Section 33 Causal thinking is essentially contrastive thinking

Variables contrast the actual (or imagined) state of things with possible alternatives.

All causal claims intrinsically have contrastive meaning. (I say “contrastive” rather than “counterfactual” as the latter would more strictly only refer to past things which can no longer be changed). If A claims that contrails causally influence the weather, and in particular that if if there are a lot of contrails, the weather will be worse, but has no opinion at all about what the weather would be like (controlling for any other influences) if there were fewer contrails, in particular doesn’t claim it would be any better, then they haven’t understood what “causal influence” means. In other words a useful and comprehensive general framework for causal maps in social science can start by treating the elements as variables in a broad (and mathematical rather than statistical) sense, i.e. as things that can / could be / could have been different.

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