 Assuming that the effect is somehow already contained in the cause (or in the causal field, that is in the collection of the cause and all the necessary background conditions) might be a more interesting way of spelling out self-causation. This also entails that when the cause is present, the effect is present too, contrary to our usual assumption that it is the cause which brings about the effect at a later time. Yet we are not able to find the effect if we look amongst the components of the causal field: amongst petrol, oxygen, a spark and so forth there is no explosion to be found. This does not mean that given a sufficiently detailed description of the causal field we might not be able to infer the effect. But this would hardly be sufficient to allow us to speak of the containment of the effect in the cause.