Across a diverse range of languages, children proceed through similar stages in their production of causal language: their initial verbs lack internal causal structure, followed by a period during which they produce causative overgeneralizations, indicating knowledge of a productive causative rule. We asked in this study whether a child not exposed to structured linguistic input could create li...

In this paper, we present a probabilistic theory of abductive diagnostic reasoning. The domain knowledge is represented by a causal network. An explanation of a set of observations is a chain of causation events. These causation events constitute a scenario where all the observations can be observed. We deene the best explanation to be the most probable explanation. The underlying causal model ...

Causation looms large in legal and moral reasoning. People construct causal models of the social and physical world to understand what has happened, how and why, and to allocate responsibility and blame. This chapter explores people’s commonsense notion of causation, and shows how it underpins moral and legal judgments. As a guiding framework it uses the causal model framework (Pearl, 2000) roo...

Abstract The Minimal Theory of Causation, presented in Graßhoff and May, 2001, aspires to be a version regularity analysis causation able correctly predict our causal intuitions. In my article, I will argue that it is unsuccessful this respect. second aim the paper defend Hitchcock’s proposal concerning divisions relations (presented Hitchcock, 2001) against criticism made, Jakob, 2006 on basis...

The principle of physical causal closure makes the problem ontology consciousness insoluble since rejects possibility mental causation. However, this is based on linear causality model foundation which connection material events with each other. article deals causation non-material events, reflecting influence probability probability, and not an event event. A hypothetical considered, in one st...

The counterfactual tradition to defining actual causation has come a long way since Lewis started it off. However there are still important open problems that need to be solved. One of them is the (in)transitivity of causation. Endorsing transitivity was a major source of trouble for the approach taken by Lewis, which is why currently most approaches reject it. But transitivity has never lost i...

I propose a non-Humean theory of causation with “tendencies” as causal connections. Not, however, as “necessary connexions”: causes are not sufficient, they do not necessitate their effects. The theory is designed to be, not an analysis of the concept of causation, but a description of what is the case in typical cases of causation. I therefore call it a metaphysical theory of causation, as opp...

M énière’s disease is characterised by recurrent attacks of vertigo accompanied by fluctuating sensorineural hearing loss, tinnitus and a sense of aural fullness. Prosper Ménière in 1861 correctly attributed the attacks to a disorder of the inner ear, suggesting that the mechanism of causation could be similar to migraine or inner ear vasospasm, a differential diagnosis which is still relevant ...

Top-down causation has been suggested to occur at all scales of biological organization as a mechanism for explaining the hierarchy of structure and causation in living systems (Campbell, 1974; Auletta et al., 2008; Davies, 2006b, 2012; Ellis, 2012). Here we propose that a transition from bottom-up to top-down causation – mediated by a reversal in the flow of information from lower to higher le...