Causal Semantic Relation

A Causal Relation is a causal relationship that is a formal relation.

• Context:
  • It can have a Strength Value.
  • It can be Instantiated as a Physical Phenomenon.
  • It can be Represented by a Semantic Relation (e.g. in a Causal Network).
  • It can be Referenced by a Semantic Relation.
  • It can be a Physical Law.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • The transfer of force between two colliding balls.
  • The chemical forces at work during a Chemical Reaction.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • A Free Choice such as the choice of Employment by a Human.
  • a Temporal Relation.
  • a Contrastive Relation.
• See: Causal Model, Causal Analysis, Physical Space, Physical Time, Event, Counterfactual, Structural Equation Modeling Algorithm.

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References

2011

• (Prasad et al., 2011) ⇒ Rashmi Prasad, Susan McRoy, Nadya Frid, Aravind Joshi, and Hong Yu. (2011). “[10.1186/1471-2105-12-188 The Biomedical Discourse Relation Bank].” In: BMC Bioinformatics 2011, 12:188. doi:10.1186/1471-2105-12-188
  • QUOTE: … Discourse relations, such as causal, temporal, and contrastive relations, are relations between eventualities and propositions mentioned in a text, from which we can draw deep or complex inferences about the text.

2009

• http://www.isi.edu/~hobbs/bgt-cause.text
  • The account of causality we use here is that of Hobbs (2005). This distinguishes between the monotonic, precise notion of "causal complex" and the nonmonotonic, defeasible notion of "cause". The former gives us mathematical rigor; the latter is more useful for everyday reasoning and can be characterized in terms of the former. We begin with an abbreviated account of these concepts.
  • When we flip a switch to turn on a light, we say that flipping the switch caused the light to turn on. But for this to happen, many other factors had to be in place. The bulb had to be intact, the switch had to be connected to the bulb, the power had to be on in the city, and so on. We will use the predicate "cause" for flipping the switch, and introduce the predicate "causalComplex" to refer to the set of all the states and events that have to hold or happen for the effect to happen. Thus, the states of the bulb, the wiring, and the power supply would all be in the causal complex.

2005

• (Hobbs, 2005) ⇒ Jerry R. Hobbs. (2005). “Toward a Useful Notion of Causality for Lexical Semantics.” In: Journal of Semantics, 22.

2000

• (Pearl, 2000) ⇒ Judea Pearl. (2000). “Causality: models, reasoning, and inference." Cambridge University Press, ISBN:0521773628

1995

• (Khoo, 1995) ⇒ Christopher Soo-Guan Khoo. (1995). “Automatic Identification of Causal Relations in Text and Their Use for Improving Precision in Information Retrieval." Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University.

1990

• (Shoam, 1990) ⇒ Yoav Shoham. (1990). “Nonmonotonic reasoning and Causation.” In: Cognitive Science, 14.

1973

• (Lewis, 1973) ⇒ David K Lewis. (1973). “Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press.

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