Theorizing and Diagramming Causal Models-Mechanisms

I would like to thank the editors for inviting me to participate in the symposium. In this introductory prelude I provide some philosophical positions on the role of causal mechanisms in causal inference as well as the issue of the role of historical factors, often called legacies, in explaining social phenomena. This prelude pro- vides some background, very brief, before getting to the business at hand which is to draw a causal mechanism or causal model figure of Homola, Pereira, and Tavits (2020), which is the topic of the next section. Because of space constraints I make stark statements with little justification. To provide reasonable justification would push the essay beyond space limits.