Manfred comments on Causation, Probability and Objectivity - Less Wrong

7 Post author: antigonus 18 March 2012 06:54AM

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Comment author: Manfred 19 March 2012 02:23:42AM 0 points [-]

A causal model uniquely specifies a bunch of conditional probabilities, right?

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 19 March 2012 02:28:41AM *  1 point [-]

Only in a sense that a first order theory of natural numbers does. Really I think it is more accurate to view "a causal model" as a model in the mathematical logic sense -- an object about which logical assertions can be made. In the case of causal models, these assertions are modelling "interventions." Here's a paper on this:

http://www.jair.org/papers/paper648.html

This view appears in Pearl's chapter 7, as well.