000			a
999			_c29544 _d29544
008			200622b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9780262537131
082			_a122 _bHAL
100			_aHalpern, Joseph Y.
245			_aActual Causality
260			_bMIT Press _c2019 _aCambridge
300			_aix, 229 p. _bill. _c23 cm.
365			_b37.00 _cUSD _d80.00
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index
520			_aCausality plays a central role in the way people structure the world; we constantly seek causal explanations for our observations. But what does it even mean that an event C “actually caused” event E? The problem of defining actual causation goes beyond mere philosophical speculation. For example, in many legal arguments, it is precisely what needs to be established in order to determine responsibility. The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality since Hume. In this book, Joseph Halpern explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression. Halpern applies and expands an approach to causality that he and Judea Pearl developed, based on structural equations. He carefully formulates a definition of causality, and building on this, defines degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. He concludes by discussing how these ideas can be applied to such practical problems as accountability and program verification. Technical details are generally confined to the final section of each chapter and can be skipped by non-mathematical readers.
650			_aCausation
650			_aFunctional analysis
650			_aProbabilities
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