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What Is Going on Inside the Arrows? Discovering the Hidden Springs in Causal Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alexander Murray-Watters  and
Clark Glymour
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Abstract

Using Gebharter’s representation, we consider aspects of the problem of discovering the structure of unmeasured submechanisms when the variables in those submechanisms have not been measured. Exploiting an early insight of Sober’s, we provide a correct algorithm for identifying latent, endogenous structure—submechanisms—for a restricted class of structures. The algorithm can be merged with other methods for discovering causal relations among unmeasured variables, and feedback relations between measured variables and unobserved causes can sometimes be learned.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 556 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This research is undertaken under the auspices of the University of Pittsburgh Carnegie Mellon Center for Causal Discovery, supported by the National Institutes of Health under award U54HG008540. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Additional support was received from the James S. McDonnell Foundation. We thank Gregory Cooper, Xinghua Lu, and Richard Scheines for their help.

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