Causality

Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17
First version:

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There is unfortunately no accepted name for the scientific study of causality, or of methods for inferring it. "Etiology" suggests itself, but it's already taken...

Causal inference is an important enough sub-problem to get spun out of here. (I don't feel up to updating all of my links.)

Recommended, big picture:
• Stephen L. Morgan and Christopher Winship, Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research [Mini-review]
• Judea Pearl
  • "Causal Inference in Statistics: An Overview", Statistics Surveys 3 (2009): 96--146
  • Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference
• Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour and Richard Scheines, Causation, Prediction and Search [Comments]

Recommended, close-ups:
• Nihat Ay, "A Refinement of the Common Cause Principle", SFI Working Paper 08-01-001 [PDF]
• Krzysztof Chalupka, Pietro Perona and Frederick Eberhardt
  • "Visual Causal Feature Learning", UAI 2015, arxiv:1412.2309
  • "Multi-Level Cause-Effect Systems", arxiv:1512.07942
• Michael Eichler and Vanessa Didelez, "Causal Reasoning in Graphical Time Series Models", UAI 2007, arxiv:1206.5246
• David Galles and Judea Pearl
  • "Axioms of Causal Relevance" [preprint]
  • "An Axiomatic Characterization of Causal Counterfactuals" [preprint]
  • "Testing Identifiability of Causal Effects" [preprint]
• Clark Glymour
  • "Markov Properties and Quantum Experiments", pp. 117--126 in W. Demopoulos and I. Pitowsky (eds.), Physical Theory and its Interpretation [PDF reprint via Clark]
  • "When Is a Brain Like the Planet?", Philosophy of Science 74 (2007): 330--347
• Dominik Janzing, "On causally asymmetric versions of Occam's Razor and their relation to thermodynamics", arxiv:0708.3411
• Maxim Raginsky, "Directed information and Pearl's causal calculus", arxiv:1110.0718
• James M. Robins, Tyler J. VanderWeele, Richard D. Gill, "A proof of Bell's inequality in quantum mechanics using causal interactions", arxiv:1207.4913
• Wesley Salmon
  • Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World
  • Causality and Explanation
• Herbert Simon
  • "Causal Ordering and Identifiability", in Studies in Econometric Method, 1953; reprinted as chapter 1 in Simon's Models of Man [PDF of the 1950 preprint version, as "The Causal Principle and the Identification Problem"]
  • "Spurious Correlation: A Causal Interpretation", Journal of the American Statistical Association 49 (1954): 467-479 [PDF reprint]
• Christopher Winship, Counterfactual Causal Analysis [Repository page with papers aimed at sociological applications]

Recommended, historical interest:
• Hubert M. Blalock, Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research [1962, so technically obsolete, but interesting to see just how many of the pieces that came together in the early 1990s were in place much earlier. One of his procedures seems to be something like a cross between an instrumental variable and propensity score matching.]
• David Hume
• Barry Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation
• Jerzy Neyman, "On the Application of Probability Theory to Agricultural Experiments: Essay on Principles, Section 9", Statistical Science 5 (1990): 465--472 [Translation of a portion of Neyman's 1923 dissertation]
• Hans Reichenbach, The Direction of Time [Comments]
• Bertrand Russell
  • The Analysis of Matter
  • Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits
• ibn Rushd (= Averroes), Tahafut al-Tahafut [Which, needless to say, I've only read in translation]

To read:
• Mickel Aickin, Causal Analysis in Biomedicine and Epidemiology: Based on Minimal Sufficient Causation
• P. O. Amblard and O. J. J. Michel, "On directed information theory and Granger causality graphs", arxiv:1002.1446
• Yemima Ben-Menahem, Causation in Science
• Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke and Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation
• Nancy Cartwright, Hunting Causes and Using Them: Approaches in Philosophy and Economics [Extremely harsh critiques by Pearl and Glymour ("All of her critical claims are false or at best fractionally true")]
• John Collins, Ned Hall, L.A. Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals
• Daniel Commenges, Anne Gegout-Petit, "A general dynamical statistical model with possible causal interpretation", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B 71 (2009): 719--736, arxiv:0710.4396
• Vanessa Didelez, Philip Dawid, Sara Geneletti, "Direct and Indirect Effects of Sequential Treatments", UAI 2006, arxiv:1206.6840 [I have great respect for the authors, but I will be very curious to see how they define "intervention" without using counterfactual concepts!]
• Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov, Janne V. Kujala, "Selectivity in Probabilistic Causality: Drawing Arrows from Inputs to Stochastic Outputs", arxiv:1108.3074
• Ellery Eells, Probabilistic Causality
• Adam Elga, "Isolation and Folk Physics", phi-sci/2678 [Ordinary notions of causality as approximations to real physics, under conditions of near-independence]
• Mathias Frisch, Causal Reasoning in Physics [Review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews]
• Galavotti (ed.), Stochastic Causality
• Anne Gegout-Petit and Daniel Commenges, "A general definition of influence between stochastic processes", arxiv:0905.3619
• Clark Glymour, "Rabbit Hunting", Synthese 121 (1999): 55--78 [PDF reprint]
• Adam Glynn and Kevin Quinn, "Non-parametric Mechanisms and Causal Modeling" [PDF preprint]
• Alison Gopnik and Laura Schulz (eds.), Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy and Computation
• Christian Gourieroux, Alain Monfort and Eric Renault, "Kullback Causality Measures", Annales d'Economie et de Statistique 6--7 (1987): 369--410 [via Maxim Raginsky]
• Zalán Gyenis and Miklós Rédei, "Characterizing Common Cause Closed Probability Spaces", Philosophy of Science 78 (2011): 393--409
• Joseph Y. Halpern and Judea Pearl, "Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach", "Part I: Causes", cs.AI/0011012, and "Part II: Explanations," cs.AI/0208034
• Jeffrey Haydu, "Reversals of fortune: path dependency, problem solving, and temporal cases", Theory and Society 39 (2010): 25--48
• Joe Henson, "Comparing causality principles", Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 36 (2005): 519--543
• Bjorn Erik Juel, Renzo Comolatti, Giulio Tononi, Larissa Albantakis, "When is an action caused from within? Quantifying the causal chain leading to actions in simulated agents", arxiv:1904.02995
• Phyllis Illari and Federica Russo, Causality: Philosophical Theory Meets Scientific Practice
• Stanley Lieberson, "The Big Broad Issues in Society and Social History: Application of a Probabilistic Perspective", pp. 359--385 in Vaughn R. McKim and Stephen P. Turner (eds.), Causality in Crisis? Statistical Methods and the Search for Causal Knowledge in the Social Sciences [PDF reprint]
• T. Lombrozo, "Causal-explanatory pluralism: How intentions, functions, and mechanisms influence causal ascriptions", Cognitive Psychology 61 (2010): 303--332
• Vaughn R. McKim and Stephen P. Turner (ed.), Causality in Crisis? Statistical Methods and the Search for Causal Knowledge in the Social Sciences
• Peter Menzies, "A Structural Equations Account of Negative Causation", phil-sci/2962
• John D. Norton, "Causation as Folk Science," phil-sci/1214
• Farid Nouioua, "Why did the accident happen? A norm-based reasoning approach", cs.AI/0610015
• L. A. (Laurie) Paul and Ned Hall, Causation: A User's Guide
• David T. Pegg, "Causality in quantum mechanics", Physics Letters A 349 (2006): 411--414
• Huw Price and Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited
• Miklós Rédei and Stephen J. Summers, "Remarks on Causality in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory", quant-ph/0302115
• Eva Riccomagno, Jim Q. Smith
  • "Algebraic causality: Bayes nets and beyond", arxiv:0709.3377
  • "The causal manipulation of chain event graphs", 0709.3380
• Federica Russo and Jon Williamson, "Generic versus Single-case Causality: the Case of Autopsy", phil-sci/5148
• Glenn Shafer, The Art of Causal Conjecture [Bought from an on-line bookstore which gave the title as The Art of Casual Conjecture; a book which should be written. Reviwed by Glymour (PDF)]
• Alexander Sokol, Niels Richard Hansen, "Causal interpretation of stochastic differential equations", Electronic Journal of Probability 19 (2014): 100, arxiv:1304.0217
• Dan Sperber, David Premack and Ann James Premack (eds.), Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate
• Patrick Suppes
  • Patrick Suppes, Scientific Philosopher
  • A Probabilistic Theory of Causality
  • Representation and Invariance
• G. A. Svechnikov, Causality and the Relation of States in Physics
• Brad Weslake, "Common Causes and The Direction of Causation", phil-sci 2383
• Phillip Wolff, "Representing Causation", phil-sci/3177
• James Woodward, Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation [Review by Glymour]

To read, history:
• Stephen Kern, A Cultural History of Causality: Science, Murder Novels, and Systems of Thought

To write, someday:
• CRS, "Causality in Models of Dynamics"