Related papers: The Computational Complexity of Structure-Based Ca…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
In view of the growing complexity of modern software architectures, formal models are increasingly used to understand why a system works the way it does, opposed to simply verifying that it behaves as intended. This paper surveys approaches…
Causality is the relationship where one event contributes to the production of another, with the cause being partly responsible for the effect and the effect partly dependent on the cause. In this paper, we propose a novel and effective…
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)…
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…
Given a causal model of some domain and a particular story that has taken place in this domain, the problem of actual causation is deciding which of the possible causes for some effect actually caused it. One of the most influential…
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…
This work extends Halpern and Pearl's causal models for actual causality to a possible world semantics environment. Using this framework we introduce a logic of actual causality with modal operators, which allows for reasoning about…
We study formal languages which are capable of fully expressing quantitative probabilistic reasoning and do-calculus reasoning for causal effects, from a computational complexity perspective. We focus on satisfiability problems whose…
The notion of actual causation, as formalized by Halpern and Pearl, has been recently applied to relational databases, to characterize and compute actual causes for possibly unexpected answers to monotone queries. Causes take the form of…
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…
Many objectives can be achieved (or may be achieved more effectively) only by a group of agents executing a team plan. If a team plan fails, it is often of interest to determine what caused the failure, the degree of responsibility of each…
Since Pearl's seminal work on providing a formal language for causality, the subject has garnered a lot of interest among philosophers and researchers in artificial intelligence alike. One of the most debated topics in this context regards…
Actual causality is increasingly well understood. Recent formal approaches, proposed by Halpern and Pearl, have made this concept mature enough to be amenable to automated reasoning. Actual causality is especially vital for building…
The framework of Pearl's Causal Hierarchy (PCH) formalizes three types of reasoning: probabilistic (i.e. purely observational), interventional, and counterfactual, that reflect the progressive sophistication of human thought regarding…
We propose a new definition of actual causes, using structural equations to model counterfactuals.We show that the definitions yield a plausible and elegant account ofcausation that handles well examples which have caused problems forother…