate relationship, such as clouds weeping over a separation.
The purpose is not to deceive the audience about physical causation; it is to recast the event imaginatively. Success depends on fittingness, subtlety, and context. An arbitrary invented cause does not automatically become elegant attribution.