Related papers: A Counterfactual Cause in Situation Calculus
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
We describe and contrast two distinct problem areas for statistical causality: studying the likely effects of an intervention ("effects of causes"), and studying whether there is a causal link between the observed exposure and outcome in an…
We consider identification and inference about a counterfactual outcome mean when there is unmeasured confounding using tools from proximal causal inference (Miao et al. [2018], Tchetgen Tchetgen et al. [2020]). Proximal causal inference…
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…
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…
I develop a novel semantics for probabilities of counterfactuals that generalizes the standard Pearlian semantics: it applies to probabilistic causal models that cannot be extended into realistic structural causal models and are therefore…
Attributing an observed outcome to its root cause is a central task in domains ranging from medical diagnosis to engineering fault diagnosis. Existing approaches either equate the root cause with a root node of the causal graph, as in…
Counterfactual explanations (CEs) are methods for generating an alternative scenario that produces a different desirable outcome. For example, if a student is predicted to fail a course, then counterfactual explanations can provide the…
We propose a formal model for counterfactual estimation with unobserved confounding in "data-rich" settings, i.e., where there are a large number of units and a large number of measurements per unit. Our model provides a bridge between the…
AI-driven outcomes can be challenging for end-users to understand. Explanations can address two key questions: "Why this outcome?" (factual) and "Why not another?" (counterfactual). While substantial efforts have been made to formalize…
It is commonly believed that, in a real-world environment, samples can only be drawn from observational and interventional distributions, corresponding to Layers 1 and 2 of the Pearl Causal Hierarchy. Layer 3, representing counterfactual…
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…
We introduce an extension of team semantics which provides a framework for the logic of manipulationist theories of causation based on structural equation models, such as Woodward's and Pearl's; our causal teams incorporate (partial or…
Investigations of causality in operational systems aim at providing human-understandable explanations of why a system behaves as it does. There is, in particular, a demand to explain what went wrong on a given counterexample execution that…
Investigations of causality in operational systems aim at providing human-understandable explanations of why a system behaves as it does. There is, in particular, a demand to explain what went wrong on a given counterexample execution that…