  Whether you take causality to be a fundamental construct in natural science, or a fundamental common sense phenomenon, depends on whether you have in mind an idealized nature described by differential equations or you have in mind the view of nature we have to take in order to act, either in everyday situations, or for that matter in designing experiments in the laboratory. The fact that, as Bertrand Russell noted (see  Russell 1957), causality is not to be found as a theoretical primitive in contemporary physical theories is at odds with its seeming importance in so many familiar areas of reasoning. The rigorous theories emerging in AI that are beginning to illuminate the workings of causality are important not only in themselves, but in their potentiality to illuminate wider philosophical issues.