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A Criterion of Probabilistic Causation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Charles R. Twardy  and
Kevin B. Korb
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Abstract

The investigation of probabilistic causality has been plagued by a variety of misconceptions and misunderstandings. One has been the thought that the aim of the probabilistic account of causality is the reduction of causal claims to probabilistic claims. Nancy Cartwright (1979) has clearly rebutted that idea. Another ill-conceived idea continues to haunt the debate, namely the idea that contextual unanimity can do the work of objective homogeneity. It cannot. We argue that only objective homogeneity in combination with a causal interpretation of Bayesian networks can provide the desired criterion of probabilistic causality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , July 2004 , pp. 241 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

We are grateful to Christoper Hitchcock, Dan Hausman, Peter Moulder, Michaelis Michael, Lucas Hope and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. NSF grant SES 99-06565 provided partial support for this work.

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