Causality offers the first comprehensive coverage of causal analysis in many sciences, including recent advances using graphical methods. Pearl presents a unified account of the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual and structural approaches to causation, and devises simple mathematical tools for analyzing the relationships between causal connections, statistical associations, actions and observations. The book will open the way for including causal analysis in the standard curriculum of statistics, artificial intelligence, business, epidemiology, social science and economics.

This book intends to make known, in a detailed but accessible way to the general public, an old idea, but which has had a renewed interest in recent years: the proposal of attributing an unconditional basic income for all. This idea, often discarded and disqualified for allegedly belonging to the mere domain of utopia, understood in a pejorative sense as something unrealizable, has been the target of the interest of many people (academics, politicians, businesspeople, activists and, of course, all citizens (...) concerned with the common good) is presented as being feasible through several concrete experiences and pilot projects. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to understand the method by which Thomas Solly (1816?1875), in his Syllabus of Logic (1839), provided a mathematical formulation of the traditional syllogism. The symbolism, in which analogues of multiplication, addition and subtraction are applied to term variables, is very puzzling at first. This paper provides a clear interpretation for this symbolism and explains why it works. It also addresses other notable features of the symbolism. The paper concludes by comparing the results which Solly obtained (...) by symbolic means with those which he obtained non?symbolically. (shrink)

Everyone has heard the claim, "Correlation does not imply causation." What might sound like a reasonable dictum metastasized in the twentieth century into one of science's biggest obstacles, as a legion of researchers became unwilling to make the claim that one thing could cause another. Even two decades ago, asking a statistician a question like "Was it the aspirin that stopped my headache?" would have been like asking if he believed in voodoo, or at best a topic for conversation at (...) a cocktail party rather than a legitimate target of scientific inquiry. Scientists were allowed to posit only that the probability that one thing was associated with another. This all changed with Judea Pearl, whose work on causality was not just a victory for common sense, but a revolution in the study of the world. (shrink)

The following Addenda and some Corrigenda were derived for the most part from manuscripts examined in the summer of 1964 and in the spring and summer of 1965, 1967 at Bologna University ; London, British Museum ; Munich, Bayerische Staats-Bibliothek, Codex Latinus Monacensis ; Orlèans; Oxford, the Bodleian ; and Merton College ; Paris, Bibliotheque nationale , and University ; Tours; Vatican, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana ; and Vienna, National-Bibliothek . A number are noted from other sources, namely Silvestre , Wickersheimer (...) , et alia. They supplement the late Lynn Thorndike's “Additional Addenda et Corrigenda” in Speculum , and are here offered for the convenience of users of the Catalogue of Incipits. jQuery.click { event.preventDefault(); }). (shrink)

Grice proposed to investigate 'the total signification of the utterance'. One persistent criticism of Grice's taxonomy of signification is that he missed an important category of information. This content, and/or the process of providing it, goes by a variety of labels: 'generalized implicature', 'explicature', 'unarticulated constituents', 'default heuristics', 'impliciture'. In this study we first take a sample of such phenomena and, from the point of view of pure pragmatics, survey the central descriptions of the content expressed and the mechanisms that (...) might deliver these contents. We then, from the point of view of experimental pragmatics, focus on two accounts: Levinson's I-heuristic, and Bach's standardization. We find experimental evidence for the existence of such implicitures, and for the use of language specific standardizations over language neutral background information. (shrink)

This paper was a comment on address at a conference whose proceedings were published by The Personalist (now the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.) It was pure ephemera and only someone interested in the paper on which it was a comment would find this of interest. I have no copy of it remaining and have, at this distance, no memory of what I might have said.

The book can also be used as an excellent text for graduate-level courses in AI, operations research, or applied probability.

'Methinks I am like a man, who having narrowly escap'd shipwreck', David Hume writes in A Treatise of Human Nature, 'has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe'. With these words, Hume begins a memorable depiction of the crisis of philosophy and his turn to moral and political philosophy as the path forward. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas W. (...) class='Hi'>Merrill shows how Hume's turn is the core of his thought, linking Hume's metaphysical and philosophical crisis to the moral-political inquiries of his mature thought. Merrill shows how Hume's comparison of himself to Socrates in the introduction to the Treatise illuminates the dramatic structure and argument of the book as a whole, and he traces Hume's underappreciated argument about the political role of philosophy in the Essays. (shrink)

Since the first version of this classic work was published in 1974, major events in which American journalism has played a decisive role have cast the reporter increasingly as the subject for public examination. The newsman has become news. Though there are more serious, responsible journalists today than at any time in America, the less serious, less responsible also have great exposure. The loss of credibility of the mass media is widely acknowledged, and is a considerable concern to serious journalists. (...) For not only is American policy-making hampered by sensational journalism, but also weakened is the philosophical foundation of a free society; a society committed to maximize the freedom of well-informed choice for individual citizens in a period of massification. This book presents a philosophy of journalism that not only relates to a journalist's everyday activities, but also deals with a broad Weltanschauung for journalism which is built largely on the ideas coming out of the Age of Reason. Areas of philosophy are political philosophy and its relationship to journalism, epistemological concerns primarily journalistic objectivity and truth-seeking, and journalistic ethics. (shrink)

In "Realism and Reason" Hilary Putnam has offered an apparently strong argument that the position of metaphysical realism provides an incoherent model of the relation of a correct scientific theory to the world. However, although Putnam's attack upon the notion of the "intended" interpretation of a scientific theory is sound, it is shown here that realism may be formulated in such a way that the realist need make no appeal to any "intended" interpretation of such a theory. Consequently, it can (...) be shown that realism is immune to Putnam's criticism and that attempts at reformulating this criticism are not likely to meet with success. (shrink)

Merrill, Booker and Fivush examine the social functions associated with transmitting intergenerational narratives to adolescents and emerging adults and how these family stories affect identity formation in early adulthood. Merrill et al. observed that the intergenerational stories of parents’ transgression and proud moments told by adolescents and emerging adults operate as a way to transmit life lessons, strengthen relationships with the parent and give insights into their parents and their self.

This note aims to assist applied econometricians in understanding the tools of causal inference and to extend those discussed in Nick Huntington-Klein's review of The Book of Why.

Lvcretivs II. 263 ‘nonne uides etiam patefactos tempore puncto.’ ‘Tempore puncto’ occurs only here in Lucretius and in no other author; but ‘puncto tempore’ is read in II. 456, 1006, IV. 214; ‘puncto in tempore et,’ VI. 230. ‘Temporis puncto’ is found at I. 1109, and ‘temporis in puncto’ at IV. 164, 193. ‘Puncto… diei’ occurs in IV. 201. ‘Punctum’ as a noun corresponds to τομος, for a point has no dimensions; St. August. Ep. 205, 14, ‘atomo temporis, inquit, hoc (...) est in puncto temporis quod diuidi non potest.’ ‘Inquit’ refers to St. Paul I. Ad Corinth. XV. 52, where the N.T. has ν τόμѡ and the present Vulgate ‘in momento.’ And in Ep. 190, 15, St. Austin says ‘summa celeritate atque atomo temporis’; and St. Jerome, Ep. 119, 2, ‘in atomo et in puncto temporis atque momento,’ 5 ‘atomus… punctum temporis est’; J. Cassian, Inst. II. 7, 2, ‘puncto breuissimo’; Lact. Inst. VII. 12 ‘uno temporis puncto.’ ‘Punctum temporis’ or ‘atomus temporis’ means an instant of time that cannot be divided. (shrink)