 The functional project has close affinities to what in recent years has been discussed under the term conceptual engineering (Cappelen 2018). Conceptual engineering aims to develop precise philosophical concepts that fulfil certain cognitive goals, often taking an existing concept as its starting point, offering a philosophical precissification of this concept and then engaging in an assessment of the precissified concept’s usefulness. In taking existing concepts of causation as its starting point the functional project concerning causation engages primarily in what David Chalmers calls “re-engineering” rather than “de novo engineering” (Chalmers 2018, see  Other Internet Resources).  Unlike the descriptive project, the functional project possesses a methodological or normative dimension, evaluating the usefulness of causal concepts and of types of causal reasoning.