The causal principle states that everything must have a cause. William Lane Craig argues that even in the cases of subatomic events in QM, there are certain necessary conditions that produce an effect, even if they don’t sufficiently produce an effect.
My concern is deeper than this. The question I have is how can we rule out the notion of measurements affecting a system in such a way that it only appears to create effects that don’t have sufficient causes? If this was true, is this the same or different from superdeterminism? If this was true, would it be a local or non-local hidden variable theory?
Interestingly, I found the same concern in an SEP article here. As quoted,
It is true that, given Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty, we cannot precisely predict individual subatomic events. What is debated is whether this inability to predict is due to the absence of sufficient causal conditions, or whether it is merely a result of the fact that any attempt to precisely measure these events alters their status. The very introduction of the observer into the arena so affects what is observed that it gives the appearance that effects occur without sufficient or determining causes. However, we have no way of knowing what is happening without introducing observers into the situation and the changes they bring. In the above example, we simply are unable to discern the intermediate states of the electron’s existence apart from introducing conditions of observation. When Heisenberg’s indeterminacy is understood as describing not simply the events themselves but these events relative to our knowledge of the events, the Causal Principle still holds and can still be applied to the initial singularity, although we cannot expect to achieve any kind of determinate predictability about what occurs in specific cases on the sub-atomic level given the cause.