Abstract—Several prominent philosophers of science (Cartwright [2], Dupré [3], Hausman [8], [9], Hitchcock [10]) pose a problem for the probabilistic theory of causally called the unanimity theory. In this paper, I focus on Hitchcock’s criticism of the unanimity theory. I critically examine Hitchcock’s argument against the unanimity theory. After introducing the desirable features of the unanimity theory, I show that the unanimity theory too does the same job Hitchcock’s theory is intended to do. I conclude that the criticism of the unanimity theory on the contrary reveals the versatility of the unanimity theory some philosophers of science and some computer scientists ([17], [21]) do not notice.
Index Terms—Binary, causality, contrast, disjunctive factors, ternary, population, probabilistic theory, unanimity.
Joonsung Kim is with the Department of Philosophy, Myongji University, Seoul, Korea (ROK) (e-mail: jkim30@ mju.ac.kr).
Cite: Joonsung Kim, "Probabilistic Theories of Causality: Singular or Plural?," International Journal of Machine Learning and Computing vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 319-326, 2012.