A comparison of three Occam’s razors for Markovian causal models
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Publication Date
6-1-2012
Volume
64
Issue
2
First Page
423
Last Page
448
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Abstract
The framework of causal Bayes nets, currently influential in several scientific disciplines, provides a rich formalism to study the connection between causality and probability from an epistemological perspective. This article compares three assumptions in the literature that seem to constrain the connection between causality and probability in the style of Occam's razor. The trio includes two minimality assumptions—one formulated by Spirtes, Glymour, and Scheines (SGS) and the other due to Pearl—and the more well-known faithfulness or stability assumption. In terms of logical strength, it is fairly obvious that the three form a sequence of increasingly stronger assumptions. The focus of this article, however, is to investigate the nature of their relative strength. The comparative analysis reveals an important sense in which Pearl's minimality assumption is as strong as the faithfulness assumption and identifies a useful condition under which it is as safe as SGS's relatively secure minimality assumption. Both findings have notable implications for the theory and practice of causal inference.
DOI
10.1093/bjps/axs005
Print ISSN
00070882
E-ISSN
14643537
Funding Information
This work was supported in part by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong under the General Research Fund LU341910.
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2012 The Author
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Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Zhang, J. (2012). A comparison of three Occam’s razors for markovian causal models. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 64(2), 423-448. doi: 10.1093/bjps/axs005