Towards A Logical Account of Epistemic Causality

TL;DR

This paper introduces an epistemic extension to formal causality models, defining how agents understand causes and demonstrating that this subjective causality differs from objective causality through counterexamples.

Contribution

It presents a novel epistemic framework for causality, highlighting the differences between subjective and objective causality in multi-agent contexts.

Findings

Epistemic causality differs from objective causality.

Defined formal criteria for an agent to know causes.

Counterexample illustrating the distinction.

Abstract

Reasoning about observed effects and their causes is important in multi-agent contexts. While there has been much work on causality from an objective standpoint, causality from the point of view of some particular agent has received much less attention. In this paper, we address this issue by incorporating an epistemic dimension to an existing formal model of causality. We define what it means for an agent to know the causes of an effect. Then using a counterexample, we prove that epistemic causality is a different notion from its objective counterpart.