Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach - Part II: Explanations

Halpern, Joseph Y.; Pearl, Judea

Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach - Part II: Explanations

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Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Pages 27-33.

Abstract

We propose a new definition of (causal) explanation, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition is based on the notion of actual cause, as defined and motivated in a companion paper. Essentially, an explanation is a fact that is not known for certain but, if found to be true, would constitute an actual cause of the fact to be explained, regardless of the agent’s initial uncertainty. We show that the definition handles well a number of problematic examples from the literature.

Joseph Y. Halpern, and Judea Pearl. 2001. Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach - Part II: Explanations. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-01. IJCAI, 27–33. https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2001/4

@inproceedings{ijcai2001p4,
  title     = {Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach - Part II: Explanations},
  author    = {Halpern, Joseph Y. and Pearl, Judea},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Joint Conference on
               Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI-01}},
  publisher = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence},
  pages     = {27--33},
  year      = {2001},
  url       = {https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2001/4},
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach - Part II: Explanations
AU  - Halpern, Joseph Y.
AU  - Pearl, Judea
T2  - Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-01
PB  - International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence
PY  - 2001
SP  - 27
EP  - 33
UR  - https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2001/4
ER  -