Causation/Influence

The most critical causal relationship is ‘cause’ itself. This will be signalled notationally by arrows:

→;←;↔ Influencing or Causing Causation/influence in one or both directions

Note: when the same term precedes and follows an → it means influence from one (state or group or whatever) to another

Note that there is no need to distinguish ‘cause object’ from ‘cause event,’ as these will be clear in context.

Note also that in cases where we need to cope with the vague ‘X happened’ this can be coded as just ‘X’ or as ‘something unidentified caused X.’

The arrows used for notation are wonderfully expressive. Nevertheless, this expressive notation may have to be

sacrificed at a later stage because arrows are not yet easily translated across different computer programs.