The Cognitive Processing of Causal Knowledge

There is a brief description of the probabilistic causal graph model for representing, reasoning with, and learn­ ing causal structure using Bayesian networks. It is then argued that this model is closely related to how humans reason with and learn causal structure. It is shown that studies in psychology on discounting (reasoning concern­ ing how the presence of one cause of an effect makes an­ other cause less probable) support the hypothesis that humans reach the same judgments as algorithms for do­ ing inference in Bayesian networks. Next, it is shown how studies by Piaget indicate that humans learn causal structure by observing the same independencies and de­ pendencies as those used by certain algorithms for learn­ ing the structure of a Bayesian network. Based on this indication, a subjective definition of causality is for­ warded. Finally, methods for further testing the accu­ racy of these claims are discussed.