Title

Detection of unfaithfulness and robust causal inference

Document Type

Journal article

Source Publication

Minds and Machines

Publication Date

6-1-2008

Volume

18

Issue

2

First Page

239

Last Page

271

Publisher

Springer Netherlands

Keywords

Bayesian network, Causal inference, Epistemology of causation, Faithfulness condition, Machine learning, Uniform consistency

Abstract

Much of the recent work on the epistemology of causation has centered on two assumptions, known as the Causal Markov Condition and the Causal Faithfulness Condition. Philosophical discussions of the latter condition have exhibited situations in which it is likely to fail. This paper studies the Causal Faithfulness Condition as a conjunction of weaker conditions. We show that some of the weaker conjuncts can be empirically tested, and hence do not have to be assumed a priori. Our results lead to two methodologically significant observations: (1) some common types of counterexamples to the Faithfulness condition constitute objections only to the empirically testable part of the condition; and (2) some common defenses of the Faithfulness condition do not provide justification or evidence for the testable parts of the condition. It is thus worthwhile to study the possibility of reliable causal inference under weaker Faithfulness conditions. As it turns out, the modification needed to make standard procedures work under a weaker version of the Faithfulness condition also has the practical effect of making them more robust when the standard Faithfulness condition actually holds. This, we argue, is related to the possibility of controlling error probabilities with finite sample size (“uniform consistency”) in causal inference.

DOI

10.1007/s11023-008-9096-4

Print ISSN

09246495

E-ISSN

15728641

Publisher Statement

Copyright © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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

Full-text Version

Publisher’s Version

Language

English

Recommended Citation

Zhang, J., & Spirtes, P. (2008). Detection of unfaithfulness and robust causal inference. Minds and Machines, 18(2), 239-271. doi: 10.1007/s11023-008-9096-4

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