Stochastic Causalityedited by Maria Carla Galavotti, Patrick Suppes, and Domenico Costantini
This volume is about causality, a topic of perennial interest in philosophy and many scientific disciplines. The focus is on probabilistic causality, which has dominated much of the recent literature on causality. The fifteen papers cover a wide variety of topics, such as the search for causal mechanisms, epistemic and metaphysical views of causality, Bayesian nets and causal dependence, and causation in the special sciences. Several papers stress the statistical analysis of probabilistic data, and the problems that have arisen in making appropriate inferences about causal relations. The last four papers address causal issues in physics, with emphasis on physical processes that are also probabilistic, in other words, stochastic processes. With this closing emphasis, the importance of stochastic causality, that is, causal analysis of stochastic processes, is stressed.
Maria Carla Galavotti is Professor of Science at the University of Bologna. Patrick Suppes is the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus at Stanford. Domenico Constantini is Professor of the Theory of Probability at the University of Bologna.
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- 1 Causality, Mechanisms and Manipulation
Maria Carla Galavotti
- 2 Metaphysics over Methodology—or, Why Infidelity Provides No Grounds to Divorce Causes from Probabilities
David Panineau
- 3 Probabilistic Causality, Direct Causes and Counterfactual Dependence
James Woodward
- 4 Modularity: It Can—and Generally Does—Fail
Nancy Cartwright
- 5 Three Dogmas of Humean Causation
Gürol Irzik
- 6 Causation in the Special Sciences: The Case for Pragmatism
Huw Price
- 7 Analogy, Causal Patterns and Economic Choice
Roberto Scazzieri
- 8 Epistemic Causality and Hard Uncertainty: A Keynesian Approach
Alessandro Vercelli
- 9 Bayesian Nets Are All There Is to Causal Dependence
Wolfgang Spohn
- 10 The Causal Interpretation of the Regression Coefficients
Paul W. Holland
- 12 Hierarchal Models and Partial Exchangeability
Attilio Wedlin
- 13 A Characterization of Creation and Destruction Propensities
Domenico Constantini and Ubaldo Garibaldi
- 14 Physical Quantum States and the Meaning of Probability
Michael Paty
- 15 Stochastic Dynamical Reduction and Causality
GianCarlo Ghirardi
12/1/2001
ISBN (Paperback): 1575863227 (9781575863221)
ISBN (Cloth): 1575863219 (9781575863214)
Subject: Causation; Probabilities
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Distributed by the University of Chicago Press
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