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Venetian Sea Levels, British Bread Prices and the Principle of the Common Cause: A Reassessment

San Pedro, Iñaki (2010) Venetian Sea Levels, British Bread Prices and the Principle of the Common Cause: A Reassessment. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

It is still a controversial issue whether Reichenbach’s Principle of the Common Cause (RPCC) is a sound method for causal inference. In fact, the status of the principle has been a subject of intense philosophical debate. An extensive literature has been thus generated both with arguments in favor and against the adequacy of the principle. A remarkable argument against the principle, first proposed by Elliott Sober (Sober, 1987, 2001), consists on a counterexample which involves corelations between bread prices in Britain and sea levels in Venice. The aim of this paper is to put into perspective criticisms to RPCC of the kind of Sober’s in the light of recent formal results regarding the so-called extendability and common cause completability.


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Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:
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San Pedro, Iñaki
Keywords: Common Cause, Reichenbach´s Principle of the common cause, Venetian sea levels and British bread prices
Subjects: General Issues > Causation
Depositing User: Dr Iñaki San Pedro
Date Deposited: 06 Apr 2010
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:19
Item ID: 5299
Subjects: General Issues > Causation
Date: 2010
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/5299

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