792 research outputs found
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 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
A principled approach to defining actual causation
In this paper we present a new proposal for defining actual causation, i.e., the problem of deciding if one event caused another. We do so within the popular counterfactual tradition initiated by Lewis, which is characterised by attributing a fundamental role to counterfactual dependence. Unlike the currently prominent definitions, our approach proceeds from the ground up: we start from basic principles, and construct a definition of causation that satisfies them. We define the concepts of counterfactual dependence and production, and put forward principles such that dependence is an unnecessary but sufficient condition for causation, whereas production is an insufficient but necessary condition. The resulting definition of causation is a suitable compromise between dependence and production. Every principle is introduced by means of a paradigmatic example of causation. We illustrate some of the benefits of our approach with two examples that have spelled trouble for other accounts. We make all of this formally precise using structural equations, which we extend with a timing over all events
CHR(PRISM)-based Probabilistic Logic Learning
PRISM is an extension of Prolog with probabilistic predicates and built-in
support for expectation-maximization learning. Constraint Handling Rules (CHR)
is a high-level programming language based on multi-headed multiset rewrite
rules.
In this paper, we introduce a new probabilistic logic formalism, called
CHRiSM, based on a combination of CHR and PRISM. It can be used for high-level
rapid prototyping of complex statistical models by means of "chance rules". The
underlying PRISM system can then be used for several probabilistic inference
tasks, including probability computation and parameter learning. We define the
CHRiSM language in terms of syntax and operational semantics, and illustrate it
with examples. We define the notion of ambiguous programs and define a
distribution semantics for unambiguous programs. Next, we describe an
implementation of CHRiSM, based on CHR(PRISM). We discuss the relation between
CHRiSM and other probabilistic logic programming languages, in particular PCHR.
Finally we identify potential application domains
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