 Nāgārjuna seems to favour the second interpretation when he asserts that a cause could not exist without an effect. (MMK 4.3) It is significant that what is denied here is not just the ascription of the label ‘cause’ to some object because it is related to some other object, the effect, but the existence of the cause in the absence of the effect. Nāgārjuna endorses not just the uncontroversial notional dependence of the cause on its effect, but its existential dependence as well. Applied to the discussion of causal fields this implies that a causal field can only exist if the effect it brings about does, and for this reason cannot be taken to exist whenever all of its members do. If we adopt reading c) given above we have to conclude that for Nāgārjuna causes and effects are both notionally and existentially dependent on one another. They therefore cannot exist from their own side, irrespective of the existence of one another. Moreover, they also depend for their existence on us, because it is our cognitive act of cutting up the world of phenomena in the first place that creates the particular assembly of objects that constitutes a causal field, which then in turn gives rise to the notions of cause and effect. This entails that the causal field, cause and effect are empty of svabhāva.