Causation
A genuine relationship where changing one thing changes another.
At a glance
Key signals
20% cross fields · reaches 6 more
- Philosophy of Science
- Statistics
- Medicine
- Explanation
- Examples
- Misconception
- Sourced relations
- Attribution
Dependencies
What this concept builds on and what it makes possible — derived from the atlas’s dependency, causal and structural relations, not from every related edge.
Foundations · builds on
CausationrequiresMechanismStrongly supported
Establishing causation needs a mechanism.
Mechanism: A credible cause comes with a story of how it works, step by step; without a mechanism a claimed cause is just a correlation with a confident tone.
Causationdepends onTimeEstablished
Causation depends on Time.
Enables · leads to
Free Will and Determinismdepends onCausationEstablished
Open Free Will and Determinism →
Free Will and Determinism depends on Causation.
Structural role & consequence
Interpreted from the current atlas graph — what the connections mean, not just how many there are.
Currently dark in the atlas: no key date stored · 5 of 5 of its relations lack claim-level evidence.
atlas representation · Describes the current Thinking OS representation, not the state of the world.
Builds on 2 foundations (requires / depends-on / derived-from / emerges-from).
structural · Structural graph analysis — not a claim of importance, causation or history.
Structural neighbourhood: 5 → 19 → 88 concepts reachable within 3 hops.
structural · Structural reach — being reachable is not the same as being understood.
cross-field
4 within-field, 1 cross-field
Strengths & constraints
Constraints
- Evidence coverage currently thin in the atlas — few of its relationships carry claim-level evidence. atlas representation
- No dated history stored — the atlas records no key date for this concept. atlas representation
Conditions
- Its dependency reading rests on 2 foundation relations. structural
- Read structurally — most of its relationships carry no external evidence yet, so claims here are graph-derived. structural
Dependency radial
What this concept builds on (left) and what it makes possible (right) — derived from dependency and causal relations.
What builds on this
1 concept build on this directly, 1 in total, across 1 discipline.
Structural downstream reach along dependency edges — not a claim of historical necessity.
Seen through each discipline
How this concept sits in each of its fields — derived from its real connections in the graph, not asserted.
Through this lens it connects to Mechanism.
Through this lens it connects to Time and Free Will and Determinism.
Related ideas to explore
Concepts that look related but are not yet connected here — candidates for a connection to reason about, not established links.
This idea also appears in…
The same structure shows up in other disciplines. These are real recurrences drawn from the graph — a starting point for asking “what carries over, and what changes?”
Cause and effect29 disciplines · 31 concepts
Concepts
shares a mental model
shares a mental model
shares a mental model
shares a mental model
shares a mental model
shares a mental model
Mental models at work here
- Connects 5 other ideas across 6 disciplines.
- A cross-disciplinary bridge — its connections reach into 6 other fields.
- Most of its connections are of the “Dependency” kind.
- It exercises 1 reusable thinking pattern.
Derived from the graph’s real structure — observations, not a score.
Sources
- Contemporary Efficient Causation (2014) verified
- Efficient Causation (2014) verified
- Causation and statistics (2014) verified
- Causation and the Dynamics of Belief (1988) verified