Team semantics for interventionist counterfactuals and causal dependence (1712.08661v3)

Abstract: We introduce a generalization of team semantics which provides a framework for manipulationist theories of causation based on structural equation models, such as Woodward's and Pearl's; our causal teams incorporate (partial or total) information about functional dependencies that are invariant under interventions. We give a unified treatment of observational and causal aspects of causal models by isolating two operators on causal teams which correspond, respectively, to conditioning and to interventionist counterfactual implication. The evaluation of counterfactuals may involve the production of partially determined teams. We suggest a way of dealing with such cases by 1) the introduction of formal entries in causal teams, and 2) the introduction of weaker truth values (falsifiability and admissibility), for which we suggest some plausible semantical clauses. We introduce formal languages for both deterministic and probabilistic causal discourse, and study in some detail their inferential aspects. Finally, we apply our framework to the analysis of direct and total causation, and other notions of dependence and invariance.