Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach --- Part 1: Causes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a structural-model approach to defining actual causes using structural equations, providing a more plausible and elegant account of causation that addresses traditional difficulties.

Contribution

It presents a novel formal definition of causality based on structural equations, improving upon previous theories and handling complex causation examples effectively.

Findings

Provides a new formal framework for causation using structural equations

Resolves major issues in traditional causality definitions

Lays groundwork for a formal theory of causal explanation

Abstract

We propose a new definition of actual causes, using structural equations to model counterfactuals.We show that the definitions yield a plausible and elegant account ofcausation that handles well examples which have caused problems forother definitions and resolves major difficulties in the traditionalaccount. In a companion paper, we show how the definition of causality can beused to give an elegant definition of (causal) explanation.