- relationship where one event (cause) produces another (effect)
- requires temporal ordering: cause precedes effect
- requires a mechanism or pathway linking cause to effect
- distinct from correlation: co-occurrence alone does not establish causation
- Hume’s criteria: contiguity, succession, constant conjunction
- Pearl’s do-calculus and directed acyclic graphs formalize causal inference
- counterfactual test: if the cause had been absent, the effect would not have occurred
- central to science, law, medicine, and engineering: identifying causes enables intervention
- confounding variables, reverse causation, and selection bias obscure causal relationships