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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2005 56(1):3-26; doi:10.1093/phisci/axi101
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Indeterminism and the Causal Markov Condition

Daniel Steel

Department of Philosophy, 503 S. Kedzie Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MT 48824-1032, USA, Email: steel{at}msu.edu

The causal Markov condition (CMC) plays an important role in much recent work on the problem of causal inference from statistical data. It is commonly thought that the CMC is a more problematic assumption for genuinely indeterministic systems than for deterministic ones. In this essay, I critically examine this proposition. I show how the usual motivation for the CMC—that it is true of any acyclic, deterministic causal system in which the exogenous variables are independent—can be extended to the indeterministic case. In light of this result, I consider several arguments for supposing indeterminism a particularly hostile environment for the CMC, but conclude that none are persuasive.

  1. Introduction
  2. Functional models and directed graphs
  3. The causal Markov theorem
  4. The causal Markov theorem and genuine indeterminism
  5. Are the exogenous variables independent?
  6. EPR
  7. Conclusion


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D. Steel
Comment On Hausman & Woodward On The Causal Markov Condition
Brit J Philos Sci, March 1, 2006; 57(1): 219 - 231.
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