it’s not obvious that processes must be made up of composable steps
why is causality a chain? why is logic made up of steps?
causality as a chain
hume questioned the necessity of causal connection, saw it as a habit of mind
david lewis causal connectivity as counterfactual dependence
x causes y if, had x not happened, y wouldn’t have happened
rooted in possible worlds logic
judea pearl uses directed acyclic graphs explicitly
logic made up of steps
frege / bertrand russell / Whitehead, formal logic as stepwise derivation
ludwig wittgenstein logical form as mirrored in the structure of reality, atomic facts compose into more complex facts
brouwer in intuitionism, logic is a constructive mental activity, the steps come from the “mind’s unfolding”