规律性因果结构推理与奥卡姆剃刀  

Regularity-theoretic Causal Inference and Occam's Razors

作　　者：张寄冀 Zhang Jiji(The Department of Philosophy,The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong 999077,China)

机构地区：[1]香港中文大学哲学系,中国香港

出　　处：《科学．经济．社会》2023年第3期1-12,共12页Science Economy Society

基　　金：香港研究资助局优配研究金(13602720)。

摘　　要：发现因果结构是许多科学研究的一个重要目的。如何从被动观察而非主动干预实验中推断因果结构是近年来颇受关注的方法论问题。针对方法论中的简单性原则比较两个处理此问题的进路,一个是用干预的概念来定义因果结构,进而探究从观察性数据中推断此结构的可能性;另一个则遵循规律性因果理论的传统,以实际可观察的规律定义因果结构,在此基础上设计因果推断的方法。两种进路的现有方法都会用到某些极小化原则。在第一种基于干预概念的进路中,通常用到的极小化原则比较明显是方法论意义上的简单化原则或奥卡姆剃刀,而非当作因果概念的一部分或关于因果关系的本体论原则。但在规律性因果理论的进路里,极小化原则似乎是概念的或语义的原则。试图论证这个看似存在的差别并不真实:规律性因果理论中的极小化原则在因果推断中起的作用实际上也相当于奥卡姆剃刀。澄清此相似之处有一个重要后果:基于规律性因果的方法有可能借用基于干预性因果的文献中提出的各种奥卡姆剃刀来应对一些困难,值得进一步探究。An important aim of scientific research in many fields is to discover causal structures.Recent years have seen increasing attention paid to methodological issues in the inference of causal structures from observational rather than experimental data.This article compares two approaches to inference of causal structures,regarding the use of methodological principles of simplicity.One approach defines causal structures in terms of interventions and seeks to infer useful information about such a structure from noninterventional data.The other follows the tradition of regularity theories of causation,defining causal structures in terms of observable regularities,and design methods of causal inference accordingly.Methods in both approaches employ certain minimality assumptions.In the intervention-based approach,the status of such assumptions is fairly obvious:they are methodological assumptions rather than ontological or semantical truths.However,this is not so clear in the regularity-based approach.This article argues that the minimality assumptions in the regularity-based approach are also Occam's razors in the methodological sense.Moreover,there is an important consequence of this understanding:the regularity-based approach may borrow Occam's razors from the intervention-based approach to address some of its internal problems.

关 键 词：因果关系 因果推断 方法论 干预 规律性因果理论 奥卡姆剃刀 

分 类 号：B089[哲学宗教—哲学理论]