TOWARDS A CAUSAL ONTOLOGY COPING WITH THE TEMPORAL CONSTRAINTS BETWEEN CAUSES AND EFFECTS

The paper describes a causal ontology in which the temporal implicatio ns of causation (and, in particular, the temporal constraints it impos es between causes and effects) are coped with in detail. It proposes a classification of causal relations on the basis of the temporal const raints they impose between their causes and effects, and further refin es the basic classification for coping also with causation with thresh old and with phenomena of production/consumption of stuff. Finally, th e paper sketches an application of the causal ontology for developing causal nets used as domain knowledge for natural language interpretati on, and briefly addresses also the reasoning techniques required to th is purpose. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limited