Sufficient and necessary causation are dual

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between necessary and sufficient causes within causality frameworks, clarifying their duality and implications across philosophy, formal models, and security applications.

Contribution

It establishes an explicit relation between necessary and sufficient causes, bridging formal causality definitions and their applications in security.

Findings

Necessary and sufficient causes are formally related.

Sufficient causes are used in security formalizations.

The duality clarifies causality concepts across domains.

Abstract

Causation has been the issue of philosophic debate since Hippocrates. Recent work defines actual causation in terms of Pearl/Halpern's causality framework, formalizing necessary causes (IJCAI'15). This has inspired causality notions in the security domain (CSF'15), which, perhaps surprisingly, formalize sufficient causes instead. We provide an explicit relation between necessary and sufficient causes.