Abstract for: Expanding our Causal Vocabulary: Integrating Causal Hierarchy, Directionality, and Type into our Language of System Dynamics

System dynamics has one recognized type of causality: a flat circular feedback loop. Other scientific fields have developed terms that make causal directionality, causal hierarchy, transition, and experimental terms explicit. This paper introduces those terms in the context of our current practices identifying how certain techniques already lend themselves to these terms, and where new techniques are needed. This paper does not attempt to resolve the debate between the validity of top-down or bottom-up causation in a complex system or propose specific new causal analysis methods for system dynamics.