Halpern J.Y. Actual Causality

Boston: The MIT Press, 2016. — 229 p. — ISBN: 9780262035026.Causality plays a central role in the way people structure the world; we constantly seek causal explanations for our observations. But what does it even mean that an event C "actually caused" event E? The problem of defining actual causation goes beyond mere philosophical speculation. For example, in many legal arguments, it is precisely what needs to be established in order to determine responsibility. The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality since Hume.
In this book, Joseph Halpern explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression.
Halpern applies and expands an approach to causality that he and Judea Pearl developed, based on structural equations. He carefully formulates a definition of causality, and building on this, defines degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. He concludes by discussing how these ideas can be applied to such practical problems as accountability and program verification. Technical details are generally confined to the final section of each chapter and can be skipped by non-mathematical readers.Introduction and OverviewThe HP Definition of Causality
Causal Models
A Formal Definition of Actual Cause
A language for describing causality
The HP definition of actual causality
Examples
Transitivity
Probability and Causality
Sufficient Causality
Causality in Nonrecursive Models
AC2(bo) vs. AC2(bu)
Causal Paths
ProofsGraded Causation and Normality
Defaults, Typicality, and Normality
Extended Causal Models
Graded Causation
More Examples
An Alternative Approach to Incorporating NormalityThe Art of Causal Modeling
Adding Variables to Structure a Causal Scenario
Conservative Extensions
Using the Original HP Definition Instead of the Updated Definition
The Stability of (Non-)Causality
The Range of Variables
Dependence and Independence
Dealing With Normality and Typicality
ProofsComplexity and Axiomatization
Compact Representations of Structural Equations
Compact Representations of the Normality Ordering
The Complexity of Determining Causality
Axiomatizing Causal Reasoning
Technical Details and ProofsResponsibility and Blame
A Naive Definition of Responsibility
Blame
Responsibility, Normality, and BlameExplanation
Explanation: The Basic Definition
Partial Explanations and Explanatory Power
The General Definition of ExplanationApplying the Definitions
Accountability
Causality in Databases
Program Verification
Last Words