The third rung of the ladder of causation is labelled 'Counterfactuals' and involves answering questions which ask what might have been, had circumstances been different. This kind of reasoning invokes causality and can be used to investigate more questions than the reasoning of the first rung.
For example, the question 'does smoking increase my chance of lung cancer?' exists on the second level of the ladder of causation. Reasoning on this level answers questions of the form 'if I make the intervention X, how will this affect the probability of the outcome Y?'. The second level (or 'rung') on the ladder of causation is labelled 'Intervention'. Many of the early 20th century statistical tools, such as correlation and regression operate on this level. However, this kind of reasoning cannot describe causal relations, for example, we cannot say whether the sunrise causes the rooster to crow, or whether the rooster causes the sun to rise. An example of reasoning on this first level is the observation that a crowing rooster is associated with the sunrise. However, crucially, causality is not invoked. Questions such as 'is variable X associated with variable Y?' can be answered at this level. The first level is named 'Association', which discusses associations between variables. The authors then describe what they term 'The Causal Revolution', which started in the middle of the 20th century, and provided new conceptual and mathematical tools for describing causal relationships.Ĭhapter 1: The Ladder of Causation Ĭhapter 1 introduces the 'ladder of causation' - a diagram used to illustrate the three levels of causal reasoning. The introduction describes the inadequacy of early 20th century statistical methods at making statements about causal relationships between variables. The book consists of ten chapters and an introduction. ( February 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help improve the section by merging similar sections and removing unneeded subheaders. This section may have too many subsection headers dividing up its content.
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