The probability of causal conditionals
Open accessAbstract
Conditionals in natural language are central to reasoning and decision making. A theoretical proposal called the Ramsey test implies the conditional probability hypothesis: that the subjective probability of a natural language conditional, P(if p then q), is the conditional subjective probability, P(q/p). We report three experiments on causal indicative conditionals and related counterfactuals that support this hypothesis. We measured the probabilities people assigned to truth table cases, P(pq), P(p notq), P( notpq) and P( notp notq). From these ratings, we computed three independent predictors, P(p), P(q/p) and P(q/ notp), that we then entered into a regression equation with judged P(if p then q) as the dependent variable. In line with the conditional probability hypothesis, P(q/p) was by far the strongest predictor in our experiments. This result is inconsistent with the claim that causal conditionals are the material conditionals of elementary logic. Instead, it supports the Ramsey test hypothesis, implying that common processes underlie the use of conditionals in reasoning and judgments of conditional probability in decision making.
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The stochastic nature of predictions made by various AI algorithms is claimed to be among the main obstacles in reaching a true explanation.
“The stochastic nature of predictions made by various AI algorithms is claimed to be among the main obstacles in reaching a true explanation [44].”
From A Survey of Contrastive and Counterfactual Explanation Generation Methods for Explainable Artificial Intelligence (2021) · cites this paper as [44]
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- Authors
- Over, D. E., Hadjichristidis, C., Evans, J. S. B. T., Handley, S. J., & Sloman, S. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Sunderland (GB)
- University of Leeds (GB)
- University of Plymouth (GB)
- Brown University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Over, David E.
- Venue
- Cognitive Psychology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2007-02
- Volume
- 54
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 62-97
- ISSN
- 0010-0285 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1985061620
- Cited by
- 229
- References
- 73
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 15.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- Locations
- Cognitive Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (acceptedVersion)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Institutional Research Information System (Università degli Studi di Trento) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Bayesian Modeling and Causal Inference
- Keywords
- causal conditionals, indicative conditionals, counterfactuals, Ramsey test, subjective probability, material conditional, conditional reasoning, decision-making
- MeSH terms
- Analysis of Variance, Culture, Decision Making, Humans, Judgment, Probability Learning, Problem Solving, Regression Analysis, Statistics as Topic, Models, Statistical, Causality
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