Actual causation in CP-logic

Given a causal model of some domain and a particular story that has taken place in this domain, the problem of actual causation is deciding which of the possible causes for some effect actually caused it. One of the most influential approaches to this problem has been developed by Halpern and Pearl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theory and practice of logic programming 2011-07, Vol.11 (4-5), p.647-662
Main Author: VENNEKENS, JOOST
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
British
Causation
Dynamics
Logic programming
Philosophy
Probabilistic methods
Probability theory
Regular Papers
Semantics
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Summary:Given a causal model of some domain and a particular story that has taken place in this domain, the problem of actual causation is deciding which of the possible causes for some effect actually caused it. One of the most influential approaches to this problem has been developed by Halpern and Pearl (Halpern, J. and Pearl, J. 2005. Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach. Part I: Causes. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56(4), 843–887) in the context of structural models. In this paper, I argue that this is actually not the best setting for studying this problem. As an alternative, I offer the probabilistic logic programming language of CP-logic. Unlike structural models, CP-logic incorporates the deviant/default distinction that is generally considered an important aspect of actual causation, and it has an explicitly dynamic semantics, which helps to formalize the stories that serve as input to an actual causation problem.
ISSN:1471-0684
1475-3081
DOI:10.1017/S1471068411000226