In recent work on the safety analysis of systems we have shown how causal relationships amongst events can be algorithmically inferred from probabilistic counterexamples and subsequently be mapped to fault trees. The resulting fault trees were significantly smaller and hence easier to understand than the corresponding probabilistic counterexample, but still contain all information needed to dis...

Drawing from the optimal transport theory adapted to the Lorentzian setting, we propose and study the extension of the Sorkin–Woolgar causal relation K+ onto the space of Borel probability measures on a given spacetime. We show that it retains its fundamental properties of transitivity and closedness. Furthermore, we list and prove several characterizations of this relation, including the “meas...

After introducing a range of mechanistic theories of causality and some of the problems they face, I argue that while there is a decisive case against a purely mechanistic analysis, a viable theory of causality must incorporate mechanisms as an ingredient. I describe one way of providing an analysis of causality which reaps the rewards of the mechanistic approach without succumbing to its pitfa...

Maintenance of causality information in distributed systems has previously been implemented in the communications infrastructure with the focus on providing reliability and availability for distributed services. While this approach has a number of advantages, moving causality information up into the view and control of the application programmer is useful, and in some cases, preferable. In an e...

This chapter provides an overview of a range of probabilistic theories of causality, including those of Reichenbach, Good and Suppes, and the contemporary causal net approach. It discusses two key problems for probabilistic accounts: counterexamples to these theories and their failure to account for the relationship between causality and mechanisms. It is argued that to overcome the problems, a...

This study examines the dynamic relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and total factor productivity having controlled for other channels of external openness: exports and imports in four ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. We employ the panel data analysis PDA (fixed effect and dynamic panel models) as well as the panel cointegration and Granger causali...

Humans, even babies, perceive causality when one shape moves briefly and linearly after another. Motion timing is crucial in this and causal impressions disappear with short delays between motions. However, the role of temporal information is more complex: it is both a cue to causality and a factor that constrains processing. It affects ability to distinguish causality from non-causality, and s...

It is known that every causality-preserving transformation of Minkowski space-time is a composition of Lorentz transformations, shifts, rotations, and dilations. In principle, this result means that by only knowing the causality relation, we can determine the coordinate and metric structure on the space-time. However, strictly speaking, the theorem only says that this reconstruction is possible...

We propose a new semantic orientation, Excitation, and its automatic acquisition method. Excitation is a semantic property of predicates that classifies them into excitatory, inhibitory and neutral. We show that Excitation is useful for extracting contradiction pairs (e.g., destroy cancer ⊥ develop cancer) and causality pairs (e.g., increase in crime ⇒ heighten anxiety). Our experiments show th...