Uncovering deterministic causal structures: a Boolean approach.

While standard procedures of causal reasoning as procedures analyzing causal Bayesian networks are custom-built for (non-deterministic) probabilistic structures, this paper introduces a Boolean procedure that uncovers deterministic causal structures. Contrary to existing Boolean methodologies, the p...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Synthese Vol. 170; no. 1; pp. 71 - 97
Autor principal: Baumgartner, Michael
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Sep2009
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:While standard procedures of causal reasoning as procedures analyzing causal Bayesian networks are custom-built for (non-deterministic) probabilistic structures, this paper introduces a Boolean procedure that uncovers deterministic causal structures. Contrary to existing Boolean methodologies, the procedure advanced here successfully analyzes structures of arbitrary complexity. It roughly involves three parts: first, deterministic dependencies are identified in the data; second, these dependencies are suitably minimalized in order to eliminate redundancies; and third, one or—in case of ambiguities—more than one causal structure is assigned to the minimalized deterministic dependencies.