Causes and Explanations¶
Halpern, J. Y., & Pearl, J. (2005). Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part I: Causes. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56(4), 843-887.
Cited by¶
2 citations across 2 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Causality
- (6) Screening-off and confounding: genetic factors confound the smoking-cancer link; conditioning on tar mediates the effect.
This sourceStructural-equation definition of actual (token) causation handling preemption and overdetermination; narrows a sprawling causal field to selected actual causes.
- (6) Screening-off and confounding: genetic factors confound the smoking-cancer link; conditioning on tar mediates the effect.
- Responsibility Attribution
- Where bare causation answers "what produced this?", attribution answers the further question "who or what is to be held to account, and in what proportion?" — converting a sprawling causal history into a bounded ledger of credit and blame.
This sourceCounterfactual structural-model account of actual-cause selection: formalizes how a sprawling causal field is narrowed to selected causes (842, 852), the truncation of the causal regress (843), the separation of causal contribution from the accountability judgment built atop it (844), and causation without responsibility (846).
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Backs the selection half of the claim — a formal counterfactual definition of actual cause that narrows a causal field — but the abstract says nothing about accountability, so only part of the sentence is supported.
“We propose a new definition of actual causes, 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 other definitions and resolves major difficulties in the traditional account.”
- Where bare causation answers "what produced this?", attribution answers the further question "who or what is to be held to account, and in what proportion?" — converting a sprawling causal history into a bounded ledger of credit and blame.
Verification¶
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