From Metaphysics to Method: Comments on Manipulability and the Causal Markov Condition

نویسنده

  • Nancy Cartwright
چکیده

Daniel Hausman and James Woodward claim to prove that the causal Markov condition, so important to Bayes-nets methods for causal inference, is the ‘flip side’ of an important metaphysical fact about causation—that causes can be used to manipulate their effects. This paper disagrees. First, the premise of their proof does not demand that causes can be used to manipulate their effects but rather that if a relation passes a certain specific kind of test, it is causal. Second, the proof is invalid. Third, the kind of testability they require can easily be had without the causal Markov condition.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Manipulation and the Causal Markov Condition

This paper explores the relationship between a manipulability conception of causation and the causal Markov condition (CM). We argue that violations of CM also violate widely shared expectations—implicit in the manipulability conception—having to do with the absence of spontaneous correlations. They also violate expectations concerning the connection between independence or dependence relations...

متن کامل

Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science Causality: Metaphysics and Methods

How ought we learn causal relationships? While Popper advocated a hypothetico-deductive logic of causal discovery, inductive accounts are currently in vogue. Many inductive approaches depend on the causal Markov condition as a fundamental assumption. This condition, I maintain, is not universally valid, though it is justifiable as a default assumption. In which case the results of the inductive...

متن کامل

Intervention, determinism, and the causal minimality condition

We clarify the status of the so-called causal minimality condition in the theory of causal Bayesian networks, which has received much attention in the recent literature on the epistemology of causation. In doing so, we argue that the condition is well motivated in the interventionist (or manipulability) account of causation, assuming the causal Markov condition which is essential to the semanti...

متن کامل

Is determinism more favorable than indeterminism for the causal Markov condition?

The present text comments on a paper by Daniel Steel, in which the author claims to extent from the deterministic to the general case the result according to which the causal Markov condition is satis ed by systems with jointly independent exogenous variables. I show that Steel's claim cannot be accepted unless one is prepared to abandon standard causal modeling terminology. Correlatively, I ar...

متن کامل

What is information? with an Emphasis on Zins’s Views

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore some important views and theories of information and knowledge in the area of library and information science (LIS) and then to propose a new model of information and knowledge. Method: This research has been conducted by using a comparative content analysis of the existing materials on conceptualizations and definitions of information and knowledge...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2006