Zhang, Jiji (2022) On the unity between observational and experimental causal discovery. THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science, 37 (1). pp. 63-74. ISSN 0495-4548
|
Text
def_22691_Zhang_Theoria37-1.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (184kB) | Preview |
Abstract
In “Flagpoles anyone? Causal and explanatory asymmetries”, James Woodward supplements his celebrated interventionist account of causation and explanation with a set of new ideas about causal and explanatory asymmetries, which he extracts from some cutting-edge methods for causal discovery from observational data. Among other things, Woodward draws interesting connections between observational causal discovery and interventionist themes that are inspired in the first place by experimental causal discovery, alluding to a sort of unity between observational and experimental causal discovery. In this paper, I make explicit what I take to be the implicated unity. Like experimental causal discovery, observational causal discovery also relies on interventions (or exogenous variations, to be more accurate), albeit interventions that are not carried out by investigators and hence need to be detected as part of the inference. The observational patterns appealed to in observational causal discovery are not only surrogates for would-be interventions, as Woodward sometimes puts it; they also serve to mark relevant interventions that actually happen in the data generating process.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
||||||
| Additional Information: | ISSN: 0495-4548 (print) | ||||||
| Keywords: | Causal Discovery, Epistemology of Causation, Interventionism, Invariance | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Experimentation General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Theory/Observation |
||||||
| Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email theoria@ehu.es | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 15 May 2022 03:51 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 15 May 2022 03:51 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 20608 | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science | ||||||
| Publisher: | Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea / Universidad del País Vasco | ||||||
| Official URL: | https://ojs.ehu.eus/index.php/THEORIA/article/view... | ||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | 10.1387/theoria.22691 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation General Issues > Experimentation General Issues > Explanation General Issues > Theory/Observation |
||||||
| Date: | 2022 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 63-74 | ||||||
| Volume: | 37 | ||||||
| Number: | 1 | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0495-4548 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20608 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Altmetric.com
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}