a) asadkarnat - what is not cannot be produced, b) upadanakarnat - the effect requires a material cause, c) samsambhavatbhavat - not

everything arises from everything, d) saktasya-sakya-karnat - the cause produces only what corresponds to its potential and e)
karanabhavat - the effect has the nature of the cause.

The S khya philosophers advance the following arguments in favour of their theory of causation.
(a) What is non-existent cannot ever be produced. Whatever is non-existent remains non-existent for ever and whatever is
existent always exists. Nothing can be sometimes existent and sometimes non-existent. Self, for example, is always existent,
whereas the fictitious sky-flower is eternally non-existent. No agency can turn non-existent into existent. So if the effect
were non-existent in the material cause before the causal operation, then it would never be produced.
(b) If a particular cause is to be a prior determinant of a particular effect, then there must be an appropriate relation
between cause and effect. That means, a cause produces an effect only being related to it. But no such relation can obtain, if
the effect were non-existent. For, a relation to obtain requires at least two relata. Hence an effect must pre-exist in its cause.
Moreover, on the S khya view the relation between cause and effect is one of identity (tdtmya), and it is obvious that
an existent cause cannot be identical to a non-existent effect.
(c) One may still wonder, why should not the effect be produced by an unrelated cause? The reason is that if the effect
could arise without being related to the cause, then any cause could give rise to any effect. If there were no definite relation
between threads and cloth, then why does a pot not arise from threads?
(d) The opponent might say that the effect need not pre-exist in the material cause because when the cause is potent even a
non-existent effect can be made to exist by the causal operation. When, on the other hand, the cause lacks the potency the
desired effect cannot be produced. Since oil-seeds possess the adequate potency, oil can be produced out of these seeds but
not out of sand. S khya philosophers concede this point and maintain that causal operation enables a potent cause to
manifest the latent effect. However, they point out that positing potency or efficiency will not satisfy their opponents. For
then the question will be: where does this potency exist? The opponent must agree that this potency exists in the material
cause. Does this potency have any relation with the effect or not? The answer has to be affirmative, otherwise we would not
have said that oilseeds possess the capacity of producing oil and not pots. So once again we are back to the same question:
how can the potency residing in the material cause be related with a non-existent effect? The S khyas, therefore, affirm
that this causal efficiency is nothing other than the existence of the effect in the material cause in a latent form.
(e) The final argument in favour of the S khya position reveals the whole issue very pointedly. The effect, they say, exists
in the material cause because cause and effect are essentially the same but only different in form. Since the cause is existent,
the effect also must exist. The S khya has a special stake in this point because the whole debate is geared to proving the
existence of prak ti as the ultimate material cause of the universe. In the process they also attempt to establish, contra
Vednta, that the evolution of the universe is genuine and not merely illusory.
In Short,
The following five considerations are used in an argument for the sat-krya-vda: (a) the nonexistent cannot produce anything (given the assumed
definition of existence as the ability to have some effect); (b) when producing a specific thing, we always need a specific substance as material cause
(such as the clay for a pot, or milk for curds); (c) otherwise everything (or at least anything) would come into being from anything; (d) the creative
agent (the efficient cause) produces only what it can, not anything (a potter cannot make jewelry); (e) the effect is essentially identical with its material
cause, and so it has many of its qualities (a pot is still clay, and thus consists of the primary attributes of clay). This last argument is utilized to
determine the basic attributes of the imperceptible metaphysical causes of the empirical world: the substrate must have the same fundamental attributes
and abilities as the manifest world.
Purusa:
As the immaterial soul, puru a is not known through direct perception. Five arguments are given to prove its existence. (1) All complex structures serve
an external purpose, for instance, a bed is for somebody to lie on; so the whole of nature, or more specifically the body a very complex system must
also serve something different from it, which is thepuru a. (2) The three gu a-s give an exhaustive explanation of material phenomena, but in sentient
beings we find features that are the direct opposites of the gu a-s (such as consciousness or being strictly private), and thus they need a non-material
cause, which is the Puru a. (3) The coordinated activity of all the parts of a human being prove that there is something supervising it; without it, it
would fall apart, as we see in a dead body, hence the puru a must exist. (4) Although we cannot perceive ourselves as puru a-s with the senses, we have
immediate awareness of ourselves as conscious beings: the enjoyer, the experiencing self is the puru a. (5) Liberation, or the separation of soul and
matter, would be impossible without their being separate puru a-s to be liberated, thus puru a-s must exist.