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Aggregating Causal Judgments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard Bradley ,
Franz Dietrich  and
Christian List
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Abstract

Decision making typically requires judgments about causal relations: we need to know the causal effects of our actions and the causal relevance of various environmental factors. We investigate how several individuals’ causal judgments can be aggregated into collective causal judgments. First, we consider the aggregation of causal judgments via the aggregation of probabilistic judgments and identify the limitations of this approach. We then explore the possibility of aggregating causal judgments independently of probabilistic ones. Formally, we introduce the problem of causal-network aggregation. Finally, we revisit the aggregation of probabilistic judgments when this is constrained by prior aggregation of qualitative causal judgments.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 491 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Previous versions of this article were presented at a Choice Group seminar at the London School of Economics, October 2006; the 2006 conference of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vancouver, November 2006; and the 2nd Philosophy of Biology at Dolphin Beach workshop, Kioloa, New South Wales, August 2007. We thank the seminar and conference participants as well as two anonymous referees for very helpful comments and suggestions.

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