Causality (also referred to as causation) is the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first.
In common usage, causality is also the relationship between a set of factors (causes) and a phenomenon (the effect). Anything that affects an effect is a factor of that effect. A direct factor is a factor that affects an effect directly, that is, without any intervening factors. (Intervening factors are sometimes called "intermediate factors".) The connection between a cause(s) and an effect in this way can also be referred to as a causal nexus.
Though the causes and effects are typically related to changes or events, candidates include objects, processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; characterizing the causal relationship can be the subject of much debate.
The philosophical treatment of causality extends over millennia. In the Western philosophical tradition, discussion stretches back at least to Aristotle, and the topic remains a staple in contemporary philosophy.
John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932, in Denver, Colorado) is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy, he began teaching at Berkeley in 1959, where, among his many distinctions, he was the first tenured professor to join the Free Speech Movement. He received the Jean Nicod Prize in 2000, and the National Humanities Medal in 2004. Among his notable concepts are the "Chinese Room" argument against artificial intelligence.
Searle's father, G. W. Searle, an electrical engineer, was employed by AT&T, while his mother, Hester Beck Searle, was a physician. John Searle began his college education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and subsequently became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he earned an undergraduate degree and a doctorate in philosophy and ethics.
In the 1950s, as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, Searle was the secretary of "Students against Joseph McCarthy" (McCarthy was then the junior Senator from Wisconsin).
Judea Pearl (born 1936) is an Israeli American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief propagation). He is also credited for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models (see article on causality). He is the 2011 winner of the ACM Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning."
Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by militants in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front in 2002 for his being American and Jewish.
Judea Pearl was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1936 and received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion in 1960. In 1960 he came to the United States and received a masters degree in Physics from Rutgers University, U.S. and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, U.S., in 1965. He worked at RCA Research Laboratories on superconductive parametric and storage devices and at Electronic Memories, Inc., on advanced memory systems. He then joined UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1970, where he is currently a professor of computer science and statistics and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory. He and his wife, Ruth, had three children. In addition, as of 2011[update], he is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.
It's a mistake to marvel at ourselves
To accept what we are as of now
I need to hold onto some sort of relevance, it's all I have left.
All at once I could view the entirety of space
A moment of isolation welcoming paralysis
Follow the cord which projects and makes the decisions for you
Adaptation brought introspection
All comfort has escaped me, remember to breathe in, breathe in again.