Empirical is not only causal as the experience is not only causal. We experience not only causal connections and we think and know the world not only by causal thought method. Experience is topological though - experience is in a place and with relations.
A causal connection is not a relation, it is a function; a topological connection is not. A causal connection has a direction, a topological doesn’t.
Oh, I wonder if the causal direction emerges as the direction towards more connectivity?
The causal thought method differs from a topological thought technique. Causal structure is ordered, causal thought is ordered and ordering. Directed and functional. Ordering the world into ordered, functional structure. Causal thought is a method of the reason and explanation as goal and effect. Causal thought is, well, causal and so it itself has its causes and effects. It is set and it has rules and order. If it strays from them it will only force what it found into the rules and order calling anything it sees and makes - causality. Like non-linear causality, or circular causality, or retro causality, or complex causality. Or ambiguous causality.
It simplifies, explains, flattens the complex. Forces the indeterminable and ambiguous to unfreedom. Systematically orders. Oh, does causality emerge as the default structure when information is actually limited by limited focused attention and thought based on simple rules?
A causal connection is a function, it has a direction. In this sense a causal connection is an intentional connection. A cause produces an effect as an outcome, a result, a goal. This functionality and  intentionality of the causal thought method make it a method of production. A cause is a source, a producer, an effect is a result, a product. It’s intentionality produces the subject with the object. Causal method produces production and reproduces itself. It is how there is no possibility for pure freedom within the causal method. Where rules and order are, where intention and functionality are, where determination is, pure freedom is not.
Causal method is temporal but it is also ordering time into linearity of succession steps, reducing the time to the concept that it itself is. Claiming the authority over acts and freedom. By determining something as the cause of something, it makes a universal claim not only about actual, but also about possible. Totalizing the world into a system that acts according to a set of rules and within a set of possible possibilities.
Causality is not the fundamental concept that we use to build the worldview. Use isn’t. Build isn’t. Concept isn’t. We are in the world as body.  
A topological technique differs from the causal method. A topological technique is a technique of dreamthought. Without set rules and order, it thinks the world freely with ambiguity and emergence. Emergence is topological in the sense that it is not causally explainable, but is from relations. Without rules and order, without determined causes, emergence is how a new is. In this way a body is - a nothing as where and how-with the dream thought acts, seeing and making relations that are there by absence, as always not yet and always not already. Never all yet and never already all. Nothing determining itself with. As a body. A body with relations and place and time, from a dream sensing, seeing and making. Subject and object are nothing, but a dream sensing, seeing and making. Acting. There is no subject and object outside of this act. Outside of this place and time. Outside of body. This is how we can think that time is emergent. In this sense a now is a body. A body is how a now is always a new. This is how time moments, moves, not in causal ordered steps, but in a dance emerging as it wills. Free. With body. As multiplicity and multiplacity. This is how we can think that time is sense. With dreamthought. But what is this dream thought? It is an encounter with nothing. And it is an encounter of nothing. As it is an encounter of nothing with itself.