Related papers: Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approa…
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…
Causal reasoning is a crucial part of science and human intelligence. In order to discover causal relationships from data, we need structure discovery methods. We provide a review of background theory and a survey of methods for structure…
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 authors have proposed analyzing conditional reasoning through a notion of intervention on a simulation program, and have found a sound and complete axiomatization of the logic of conditionals in this setting. Here we extend this…
Understanding causal explanations - reasons given for happenings in one's life - has been found to be an important psychological factor linked to physical and mental health. Causal explanations are often studied through manual…
This paper studies the problem of estimating the contributions of features to the prediction of a specific instance by a machine learning model and the overall contribution of a feature to the model. The causal effect of a feature…
We propose a simple definition of an explanation for the outcome of a classifier based on concepts from causality. We compare it with previously proposed notions of explanation, and study their complexity. We conduct an experimental…
Explanations are a fundamental element of how people make sense of the political world. Citizens routinely ask and answer questions about why events happen, who is responsible, and what could or should be done differently. Yet despite their…
Explanations of model behavior are commonly evaluated via proxy properties weakly tied to the purposes explanations serve in practice. We contribute a decision theoretic framework that treats explanations as information signals valued by…
Most traditional models of uncertainty have focused on the associational relationship among variables as captured by conditional dependence. In order to successfully manage intelligent systems for decision making, however, we must be able…
In this paper, we continue our research on the algorithmic aspects of Halpern and Pearl's causes and explanations in the structural-model approach. To this end, we present new characterizations of weak causes for certain classes of causal…
In this paper, we discuss necessary and sufficient explanations for formal argumentation - the question whether and why a certain argument can be accepted (or not) under various extension-based semantics. Given a framework with which…
Inferring the abstract relational and causal structure of the world is a major challenge for reinforcement-learning (RL) agents. For humans, language--particularly in the form of explanations--plays a considerable role in overcoming this…
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…
Much of our experiments are designed to uncover the cause(s) and effect(s) behind a data generating mechanism (i.e., phenomenon) we happen to be interested in. Uncovering such relationships allows us to identify the true working of a…
Discussions on causal relations in real life often consider variables for which the definition of causality is unclear since the notion of interventions on the respective variables is obscure. Asking 'what qualifies an action for being an…
A model of knowledge representation is described in which propositional facts and the relationships among them can be supported by other facts. The set of knowledge which can be supported is called the set of cognitive units, each having…
Transparency is a fundamental requirement for decision making systems when these should be deployed in the real world. It is usually achieved by providing explanations of the system's behavior. A prominent and intuitive type of explanations…
Understanding the predictions made by deep learning models remains a central challenge, especially in high-stakes applications. A promising approach is to equip models with the ability to answer counterfactual questions -- hypothetical…
The causal assumptions, the study design and the data are the elements required for scientific inference in empirical research. The research is adequately communicated only if all of these elements and their relations are described…