A general formal theory of causal reasoning as a logical study of causal models, reasoning, and inference. In this book, Alexander Bochman presents a general formal theory of causal reasoning as a logical study of causal models, reasoning, and inference, basing it on a supposition that causal reasoning is not a competitor of logical reasoning but its complement for situations lacking logically sufficient data or knowledge. Bochman also explores the relationship of this theory with the popular structural equation approach to causality proposed by Judea Pearl and explores several applications ranging from artificial intelligence to legal theory, including abduction, counterfactuals, actual and proximate causality, dynamic causal models, and reasoning about action and change in artificial intelligence. As logical preparation, before introducing causal concepts, Bochman describes an alternative, situation-based semantics for classical logic that provides a better understanding of what can be captured by purely logical means. He then presents another prerequisite, outlining those parts of a general theory of nonmonotonic reasoning that are relevant to his own theory. These two components provide a logical background for the main, two-tier formalism of the causal calculus that serves as the formal basis of his theory. He presents the main causal formalism of the book as a natural generalization of classical logic that allows for causal reasoning. This provides a formal background for subsequent chapters. Finally, Bochman presents a generalization of causal reasoning to dynamic domains.
Dependency is a fundamental concept in the analysis of linguistic systems. The many if-then statements offered in typology and grammar-writing imply a casually real notion of dependency that is central to the claim being made—usually with reference to widely varying timescales and types of processes. But despite the importance of the concept of dependency in our work, its nature is seldom defined or made explicit. This book brings together experts on language, representing descriptive linguistics, language typology, functional/cognitive linguistics, cognitive science, research on gesture and other semiotic systems, developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, and linguistic anthropology to address the following question: What kinds of dependencies exist among language-related systems, and how do we define and explain them in natural, causal terms?
This book considers the recent results and evaluations of the Theta System in both theoretical and experimental domains. Distinguished linguists from all over the world examine the theory in the context of an impressive array of new empirical data ranging from Germanic, Romance, and Slavic to Ugro-Finnish, and Semitic languages.
The book explores finely-grained distinctions in causal meaning, mostly from a relevance-theoretic perspective. To increase the challenge of this double task, i.e. a thorough as well as satisfactory account of cause and a detailed assessment of the theoretical model employed to this end, the current study involves an investigation carried out by way of contrasting the prototypical causal exponents of Modern Greek subordination, i.e. epeiδi and γiati. In addition, this objective is achieved in the methodological framework of contrasting a range of contextual applications of the two connectives against their translated versions in English, realizable by means of because. Despite first impressions, a closer observation of the wide range of applications of these markers in the discourse of coherence relations illustrates divergences in their distribution, which, in turn, are taken to highlight differing aspects of causal interpretation. The proposal for the relevance-theoretic model emanates from a reaction to an array of problems undermining traditional tenets of pragmatic theory originating with Grice’s stance, but is also made in response to the common practice in pragmatic research (since its origin) to pay low regard for the contribution of typical causal markers to debates aiming at the determination of the distinction that has been instrumental to issues of cognition and pragmatic interpretation, i.e. propositional vs. non-propositional meaning.
In this investigation of the psychological relationship between shape and time, Leyton argues compellingly that shape is used by the mind to recover the past and as such it forms a basis for memory. Michael Leyton's arguments about the nature of perception and cognition are fascinating, exciting, and sure to be controversial. In this investigation of the psychological relationship between shape and time, Leyton argues compellingly that shape is used by the mind to recover the past and as such it forms a basis for memory. He elaborates a system of rules by which the conversion to memory takes place and presents a number of detailed case studies--in perception, linguistics, art, and even political subjugation--that support these rules. Leyton observes that the mind assigns to any shape a causal history explaining how the shape was formed. We cannot help but perceive a deformed can as a dented can. Moreover, by reducing the study of shape to the study of symmetry, he shows that symmetry is crucial to our everyday cognitive processing. Symmetry is the means by which shape is converted into memory. Perception is usually regarded as the recovery of the spatial layout of the environment. Leyton, however, shows that perception is fundamentally the extraction of time from shape. In doing so, he is able to reduce the several areas of computational vision purely to symmetry principles. Examining grammar in linguistics, he argues that a sentence is psychologically represented as a piece of causal history, an archeological relic disinterred by the listener so that the sentence reveals the past. Again through a detailed analysis of art he shows that what the viewer takes to be the experience of a painting is in fact the extraction of time from the shapes of the painting. Finally he highlights crucial aspects of the mind's attempt to recover time in examples of political subjugation.
Explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression.
Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. And causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive overview of these and other topics, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. The chapters provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims; and each includes a comprehensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading. The book is thus the most comprehensive source of information about causation currently available, and will be invaluable for upper-level undergraduates through to professional philosophers.
Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. The handbook brings together the leading researchers in the field of causal reasoning and offers state-of-the-art presentations of theories and research. It provides introductions of competing theories of causal reasoning, and discusses its role in various cognitive functions and domains. The final section presents research from neighboring fields.
This book presents both general issues in pragmatic theories and specific arguments for an inferential approach to pragmatics. At the present time, pragmatics is generally approached from the neo- and post-Gricean perspectives. These perspectives, which stem from philosophical theories of meaning, can be viewed as paradigms, that is, sets of concepts, procedures and results which structure scientific investigations. The main purpose of the book is to defend a new post-Gricean approach to the substantial lexicon and to the functional lexicon (tenses, connectives), and more specifically to explore lexical and non-lexical pragmatics. A precise approach to lexical and non-lexical pragmatic contents will be developed, with special emphasis on non-lexical temporal and causal information. A model for inferring temporal relations in discourse (the directional inferences model based on French data) is developed. This approach to temporal representations and inferences will be completed by a discussion on how causal inferences are triggered in discourse interpretation. The role of conceptual causal relations, as well as causal procedural information encoded in discourse connectives (mainly parce que ‘because’, donc ‘therefore’, et ‘and’), is empirically and theoretically supported. Pragmatic theory can be described as a very powerful interface system which gives access to lexical and functional information, and which contains rich pragmatic enrichment processes, for non-lexical information (quantifier, tenses, connectives) as well as for lexical information (event predicates). The book’s originality stems from its demonstration that pragmatic enrichment is structurally constrained, and occurs at the level of explicature.