A Comparative Study of Six Formal Models of Causal Ascription

  • Authors:
  • Salem Benferhat;Jean-François Bonnefon;Philippe Chassy;Rui Silva Neves;Didier Dubois;Florence Dupin De Saint-Cyr;Daniel Kayser;Farid Nouioua;Sara Nouioua-Boutouhami;Henri Prade;Salma Smaoui

  • Affiliations:
  • Université d'Artois,;Université de Toulouse,;Université de Toulouse,;Université de Toulouse,;Université de Toulouse,;Université de Toulouse,;Université Paris 13,;Université Paris 13,;Université Paris 13,;Université de Toulouse,;Université d'Artois,

  • Venue:
  • SUM '08 Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Scalable Uncertainty Management
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Ascribing causality amounts to determining what elements in a sequence of reported facts can be related in a causal way, on the basis of some knowledge about the course of the world. The paper offers a comparison of a large span of formal models (based on structural equations, non-monotonic consequence relations, trajectory preference relations, identification of violated norms, graphical representations, or connectionism), using a running example taken from a corpus of car accident reports. Interestingly enough, the compared approaches focus on different aspects of the problem by either identifying all the potential causes, or selecting a smaller subset by taking advantages of contextually abnormal facts, or by modeling interventions to get rid of simple correlations. The paper concludes by a general discussion based on a battery of criteria (several of them being proper to AI approaches to causality).