A Peculiarity in Pearl's Logic of Interventionist Counterfactuals
Journal of Philosophical Logic (forthcoming)
| Abstract | We examine a formal semantics for counterfactual conditionals due to Judea Pearl, which formalizes the interventionist interpretation of counterfactuals central to the interventionist accounts of causation and explanation. We show that a characteristic principle validated by Pearl’s semantics, known as the principle of reversibility, states a kind of irreversibility: counterfactual dependence (in David Lewis’s sense) between two distinct events is irreversible. Moreover, we show that Pearl’s semantics rules out only mutual counterfactual dependence, not cyclic dependence in general. This, we argue, suggests that Pearl’s logic is either too weak or too strong. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,865 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesJiji Zhang (2013). A Lewisian Logic of Causal Counterfactuals. Minds and Machines 23 (1):77-93.
Luke Glynn (forthcoming). Of Miracles and Interventions. Erkenntnis:1-22.
David Galles & Judea Pearl (1998). An Axiomatic Characterization of Causal Counterfactuals. Foundations of Science 3 (1):151-182.
Alexander Reutlinger (2012). Getting Rid of Interventions. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 43 (4):787-795.
Stathis Psillos (2004). A Glimpse of the Secret Connexion: Harmonizing Mechanisms with Counterfactuals. Perspectives on Science 12 (3):288-319.
S. Barker (2003). A Dilemma for the Counterfactual Analysis of Causation. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (1):62 – 77.
Peter Menzies (2004). Causal Models, Token Causation, and Processes. Philosophy of Science 71 (5):820-832.
Ivar Hannikainen (2011). Might-Counterfactuals and the Principle of Conditional Excluded Middle. Disputatio (30):127-149.
Max Kistler (forthcoming). The Interventionist Account of Causation and Non-Causal Association Laws. Erkenntnis:1-20.
Judea Pearl (2000). Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge University Press.
Stathis Psillos (2004). A Glimpse of The. Perspectives on Science 12 (3).
James Woodward (2004). Counterfactuals and Causal Explanation. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (1):41 – 72.
Adam Elga (2001). Statistical Mechanics and the Asymmetry of Counterfactual Dependence. Philosophy of Science 68 (S1):S313-.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-11-09Total downloads4 ( #180,404 of 556,775 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #64,847 of 556,775 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
