I propose the hypothesis that much of our appreciation of causal relations is preverbal and multimodal, shared with infants and nonhuman animals that lack language. Even at 2½ months, human babies act surprised when colliding objects do not behave in normal ways, which suggests that they already possess some elementary understanding of causality. The linguistic and mathematical limitations of infants require us to look elsewhere for ideas about how they represent causality, which I conjecture is mainly based on sensory-motor patterns. Babies have patterns of neural activation for sensory experiences such as seeing a toy or hearing a bell, and they also have neural patterns corresponding to sequences of motor behaviors such as reaching out and grabbing the toy. It would be fascinating to work out an account of how neural populations can combine sensory and motor patterns. For example, when a baby sees a rattle, grabs it, moves it, and then sees the toy in a different place while hearing it make a sound, there is a repeated pattern of experience that is sensory-motor- sensory.