/evaluate-necessity-sufficiency

name: evaluate-necessity-sufficiency
description: "Test whether a proposed cause/mechanism is necessary and/or sufficient under controlled counterfactual or intervention comparisons."

evaluate-necessity-sufficiency

Purpose

Test whether a proposed cause or mechanism is necessary and/or sufficient under controlled counterfactual or intervention comparisons.

Input contract

required: [cause_or_mechanism, outcome, comparison_conditions]
optional: [counterfactual_worlds, intervention_data]
constraints: [necessary and sufficient tests must be reported separately]

Procedure

1. Define removal/absence and presence/intervention contrasts. 2. Compare outcomes under held-fixed conditions. 3. Report necessity, sufficiency, confounds, and uncertainty.

Output contract

produces: [necessity_result, sufficiency_result, comparison_table, confounds]
delta_fields: [findings, evidence_updates, uncertainties, decisions]

Quality gates

• A necessity claim needs an absence/removal comparison; sufficiency needs a presence/intervention comparison.

Failure and counterexamples

Do not infer necessity from correlation or sufficiency from one positive case.

Provenance map

• resolved: causal-necessity-testing