Wachter, Daniel von

Comparative and Functional Genomics

English

PubMed

Open Access LMU

 1 How a Philosophical Theory of Causation May Help in Ontological Engineering  Daniel von Wachter Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science University of Leipzig  Homepage of the author: http://von-wachter.de  Email: replace “ABC” in daniel@ABC.de by “von-wachter” Address: Dr. Dr. Daniel von Wachter, Institut für Philosophie, Universität München, PF 42, D-80539 München, Germany.  This is a preprint version of:  Wachter, Daniel von. 2003. "How a Philosophical Theory of Causation May Help in Ontological Engineering." Comparative and Functional Genomics 4(1):111-114.  This document is available at http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de.  (Format A5; print 2 pages per sheet)    The Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science, IFOMIS (http://ifomis.de) at the University of Leipzig is developing a common reference ontology for the medical domain. This ontology will be developed in tandem with work on ontology formalization being car-ried out in Leeds (http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/brandon/ontology/), Trento (http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/) and elsewhere. It will also provide part of the ontological infrastructure for the systems for  2the extraction of digitalized information content from unstructured medical text which are being developed in Belgium by the company Lan-guage and Communication NV (http://www.landc.be).  Whilst the technology for running databases has reached an impressive state of maturity, the classification systems upon which this technology is based are the products of myriad ad hoc decisions stretching back to the early days of database design. The resulting inadequacies become appar-ent, for example, wherever attempts are made to integrate data from dif-ferent sources. The problems remind one of the old fable of the Tower of Babel.  A central classification system designed to facilitate database integration was called by information scientists an ontology. At IFOMIS we assume that the two thousand year old philosophical discipline which is tradi-tionally called ontology is vital for the kind of ontology information sci-entists are developing. Since Aristotle’s day philosophers have been work-ing on many of the problems which underlie the problems ontological engineers are working on. Examples of such problems concern universals and particulars, properties and relations, events and processes. At IFOMIS we assume that for building ontologies we need true philosophi-cal theories about reality rather than just representations of concepts or beliefs. My purpose here is to illustrate this claim by explaining how a philosophical theory of causation may help in ontological engineering.  Philosophical theories of causation In philosophy two questions about causation are discussed (though they are not always distinguished). The first is what we may call the semantic question: can statements of the form ‘A caused B’ be transformed into statements of some other type? In particular, can they be transformed into statements that do not contain any reference to a cause or causes? The second is what we may call the ontological question: what is there in  3 reality that makes true a claim that something causes something else? What in reality do we refer to in causal claims? I shall now briefly sketch some standard philosophical theories of causation and relate them to these questions. Then I shall describe the theory I favour and indicate how that theory may be relevant to the task of the ontological engineer.  Most contemporary philosophical work on causation still pays homage to David Hume’s ideas. Hume considers one billiard ball pushing against another and says that we can observe the movement of the first ball and the subsequent movement of the second ball, but we cannot observe any pushing, necessitating, or bringing about – in short, any causal connexion – between the two movements. Since he thought that every concept must be a copy of a sense impression or a complex of such copies, Hume con-cluded that the concept of causation does not contain the idea of a causal connexion (Strawson 1989). Contemporary Humean philosophers draw the further conclusion that there is no such thing as a causal connexion. One theory of causation in this spirit is the regularity theory, which de-fines causation as follows:  A caused B if and only if (1) A preceded B, and (2) events like A are al-ways followed by events like B.  The resulting picture is that what happens at one time does not really have an impact on what happens later. Nothing really brings anything else about. When we call something a cause we just represent it in relation to what happens in other similar situations; we subsume it under obtain-ing patterns or regularities of the form: such-and-such events are always followed by such-and-such events.  This view poses obvious difficulties (cf. Swinburne 1997); for example, a pattern of the given type is instantiated whenever the falling of a barome-ter is followed by rain, but the falling of a barometer does not cause rain. Many modifications of the regularity theory have been proposed to meet such objections. Some more sophisticated versions of the regularity the-ory, probabilistic theories, define causation in terms of relative frequen-cies: A causes B if and only if the frequency of events like B occurring  4subsequent to events like A is higher than the frequency of events like B occurring where no event like A occurs (that is, A causes B if and only if P(B|A) > P(B|not-A). (Cf. Hitchcock 1997) Another strategy Humeans have chosen to meet the objections that the simple regularity faces is to refer to regularities, not just in the actual world, but ‘in all possible worlds’. The counterfactual analysis of causation put forward by David Lewis (1973) says in this sense that A caused B if and only if (1) A oc-curred and B occurred, and (2) had A not occurred B would not have oc-curred. Regularity theories may have some plausibility if they are taken as just claiming that causal statements can be replaced by certain other state-ments, in which no reference to causal connexions is made. One may hold that ‘A caused B’, at least for certain purposes, can be replaced by ‘A as well as B occurred, and all events like A are followed by events like B’. But if there were no causal connexions, then probably there would not be any of the regularities to which the regularity theory refers, and probably there would not be the truths of the type ‘Had A not occurred B would not have occurred’ which the counterfactual analysis uses. The answer to the semantic question of causation may be Humean even though the an-swer to the ontological question is non-Humean. The Tendency Theory of Causation The Tendency Theory of Causation assumes that there are causal connex-ions, and gives an ontological analysis thereof. Consider forces in Newto-nian physics. If a gravitational force is acting on a planet then that planet will move in accordance with that force if and only if there are no other forces acting on the planet. A force is an example of what I call a tendency. A tendency is a bias in the world at a certain time to carry on in a certain way. Forces are a kind of tendency, namely tendencies that concern the spatial position of things.   5 A tendency obtains at a time t1 and is a tendency towards the world carry-ing on after t1 in a way that leads to the obtaining of a certain state of af-fairs, S, at a certain later time t2. The tendency is towards S. To say that the tendency was realised is to say that things carried on in accordance with the tendency and this led to S. A tendency will be realised if and only if there is no counteracting tendency. Some features of the world at t1 are relevant for the tendency, and others are not. For example, if there is a tendency towards two planets being at certain positions at t2, then the colour of the planets or the density of some remote star is not relevant for this tendency. The state of affairs at t1 that is relevant for the obtaining of the tendency, I call the basis of the tendency. For example, where the law of gravity applies, the basis of the tendency in question is referred to in the expression: m1m2/d2.  We can now say what causation is:  A caused B if and only if A was the basis of a tendency towards B and the tendency was realised.  This theory is an answer to the ontological question about causation: it describes what it is in reality that makes causal statements true.  An example Let me illustrate this theory with an example. A pathologist discovers that Jones’s death was caused by morphium in his blood. We identify the cause more precisely in three steps. First, we have to find out what con-crete thing or stuff was involved in the causing. It was not the kidney, not the muscles, but the blood. Second, not every aspect of the blood was in-volved in the causing. Its consistency, the concentration of red blood cells, etc., were not relevant for the causing. Rather, it was the blood’s containing morphium that was relevant. Third, in order to identify the cause completely we have to identify the time, t1 (period or instant), of the operation of the cause. So the complete identification of a cause consists  6of the identification of the causing thing, the relevant aspect of the thing, and the time of the causing. What we have identified in this way we can call a state of affairs (we can also use the term ‘event’). This state of affairs was the basis of a certain tendency; that is, in virtue of this state of affairs the world at t1 had a bias towards carrying on in a way which included the paralysis of the respiratory system at t2. This tendency was realised; there were no countervailing tendencies to stand in the way of its realization. Thus the world carried on in accordance with the tendency so that paraly-sis of the respiratory system, and hence the death of the patient, occurred. In this sense, the presence of morphium in the blood caused the patient’s death. Causation, on this account, always consists in a causal process: if A caused B, then A and B were stages of the same causal process. By a proc-ess I mean a continuous series of states of affairs. By a causal process I mean a process each stage of which is the result of a tendency whose basis was an earlier stage of the process.  Applications in ontological engineering Our hypothesis at IFOMIS is that metaphysical theories of causality, space, time, material substance, body, organism, environment, spatial and temporal continuity, and so forth, can provide a common domain-neutral framework for the development of a series of domain-specific theories for ontological engineering (Smith and Varzi, 1999 and 2002). In our present case this means that knowledge about the nature of causal connexions can help provide a framework for the formal representation of information about causings. Let me give four illustrations of the implications of this remark. First, the tendency theory entails something about what causes and effects are and how they are to be described. This tells us how we should repre-sent causes and effects. The theory says that a tendency is ‘based on a state of affairs’. This means that specifying a cause requires the specification of thing, aspect, and time. Both thing and aspect may be referred to by dif- 7 ferent information systems in different ways, for example by using a name for the spatial location of the thing or by using a name of the thing itself, e.g. ‘Jones’s liver’. Formal means have to be found for unifying such different types of reports.  Second, the tendency theory helps us to understand causation by absence (as in ‘The lack of insulin caused the hyperglycaemia’) and causation by defect (as in ‘The genetic defect caused the Down syndrome’). In both cases there is a tendency whose basis is referred to indirectly. The basis of the tendency towards the hyperglycaemia was not some ‘lack’ but rather some positive state of affairs involving a certain concentration of insulin at a certain time and place. Similarly, the basis of the tendency towards the Down syndrome was not caused by a thing that is a defect but rather by a positive state of affairs, namely by the presence of three chromo-somes #21.  Third, the tendency theory entails that a tendency will be realised unless it is prevented from doing so. This gives us a clue to dealing with informa-tion about something’s having been prevented or preventable in given circumstances. Most theories of causation assume that the occurrence of a complete cause is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of its effect. Then, however, the description of a cause becomes very lengthy, since it must refer to all things which could have prevented the effect in such a way that their non-occurrence is registered as part of the cause. From the perspective of the tendency theory, in contrast, no event is sufficient for the occurrence of a certain later event. For the theory distinguishes be-tween a cause and possible ways in which, even in the presence of the complete cause, the effect could have been prevented. This allows more adequate and more efficient representation of causal information.  Finally, the tendency theory may give us clues about reasoning with re-gard to causal information. Statistical information is to be used as evi-dence for there being certain tendencies in certain situations. This way we can acquire knowledge of the kind ‘If a patient is in state S then there is a tendency towards him having disease D (e.g. lung cancer)’. This means that given he is in this state he will get disease D unless something pre- 8vents that. The conjunction of ‘Patient P is in state S’ and ‘Patient P did not develop D’ entails that something prevented D. Further knowledge can be acquired about what prevents that a patient in state S develops D. Regularity theories do not allow this kind of reasoning because they do not distinguish statistical knowledge from knowledge about tendencies.  The main reason for being optimistic that with the tendency theory we will be able to make progress with regard to representing and reasoning with causal information is that it seems to overcome the difficulties that the regularity theories face. The objections raised in the literature suggest that regularity theories lead to false conclusions about what caused what, and they operate with generalisation which are unreliable. If we process formation on the basis of an inadequate philosophical theory of causation we should not be surprised if we get in trouble. With the tendency theory we should be more successful.  Since issues of fusion of terminologies, prevention, causation by absence, and reasoning with regard to causal information are precisely among the most serious challenges facing current medical ontology (Rector and Rogers 2000), the tendency theory promises to be of interest not only to philosophers but also to those involved in the practical business of medi-cal informatics. References Hitchcock CR. 1997. Probabilistic Causation. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2001 Edition). Available from http://www.illc.uva.nl/~seop/archives/fall2001/entries/causation-probabilistic/. Lewis DK. 1973. Causation. In Philosophical Papers II. Oxford UP, 1986, 159-213.  Rector AL, Rogers JE. 2000. Ontological Issues in using a Description Logic to Represent Medical Concepts: Experience from GALEN. IMIA WG6. Smith B, Varzi A. 1999. The Niche. Noûs 33: 198–222. Smith B, Varzi A. 2002. Surrounding Space: The Ontology of Organism-Environment Relations. Theory in Biosciences 121: 139–162.  9 Strawson G. 1989. The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume. Clarendon Press: Oxford. Swinburne R. 1997. The Irreducibility of Causation. Dialectica 51: 79-92. Welty C, Smith B (eds.). 2001. Formal Ontology and Information Systems, ACM Press: New York.   

Causation. In Philosophical Papers II. Oxford UP,

Ontological Issues in using a Description Logic to Represent Medical Concepts: Experience from GALEN. IMIA WG6.

Probabilistic Causation.

Surrounding Space: The Ontology of OrganismEnvironment Relations. Theory

The Irreducibility of Causation.

The Niche.

How a Philosophical Theory of Causation May Help in Ontological Engineering

Universität München: Elektronischen Publikationen

 1 
How a Philosophical Theory of Causation May Help in 
Ontological Engineering  
Daniel von Wachter 
Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science 
University of Leipzig 
 
Homepage of the author: http://von-wachter.de  
Email: replace “ABC” in daniel@ABC.de by “von-wachter” 
Address: Dr. Dr. Daniel von Wachter, Institut für Philosophie, Universität 
München, PF 42, D-80539 München, Germany. 
 
This is a preprint version of:  
Wachter, Daniel von. 2003. "How a Philosophical Theory of Causation May Help 
in Ontological Engineering." Comparative and Functional Genomics 4(1):111-
114. 
 
This document is available at http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de.  
(Format A5; print 2 pages per sheet) 
 
 
 
The Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science, 
IFOMIS (http://ifomis.de) at the University of Leipzig is developing a 
common reference ontology for the medical domain. This ontology will 
be developed in tandem with work on ontology formalization being car-
ried out in Leeds (http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/brandon/ontology/), 
Trento (http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/) and elsewhere. It 
will also provide part of the ontological infrastructure for the systems for 
 2
the extraction of digitalized information content from unstructured 
medical text which are being developed in Belgium by the company Lan-
guage and Communication NV (http://www.landc.be).  
Whilst the technology for running databases has reached an impressive 
state of maturity, the classification systems upon which this technology is 
based are the products of myriad ad hoc decisions stretching back to the 
early days of database design. The resulting inadequacies become appar-
ent, for example, wherever attempts are made to integrate data from dif-
ferent sources. The problems remind one of the old fable of the Tower of 
Babel.  
A central classification system designed to facilitate database integration 
was called by information scientists an ontology. At IFOMIS we assume 
that the two thousand year old philosophical discipline which is tradi-
tionally called ontology is vital for the kind of ontology information sci-
entists are developing. Since Aristotle’s day philosophers have been work-
ing on many of the problems which underlie the problems ontological 
engineers are working on. Examples of such problems concern universals 
and particulars, properties and relations, events and processes. At 
IFOMIS we assume that for building ontologies we need true philosophi-
cal theories about reality rather than just representations of concepts or 
beliefs. My purpose here is to illustrate this claim by explaining how a 
philosophical theory of causation may help in ontological engineering.  
Philosophical theories of causation 
In philosophy two questions about causation are discussed (though they 
are not always distinguished). The first is what we may call the semantic 
question: can statements of the form ‘A caused B’ be transformed into 
statements of some other type? In particular, can they be transformed 
into statements that do not contain any reference to a cause or causes? 
The second is what we may call the ontological question: what is there in 
 3 
reality that makes true a claim that something causes something else? 
What in reality do we refer to in causal claims? I shall now briefly sketch 
some standard philosophical theories of causation and relate them to 
these questions. Then I shall describe the theory I favour and indicate 
how that theory may be relevant to the task of the ontological engineer.  
Most contemporary philosophical work on causation still pays homage to 
David Hume’s ideas. Hume considers one billiard ball pushing against 
another and says that we can observe the movement of the first ball and 
the subsequent movement of the second ball, but we cannot observe any 
pushing, necessitating, or bringing about – in short, any causal connexion 
– between the two movements. Since he thought that every concept must 
be a copy of a sense impression or a complex of such copies, Hume con-
cluded that the concept of causation does not contain the idea of a causal 
connexion (Strawson 1989). Contemporary Humean philosophers draw 
the further conclusion that there is no such thing as a causal connexion. 
One theory of causation in this spirit is the regularity theory, which de-
fines causation as follows:  
A caused B if and only if (1) A preceded B, and (2) events like A are al-
ways followed by events like B.  
The resulting picture is that what happens at one time does not really 
have an impact on what happens later. Nothing really brings anything 
else about. When we call something a cause we just represent it in relation 
to what happens in other similar situations; we subsume it under obtain-
ing patterns or regularities of the form: such-and-such events are always 
followed by such-and-such events.  
This view poses obvious difficulties (cf. Swinburne 1997); for example, a 
pattern of the given type is instantiated whenever the falling of a barome-
ter is followed by rain, but the falling of a barometer does not cause rain. 
Many modifications of the regularity theory have been proposed to meet 
such objections. Some more sophisticated versions of the regularity the-
ory, probabilistic theories, define causation in terms of relative frequen-
cies: A causes B if and only if the frequency of events like B occurring 
 4
subsequent to events like A is higher than the frequency of events like B 
occurring where no event like A occurs (that is, A causes B if and only if 
P(B|A) > P(B|not-A). (Cf. Hitchcock 1997) Another strategy Humeans 
have chosen to meet the objections that the simple regularity faces is to 
refer to regularities, not just in the actual world, but ‘in all possible 
worlds’. The counterfactual analysis of causation put forward by David 
Lewis (1973) says in this sense that A caused B if and only if (1) A oc-
curred and B occurred, and (2) had A not occurred B would not have oc-
curred. 
Regularity theories may have some plausibility if they are taken as just 
claiming that causal statements can be replaced by certain other state-
ments, in which no reference to causal connexions is made. One may 
hold that ‘A caused B’, at least for certain purposes, can be replaced by ‘A 
as well as B occurred, and all events like A are followed by events like B’. 
But if there were no causal connexions, then probably there would not be 
any of the regularities to which the regularity theory refers, and probably 
there would not be the truths of the type ‘Had A not occurred B would 
not have occurred’ which the counterfactual analysis uses. The answer to 
the semantic question of causation may be Humean even though the an-
swer to the ontological question is non-Humean. 
The Tendency Theory of Causation 
The Tendency Theory of Causation assumes that there are causal connex-
ions, and gives an ontological analysis thereof. Consider forces in Newto-
nian physics. If a gravitational force is acting on a planet then that planet 
will move in accordance with that force if and only if there are no other 
forces acting on the planet. A force is an example of what I call a tendency. 
A tendency is a bias in the world at a certain time to carry on in a certain 
way. Forces are a kind of tendency, namely tendencies that concern the 
spatial position of things.  
 5 
A tendency obtains at a time t1 and is a tendency towards the world carry-
ing on after t1 in a way that leads to the obtaining of a certain state of af-
fairs, S, at a certain later time t2. The tendency is towards S. To say that 
the tendency was realised is to say that things carried on in accordance 
with the tendency and this led to S. A tendency will be realised if and only 
if there is no counteracting tendency. Some features of the world at t1 are 
relevant for the tendency, and others are not. For example, if there is a 
tendency towards two planets being at certain positions at t2, then the 
colour of the planets or the density of some remote star is not relevant for 
this tendency. The state of affairs at t1 that is relevant for the obtaining of 
the tendency, I call the basis of the tendency. For example, where the law 
of gravity applies, the basis of the tendency in question is referred to in 
the expression: m1m2/d2.  
We can now say what causation is:  
A caused B if and only if A was the basis of a tendency towards B and the 
tendency was realised.  
This theory is an answer to the ontological question about causation: it 
describes what it is in reality that makes causal statements true.  
An example 
Let me illustrate this theory with an example. A pathologist discovers that 
Jones’s death was caused by morphium in his blood. We identify the 
cause more precisely in three steps. First, we have to find out what con-
crete thing or stuff was involved in the causing. It was not the kidney, not 
the muscles, but the blood. Second, not every aspect of the blood was in-
volved in the causing. Its consistency, the concentration of red blood 
cells, etc., were not relevant for the causing. Rather, it was the blood’s 
containing morphium that was relevant. Third, in order to identify the 
cause completely we have to identify the time, t1 (period or instant), of the 
operation of the cause. So the complete identification of a cause consists 
 6
of the identification of the causing thing, the relevant aspect of the thing, 
and the time of the causing. What we have identified in this way we can 
call a state of affairs (we can also use the term ‘event’). This state of affairs 
was the basis of a certain tendency; that is, in virtue of this state of affairs 
the world at t1 had a bias towards carrying on in a way which included the 
paralysis of the respiratory system at t2. This tendency was realised; there 
were no countervailing tendencies to stand in the way of its realization. 
Thus the world carried on in accordance with the tendency so that paraly-
sis of the respiratory system, and hence the death of the patient, occurred. 
In this sense, the presence of morphium in the blood caused the patient’s 
death. Causation, on this account, always consists in a causal process: if A 
caused B, then A and B were stages of the same causal process. By a proc-
ess I mean a continuous series of states of affairs. By a causal process I 
mean a process each stage of which is the result of a tendency whose basis 
was an earlier stage of the process.  
Applications in ontological engineering 
Our hypothesis at IFOMIS is that metaphysical theories of causality, 
space, time, material substance, body, organism, environment, spatial and 
temporal continuity, and so forth, can provide a common domain-neutral 
framework for the development of a series of domain-specific theories for 
ontological engineering (Smith and Varzi, 1999 and 2002). In our present 
case this means that knowledge about the nature of causal connexions can 
help provide a framework for the formal representation of information 
about causings. Let me give four illustrations of the implications of this 
remark. 
First, the tendency theory entails something about what causes and effects 
are and how they are to be described. This tells us how we should repre-
sent causes and effects. The theory says that a tendency is ‘based on a state 
of affairs’. This means that specifying a cause requires the specification of 
thing, aspect, and time. Both thing and aspect may be referred to by dif-
 7 
ferent information systems in different ways, for example by using a 
name for the spatial location of the thing or by using a name of the thing 
itself, e.g. ‘Jones’s liver’. Formal means have to be found for unifying such 
different types of reports.  
Second, the tendency theory helps us to understand causation by absence 
(as in ‘The lack of insulin caused the hyperglycaemia’) and causation by 
defect (as in ‘The genetic defect caused the Down syndrome’). In both 
cases there is a tendency whose basis is referred to indirectly. The basis of 
the tendency towards the hyperglycaemia was not some ‘lack’ but rather 
some positive state of affairs involving a certain concentration of insulin 
at a certain time and place. Similarly, the basis of the tendency towards 
the Down syndrome was not caused by a thing that is a defect but rather 
by a positive state of affairs, namely by the presence of three chromo-
somes #21.  
Third, the tendency theory entails that a tendency will be realised unless it 
is prevented from doing so. This gives us a clue to dealing with informa-
tion about something’s having been prevented or preventable in given 
circumstances. Most theories of causation assume that the occurrence of a 
complete cause is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of its effect. 
Then, however, the description of a cause becomes very lengthy, since it 
must refer to all things which could have prevented the effect in such a 
way that their non-occurrence is registered as part of the cause. From the 
perspective of the tendency theory, in contrast, no event is sufficient for 
the occurrence of a certain later event. For the theory distinguishes be-
tween a cause and possible ways in which, even in the presence of the 
complete cause, the effect could have been prevented. This allows more 
adequate and more efficient representation of causal information.  
Finally, the tendency theory may give us clues about reasoning with re-
gard to causal information. Statistical information is to be used as evi-
dence for there being certain tendencies in certain situations. This way we 
can acquire knowledge of the kind ‘If a patient is in state S then there is a 
tendency towards him having disease D (e.g. lung cancer)’. This means 
that given he is in this state he will get disease D unless something pre-
 8
vents that. The conjunction of ‘Patient P is in state S’ and ‘Patient P did 
not develop D’ entails that something prevented D. Further knowledge 
can be acquired about what prevents that a patient in state S develops D. 
Regularity theories do not allow this kind of reasoning because they do 
not distinguish statistical knowledge from knowledge about tendencies.  
The main reason for being optimistic that with the tendency theory we 
will be able to make progress with regard to representing and reasoning 
with causal information is that it seems to overcome the difficulties that 
the regularity theories face. The objections raised in the literature suggest 
that regularity theories lead to false conclusions about what caused what, 
and they operate with generalisation which are unreliable. If we process 
formation on the basis of an inadequate philosophical theory of causation 
we should not be surprised if we get in trouble. With the tendency theory 
we should be more successful.  
Since issues of fusion of terminologies, prevention, causation by absence, 
and reasoning with regard to causal information are precisely among the 
most serious challenges facing current medical ontology (Rector and 
Rogers 2000), the tendency theory promises to be of interest not only to 
philosophers but also to those involved in the practical business of medi-
cal informatics. 
References 
Hitchcock CR. 1997. Probabilistic Causation. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of 
Philosophy (Fall 2001 Edition). Available from 
http://www.illc.uva.nl/~seop/archives/fall2001/entries/causation-
probabilistic/. 
Lewis DK. 1973. Causation. In Philosophical Papers II. Oxford UP, 1986, 159-213.  
Rector AL, Rogers JE. 2000. Ontological Issues in using a Description Logic to 
Represent Medical Concepts: Experience from GALEN. IMIA WG6. 
Smith B, Varzi A. 1999. The Niche. Noûs 33: 198–222. 
Smith B, Varzi A. 2002. Surrounding Space: The Ontology of Organism-
Environment Relations. Theory in Biosciences 121: 139–162. 
 9 
Strawson G. 1989. The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume. 
Clarendon Press: Oxford. 
Swinburne R. 1997. The Irreducibility of Causation. Dialectica 51: 79-92. 
Welty C, Smith B (eds.). 2001. Formal Ontology and Information Systems, ACM 
Press: New York.  
 


In Philosophical Papers II.

Ontological issues in using a description logic to represent medical concepts: experience from GALEN. IMIA WG6.

How a Philosophical Theory of Causation May Help in Ontological Engineering

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