Explanation, Causation and Laws

Causation, mediation and explanation

doi: 10.1093/ije/dyw281 Advance Access Publication Date: 18 November 2016 Causation, mediation and explanation Neil Pearce and Jan P Vandenbroucke* Department of Medical Statistics and Centre for Global NCDs, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK and Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand and Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Leiden...

Causation and Explanation

Laws and causation

Causal Laws and Singular Causation

In this paper it will be argued that causal laws describe the actions of causal powers. The process which results from such an action is one which belongs to a natural kind, the essence of which is that it is a display of this causal power. Therefore, if anything has a given causal power necessarily, it must be naturally disposed to act in the manner prescribed by the causal law describing the ...

Causation , Explanation and Nonmonotonic Temporal Reasoning

We introduce a new approach to reasoning about action and change using nonmonotonic logic. The approach is arrived at by applying Pearl's theory of causal networks to logical formalizations of temporal reasoning domains. It handles complicated reasoning domains involving concurrent actions, actions with nondeterministic eects, preconditions over several points in time, ramication/qualication co...