Section 24 Context

All maps actually have a context attached to them in which they are claimed, stated, posited, uttered, etc.

I am not going to deal much with context at this point, i.e. I will assume that all the maps come from the same unspecified context, but context is really important.

24.1 Intersections

In general, the combined map is only true in the intersection of the contexts. (So if one map is true for females, and the other is true only for young people, the combined map is true only for girls).

24.2 Replacing contexts with variables

If one or more variables B, C,..… influence a variable E in a context K, we can recast this so that the information about the context is replaced by an additional variable K which governs the influence of B, C etc on E?

That would be great, because this would just be another mini-map:

… and we would have reduced the idea of “context” to a variable within an expanded mini-map. The difference is that we (typically) have no information about the relationship between B, C when gender is not female.

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Technical note

There is no such thing as absolutely specifying a context. The only way to do it meaninfully is simply to mention any relevant differences from the current context. See Pearl xx and Mayne xx.