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The Common Cause Principle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Frank Arntzenius
Frank Arntzenius*
Affiliation:
University of Southem California
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Extract

The common cause principle, roughly speaking, consists of the following 2 subprinciples:

  1. i) If 2 events (or types of events, or facts, or conditions, or …..) are correlated, and the one does not cause the other, then there is a third event (type of event, …..) such that the 2 events are probabilistically independent given the presence or absence of the third event. That is to say: for every pair of correlated events that do not have direct causal links there is a screener off of that correlation.

  2. ii) This screener off occurs before the correlated events.

Type
Part VIII. Statistical Asymmetries and the Direction of Causation
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1992 , 1993 , pp. 226 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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