Detection of unfaithfulness and robust causal inference

Minds and Machines 18 (2):239-271 (2008)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Much of the recent work on the epistemology of causation has centered on two assumptions, known as the Causal Markov Condition and the Causal Faithfulness Condition. Philosophical discussions of the latter condition have exhibited situations in which it is likely to fail. This paper studies the Causal Faithfulness Condition as a conjunction of weaker conditions. We show that some of the weaker conjuncts can be empirically tested, and hence do not have to be assumed a priori. Our results lead to two methodologically significant observations: (1) some common types of counterexamples to the Faithfulness condition constitute objections only to the empirically testable part of the condition; and (2) some common defenses of the Faithfulness condition do not provide justification or evidence for the testable parts of the condition. It is thus worthwhile to study the possibility of reliable causal inference under weaker Faithfulness conditions. As it turns out, the modification needed to make standard procedures work under a weaker version of the Faithfulness condition also has the practical effect of making them more robust when the standard Faithfulness condition actually holds. This, we argue, is related to the possibility of controlling error probabilities with finite sample size (“uniform consistency”) in causal inference.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

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

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Epr Robustness and the Causal Markov Condition.Mauricio Suárez & Iñaki San Pedro - 2007 - Centre of Philosophy of Natural and Social Science.
Independence, invariance and the causal Markov condition.Daniel M. Hausman & James Woodward - 1999 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (4):521-583.
Modularity and the causal Markov condition: A restatement.Daniel M. Hausman & James Woodward - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (1):147-161.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
348 (#52,183)

6 months
23 (#98,303)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Jiji Zhang
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Peter Spirtes
Carnegie Mellon University