ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to establish a workable definition of “causality” and explores the related ideas of prediction, law, explanation, and function. The task boils down to a search for an operational definition of “causality.” This is perhaps the most important point of all and the hardest to understand and accept. Of course, the operational definition must be a reasonably valid one. To describe the definition of “causality” in another way, can say that causal relations are a subclass of associations that meet several qualifying tests or conditions. The job of the definition is to establish appropriate tests, which are the conditions a relationship must meet to be considered causal. The chapter is concerned with whether there is a causal relation, rather than with the direction of causality, and arguments of time order arise mainly in the latter issue. But time order can also be relevant to issues of whether a relationship is causal.
