Causal inference of ambiguous manipulations

Philosophy of Science 71 (5):833-845 (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Over the last two decades, a fundamental outline of a theory of causal inference has emerged. However, this theory does not consider the following problem. Sometimes two or more measured variables are deterministic functions of one another, not deliberately, but because of redundant measurements. In these cases, manipulation of an observed defined variable may actually be an ambiguous description of a manipulation of some underlying variables, although the manipulator does not know that this is the case. In this article we revisit the question of precisely characterizing conditions and assumptions under which reliable inference about the effects of manipulations is possible, even when the possibility of “ambiguous manipulations” is allowed.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
104 (#155,272)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Peter Spirtes
Carnegie Mellon University
Richard Scheines
Carnegie Mellon University

Citations of this work

Grounding in the image of causation.Jonathan Schaffer - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (1):49-100.
Interventionism and Causal Exclusion.James Woodward - 2015 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (2):303-347.
The problem of variable choice.James Woodward - 2016 - Synthese 193 (4):1047-1072.
Anti-reductionist Interventionism.Reuben Stern & Benjamin Eva - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (1):241-267.

View all 34 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):201-202.
Causal inference of ambiguous manipulations.Peter Spirtes & Richard Scheines - 2004 - Philosophy of Science 71 (5):833-845.

Add more references