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Measuring causal invariance formally

Pierrick Bourrat*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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    Abstract

    Invariance is one of several dimensions of causal relationships within the interventionist account. The more invariant a relationship between two variables, the more the relationship should be considered paradigmatically causal. In this paper, I propose two formal measures to estimate invariance, illustrated by a simple example. I then discuss the notion of invariance for causal relationships between non-nominal (i.e., ordinal and quantitative) variables, for which Information theory, and hence the formalism proposed here, is not well suited. Finally, I propose how invariance could be qualified for such variables.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number690
    Pages (from-to)1-15
    Number of pages15
    JournalEntropy
    Volume23
    Issue number6
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jun 2021

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2021. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

    Keywords

    • causal specificity
    • causation
    • information theory
    • invariance

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