Actual Causality
Actual Causality
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实际因果关系
DOI：
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发表时间：
2016
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
J. Halpern
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文献类型：
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作者：
J. Halpern
因果关系在人们构建世界的方式中起着核心作用；我们不断为自己的观察寻求因果解释。但是事件C“实际导致”事件E究竟意味着什么呢？定义实际因果关系的问题不仅仅是哲学上的思辨。例如，在许多法律论证中，这正是为了确定责任而需要确定的内容。自休谟以来，哲学文献一直在努力解决定义因果关系的问题。在本书中，约瑟夫·哈尔彭探讨了实际因果关系以及相关概念，如责任程度、归咎程度和因果解释。目标是得出一个符合我们自然语言使用的因果关系定义，并且对例如决定法律案件的陪审团、寻找导致某些软件失败的代码行的程序员，或者试图确定紧缩政策是否导致随后经济萧条的经济学家有所帮助。哈尔彭应用并扩展了他和朱迪亚·珀尔基于结构方程开发的一种因果关系方法。他仔细地制定了因果关系的定义，并在此基础上定义了责任程度、归咎程度和因果解释。最后他讨论了这些想法如何应用于问责和程序验证等实际问题。技术细节一般局限于每章的最后部分，非数学专业的读者可以跳过。
Causality 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.