Philosophy of Modeling: Neglected Pages of History

The work done in the philosophy of modeling by Vaihinger (1876), Craik (1943), Rosenblueth and Wiener (1945), Apostel (1960), Minsky (1965), Klaus (1966) and Stachowiak (1973) is still almost completely neglected in the mainstream literature. However, this work seems to contain original ideas worth to be discussed. For example, the idea that diverse functions of models can be better structured as follows: in fact, models perform only a single function – they are replacing their target systems, but for different purposes. Another example: the idea that all of cognition is cognition in models or by means of models. Even perception, reflexes and instincts (animal and human) can be best analyzed as modeling. The paper presents an analysis of the above-mentioned work

Reasoning about Action: An Argumentation - Theoretic Approach

We present a uniform non-monotonic solution to the problems of reasoning about action on the basis of an argumentation-theoretic approach. Our theory is provably correct relative to a sensible minimisation policy introduced on top of a temporal propositional logic. Sophisticated problem domains can be formalised in our framework. As much attention of researchers in the field has been paid to the traditional and basic problems in reasoning about actions such as the frame, the qualification and the ramification problems, approaches to these problems within our formalisation lie at heart of the expositions presented in this paper

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

Entanglement, joint measurement, and state reduction

Entanglement is perhaps the most important new feature of the quantum world. It is expressed in quantum theory by the joint measurement formula. We prove the formula for self-adjoint observables from a plausible assumption, which for spacelike separated measurements is an expression of relativistic causality. State reduction is simply a way to express the JMF after one measurement has been made, and its result known.Comment: New material. Reformatted for journal submissio

Embracing Background Knowledge in the Analysis of Actual Causality: An Answer Set Programming Approach

This paper presents a rich knowledge representation language aimed at formalizing causal knowledge. This language is used for accurately and directly formalizing common benchmark examples from the literature of actual causality. A definition of cause is presented and used to analyze the actual causes of changes with respect to sequences of actions representing those examples.Comment: Under consideration for publication in Theory and Practice of Logic Programmin