A Lewisian Logic of Causal Counterfactuals

Minds and Machines 23 (1):77-93 (2013)
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Abstract

In the artificial intelligence literature a promising approach to counterfactual reasoning is to interpret counterfactual conditionals based on causal models. Different logics of such causal counterfactuals have been developed with respect to different classes of causal models. In this paper I characterize the class of causal models that are Lewisian in the sense that they validate the principles in Lewis’s well-known logic of counterfactuals. I then develop a system sound and complete with respect to this class. The resulting logic is the weakest logic of causal counterfactuals that respects Lewis’s principles, sits in between the logic developed by Galles and Pearl and the logic developed by Halpern, and stands to Galles and Pearl’s logic in the same fashion as Lewis’s stands to Stalnaker’s

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2011-11-18

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Jiji Zhang
Chinese University of Hong Kong

Citations of this work

Causal and Evidential Conditionals.Mario Günther - 2022 - Minds and Machines 32 (4):613-626.
From causal models to counterfactual structures.Joseph Y. Halpern - 2013 - Review of Symbolic Logic 6 (2):305-322.
What Should I Believe About What Would Have Been the Case?Franz Huber - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 44 (1):81-110.

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References found in this work

Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference.Judea Pearl - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
A Theory of Conditionals.Robert Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory. Oxford,: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
Causality.Judea Pearl - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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