Related papers: Defaults and Normality in Causal Structures
A definition of causality introduced by Halpern and Pearl, which uses structural equations, is reviewed. A more refined definition is then considered, which takes into account issues of normality and typicality, which are well known to…
Causal models defined in terms of structural equations have proved to be quite a powerful way of representing knowledge regarding causality. However, a number of authors have given examples that seem to show that the Halpern-Pearl (HP)…
Perhaps the most prominent current definition of (actual) causality is due to Halpern and Pearl. It is defined using causal models (also known as structural equations models). We abstract the definition, extracting its key features, so that…
Thinking in terms of causality helps us structure how different parts of a system depend on each other, and how interventions on one part of a system may result in changes to other parts. Therefore, formal models of causality are an…
The original Halpern-Pearl definition of causality [Halpern and Pearl, 2001] was updated in the journal version of the paper [Halpern and Pearl, 2005] to deal with some problems pointed out by Hopkins and Pearl [2003]. Here the definition…
In previous work with Joost Vennekens I proposed a definition of actual causation that is based on certain plausible principles, thereby allowing the debate on causation to shift away from its heavy focus on examples towards a more…
Detecting and understanding reasons for defects and inadvertent behavior in software is challenging due to their increasing complexity. In configurable software systems, the combinatorics that arises from the multitude of features a user…
The theory of actual causality, defined by Halpern and Pearl, and its quantitative measure - the degree of responsibility - was shown to be extremely useful in various areas of computer science due to a good match between the results it…
One of the key challenges when looking for the causes of a complex event is to determine the causal status of factors that are neither individually necessary nor individually sufficient to produce that event. In order to reason about how…
Causality has been the issue of philosophic debate since Hippocrates. It is used in formal verification and testing, e.g., to explain counterexamples or construct fault trees. Recent work defines actual causation in terms of Pearl's…
Pearl opened the door to formally defining actual causation using causal models. His approach rests on two strategies: first, capturing the widespread intuition that X=x causes Y=y iff X=x is a Necessary Element of a Sufficient Set for Y=y,…
Recent work in psychology and experimental philosophy has shown that judgments of actual causation are often influenced by consideration of defaults, typicality, and normality. A number of philosophers and computer scientists have also…
Causality is typically treated an all-or-nothing concept; either A is a cause of B or it is not. We extend the definition of causality introduced by Halpern and Pearl [2001] to take into account the degree of responsibility of A for B. For…
Halpern and Pearl introduced a definition of actual causality; Eiter and Lukasiewicz showed that computing whether X=x is a cause of Y=y is NP-complete in binary models (where all variables can take on only two values) and\…
In this paper, we propose causality as a unified framework to explain query answers and non-answers, thus generalizing and extending several previously proposed approaches of provenance and missing query result explanations. We develop our…
In this paper we introduce a notion of counterfactual causality in the Halpern and Pearl sense that is compositional with respect to the interleaving of transition systems. The formal framework for reasoning on what caused the violation of…
We show that singularities necessarily occur when a boundary of causality violating set exists in a space-time under the physically suitable assumptions except the global causality condition in the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems.…
We present a formal theory for analysing causality in cyber-physical systems. To this end, we extend the theory of actual causality by Halpern and Pearl to cope with the continuous nature of cyber-physical systems. Based on our theory, we…
An answer to a query has a well-defined lineage expression (alternatively called how-provenance) that explains how the answer was derived. Recent work has also shown how to compute the lineage of a non-answer to a query. However, the cause…
Causal reasoning is essential for understanding decision-making about the behaviour of complex `ecosystems' of systems that underpin modern society, with security -- including issues around correctness, safety, resilience, etc. -- typically…