Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T04:56:14.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Actual causation in CP-logic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2011

JOOST VENNEKENS
JOOST VENNEKENS*
Affiliation:
Lessius Mechelen (Campus De Nayer), Belgium (e-mail: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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 approaches to this problem has been developed by Halpern and Pearl (Halpern, J. and Pearl, J. 2005. Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach. Part I: Causes. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56(4), 843–887) in the context of structural models. In this paper, I argue that this is actually not the best setting for studying this problem. As an alternative, I offer the probabilistic logic programming language of CP-logic. Unlike structural models, CP-logic incorporates the deviant/default distinction that is generally considered an important aspect of actual causation, and it has an explicitly dynamic semantics, which helps to formalize the stories that serve as input to an actual causation problem.

Type
Regular Papers
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 11 , Special Issue 4-5: 27th International Conference on Logic Programming , July 2011 , pp. 647 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Glymour, C., Danks, D., Glymour, B., Eberhardt, F., Ramsey, J., Scheines, R., Spirtes, P., Teng, C. M. and Zhang, J. 2010. Actual causation: A stone soup essay. Synthese 2, 169–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, N. 2004. Two concepts of causation. In Causation and Counterfactuals, Collins, J., Hall, N. and Paul, L., Eds. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 225–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, N. 2007. Structural equations and causation. Philosophical Studies 132 (1), 109–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halpern, J. and Pearl, J. 2005. Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach. Part I: Causes. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4), 843–887.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hiddleston, E. 2005. Causal powers. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56, 27–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitchcock, C. 2001. The intransitivity of causation revealed in equations and graphs. Journal of Philosophy 98, 273–299.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, C. 2007. Prevention, preemption, and the principle of sufficient reason. Philosophical Review 116 (4), 495–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. 1973. Causation. Journal of Philosophy 70, 113–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearl, J. 2000. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.Google Scholar
Riguzzi, F. 2008. Inference with logic programs with annotated disjunctions under the well founded semantics. In Logic Programming, Proceedings of 24th International Conference, ICLP 2008, Udine, Italy, December 9–13. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5366. Springer, New York, USA, 667–771.Google Scholar
Riguzzi, F. 2010. SLGAD resolution for inference on logic programs with annotated disjunctions. Fundamenta Informaticae 102 (3–4), 429–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer, G. 1996. The Art of Causal Conjecture. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vennekens, J., Denecker, M. and Bruynooghe, M. 2009. CP-logic: A language of probabilistic causal laws and its relation to logic programming. Theory and Practice of Logic Programming 9, 245–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vennekens, J., Denecker, M. and Bruynooghe, M. 2010. Embracing events in causal modelling: Interventions and counterfactuals in CP-logic. In 12th European Conference on Logics in Artificial Intelligence (JELIA), Helsinki, Finland, September 13–15, 313–325.Google Scholar
Vennekens, J., Verbaeten, S. and Bruynooghe, M. 2004. Logic programs with annotated disjunctions. In The 20th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP), Saint-Malo, France, September 6–10, 431–445.Google Scholar