Related papers: The Computational Complexity of Structure-Based Ca…
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…
Judea Pearl was the first to propose a definition of actual causation using causal models. A number of authors have suggested that an adequate account of actual causation must appeal not only to causal structure, but also to considerations…
A serious defect with the Halpern-Pearl (HP) definition of causality is repaired by combining a theory of causality with a theory of defaults. In addition, it is shown that (despite a claim to the contrary) a cause according to the HP…
We propose a new definition of actual cause, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. We show that the definition yields a plausible and elegant account of causation that handles well examples which have caused problems for…
In (Beckers, 2025) I introduced nondeterministic causal models as a generalization of Pearl's standard deterministic causal models. I here take advantage of the increased expressivity offered by these models to offer a novel definition of…
Temporal causality defines what property causes some observed temporal behavior (the effect) in a given computation, based on a counterfactual analysis of similar computations. In this paper, we study its closure properties and the…
In recent years the search for a proper formal definition of actual causation -- i.e., the relation of cause-effect as it is instantiated in specific observations, rather than general causal relations -- has taken on impressive proportions.…
Complex systems can be described at myriad different scales, and their causal workings often have multiscale structure (e.g., a computer can be described at the microscale of its hardware circuitry, the mesoscale of its machine code, and…
Ibeling et al. (2023). axiomatize increasingly expressive languages of causation and probability, and Mosse et al. (2024) show that reasoning (specifically the satisfiability problem) in each causal language is as difficult, from a…
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…
Even when a system is proven to be correct with respect to a specification, there is still a question of how complete the specification is, and whether it really covers all the behaviors of the system. Coverage metrics attempt to check…
The verification and validation of automated driving systems at SAE levels 4 and 5 is a multi-faceted challenge for which classical statistical considerations become infeasible. For this, contemporary approaches suggest a decomposition into…
We study the complexity of satisfiability problems in probabilistic and causal reasoning. Given random variables $X_1, X_2,\ldots$ over finite domains, the basic terms are probabilities of propositional formulas over atomic events $X_i =…
Causation has been the issue of philosophic debate since Hippocrates. Recent work defines actual causation in terms of Pearl/Halpern's causality framework, formalizing necessary causes (IJCAI'15). This has inspired causality notions in the…
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…
Structural causal models are the basic modelling unit in Pearl's causal theory; in principle they allow us to solve counterfactuals, which are at the top rung of the ladder of causation. But they often contain latent variables that limit…
Emergence and causality are two fundamental concepts for understanding complex systems. They are interconnected. On one hand, emergence refers to the phenomenon where macroscopic properties cannot be solely attributed to the cause of…
This paper deals with the problem of estimating the probability that one event was a cause of another in a given scenario. Using structural-semantical definitions of the probabilities of necessary or sufficient causation (or both), we show…
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…
We develop a theory of complexity for numerical computations that takes into account the condition of the input data and allows for roundoff in the computations. We follow the lines of the theory developed by Blum, Shub, and Smale for…