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

Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.

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

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