Related papers: Cost and Actual Causation
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
From the standpoint of applied ontology, the problem of understanding and modeling causation has been recently challenged on the premise that causation is real. As a consequence, the following three results were obtained: (1) causation can…
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…
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…
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…
As autonomous systems rapidly become ubiquitous, there is a growing need for a legal and regulatory framework to address when and how such a system harms someone. There have been several attempts within the philosophy literature to define…
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…
Reasoning about the causes behind observations is crucial to the formalization of rationality. While extensive research has been conducted on root cause analysis, most studies have predominantly focused on deterministic settings. In this…
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…
In this position paper we discuss three main shortcomings of existing approaches to counterfactual causality from the computer science perspective, and sketch lines of work to try and overcome these issues: (1) causality definitions should…
Reasoning about actual causes of observed effects is fundamental to the study of rationality. This important problem has been studied since the time of Aristotle, with formal mathematical accounts emerging recently. We live in a world where…
We propose new definitions of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion paper. Essentially, an explanation is a…
This paper presents a rich knowledge representation language aimed at formalizing causal knowledge. This language is used for accurately and directly formalizing common benchmark examples from the literature of actual causality. A…
We look more carefully at the modeling of causality using structural equations. It is clear that the structural equations can have a major impact on the conclusions we draw about causality. In particular, the choice of variables and their…
Actual causation is concerned with the question "what caused what?" Consider a transition between two states within a system of interacting elements, such as an artificial neural network, or a biological brain circuit. Which combination of…