Fig 3. Composition of intrinsic effects.

From the intrinsic perspective of the system, a specific cause or effect is only available to the system if it is selected by a causal distinction d ∈ D(s). In (A), only the top-order effect is specified. From the intrinsic perspective, the system cannot distinguish the individual units. In (B), only first-order effects are specified. The system has no “handle” to select all three units together. (C) If both first- and third-order effects are specified, but no second-order effects, the system can distinguish individual units and select them together, but has no way of ordering them sequentially. (D) The system can distinguish individual units, select them altogether, as well as order them sequentially, in the sense that it has a handle for ab and bc, but not ac. The ordering becomes apparent once the relations among the distinctions are considered (see below, Fig 5).