A Modification of the Halpern-Pearl Definition of Causality

The original Halpern-Pearl definition of causality [Halpern and Pearl, 2001] was updated in the journal version of the paper [Halpern and Pearl, 2005] to deal with some problems pointed out by Hopkins and Pearl [2003]. Here the definition is modified yet again, in a way that (a) leads to a simpler definition, (b) handles the problems pointed out by Hopkins and Pearl, and many others, (c) gives reasonable answers (that agree with those of the original and updated definition) in the standard problematic examples of causality, and (d) has lower complexity than either the original or updated definitions.

[1]  Eric Hiddleston,et al.  Causal Powers , 2005, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[2]  Choh Man Teng,et al.  Actual causation: a stone soup essay , 2009, Synthese.

[3]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  Responsibility and Blame: A Structural-Model Approach , 2003, IJCAI.

[4]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach , 2000 .

[5]  Mihalis Yannakakis,et al.  The complexity of facets (and some facets of complexity) , 1982, STOC '82.

[6]  Christopher R. Hitchcock.  The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed In Equations and Graphs , 2001 .

[7]  Christopher R. Hitchcock.  Prevention, Preemption, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason , 2007 .

[8]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  Actual causation and the art of modeling , 2011, ArXiv.

[9]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  The Computational Complexity of Structure-Based Causality , 2014, AAAI.

[10]  Judea Pearl,et al.  On the Definition of Actual Cause (draft Copy { Comments Are Welcome) , 1998 .

[11]  Tobias Gerstenberg,et al.  Finding fault: Causality and counterfactuals in group attributions , 2012, Cognition.

[12]  Ned Hall,et al.  Causation: A User's Guide , 2013 .

[13]  D. Mant.  Prevention , 1994, The Lancet.

[14]  Joseph Y. Halpern.  Appropriate Causal Models and Stability of Causation , 2014, KR.

[15]  Jonathan M Livengood,et al.  Actual Causation and Simple Voting Scenarios , 2013 .

[16]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  Graded Causation and Defaults , 2013, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[17]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part I: Causes , 2000, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[18]  Joseph Y. Halpern.  Defaults and Normality in Causal Structures , 2008, KR.

[19]  D. Hubin,et al.  THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY , 2004 .

[20]  Ned Hall.  Structural equations and causation , 2007 .

[21]  Larry J. Stockmeyer,et al.  The Polynomial-Time Hierarchy , 1976, Theor. Comput. Sci..

[22]  J. Pearl,et al.  Clarifying the Usage of Structural Models for Commonsense Causal Reasoning , 2003 .

[23]  J. Pearl.  Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference , 2000 .

[24]  Thomas Lukasiewicz,et al.  Complexity results for structure-based causality , 2001, Artif. Intell..

[25]  Ned Hall.  Causation and the Price of Transitivity , 2000 .