ADR-035: causality joins the topics

Context

Registering the successors to the withdrawn Gogioso and Pinzani 2021 brought in a programme on causal order:

• The Combinatorics of Causality;
• The Topology of Causality;
• The Geometry of Causality;
• THEORY-171, on when causal data fails to glue.

No word fitted, so the reader tagged them by their sheaf and contextuality content. The owner asked for a topic.

The record already held two other clusters about causation:

• Interventionism and causal models. Woodward (LIT-713, LIT-723), the interventionist THEORY-138, causal knowledge (LIT-038) and causal claims in economics (LIT-079).
• The metaphysics of causation.
  • causal exclusion (LIT-144);
  • mental causation (LIT-147);
  • causal emergence (LIT-005, LIT-025, THEORY-133);
  • causal closure (LIT-164);
  • reciprocal causation in biology (LIT-110, LIT-156);
  • a causal account of intentional action (LIT-132);
  • causal loops in psychopathology (THEORY-058).

A first draft proposed causal-structure, which took the order programme and interventionism and left the metaphysics under metaphysics. The owner asked whether one causality word would join the clusters better. It does: the clusters ask what a causal relation is and how causes are structured, and they cite each other.

Decision

Add causality (Causality). It covers:

• causal order, definite and indefinite, and its combinatorics, topology and geometry;
• sheaf- and process-theoretic accounts of causality;
• causal models, causal inference and interventionism;
• the metaphysics of causation.

How it is applied:

• First on the four Gogioso–Pinzani works and THEORY-171, whose subject it is.
• Added beside the existing tags on every other work and THEORY whose subject is causation. Nothing is removed and primaries are unchanged, as the owner asked:
  • LIT-005, LIT-025, LIT-038, LIT-079, LIT-110, LIT-132, LIT-144, LIT-147, LIT-156, LIT-164, LIT-713 and LIT-723;
  • THEORY-058, THEORY-133 and THEORY-138.
• Not added to works that only mention causes in passing: THEORY-018 (a “causal inner product” in language models), THEORY-065 and THEORY-121.

Alternatives

• causal-structure, narrower. It would keep the metaphysics under metaphysics and split works that answer one question between two pages.
• Leaving the order programme under quantum-foundations. Its spaces of input histories apply to classical and quantum data alike.