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Structure−Based Causes and Explanations in the Independent Choice Logic

Alberto Finzi and Thomas Lukasiewicz

Abstract

This paper is directed towards combining Pearl's structural-model approach to causal reasoning with high-level formalisms for reasoning about actions. More precisely, we present a combination of Pearl's structural-model approach with Poole's independent choice logic. We show how probabilistic theories in the independent choice logic can be mapped to probabilistic causal models. This mapping provides the independent choice logic with appealing concepts of causality and explanation from the structural-model approach. We illustrate this along Halpern and Pearl's sophisticated notions of actual cause, explanation, and partial explanation. This mapping also adds first-order modeling capabilities and explicit actions to the structural-model approach.

Book Title
Proceedings of the 19th Conference in Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence‚ UAI 2003‚ Acapulco‚ Mexico‚ August 7−10‚ 2003
Editor
Christopher Meek and Uffe Kjærulff
ISBN
0−127−05664−5
Pages
225−232
Publisher
Morgan Kaufmann
Year
2003