Actual causation and the art of modeling

Abstract

We look more carefully at the modeling of causality using structural equations. It is clear that the structural equations can have a major impact on the conclusions we draw about causality. In particular, the choice of variables and their values can also have a significant impact on causality. These choices are, to some extent, subjective. We consider what counts as an appropriate choice. More generally, we consider what makes a model an appropriate model, especially if we want to take defaults into account, as was argued is necessary in recent work.

In <em>Heuristics, Probability and Causality: A Tribute to Judea Pearl</em> (editors, R. Dechter, H. Geffner, and J. Y. Halpern), College Publications, 2010, pp. 383-406

References in corpus (1)

• Defaults and Normality in Causal Structures

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