| Although the problem of causality is a fundamental issue in the field of philosophy,it was not considered an important concept within academia until the beginning of the 20 th century,and this disregard began to change with the development of fields that emphasized causality.Pearls’ causal theory was introduced 20 years ago to address uncertainty in the field of artificial intelligence and has been hailed as the "causal revolution." This mathematical causal theory consists of three distinct parts: algebraic symbolic language,causal diagrams,and counterfactual theory.Each of these parts has its own origins;for example,structural causal models can be traced back to Wright’s path coefficients,causal diagrams can be traced back to Bayes’ theorem,and Pearl’s counterfactual theory is based on David Lewis’ counterfactual theory.Pearl believed that to determine the effects between events,the confounding factors between them must be eliminated,meaning that they must be kept free of confounding.However,academic research on confounding has not been given much importance;various confounding definitions based on correlation criteria are lacking formalization and contain multiple flaws.Pearl,therefore,used atomic interventions within his theory to define confounding and proposed a no confounding causal definition.Although Pearl’s causal definition without confounding can overcome the shortcomings of previous theories,it still has its own flaws,such as the fact that Pearl’s causal theory can change causal judgments due to increasing external variables in empirical causality,or the fact that causal conclusions based on current information may contradict natural causal intuition.Despite these flaws,Pearl’s theory is seen as the key to solving the current deductive reasoning dilemma and has enormous potential.Meanwhile,Pearl’s causality theory no longer has monotonic and non-informational characteristics,like past deductive reasoning or counterfactual theories.With revolutionary thinking as its driving force,Pearl’s causality theory can break through the "deductive dilemma" of previous causal reasoning,sparking the causal revolution in the fields of artificial intelligence and logic. |
