We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) “neuron” and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...) most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a correct account of actual causation; rather, we argue that standard methods will not lead to such an account. A different approach is required. Once upon a time a hungry wanderer came into a village. He filled an iron cauldron with water, built a fire under it, and dropped a stone into the water. “I do like a tasty stone soup” he announced. Soon a villager added a cabbage to the pot, another added some salt and others added potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was a meal for all. (shrink)

We argue that current discussions of criteria for actual causation are ill-posed in several respects. (1) The methodology of current discussions is by induction from intuitions about an infinitesimal fraction of the possible examples and counterexamples; (2) cases with larger numbers of causes generate novel puzzles; (3) "neuron" and causal Bayes net diagrams are, as deployed in discussions of actual causation, almost always ambiguous; (4) actual causation is (intuitively) relative to an initial system state since state changes are relevant, but (...) most current accounts ignore state changes through time; (5) more generally, there is no reason to think that philosophical judgements about these sorts of cases are normative; but (6) there is a dearth of relevant psychological research that bears on whether various philosophical accounts are descriptive. Our skepticism is not directed towards the possibility of a correct account of actual causation; rather, we argue that standard methods will not lead to such an account. A different approach is required. (shrink)

Richard Scheines and Joe Ramsey. Simulating Genetic Regulartory Networks.

Students in two classes in the fall of 2004 making extensive use of online courseware were logged as they visited over 500 different “learning pages” which varied in length and in difficulty. We computed the time spent on each page by each student during each session they were logged in. We then modeled the time spent for a particular visit as a function of the page itself, the session, and the student. Surprisingly, the average time a student spent on learning (...) pages was of almost no value in predicting how long they would spend on a given page, even controlling for the session and page difficulty. The page itself was highly predictive, but so was the average time spent on learning pages in a given session. This indicates that local considerations, e.g., mood, deadline proximity, etc., play a much greater role in determining student pace and attention than do intrinsic student traits. We also consider the average time spent on learning pages as a function of the time of semester. Students spent less time on pages later in the semester, even for more demanding material. (shrink)

Joseph G. Ramsey argues that Richard Wright’s 1940 novella “Bright and Morning Star” has been consistently misunderstood. What has been almost universally read as a narrative of communist heroism stages instead a heroic mistake. “Bright and Morning Star” is not a story primarily about heroic individual sacrifice, but about the ways collective struggle can fail.

The theory of subjective probability and utility recently proposed by professor richard jeffrey has several unique features and appears to be in some ways distinctly more satisfactory than earlier theories. There is, However, One very important class of decision problems which is not discussed by professor jeffrey--Problems concerned with decisions about strategies for using information. The principal task of this paper is to point out some questions which arise in attempting to deal with these decision problems within jeffrey's theory. (...) To do this it will be necessary to examine in some detail jeffrey's discussion of the relation between his theory and those of ramsey and savage. (shrink)

Social cognition differs from general cognition in its focus on understanding, perceiving, and interpreting social information. However, we argue that the significance of domain‐general processes for controlling cognition has been historically undervalued in social cognition and social neuroscience research. We suggest much of social cognition can be characterized as specialized feature representations supported by domain‐general cognitive control systems. To test this proposal, we develop a comprehensive working model, based on an interactive activation and competition architecture and applied to the control (...) of action. As such, we label the model “ICON” (interactive activation and competition model for the control of action). We used the ICON model to simulate human performance across various laboratory tasks. Our simulations emphasize that many laboratory‐based social tasks do not require socially specific control systems, such as those that are argued to rely on neural networks associated with theory‐of‐mind. Moreover, our model clarifies that perceived disruptions in social cognition, even in what appears to be disruption to the control of social cognition, can stem from deficits in social representation instead. We advocate for a “default stance” in social cognition, where control is usually general, but representation is specific. This study underscores the importance of integrating social cognition within the broader realm of domain‐general control processing, offering a unified perspective on task processing. (shrink)

Emotional states of consciousness, or what are typically called emotional feelings, are traditionally viewed as being innately programed in subcortical areas of the brain, and are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. On this view, what differs in emotional and non-emotional states is the kind of inputs that are processed by a (...) general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences. Although subcortical circuits are not directly responsible for conscious feelings, they provide non-conscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences. In building the case for this proposal, we defend a modified version of what is known as the higher-order theory of consciousness. (shrink)

The problem of the nature of mind has lingered for a long time. Generated by the question of whether the mind is an independently existing entity or merely an aspect of bodily events and processes, the problem of the nature of mind has divided Western philosophers into two opposing camps, namely dualism and physicalism. Contemporary discourse of the nature of minds, within the Western philosophical tradition, continues to privilege physicalism over dualism, because it avoids the theoretical impasse engendered by the (...) dualist inability to account for how two radically different entities manage to interact with each other. Although physicalism avoids the dualist pitfalls, it, however, encounters the problem of plausibly accounting for the possibility of conscious experience without commitment to the dualist ontology of a realm different from the body. In this article, we provide an African (Yoruba) perspective to the question of the nature of mind as an alternative to the Western perspective represented by dualist and physicalist theories. We develop a variant of dualism called “contextual dualism,” which accepts the dualist basic tenet of the duality of body and mind but diverges from it by permitting that some physical organs of the body also function in the capacity of the mind. Using ethnological analysis and the Yoruba linguistic hermeneutics as theoretical frameworks, the paper argues that the difference between when a physical organ functions as body and when it functions as mind is revealed in Yoruba language through their contexts of use. The paper concludes that contextual dualism drives a reconciliatory wedge between mainstream dualism and physicalism. (shrink)

McKay & Dennett (M&D) observe that beliefs need not be true in order to evolve. We connect this insight with Schelling's work on cooperative commitment to suggest that some beliefs are best approached as social goals. We explain why a social-interactive perspective is important to explaining the dynamics of belief formation and revision among situated partners.

The Free Discussion between Richard Price and Joseph Priestley (1778) originated as a correspondence between the two after the publication of Priestley's Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, his most important philosophical work (1777). At the time it was thought remarkable that a controversey such as this could be conducted so amicably, but then the two were close friends. Nevertheless their philosophical, as opposed to their oft mentioned political views, were at opposite ends of a spectrum.

Richard Scheines and Wilfred Sieg. Computer Environments for Proof Construction.

Richard Scheines, Gaea Leinhardt, Joel Smith, and Kwangsu Cho. Teaching and Learning with Online Courses.

We present an algorithm to infer causal relations between a set of measured variables on the basis of experiments on these variables. The algorithm assumes that the causal relations are linear, but is otherwise completely general: It provides consistent estimates when the true causal structure contains feedback loops and latent variables, while the experiments can involve surgical or ‘soft’ interventions on one or multiple variables at a time. The algorithm is ‘online’ in the sense that it combines the results from (...) any set of available experiments, can incorporate background knowledge and resolves con- flicts that arise from combining results from different experiments. In addition we provide a necessary and sufficient condition that (i) determines when the algorithm can uniquely return the true graph, and (ii) can be used to select the next best experiment until this condition is satisfied. We demonstrate the method by applying it to simulated data and the flow cytometry data of Sachs et al (2005). (shrink)

In Causation, Prediction, and Search (CPS hereafter), Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour and I developed a theory of statistical causal inference. In his presentation at the Notre Dame conference (and in his paper, this volume), Glymour discussed the assumptions on which this theory is built, traced some of the mathematical consequences of the assumptions, and pointed to situations in which the assumptions might fail. Nevertheless, many at Notre Dame found the theory difficult to understand and/or assess. As a result I was (...) asked to write this paper to provide a more intuitive introduction to the theory. In what follows I shun almost all formality and avoid the numerous and complicated qualifiers that typically accompany definitions or important philosophical concepts. They can be all be found in Glymour's paper or in CPS, which are clear although sometimes dense. Here I attempt to fix intuitions by highlighting a few of the essential ideas and by providing extremely simple examples throughout. (shrink)

The statistical evidence for the detrimental effect of exposure to low levels of lead on the cognitive capacities of children has been debated for several decades. In this paper I describe how two techniques from artificial intelligence and statistics help make the statistical evidence for the accepted epidemiological conclusion seem decisive. The first is a variable-selection routine in TETRAD III for finding causes, and the second a Bayesian estimation of the parameter reflecting the causal influence of Actual Lead Exposure, a (...) latent variable, on the measured IQ score of middle class suburban children. (shrink)

The Gibbs sampler can be used to obtain samples of arbitrary size from the posterior distribution over the parameters of a structural equation model (SEM) given covariance data and a prior distribution over the parameters. Point estimates, standard deviations and interval estimates for the parameters can be computed from these samples. If the prior distribution over the parameters is uninformative, the posterior is proportional to the likelihood, and asymptotically the inferences based on the Gibbs sample are the same as those (...) based on the maximum likelihood solution, e.g., output from LISREL or EQS. In small samples, however, the likelihood surface is not Gaussian and in some cases contains local maxima. Nevertheless, the Gibbs sample comes from the correct posterior distribution over the parameters regardless of the sample size and the shape of the likelihood surface. With an informative prior distribution over the parameters, the posterior can be used to make inferences about the parameters of underidentified models, as we illustrate on a simple errors-in-variables model. (shrink)

We present an algorithm to infer causal relations between a set of measured variables on the basis of experiments on these variables. The algorithm assumes that the causal relations are linear, but is otherwise completely general: It provides consistent estimates when the true causal structure contains feedback loops and latent variables, while the experiments can involve surgical or `soft' interventions on one or multiple variables at a time. The algorithm is `online' in the sense that it combines the results from (...) any set of available experiments, can incorporate background knowledge and resolves conflicts that arise from combining results from different experiments. In addition we provide a necessary and sufficient condition that determines when the algorithm can uniquely return the true graph, and can be used to select the next best experiment until this condition is satisfied. We demonstrate the method by applying it to simulated data and the flow cytometry data of Sachs et al. (shrink)

: "In this paper we compare computerized environments in which students complete proof construction exercises in formal logic. Afterbeing given a pretest for logical aptitude, three matched groups were presented identical course material on logic for approximately five weeks by a computer. During the treatment, all students were required to complete several hundred proof construction exercises. The three groups did the exercises and the midterm in different environments. The group with a more sophisticated interface performed better on the midterm. Nearly (...) all the difference in performance showed up in the harder problems. In a follow up experiment in which flexible strategic problem solving help was added to the environment, performance improved slightly, but the data are inconclusive.". (shrink)

The computer’s effect on our understanding of causation has been enormous. By the mid‐1980s, philosophical and social‐scientific work on the topic had left us with (1) no reasonable reductive account of causation and (2) a class of statistical causal models tied to linear regression. At this time, computer scientists were attacking the problem of equipping robots with models of the external that included probabilistic portrayals of uncertainty. To solve the problem of efficiently storing such knowledge, they introduced Bayes Networks and (...) directed graphs. By attaching a causal interpretation to Bayes Networks, the philosophy of causation changed dramatically. We are now able to be extremely general about how causal structure connects to data, and systematic about when causal structures are empirically indistinguishable. In this essay I try to motivate and describe this synthesis. (shrink)

S There is a long tradition of representing causal relationships by directed acyclic graphs (Wright, 1934 ). Spirtes ( 1994), Spirtes et al. ( 1993) and Pearl & Verma ( 1991) describe procedures for inferring the presence or absence of causal arrows in the graph even if there might be unobserved confounding variables, and/or an unknown time order, and that under weak conditions, for certain combinations of directed acyclic graphs and probability distributions, are asymptotically, in sample size, consistent. These results (...) are surprising since they seem to contradict the standard statistical wisdom that consistent estimators of causal effects do not exist for nonrandomised studies if there are potentially unobserved confounding variables. We resolve the apparent incompatibility of these views by closely examining the asymptotic properties of these causal inference procedures. We show that the asymptotically consistent procedures are ‘pointwise consistent’, but ‘uniformly consistent’ tests do not exist. Thus, no finite sample size can ever be guaranteed to approximate the asymptotic results. We also show the nonexistence of valid, consistent confidence intervals for causal effects and the nonexistence of uniformly consistent point estimators. Our results make no assumption about the form of the tests or estimators. In particular, the tests could be classical independence tests, they could be Bayes tests or they could be tests based on scoring methods such as  or . The implications of our results for observational studies are controversial and are discussed briefly in the last section of the paper. The results hinge on the following fact: it is possible to find, for each sample size n, distributions P and Q such that P and Q are empirically indistinguishable and yet P and Q correspond to different causal effects. (shrink)

In a series of 5 experiments in 2000 and 2001, several hundred students at two different universities with three different professors and six different teaching assistants took a semester long course on causal and statistical reasoning in either traditional lecture/recitation or online/recitation format. In this paper we compare the pre-post test gains of these students, we identify features of the online experience that were helpful and features that were not, and we identify student learning strategies that were effective and those (...) that were not. Students who entirely replaced going to lecture with doing online modules did as well and usually better than those who went to lecture. Simple strategies like incorporating frequent interactive comprehension checks into the online material proved effective, but online students attended face-to-face recitations less often than lecture students and suffered because of it. Supporting the idea that small, interactive recitations are more effective than large, passive lectures, recitation attendance was three times as important as lecture attendance for predicting pre-test to post-test gains. For the online student, embracing the online environment as opposed to trying to convert it into a traditional print-based one was an important strategy, but simple diligence in attempting “voluntary” exercises was by far the most important factor in student success. (shrink)

There is now substantial agreement about the representational component of a normative theory of causal reasoning: Causal Bayes Nets. There is less agreement about a normative theory of causal discovery from data, either computationally or cognitively, and almost no work investigating how teaching the Causal Bayes Nets representational apparatus might help individuals faced with a causal learning task. Psychologists working to describe how naïve participants represent and learn causal structure from data have focused primarily on learning from single trials under (...) a variety of conditions. In contrast, one component of the normative theory focuses on learning from a sample drawn from a population under some experimental or observational study regime. Through a virtual Causality Lab that embodies the normative theory of causal reasoning and which allows us to record student behavior, we have begun to systematically explore how best to teach the normative theory. In this paper we explain the overall project and report on pilot studies which suggest that students can quickly be taught to (appear to) be quite rational. (shrink)

Students can use an educational system’s help in unexpected ways. For example, they may bypass abstract hints in search of a concrete solution. This behavior has traditionally been labeled as a form of gaming or help abuse. We propose that some examples of this behavior are not abusive and that bottom-out hints can act as worked examples. We create a model for distinguishing good student use of bottom-out hints from bad student use of bottom-out hints by means of logged response (...) times. We show that this model not only predicts learning, but captures behaviors related to self-explanation. (shrink)

For nearly as long as the word “correlation” has been part of statistical parlance, students have been warned that correlation does not prove causation, and that only experimental studies, e.g., randomized clinical trials, can establish the existence of a causal relationship. Over the last few decades, somewhat of a consensus has emerged between statisticians, computer scientists, and philosophers on how to represent causal claims and connect them to probabilistic relations. One strand of this work studies the conditions under which evidence (...) accumulated from non-experimental (observational) studies can be used to infer a causal relationship. In this paper, I compare the typical conditions required to infer that one variable is a direct cause of another in observational and experimental studies. I argue that they are essentially the same. (shrink)

The past two decades have seen a dramatic growth in the use of statisticians and economists for the presentation of expert testimony in legal proceedings. In this paper, we describe a hypothetical case modeled on real ones and involving statistical testimony regarding the causal effect of lead on lowering the IQs of children who ingest lead paint chips. The data we use come from a well-known pioneering study on the topic and the analyses we describe as the expert testimony are (...) similar to ones that can be found in major scientific journals. The battle of the experts in this hypothetical case resembles that which many encounter as expert witnesses. The paper concludes with some observations and advice. (shrink)

Dept. of Philosophy Center for Biomedical Center for Biomedical Dept. of Philosophy Carnegie Mellon Univ.

More and more, judges and juries are being asked to handle torts and other cases in which establishing liability involves understanding large bodies of complex scientific evidence. When establishing causation is involved, the evidence can be diverse, can involve complicated statistical models, and can seem impenetrable to non-experts. Since the decision in Daubert v. Merril Dow Pharms., Inc.1 in 1993, judges cannot simply admit expert testimony and other technical evidence and let jurors decide the verdict. Judges now must rule on (...) which experts are admissible and which are inadmissible, and they must base their ruling at least partly on the status of the scientific evidence about which the expert will testify.2 This article is intended to provide judges with an accessible methodological overview of causal science. (shrink)

In Causation, Prediction, and Search, we undertook a three part project. First, we characterized when causal models are indistinguishable by population conditional independence relations under several different assumptions relating causality to probability. Second, we proposed a number of algorithms that take sample data and optional background knowledge as input, and output a class of causal models compatible with the data and the background knowledge; the algorithms were accompanied by proofs of their correctness given assumptions that were clearly stated in CPS, (...) and that we will restate below. Finally, we offered a theory of how to predict the effects of interventions in causal structures, given only partial knowledge of causal structure. Freedman's objections are all directed against the causal inference algorithms we proposed. We do not have room here to discuss all of his criticisms, but we have answered his major points. With regard to the points we do not have room to discuss, the reader should be warned that Freedman is an unreliable interpreter of what we have written. For convenience, we have divided Freedman's objections into the following categories. 1.) Freedman questions some of the assumptions on which our correctness theorems are based. Some of his criticisms are based on covariance matrices that he constructed. None of the examples he constructed in sections 11.2, 11.3, or 12.3 are counterexamples to any theorem that we stated, nor are they even germane to the question of how probable are the assumptions we make. His examples only illustrate points discussed in detail in our book, in which we give similar examples. 2.) The most serious charge that Freedman makes is that the algorithms do not compute what we say they do. (shrink)

Deciding matters of legal liability, in torts and other civil actions, requires deciding causation. The injury suffered by a plaintiff must be caused by an event or condition due to the defendant. The courts distinguish between cause-in-fact and proximate causation, where cause-in-fact is determined by the “but-for” test: the effect would not have happened, “but for” the cause.1 Proximate causation is a set of legal limitations on cause-in-fact.

James M. Robins, Richard Scheines, Peter Spirtes, and Larry Wasserman. The Limits of Causal Knowledge.

Practically, causation matters. Juries must decide, for example, whether a pregnant mother’s refusal to give birth by caesarean section was the cause of one of her twins death. Policy makers must decide whether violence on TV causes violence in life. Neither question can be coherently debated without some theory of causation. Fortunately (or not, depending on where one sits), a virtual plethora of theories of causation have been championed in the third of a century between 1970 and 2004.

After reviewing theoretical reasons for doubting that machine learning methods can accurately infer gene regulatory networks from microarray data, we test 10 algorithms on simulated data from the sea urchin network, and on microarray data for yeast compared with recent experimental determinations of the regulatory network in the same yeast species. Our results agree with the theoretical arguments: most algorithms are at chance for determining the existence of a regulatory connection between gene pairs, and the algorithms that perform better than (...) chance are nonetheless so errorprone as to be of little practical use in these applications. (shrink)

Clark Glymour, Richard Scheines, Peter Spirtes and Kevin Kelly. Discovering Causal Structure: Artifical Intelligence, Philosophy of Science and Statistical Modeling.

Aurora P. Jackson and Richard Scheines. Single Mother's Efficacy, Parenting in the Home Environment, and Children's Development in a Two-Wave Study.

The eight pieces constituting this Meeting Report are summaries of presentations made during a panel session at the 2011 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting held between March 3rd and 6th in Cincinnati. Lisa Newton organized the session and served as chair. The panel of eight consisted both of pioneers in the field and more recent arrivals. It covered a range of topics from how the field has developed to where it should be going, from identification of (...) issues needing further study to problems of training the next generation of engineers and engineering-ethics scholars. (shrink)