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Journal of Logic and Computation Advance Access originally published online on August 2, 2007
Journal of Logic and Computation 2007 17(5):939-953; doi:10.1093/logcom/exm048
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© The Author, 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Original Articles

Causality and Counterfactuals in the Situation Calculus

Mark Hopkins

Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. E-mail: hopkins{at}ling.uni-potsdam.de

Judea Pearl

Department of Computer Science, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA. E-mail: judea{at}cs.ucla.edu

Received 1 January 2006.


  Abstract

Structural causal models offer a popular framework for exploring causal concepts. However, due to their limited expressiveness, structural models have difficulties coping with such concepts as actual (event-to-event) causation. In this article, we propose a new type of causal model, based on embedding structural considerations in the language of situation calculus. By using situation calculus as a basic language, we leverage its power to express complex, dynamically changing situations and, by relying on structural considerations, we can formulate an effective theory of counterfactuals within the situation-calculus.

Keywords: Causality; commonsense reasoning; counterfactuals; situation calculus


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