Curie's principle and causal graphs

  • David Kinney

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Curie's Principle says that any symmetry property of a cause must be found in its effect. In this article, I consider Curie's Principle from the point of view of graphical causal models, and demonstrate that, under one definition of a symmetry transformation, the causal modeling framework does not require anything like Curie's Principle to be true. On another definition of a symmetry transformation, the graphical causal modeling formalism does imply a version of Curie's Principle. These results yield a better understanding of the logical landscape with respect to the relationship between Curie's Principle and graphical causal modeling.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)22-27
Number of pages6
JournalStudies in History and Philosophy of Science
Volume87
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2021

Keywords

  • Causal graphs
  • Causation
  • Curie's Principle
  • Markov condition
  • Symmetry

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