75,561 research outputs found
From Causes for Database Queries to Repairs and Model-Based Diagnosis and Back
In this work we establish and investigate connections between causes for
query answers in databases, database repairs wrt. denial constraints, and
consistency-based diagnosis. The first two are relatively new research areas in
databases, and the third one is an established subject in knowledge
representation. We show how to obtain database repairs from causes, and the
other way around. Causality problems are formulated as diagnosis problems, and
the diagnoses provide causes and their responsibilities. The vast body of
research on database repairs can be applied to the newer problems of computing
actual causes for query answers and their responsibilities. These connections,
which are interesting per se, allow us, after a transition -inspired by
consistency-based diagnosis- to computational problems on hitting sets and
vertex covers in hypergraphs, to obtain several new algorithmic and complexity
results for database causality.Comment: To appear in Theory of Computing Systems. By invitation to special
issue with extended papers from ICDT 2015 (paper arXiv:1412.4311
Query-Answer Causality in Databases: Abductive Diagnosis and View-Updates
Causality has been recently introduced in databases, to model, characterize
and possibly compute causes for query results (answers). Connections between
query causality and consistency-based diagnosis and database repairs (wrt.
integrity constrain violations) have been established in the literature. In
this work we establish connections between query causality and abductive
diagnosis and the view-update problem. The unveiled relationships allow us to
obtain new complexity results for query causality -the main focus of our work-
and also for the two other areas.Comment: To appear in Proc. UAI Causal Inference Workshop, 2015. One example
was fixe
Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach, Part I: Causes
We propose a new definition of actual cause, using structural equations to
model counterfactuals. We show that the definition yields a plausible and
elegant account of causation that handles well examples which have caused
problems for other definitions and resolves major difficulties in the
traditional account.Comment: Part II of the paper (on Explanation) is also on the arxiv.
Previously the two parts were submitted as one paper. To appear in the
British Journal for the Philosophy of Scienc
Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously
It is argued that quantum theory is best understood as requiring an
ontological duality of res extensa and res potentia, where the latter is
understood per Heisenberg's original proposal, and the former is roughly
equivalent to Descartes' 'extended substance.' However, this is not a dualism
of mutually exclusive substances in the classical Cartesian sense, and
therefore does not inherit the infamous 'mind-body' problem. Rather, res
potentia and res extensa are proposed as mutually implicative ontological
extants that serve to explain the key conceptual challenges of quantum theory;
in particular, nonlocality, entanglement, null measurements, and wave function
collapse. It is shown that a natural account of these quantum perplexities
emerges, along with a need to reassess our usual ontological commitments
involving the nature of space and time.Comment: Final version, to appear in International Journal of Quantum
Foundation
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