ABSTRACT
Although there are obvious analogies between features of models and metaphysical creations, it is not immediately clear that these analogies are anything more than superficial resemblances. Starting at the deepest level of mental models, mutors have much in common with causation. Causation, and explanation, seems to be asymmetric: the cause explains the effect, but the effect does not explain the cause. Simulation, on the other hand, seems to be symmetric: causes predict their effects, effects retrodict their causes. Bare mutors cannot be attached to simulants: they are all organised through effectors, even if the effector has only a single mutor. There may be a higher level effector grouping several other effectors, so that if something has the higher level effector, it has all the mutors in question, while other objects can possess the lower level effectors piecemeal. Such a higher level effector may be useful in organising someone's mental models, but only if the lower effectors really do cluster reliably.
