ELFT HÍRADÓ

["Laszlo E. Szabo" <leszabo AT hps.elte.hu>]

Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Eotvos University
Budapest, Pazmany P. setany 1/A

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE SEMINAR
(http://hps.elte.hu/seminar)
________________________________________________
21 May 4:00 PM 6th floor 6.54
(Language: English, except all participants speak Hungarian)

 Panel Discussion

 Panelists:
 Balázs Gyenis*
 Gábor Hofer-Szabó*
 György Kampis*
 Miklós Rédei*
 László E. Szabó*
 Péter Szegedi*

 Moderator:
 Márta Fehér**
 _____________
 * HPS, Eötvös University, Budapest
 ** Philosophy, Technical University, Budapest

 Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle

 No correlation without causation. This is, in its most compact and
general formulation, the essence of  what became called the Common Cause
Principle (CCP). If two events A and B are (positively) correlated,
p(A&B)>p(A)p(B), then either there is a causal connection between A and
B that brings about  the correlation or there is a third event C (common
cause) that stands in a causal connection with A and  B,
and it is this C that causes the correlation, that is,

 (1) p(A&B|C)=p(A|C)p(B|C)
 (2) p(A&B|notC)=p(A|notC)p(B|notC)
 (3) p(A&C)>p(A)p(C)
 (4) p(B&C)>p(B)p(C)

A part of the panelists believe that - although some slight
modifications of the original Reichenbachian
 conception seem necessary - (1)-(4) express the proper mathematical
formulation of our causal intuition,  and are never violated in reality.

Some others argue that Reichenbach's concept of common cause is
completely pointless and does not apply for many correlations in our
world.

 Suggested readings:

- H. Reichenbach: The Direction of Time, University of California Press,
Los Angeles,1956, pp. 157-167.
- G. Hofer-Szabó, M. Rédei and L. E. Szabó: Reichenbach's Common Cause
Principle: Recent  Results and Open Questions, Reports on Philosophy,
No. 20. (2001)
-  E. Sober: The principle of the common cause, in J. H. Fetzer (ed.),
Probability and Causality,  Reidel Pub. Co., Boston,1988.
- E. Sober: Common cause explanation, Philosophy of Science, 51 (1984)
212-241.
-  N. Cartwright: How to tell a common cause - Generalization of the
conjunctive fork criterion, in J.  H. Fetzer (ed.), Probability and
Causality, Reidel Pub. Co., Boston,1988.
 - Hofer-Szabó, G., Rédei, M., Szabó, L. E., On Reichenbach's common
cause principle and Reichenbach's notion of common cause, The British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 50 (1999), 377-399.



The organizer of the seminar:   László E. Szabó

--
Laszlo E. Szabo
Department of Theoretical Physics
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Eotvos University, Budapest
H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32, Hungary
Phone/Fax: (36-1)372-2924
Home: (36-1) 200-7318
Mobil/SMS: (36) 20-366-1172
http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo